Chapter XVII (1)
A fortnight later they drove into Paris.
Tristram had written to Horatia announcing the probable date of their arrival, but, as in his trouble he had omitted to give their address, there was no letter to greet him, no invitation to stay instead at the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, as there would have been had she known where he would be. He was rather glad when he realised, on arrival, what he had done. It was late. Next day he sent a note by a messenger saying that he and Dormer would call in the early afternoon.
In the morning he went out by himself, and leaning over the Pont Royal watched the Seine running to the sea. Much water had slipped under that bridge since last he was in Paris. He smiled at the commonplaceness of the thought; but it was true, nevertheless. Did Horatia ever cross the bridge?—of course she must often do so. Paris was different from the Paris of old—different from any other city in the world, now.
One of the views of the world was before him, where up the stream Notre Dame lay magnificently at anchor. In his lonely walks in Florence Tristram had acquired the habit of going almost every day into some church or other; the desire to enter one now came upon him, and he left his post and made his way, not however to Notre Dame, but to the church which was to him the most attractive in Paris, St. Etienne du Mont.
The beautiful jubé burst on his senses with a new surprise; the splendid windows blazed again. He knelt down, undisturbed by a couple of tourists who were wandering round. The church was full of light; the wonderful exultant lines of the screen caught up his spirit, and he saw once more, not with the faint sense of regret which once he had, that the most jewelled of the windows were set up high in the clerestory, where the eye had to seek for them. St. Etienne meant that, then—the rapture, the ardour, the flaming ecstasy of sacrifice—more, of sacrifice that seemed uncalled for. Would he ever know it, or must he always feel that he gave, not grudgingly indeed, but without a grain of the incense of joy?
(2)
He thought of the church as he and Dormer walked rather silently along the Rue St. Dominique that afternoon and came at last to the gateway of the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon. Yes, he had made the sacrifice completely; it could not be redemanded now, even though he was to see her, to touch her hand. It was relief unspeakable to know this; nine months, six months ago he could not have met her. Yet he had a quite ordinary dread of the encounter, of its strangeness, of the feeling that something had come down and shut her off. Would she be looking ill?
He had said to Dormer that he rather anticipated being received in the midst of a family gathering, since he was known to the Marquis as well, and since Armand was indeed no little in his debt. He was pleased to find that this was not the case. The lackey led them up the stairs to Horatia’s boudoir. Madame la Comtesse (how unfamiliar!) was expecting them.
At first sight, as Horatia rose to greet them, Tristram thought, “Yes, she has been ill, she looks a woman, but she is the same.” She had for a moment all her old vivacity, her delightful smile, the same trick of screwing her eyes up when she talked. She gave him just the welcome that he might have had in Berkshire. He was even able to remember, as she held out her hand to Dormer, all the hits she used to aim at his friend.
“I hope you are quite recovered from your accident, Mr. Dormer,” she said. “You must not stand a moment, I am sure. Let us all sit down, and we can gossip comfortably.”
She waved them into chairs. The voice, the words, were just Horatia’s own; the air a little more assured, more mature—that of Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon. No harm in that.
She talked on lightly. Papa, she was certain, had been alarming Tristram unnecessarily; she was as well as ever she had been in her life. And why had not Tristram given her an address?—could they not come and stay at the Hôtel now? Presently they must see her son, and Armand would soon be in.
And as she talked the sense of effort began to be apparent, the glow, the first illusion faded. She was not the same Horatia; she was not even the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon, an Horatia ripened by her station, she was somehow different. She had not the same vitality. This was what her illness had done to her, thought Tristram—drained away some of that almost childish and petulant animation which he used to love in her. Spring had left those green boughs, perhaps not to revisit them. He was sad; and sat a little silent while she talked, without telling them much, about Armand, about this, that, and the other, about her own pleasure in seeing them, ending at last by saying, “Perhaps we had better be going now into the salon.”
So they followed her to that apartment where, throned in state on a sofa, out of deference to the English prejudice against being received in a bedroom, sat the Duchesse—and Tristram was momentarily startled to perceive that her hair, as he innocently supposed it to be, was of almost the same shade as Horatia’s. Beside her, talking with great animation, was a young and fashionably dressed woman, the Marquise de Beaulieu. His old acquaintance Emmanuel was standing by these two, and in a window a tall ecclesiastic whom he did not know was conversing with a shrivelled little old lady equally unknown to him.
“Aha!” said the Dowager, “so this is the celebrated M. Hungerford to whom, I understand, our young couple owe their present felicity.” And she tendered her small aged hand with a smile that unmasked the full battery of her false teeth. “I have also to thank you, Monsieur, for your kind hospitality to my son, as well as to my grandson. And why, I pray, are we to be given no opportunity of returning so many obligations?” And while, with half-bantering condescension, she proceeded in this vein, and Emmanuel greeted him again with genuine pleasure, Tristram was conscious that Dormer, rescued from his momentary fall into the clutches of Madame de Beaulieu, was borne off and presented by Horatia to the priest in the window. Then Armand appeared, with a smile for everybody, delighted to see his former host, very gallant to his wife. He had not altered. Eventually he separated Tristram from the Duchesse and his brother, and began to make courteous and tactful inquiries about his “old friends” at Compton, but all the while Tristram’s mind was busy trying to account for the change in Horatia. He was beginning to think it due, not to her illness exactly, but to the atmosphere in which she lived, to these over-many relations, amongst whom her identity, once so strong, seemed almost lost.
Presently further stir, and Maurice was borne in like a relic, and deposited in a strange shrine, his great-grandmother’s lap. Somewhat to Tristram’s surprise, Armand immediately went over to him and presented his finger; the infant, whose face had assumed an anxious expression, crowed loudly and seized it.
“Small doubt that he is thy son, mauvais sujet,” Tristram heard the Duchesse to remark sotto voce to her grandson. “His eyes are more like thine every day. Do not throw thyself about thus, little one; I have held many children before thee.”
But Tristram, the prey of a curious fascination, remained where he was. And all this while, too, Horatia was sitting leaning her head on her hand, at the other side of the room, alone, almost unnoticed, except that Dormer, though still talking to Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, was looking at her intently. It was true that Horatia’s eyes were fixed upon the group round the sofa, or rather upon its centre; their expression was not to be read, but the weariness, the profound lassitude of her pose was the ineffaceable thing which Tristram carried away from the scene—that, and Armand’s look as he stooped over their child.