Summer Will Show (20 page)

Meanwhile a provisional government of the left was proposed and agreed on; and other provisional governments were agreed upon with equal enthusiasm and unanimity at the offices of two newspapers, the
National
and the
Réforme
. The adherents of each government, everything being settled so satisfactorily, joined their triumphal processions before the Hôtel de Ville, where there was a vast scene of rejoicing and fraternity.

All this Sophia heard from the valet who brought dinner to her room. He was a young man, and he admitted himself to be moved, saying that the slaughter had been frightful, and would have been worse if it had not been for the refusal of the National Guards to take any part in it, sticking nosegays in the muzzles of their guns to show the harmlessness of their intentions. To-morrow, he said, a new era would begin.

She listened with exasperation. And yet when he had left the room she could have wished him and his babble back again; for to spend a whole day alone in a hotel bedroom, with the noise of a revolution sounding beneath one’s window, is an ordeal which will fray the most resolute nerves. She would receive no one, she had said. No one had come. She was still in the vilest of tempers, footsore, and sour with sleeplessness, for the noise which had gone on all night made sleep impossible, and the slumber on the pink sofa seemed to have taken place in another world, so far removed was it. The day of confidences on that same sofa seemed as unreal, as far forgotten. Had there been any life left in the recollection it must have perished under her will’s heel.

To-morrow a new era would begin, and she would leave Paris. No, she would not. She would stay, order new clothes at the dressmakers, and visit great-aunt Léocadie. There she would find reason, dignity, and routine — everything that is dear to a womanof good sense who has dismissed her husband, lost her children, discarded the sentimental enthusiasms of youth which sit so ill on a woman of twenty-eight. It would be interesting and consoling to hear what Léocadie had to say about the Revolution. This was her third.

Curious how affinity of character could abolish differences of age, race, and tradition! Though Sophia had been a child, and great-aunt Léocadie installed in old age, taking as her due an arm to lean on, hot rum, and a chair with ears; though she had insisted on being spoken to in French and revised every faltering sentence, in her company Sophia had enjoyed an intimacy of confidence never known before, an intimacy lifting her from the discomforts of childhood, setting her among the ranks of women grown. How much pleasanter to be great-aunt Léocadie’s Sophie than Mamma’s Sophia, what satisfaction in those interminable games of picquet! Mamma’s Sophia was praised with faint condolence upon being such a good little girl with the old lady. The praises were accepted, and spat out privately, as one spat out a mawkish lozenge; it would not do to disclose to the one woman that one liked the other quite as well. Better, indeed. Sophia much preferred Léocadie, enjoying her smell, so richly ambered, her cold dry hands, her rather flat voice, loftily unmodulated, and admiring with relief a head which never ached, a back which never tired, an imperious digestion which, for all that extravagant greed and extravagant palate, had never met its match.

I must certainly improve on my bonnet, thought Sophia, stalking about the room in long-limbed nakedness, the London bonnet held out at arm’s length. Great-aunt Léocadie had attained her third revolution, the least tribute one could pay would be a bonnet in the highest and latest fashion. Warming herself before the hearth Sophia recollected how great-aunt Léocadie had praised her for those long legs; how, coming into the nursery, she had insisted upon viewing them naked, to make sure that there was no trace of rickets. In the nursery also there had been a blaze of logs, and the child had strutted to and fro, holding up her shift, pleased to be shocking the nursemaids, proud of her legs, so long and fine, and the narrow knee-joints which would be in time, so great-aunt Léocadie said, one of her beauties. Léocadie had spoken praises in her flat voice, the nursemaids had clucked like hens, and the child had strutted up and down, lording it over that poultry-yard. Now once more it was a pleasure to warm her legs at the fire, to be free and naked, and to hold that expensive bonnet in her hand, deciding that it would not do. Since she had freed herself of Frederick nakedness was again a pleasure. Mrs. Frederick Willoughby, sharing a great bed with Mr. Frederick Willoughby, or hearing him splashing and crashing in his dressing-room, had been as shy as a nymph, as disobliging as a virgin martyr, armouring herself in great starched dressing-gowns voluminous as clouds.

She tossed the bonnet across the room, and looked at the bed. Abruptly and absolutely, as though a strain of music had been broken off, her mood of excited self-satisfaction was snapped through. A bonnet, a she-septuagenarian ... it was not for these that she had come to Paris. Everything, everything was over, henceforth she would have nothing better to do than to toss over such trivialities. There was no purpose, no savour in her life, and yesterday she had made a fool of herself.

Another procession was approaching, a procession with drums and singing and a brass band. To those thumps and brazen pantings she despatched herself to bed, settling rigidly between the cold sheets, forcing down her eyelids.

Yet however trivial these trivialities, she must keep to them, or go altogether to pieces; and hunting a new bonnet presented difficulties enough for the overcoming of them to raise her spirits a little. Every shop was shut, it was not until after midday that she had at last contrived to get herself admitted to a milliner’s by a side door. There, in semidarkness behind the shuttered windows, a trembling hand pinned bows and snatched at the English gold. “Gold is always gold, is it not?” With that voice, mingled of hope and doubt, in her ears Sophia remembered an aspect of the Revolution which might well concern her, and went to Daly’s Bank. The bank was shut.

Gold is always gold
. It was extraordinary to see how already a pious respect for property had manifested itself, as though Paris had said, “It is true that yesterday we sacked two palaces, havocked every nest where golden eggs are laid, broke, burned, and plundered. But see how scrupulously we are preserving the ruins.” Wherever she turned Sophia saw pickets and sentinels, cockaded or badged with red, armed and accoutred like comic-opera bandits, but behaving with the utmost decorum. Outside the Tuileries stood several furniture vans, and into these the Polytechnic students were packing pictures, ornaments, chandeliers, wine, and kitchen utensils. On the felled and mangled trees along the boulevards an official hand had scrawled in chalk,
Property of the Republic. Citizens, respect it!
And when a small handcart passed her, conveying a harmonium, Sophia was not astonished to see that its bearers were accompanied by an escort of two gentlemen, their substantial overcoats girded by sword-belts, red cockades in their top-hats. Indeed, it needed a certain adroitness to avoid incurring an escort for herself, so universal was the helpfulness and good feeling through which she picked her way as she scrambled over barricades or waded through the mud where pavements had been.

All this behaviour was most sensible, most praiseworthy. Every countenance beamed with goodwill, every official placard breathed peace and respect for property, never in her life had she read such a quantity of elevated adjectives. Nor could therebe any doubt but that this smugness was, for the moment at any rate, perfectly sincere. It was a shock to encounter amidst this respectable hubbub the unchanged indifferent countenance of the river, as though amidst the fuss and clatter of a philanthropic meeting one were to meet a large snake threading its way among the boots and petticoats. However much blood might flow into that river, no tincture, no composition, could possibly result. Blood would not mix with that cold vein of Nature. And leaning on the balustrade, Sophia thought how, through every city, some river flows, bearing its witness against the human delusion, discouraging as the sight of a snake. Only a romantic charlatan, speaking for effect, could pretend, as Minna had done, that the sight of a river could bolster up ideas of liberty.
Turn our captivity, O Lord, as the rivers in the South!
Turn our metaphors, O Lord, refresh our perorations! And in her fancy Sophia took firm hold of Madame Lemuel, holding her down under that cold tide, keeping her there until, soused and breathless, she had revised her notions about rivers. A silly and dangerous woman. Yes, dangerous, as this moment could prove. For even now, leaning against the balustrade, watching the river which she must presently cross, Sophia found herself thinking how, in setting foot on the Left Bank, she would be entering Minna’s territory. What patent nonsense! The Left Bank was as much great-aunt Léocadie’s territory as Minna’s. But the thought of great-aunt Léocadie would not spread this sensation of excitement through one’s limbs, call out this faint cold sweat of anticipation, knock so heavily on one’s heart.

The dangerous woman must indeed have endangered her wits, laid some spell on her common sense. Only now did it occur to her that to arrive, without a word of warning, in great-aunt Léocadie’s drawing-room, on the heels of a revolution, would demand rather more pretext than a new bonnet could supply.
I came to Paris to extort a child from my husband
. That would hardly do; though great-aunt Léocadie would see the force of it, might even approve of the expediency, she could never tolerate the statement.
I came to Paris to buy a bonnet
. That, on the other hand, was too feeble an excuse. Bonnet-buying, however necessary, would be preceded by a letter, one did not pounce after bonnets like a hawk or cattle-raider. Some good reasonable reason must be invented, for at all costs Léocadie must be preserved from supposing that the real reason was,
I heard that there was a revolution and came to look after you
. That unmerited insult must never be suggested, could never be forgiven.

Sophia was still framing the pretext which might decently wrap her appearance when the thought came that great-aunt Léocadie, so capable of looking after herself in any difficulties, might have treated this revolution as she had done others, turning her back upon it. Perhaps even now she was arriving at Blandamer. That was why she had come in 1830. Mamma had said, “Your poor Aunt Clotilde’s mother is coming to live with us for a little while. We must all be very kind to her, poor old lady. She has had so many sorrows.” And Papa, adding that respect would be quite as much called for as kindness, explained that there had been another deplorable revolution. The King of France had been obliged to fly to England. England was, etc.

Not even the shades of the guillotine could do much to ennoble the coming shadow of Madame de Saint Gonval. Aunt Clotilde had been a very washy character; she had had a baby, and died, the baby had died too, and Uncle Julius Rathbone had become a disconsolate widower and married again. The mother of a dull dead aunt promised little to the ten-year-old Sophia. She came, and remained for a year. Sophia learned to play picquet, learned to speak French, learned to admire her long legs, learned what it was to love some one of her own sex. Till then she had loved only Papa and animals. To love great-aunt Léocadie demanded the same respectful application as the performance of a difficult piece of piano-music. There must be the same agility, the same watchfulness, the same attention to phrasing and expression-marks, and simultaneously one must sit well upright, keeping the shoulders down, the elbows in, the wrists arched, the knuckles depressed. Moreover, even in the most taxing passages, one must breathe through the nose and preserve a pleasing and unaffected smile. Exercised daily in loving great-aunt Léocadie, Sophia, by the year’s end, loved almost without a flaw in execution and deportment. Never since then had she loved so well; and though with course of time her love for great-aunt Léocadie had been put aside, as one puts aside a piece of piano-music, the well-learned was still with her, she could still play it by heart.

The metaphor held good. In the instant of hearing that flat familiar voice, of smelling that richly ambered scent, the former amity renewed itself, carrying her smoothly over what she had foreboded as the difficulties of arrival. But in this foreboding Sophia had forgotten one trait of great-aunt Léocadie’s; that in any circumstances, however odd or unforeseen, Léocadie’s chief concern was Léocadie. Sophia, the Revolution, the bonnet, all fell back into their place before the fact that great-aunt Léocadie had taken to spinning.

“The only tolerable occupation, my dear, for an old woman. Listen!” She gave the wheel a turn. “That garrulous gentle doting voice. All the satisfaction of listening to a gossip and none of the trouble of saying
Yes
, or
Well
, or
And what happened then
? It is traditional, too, it is Gothic. And that makes it tolerably fashionable. It was an inspiration, that I should spin. You look very well in black, my child. Most women do, and it is providential since life compels us to mourn so often.”

She raised her head and glanced at the portraits of her son Anne-Victor, who was killed in a duel, of her daughter Clotilde, who died in childbirth. The glance travelled from the one portrait to the other, deft and sure as the toe of a ballet-dancer. With those words and that glance she established her precedence of sorrow. There was no more contestation about it than there would have been over any other uncontestable social precedence.

“I heard it said the other day, that women all like vinegar for the same reason.”

“Nonsense! Women recruit themselves with vinegar after love. It is astringent to the nerves. And so you are not living with Frederick?”

“No.”

“No. But how do you manage that in England? Don’t your acquaintances pretend to be shocked?”

“I have not consulted them.”

“That will scarcely prevent them cold-shouldering you. I do not pretend to be shocked myself, still, I should be glad to see you reconciled. While the children were alive it was quite reasonable, I dare say. But now I recommend you to patch things up. There should be an heir to the property.”