Summer Will Show (30 page)

“It was marvellous,” she said, swooping forward like some purple-plumaged bird of prey, her hooked nose impending — ”Marvellous! To have such power, to have them up at a word ... .Just what Ingelbrecht would disapprove of, too.”

In the silence that followed both women turned and looked at the empty chair, the table, the inkpot.

“I do, I do appreciate him!” exclaimed Minna. “I appreciate him implicitly. If he were to say to me, Minna, never another word, no more stories of the oppressed, no more of your sorceries with fairy-tales, I would sew up my mouth. But this afternoon how could I help feeling a little dulled? All the time he was here, the pen whispering on, the shadow of the curtain moving over the bald head, I was saying to myself — That Sophia ... .Will she ever come back?”

Into this opening she must dive.

“Minna! Do you feel equal to a piece of tiresome news?”

“One is always equal to that.”

“I went to see Frederick. I had to. And Frederick has been asserting himself.”

At a nod, wise and parrot-like, the jet ear-rings began to swing slowly in and out of the black hair.

“He dislikes me being with you — ”

“He is jealous of you?”

“Yes. I suppose that is what it is. He is jealous.”

“And no wonder.” The blue slippers moved into a more dignified position, a deft hand tweaked the purple pelisse into nobler folds. Holding her head aloft she said grandly, “If he were to strive for a lifetime, that poor Frederick, he could not appreciate me as you did in our first five minutes. And no doubt that in his darkened way he knows this.”

“No doubt. And so, on the best military models, he has cut off my supplies.”

There was a swift gesture, called back. Locking her hands together, staring down on them as though to ward them from further movement, Minna was silent.

“He has cut off my supplies. As he is entitled to do, being my husband. He has told the bank not to honour my signature, he has removed the gold fittings from my dressing-case. So you see, Minna, I am penniless, or soon shall be. I have what is left over from my ring, that will last a while. I have my clothes, for what they are worth. And my hair. I believe one can always sell one’s hair. After that, unless I comply with Frederick’s wishes, nothing.”

“You will stay? You must, if only to gall him.”

“I don’t think that much of a reason.”

“But you will stay?”

“I will stay if you wish it.”

It seemed to her that the words fell cold and glum as ice-pellets. Only beneath the crust of thought did her being assent as by right to that flush of pleasure, that triumphant cry.

“But of course,” said Minna a few hours later, thoughtfully licking the last oyster shell, “we must be practical.”

This remark she had already made repeatedly, speaking with the excitement of an adventurous mind contemplating a new and hazardous experience. Each time the remark had led to some fresh attempt at practicality, attempts that never got beyond a beginning. On the sofa lay Sophia’s dresses, three of them valued with the adeptness of an old-clothes woman, the rest only admired and exclaimed over. On the table were strewn several manuscript poems and a novel which only needed finishing and a publisher to make their fortune. Mixed in with these and, like these, read aloud in their more striking passages, were various letters, any one of which, she said, would be a gold-mine if properly negotiated. And why, she added, this prejudice against blackmail, if the results were to be applied to a good end? Why indeed, had answered Sophia, brooding upon the vileness of those who wrote such letters.

“Yes, we must be practical. No more oysters, no more supper-parties. Ah, how I reproach myself that you sold your ring. I don’t suppose Dury got half its value, rushing off like that to a Mont de Piété. If we could raise the money to buy it back, then we could sell it again.”

“I regretted that ring this afternoon. You see, I lost my temper and hit him in the face. And the moment I had done it I remembered my ring and thought how much more it would have hurt if I had been wearing it.”

“Yes. A knuckle-duster. Rings are invaluable, I know, and diamonds most painful of all. Still, I expect you didn’t do too badly. You must be very strong. I suppose you wouldn’t ... No. That would be out of the question, I’m afraid.”

“What?”

“Appear — under good auspices, you know — as a female pugilist. With your figure and height it would be marvellous. But I see that it wouldn’t really do, it is just my natural tendency to turn to circuses. You might not believe it, Sophia, to look at me now, but when I was young and slender as a reed I could go right round the ring in a series of somersaults. And the applause would be like thunder. But now, even if I were to thin, I don’t suppose I should be good for much.”

“I wonder what Ingelbrecht would suggest?”

“He would tell us to move to a cheaper apartment and work as laundresses.”

“In England that is what we prescribe for fallen women. They are all set to laundry work, in institutions. In fact, now that I come to think of it, I am among the patronesses of such an institution myself. But if I am to keep that splendid position, Frederick will have to pay my next subscription for me.”

They looked at each other with eyes brilliant with laughter and complicity. Too much excited to finish the meal they began to pace up and down the room arm in arm. Through the long window came the smell of the spring night and the smell of the city. In the windows of the house opposite they could see the life of half a dozen families, a woman in petticoat and camisole washing a pair of stockings in a basin, a young man reading while a girl rubbed her face against the back of his neck, another man yawning and fastening on a night-cap, an elderly couple leaning over the sill with a coffee-pot between them. A newspaper was being cried down the street, from the café where the local club held its sitting came the long vague rumour of declamation and bursts of applause, further away some children marched and sang, and a drum beat fitfully. But drum beats and processions were common noises now. And though they heard, immediately below, a door open, the foot of the cautious Égisippe Coton shuffle on the pavement, nothing followed but his flat voice remarking, “It’s nothing. It’s only a drum.”

During the days that followed Minna continued to rejoice in the prospect of being severely practical, and to the many visitors who came to her apartment and were fed there she explained Sophia’s position and the value which would be set upon any advice they could give. To Sophia it was at first slightly embarrassing to be assured of the nobility of her conduct.

“For it is not true, Minna, that I have left Frederick and renounced my income because my sympathies are with the Revolution. I am here as I am because I saw a chance of being happy and took it. As for the Revolution, when I smacked my husband’s face and sent him to the devil, I never gave it a thought.

“Anyhow,” she added, countering a look of triumph on Minna’s face, “I had done with Frederick long before. The smack was only a postscript.”

“You had done with Frederick, yes. But what is that? So had I. So had dozens of other women. To give up a thing or a person, that is of no significance. It is when you put out your hand for something else, something better, that you declare yourself. And though you may think you have chosen me, Sophia, or chosen happiness, it is the Revolution you have chosen.”

“As for the money,” Sophia persevered, “I regret it most sincerely. Nothing would please me better than to have it back.”

“Exactly what Ingelbrecht says. He considers it most unfortunate. I was talking to him about it yesterday evening.”

“‘These bourgeois disciples are often both wealthy and generous,’” said Sophia reminiscently.

Minna continued,

“I asked him if he thought it better if you should recover your money by a little compliance to Frederick, if I should try to persuade you to that.”

“If he had advised it, would you have tried?”

“Caught! You take it for granted that he did not advise such tactics. A week ago even, you would not have been sure of that.”

“Would you have tried?”

“No.”

In the matter of being severely practical, it was the young man called Dury who gave it the greatest consideration. Priding himself, he said, upon being a peasant and with a peasant’s astuteness, he promised to bend his mind upon the problem, and return in a day or two with a solution.

Returning, he happened to find Sophia alone. His glance rested upon her with extraordinary satisfaction, as though, for the purpose he had in mind, she were even better suited than he had supposed.

“It is nothing showy, my project,” said he. “But it is better to begin in a small way, with no outlay, with a certainty of gains, however small. And this expedient is perfectly reliable, a sitting bird. Doubtless you can sing the hymns of England?”

“Rule Britannia?”

“No, no. The ecclesiastical hymns. A friend of mine, a sculptor, a young man of real talent, is looking for a fair-haired lady who can sing English hymns.”

“I would certainly try, but I doubt if I should be of any use to your friend. I am not much practised in singing hymns, and when I sat for my portrait I found it very difficult to sit still. If I had to sing as well ... ”

“Oh, there is no question of sitting. Actually, at this moment, sculpture presents certain difficulties. Unless one tears up a paving-stone, it is difficult to procure the material for any large work. Buyers, too, are hard to come by. But Raoul can also play the accordion, and talk like a cheap-jack, and it is on these talents that he is relying. He wishes to make speeches in the streets against the Church — our Church — and especially against this abominable celibacy. It is his idea that you should accompany him, as an escaped nun, thrust into a convent against her will, suffering untold atrocities — you know the sort of thing. And it occurred to us that if you were to be an English Protestant, an heiress, taken and held by force, it would be even more affecting. He would ask nothing more of you than you should sing a hymn or two, and wear your hair in long plaits. Everything else he would be responsible for. There is always a little collection, you know, and this he would share with you. The profits are steady, and as you see, there is no outlay whatsoever. He made quite a success of it during March with a young woman (also escaped from a convent, this time a Spanish one) who danced and played a tambourine. Unfortunately for him one of their sympathising listeners took such a fancy to her that he took her into keeping. It was a blow to Raoul. Just when they were doing so well. But of course he could not stand in the girl’s way. It was a great chance for her.”

“But I understood that nuns always have their hair cut short. Surely those long plaits ... ”

“In point of fact, yes. In point of effect, no. It is to the sympathies of the crowd that one appeals rather than to their sense of accuracy. And long tresses are undoubtedly moving. You cannot, for instance, imagine a short-haired Magdalen repenting to any purpose. It is the descent, the long line, the weeping-willow quality ... .”

With his squat peasant’s paws he demonstrated the curves of a willow.

“Then should I not wear my hair unbound?”

“No, Madame. For a Protestant, plaits.”

Minna found her standing in the middle of the room, attentively rehearsing hymns in a Sunday School squall. For a while affection and ear strove together. Ear won.

“My dearest, what a very dismal tumult!”

“Frightful, isn’t it? It is an English hymn. That obliging young man who pawned my ring ... ”

She explained the project. Minna’s listening looks became slowly overcast. Doubt deepened to a noble desolation, to a grief magnanimously borne.

“I’m afraid you do not approve, Minna. You think, perhaps, I should not sing in the street. Of course it is a most outrageous cheat.”

“Cheat! Am I one to discountenance cheating? No, no, Sophia! It is envy that gnaws me. It seems to me that Dury might have cast me also for a little part in this comedy. However ... Well, at any rate, my past can enrich your future. You don’t pitch your voice right for the street.”

The more Sophia considered the society in which she found herself, the more puzzled she became. What at first had made them easy to settle among — their inconsequentiality, their rather slipshod affability, the intimacy amongst themselves so easily extended to her, the general impression which they gave of being somehow perched temporarily, like a large family stranded for a night in a waiting-room, made them as time went on, very unsettling company.

They were idle, or unoccupied; but that was nothing new; the greater part of her life had been spent among the idle, the society of honest shopkeepers would have been much more alien to her than this.

In their assumption of simplicity they were arrogant: listening to their chatter, their easy turnings upside down of all accepted judgments, she felt herself like a shy governess imported from a foreign land; but this again was nothing new to her, all her life she had been listening to people who could talk more cleverly than she, and despising them.

They were idle and they were arrogant. Often, half-closing her senses, she might have fancied herself again in Adelaide Willoughby’s drawing-room among Adelaide Willoughby’s friends. There too, people had strayed in and out, too intimate for greetings, hurrying in, it seemed, in order to express an urgent admiration for a new opera singer or a new-moded abhorrence for an established one. And then, having made their little somersault, they would whisk off again, just delaying for a moment of patronage towards the country relation. Pausing at the door they would chatter interminably.

Minna’s society was politer, and was more entertaining than Adelaide’s. But that was not all. Had it been all, she would not have known, as she did increasingly, this curious anxiety on their behalf. She felt in herself the stirrings of an impulse, half maternal, half missionary, to rally this odd troop, to warn them of danger, call them back from some impending destruction. As for the nature of the destruction, that need not be far to seek. It was obvious to her that if they persevered in this manner of life they would all be dead of starvation in six months’ time. As it was, they appeared to be living on air, on credit, on taking in each other’s washing, only supplementing these means by occasional more solid mouthfuls of living on Minna. For that matter, how did Minna live? On air, on credit, on what she called “another of my windfalls,” on Sophia’s sealskin and the remains of her ring. And with these mayflies, she thought, standing blandly in the May sunshine, admiring the new spikes of blossom on the horse-chestnut trees, listening inattentively to Raoul’s invectives against celibacy and waiting for her cue to intone another Sunday School hymn, with these mayflies I, too, shall go down; for certainly I cannot support myself by singing long-haired hymns on the boulevards, and equally certainly I will never go back to Frederick.