Chapter IX (1)
In one of the enormous rooms of her château of St. Clair, which not even her taste could make other than oppressive, Laurence-Héloïse de Vigerie sat waiting for her carriage. The apartment, with its six great windows, its consoles of alabaster, its porphyry vases and chandelier of rock-crystal, still kept its air of pomp from the time of Louvois, unsubdued by flowers or books. Even Madame de Vigerie herself had an air of being in perpetual warfare with her stiff surroundings, an appearance of being at this moment, in her pelisse of lemon-yellow silk and her delicate white jacconet gown, something rather incongruous and sylphlike shut up by mistake in a monument.
Sitting near one of the great porphyry vases she looked impatiently at the clock—monumental also—she tapped with her little foot in its lilac cashmere boot; finally she took a rose out of a jardinière and began to twirl it round and round. In a moment or two her lips parted in a smile. The scent of the rose reminded her of something.
This time last summer, chance having kept her late in Paris, some of these very roses had been sent by her command from St. Clair. Armand de la Roche-Guyon had been with her when, somewhat faded, they had arrived, and he had asked for one. And she remembered how, afterwards, with the fragrance of the dying roses round her, she had pondered for a little time whether she would marry Armand if he asked her—a contingency obviously likely to occur any day. She had his measure by heart; she knew his fickleness, was perfectly aware that he was the slave of caprice (his own or another’s), but she knew, too, that he always came back to her in the end. For her, with her connections, wealth and position, it was no great match, perhaps, the younger son of an impoverished though very ancient house. Yet sometimes... Well, she had never had to make up her mind!
And, after all, he had fallen under the sway of an empire stronger, momentarily, than hers. He had not come back to her! The news of his English marriage had struck her, it is true, as an affront, but she was persuaded that it was more of a wound to her pride than to her heart. And he would have been so much trouble to keep!
Yet he had some curious quality of charm. How easy, in spite of his defection, it had been to take him back into favour. It was true that she had caused him to feel anything but thoroughly reinstated.... And now she was going to return his wife’s visit.—Heigho, what an odd world!
Madame de Vigerie had not seen Horatia, having been out when the bride had called, but Armand had described her. Evidently she was beautiful. But that, in the Vicomtesse’s experience, did not count for very much, and certainly her own lack of beauty had never troubled her. Laurence de Vigerie was a finished type of the belle laide, dowered with the attraction which, once it has subjugated, can never lose its hold by the mere passage of time. Her power came from other sources than her complexion or her hair. Passing through life as she did, always a little amused, apparently rather cold, and inclined to experiment, elusive in her relations, absolutely without petty jealousy and very nearly without malice, she had given no cause for scandal, and had driven more men distracted than she cared, sometimes, to remember.
(2)
Horatia put down her embroidery and rose. She was dreading this interview. She was sure that she should not like Madame de Vigerie, and she would probably have to see a good deal of her.
Beneath the four upright ostrich plumes which topped her lemon-yellow bonnet, beneath its wide brim lined with Adelaide-blue crepe, Horatia saw the irregular features of the woman who might have been in her place. And Laurence de Vigerie beheld the chosen bride, the woman preferred before her, serious, rather pale, with a crown of red-gold hair and a simple muslin gown. “She is but a child” was her first thought (instantly corrected), and Horatia’s, that the Vicomtesse was not beautiful, not even pretty, as she had expected. Among her gifts Madame de Vigerie possessed the double power of making the banalities of ordinary intercourse sound interesting, and of getting them over quickly, for in the course of a few minutes they had been left behind, and the two were conversing on more interesting themes.
“You read a great deal, Madame, do you not?”
“I used to,” answered Horatia rather wistfully. “I have always been fond of reading French,” she added.
“Yes, indeed,” said Madame de Vigerie, “it is easy to see that your knowledge of our tongue is profound. Perhaps if you are not well provided with French books, you would allow me to send you over a few, I daresay the library at Kerfontaine is not very up to date. I know that mine is not, and I have to bring books from Paris. Let me lend you the new book of Hugo’s which everyone is devouring, Notre Dame de Paris.”
Horatia thanked her warmly, and the visitor went on to admire the garden and the fountain, “which I always envy so much,” she said.
Horatia, too, looked out of the window at the little figure.
“I am very fond of it,” she said, “and I wish I knew something of its history, for I believe that an ancestor of my husband’s brought it from Italy, but I have never been able to find out for certain.”
Madame de Vigerie gave her a bright and friendly glance. “I can tell you all about it,” she was beginning, when the door opened and Armand came in.
He greeted her with composure. “Do not let me deprive my wife of the information which you were about to give her, Vicomtesse,” he said. “Unless, indeed, it be some fashionable detail of which I am better left ignorant.”
Madame de Vigerie’s eyes, as they rested on him, held a little sprite of mockery which he knew very well. “We were discussing Art,” she said gravely. “Since you permit it, Monsieur, I will continue. Madame la Comtesse is doubtless aware that her fountain is a copy of Verrochio’s famous boy and dolphin at Florence. But you, Monsieur, have not told her how, in the Italian wars of Louis XII, Raoul de Kerfontaine, your grandfather heaven knows how many times removed on the mother’s side, being desirous of bringing a fairing to his lady, decided on this not very portable mark of his affection; how it took so long to copy and to convey, that when he got back to Brittany the lady was married to another. So he set it up in his own garden and, I daresay, used often to wander round it in the moonlight, poor gentleman, thinking sad thoughts.”
“Vicomtesse,” said Armand laughing, “you have made that up!”
“Fi donc, Monsieur!” retorted the guest. “You do not know the history of your own family!”
“He is scandalously ignorant,” agreed Horatia. “But, Madame, if I may ask, how do you know it so well?”
“Because,” replied Madame de Vigerie, “by an odd chance, the lady of M. de Kerfontaine’s blighted affections happened to be an ancestress of my husband’s. I can show you the tale in a book at St. Clair—not of course that St. Clair in its present state existed then.... And so M. le Comte has never shown you, Madame, the inscription which the poor Raoul had carved on the base of the statue?”
“Never. But if you, Madame, would remedy his negligence?”
“Willingly,” responded the Vicomtesse. “I am never so happy as when I am imparting information.”
Armand unfastened the window and followed them out. The visit was going well. It was long since he had seen Horatia so animated. Feeling that there might be a slight constraint in the situation, he had purposely refrained from coming in until the two women should have broken the ice, and even when he entered had thought it possible that he should find the temperature below freezing point. But you could never tell about women, for they seemed to have taken a fancy to each other. He followed the yellow pelisse and the white muslin down between the lime-trees, wondering what Laurence was thinking about.
“You see,” said Madame de Vigerie, “what the poor man thought of women.” She took off a glove and traced with a delicate finger the remains of the eroded fettering round the base of the bronze. “Cor muliebre his aquis mutabilius,” she read, and Horatia fell an instant convert to the continental mode of pronouncing Latin.
“And was the faithless lady happy?” she asked.
“Supremely, I regret to say. It was only sad for M. le Comte’s unlucky ancestor. Mais que voulez-vous? He should not have been so slow. And you had never been told this moving tale?”
“Certainly not,” responded Armand. “It is derogatory to my ancestor, and for my part I am little disposed to believe it now.”
“In the face of that evidence?” asked Madame de Vigerie, pointing to the statue.
“That inscription is a commonplace known to mankind since the days of Horace,” retorted the young man. “It is just as true to-day as then, and is therefore no evidence at all.”
The Vicomtesse removed her gaze from him. “Madame, you must not let your husband talk in this manner. But the real evidence is at St. Clair, and if you will promise to come and see me soon I will hunt out the old book.—M. le Comte, would you be good enough to see if my carriage is there?”
Armand went obediently, but when he returned, he found his wife and her visitor strayed into the rose-garden, and talking of gardening matters. Not even when putting the Vicomtesse into her carriage had he the opportunity of a word alone with her, for Horatia accompanied them. She had apparently been bidden to St. Clair next day.
“I do not invite you, M. le Comte,” was Madame de Vigerie’s parting remark. “Since you do not believe the legend, research would only bore you, and I want no unwilling converts.”
(3)
Tristram Hungerford had been right; the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, young as he was, did consider himself to be thoroughly versed in the ways of women. But there were occasions during the next three or four weeks of his sojourn in Brittany when the connoisseur found himself hopelessly puzzled by the behaviour of the two nearest specimens of the sex, women, too, of whose idiosyncrasies he might have been supposed to have an intimate knowledge—his wife that was and his wife that might have been. That these two, of characters so different, placed in a mutual relationship not of the most comfortable, should become, not mere acquaintances but, apparently, actual friends, was beyond him. And since, in that short space of time, this miracle had happened; since two days did not pass that Laurence did not come over to see Horatia, or Horatia go driving with Laurence, and since miracles were not within his sphere of belief, Armand refused to credit the evidence. He thought that the two women were playing at being friends, for some reason unknown.
But, since Armand had, along with the scepticism, the logical mind of his race, he did not long occupy this position. He could not discover a motive strong enough to produce so much dissimulation. Horatia had nothing very much to gain from intimacy with Madame de Vigerie; she would naturally be predisposed against the woman who might have had her place. And as for the Vicomtesse, Armand was not fatuous enough to imagine that she was consciously cultivating a friendship with the wife in order that she might see more of the husband. Indeed, Madame de Vigerie seemed to take especial care that no such flattering thought should find even a momentary lodging in his mind. If he was not definitely excluded from their society—which would in a sense have been complimentary—he was made to feel that his presence or absence was immaterial. His position began to be rather galling, and he strongly suspected Laurence, with her diabolical intuition, of being pleasantly aware of the fact.
He never saw her alone—a consummation which could easily have been brought about had she wished it. Already she had begun to have her house full of guests; their own, chiefly members of the family, would soon be upon them. But one day he got an opportunity when, coming home from a ride, and going into the garden in search of Horatia he perceived, seated by the fountain in a lilac muslin gown, not his wife, but Madame de Vigerie.
“At last!” said he, and approached. The Vicomtesse’s large hat lay on the ground by her side; the low sun struck gleams from her brown hair. At his step she looked round.
“How much I envy you this garden,” she said, undisturbed. “Above all I love this little green fountain.”
Armand sat down on the rim of the basin, facing her.
“Permit me to offer it to you,” he said. “It should have been yours this four hundred years or more.”
“Ah, my fickle ancestress!” said Madame de Vigerie, dabbling her hand in the water. Goldfish from all parts hurried towards it.
“What a bait!” said Armand below his breath.... “Where is my wife?”
“Showing a visitor round the garden. You should be there, too.”
“Doubtless,” replied the Comte, without stirring. He crossed one booted leg over the other, and looked at her. She withdrew her hand, and, shaking it, dried it on her handkerchief.
“Laurence,” said the young man suddenly, “don’t you think that you are treating me very badly?”
“O, I hope not!” said the Vicomtesse quite seriously.
“We were friends once,” said Armand.
“And now—surely not enemies?”
“On my soul, I had rather have you for an enemy than for—an acquaintance!”
“A compliment?” asked the Vicomtesse. “Yes, I suppose it is.... Armand, I have fallen in love... with your wife.”
“If that is, in return, a compliment to me, I thank you.”
“Really, I do not know whether it is or no. If you will permit me to say so, I do not know how she came to marry you.”
“You find me not worthy?” he inquired.
For the first time Madame de Vigerie smiled, shaking her head slightly. “I will not mount into the pulpit, mon ami, however much you press me. The day when I shall make you a homily is, I hope, distant. Meanwhile, I wish you every happiness, and a son like his mother.... Here they are returning.”
When the visitor had departed and Armand, too, had vanished, the two friends walked up and down under the limes.
“I have a house full to-morrow,” said Madame de Vigerie. “When can you come over and see me quietly, ma chère. Of course you will both dine with us next week.”
“The Marquis is coming next week,” said Horatia, “and Claude-Edmond. And, rather to my horror, the Duchesse has expressed a desire to stay here. It is a royal command.”
“You will be as busy as I for the next few weeks, then?”
Horatia nodded. “Yes, except that this house is not so capacious as St. Clair. I shall not be able to get much time for reading, I expect. I have finished Ourika, however, and the other tales of Madame de Duras. I did not admire them very much; perhaps I ought to have done so.”
“They had a vogue some years ago,” said Madame de Vigerie, “probably because she was a great lady. But I do not think that any woman who keeps a famous salon, as she did, can do much else.”
“I do not want to write,” said Horatia, “but it is a dream of mine to have a little salon—a literary salon—some day. But my husband does not encourage it.”
“Monsieur le Comte is quite right,” responded Madame de Vigerie rather unexpectedly. “To have a salon is a life in itself. It is true that the possession of one is a Frenchwoman’s ambition in youth, and her glory in old age. But, mon Dieu, what sacrifices does it not entail on her! She can be neither wife, mother, nor lover, and in friendship she can have but one preference—for the most illustrious man whom she can attract to her gatherings. To retain him there she must sacrifice everything else; she and all her surroundings must be vowed to his cult. If she cannot procure such a great man for the pivot of her circle she must wear herself out in attentions to a host of lesser lights.—My dear, you are too good for either of these rôles; do not regret your lost salon!”
(4)
Madame de Vigerie, being gifted with the seeing eye, found Horatia pathetic. “She is losing him, and she knows it,” was her verdict now. In this she was perhaps attributing to the girl more clearness of vision than she had yet attained to, but the tragedy of the situation she had not overestimated.
On arrival at Kerfontaine, Horatia had tried hard to pretend that things were as they had been in January. But the very fact of the attempt had slain the chance of its success. It was idle to wander round the rose-garden, now in fullest leaf and soon to be ablaze; it had been warmer there under the early snow. Something had gone out of the spirit of the place, and not all the cajolery of May could bring back the thrill of the bare boughs. And yet it was not that she wanted her honeymoon over again. She had no yearnings for the romping happiness of the winter. Then she had been a girl; now she was a woman. Even in Paris she had realised that the time had come for her and Armand to pass on to another stage—together, and now in the shadow of motherhood she could understand much that had been dark to her before. Never again could their love fail to satisfy, for it had found its fulfilment.
Something of this she tried to hint to Armand one May evening in the garden. He only said, “You amuse me when you look so serious, Horatia. I don’t understand what you are talking about. Those furs become you,” (it was a chilly evening,) “you had better wear them always.”
They were the words he had used in the winter, and she had thrilled then to hear them. Now they were like a sacrilege. O, why would he not understand! He must enter with her into this new world. She could not, would not know its joys, and perhaps its fears, alone.
She came one day into his sanctum, where he was doing something absorbing with a fowling-piece.
“Are you very busy, dear? Yes, I see you are. I will come another time.”
She looked very animated and charming, so the young man laid down the gun and said with a smile. “Of course I will, mon amie. What is it that you want of me?”
“I want you,” replied Horatia, mysteriously sparkling, “to come upstairs to the old armoury. I have something to ask you.”
He followed her up the staircase, looking at the little curls on the back of her neck. She led him to the big, disused room on the first floor which still held the remains of what had been a fine collection of armour, until the tenantry of Armand’s maternal grandfather had ransacked it for weapons during the Revolution, the better to defend him.
“I do not know what you will say to my idea,” began Horatia, standing in the midst of the rusty accoutrements. “I thought—but, of course, you will say if you do not like it—that all this armour could be cleaned, and cleared out and arranged along the corridors. There is not very much of it.”
“And then?”
“Then... if it were possible, this big room might be partitioned into two, or even into three, for nurseries. But perhaps you would rather not....”
It was a delightful subject for discussion, and Horatia was quite ready to discuss, even to give way altogether if he did not approve of her scheme, for she thought it might seem to him rather revolutionary.
“Mais, mon Dieu, for what do you take me?” asked her husband, laughing. “Do you think that I care where these rusty old pots are put? Turn them out anywhere you like, mon amie. It was not necessary to bring me up here to ask that!”
“But the partitioning——”
“Of course. It is an excellent idea. Do just as you like.” And he turned to go.
“But, Armand, I thought you would advise me about that. You see, if the day nursery were at this side, where the sun...”
The faintest shade of impatience appeared on the young man’s face. “My angel,” he said, “I am no expert on nurseries. You want a married woman—and a mason. Get Thiébault’s people down from Paris to do it properly, if you like; or there is a good man at Rennes. I give you carte blanche, only you must not expect me to arrange it for you. Will you forgive me now—the gamekeeper is coming in a few minutes.”
And Armand’s thought was, as he ran down the stairs, that of all people he would least have expected Horatia Grenville to turn into a Martha of domesticity. No doubt it was a good thing for the prospects of his heir, but what if he were going to be pursued by entreaties for advice about this and that detail! He was not in the least disappointed in his marriage. He was a Frenchman; marriage was an affair of arrangement, not of rapture. He had been luckier than most, for he had had the rapture too. He possessed a beautiful wife, approved of by his family, who might be trusted never to put him in the always ludicrous position of the betrayed husband. He would also have an heir. If, now, his wife would but consent to settle down, after their brief idyll of passion, into the dignified mistress of his household, and would not make uncomfortable claims upon him, he need never regret having lost his head over her in Berkshire. Her perceptions must be much less acute than he had imagined if she could not see that the bonds of matrimony in her adoptive country held in a different fashion from those of her own. However, no doubt everything would right itself in time; if would be a good thing when the boy was born.
Upstairs, among the plundered armour, Horatia stood with her head against the window and cried.