Summer Will Show (37 page)

So she held her tongue for another few days, or only used it to supply assents to Minna’s fancy sketches of lambs bounding in the hayfield. When next she gave herself to the serious duty of looking after one’s property, she got the answer,

“I wonder if I need go yet. You see, I have talked about it so much, that if we were to go there and find everything as dreadful as you say it will be, pigs dying and the roof falling in, it would be more than I could bear. Perhaps it would be better never to go there at all, but just to take the rent and keep it as a beautiful dream.”

Ingelbrecht was what she needed. Perhaps he thought that Caspar was still with them, a thought which might well keep him away. Surely he would have heard from some one? But whom? For lately they had been singularly unvisited, even Wlodomir Macgusty had come but once, and then — so now it struck her — with a rather forgiving and magnanimous air.

Now that the thought was in her head, it would not out. They were being dropped. In any other society poverty would have been explanation enough, but here the excuse would not run. Minna’s rapscallionly circle would not leave a board because it had grown bare. And what else they can find to object to, she said to herself, God knows. They are all so outrageously broadminded.

It was broadminded of her, too, to be fretting like this. How often, formerly, her wishes had swept the room clear of them, silenced their chatter! They were Minna’s friends, not hers, except for Ingelbrecht she would miss little if she never set eyes on them again. They were Minna’s friends. And now that the thought was in her head and would not out, she knew she must do something about it. Maybe a little decisiveness here would serve to drape over that continued indecision over Mr. Wilcox. When any one does turn up, she determined, I will somehow manage to speak about it.

No one turned up. Then, from the window seeing Dury in the street, she was ready to repent her determination, for no one could be more obdurate to a tactful handling than Dury. But he walked past the door and went on into the wineshop further down.

Snatching up an excuse she descended in chase of him, ran him to earth. It seemed to her that his answer to her greeting was unwilling, and that he looked at her with antagonism.

“It is a long while since we have seen you. I am afraid that tiresome Caspar was enough to keep any of our friends away.”

“He wasn’t so bad.”

“He’s gone now, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Staring at her with solemn dislike and disapproval, he said,

“We think it a pity that you sent him into the Gardes Mobiles.”

“Into the ... ?” She stopped, and remained with her mouth open as this neat piece of trickery by Frederick unfolded itself before her. Two francs a day and keep in the Gardes Mobiles was certainly a better bargain than paying fees to Monsieur Jaricot.

She felt rage flooding her face with scarlet. To gloss things over she ordered a bottle of wine which cost more than the money in her purse. Her bonnet’s term of credit was long ago ended, and she had to counter-order it for a cheaper bottle. Turning, she found the bovine young man still breathing on the back of her neck. Imperious with loss of temper she planted the bottle in his hands and marched out of the wineshop.

Would he think it a gift and walk off with it? But he followed her in silence to the entry, to the foot of the stairs.

His face was a great deal redder than hers as she took back the bottle.

“It was a pardonable mistake. Raoul saw him among them, in full fig. It seemed a serious pity, at such a time as this.”

“And so you all instantly believed it?”

“The air is full of mistrust, every one’s nerves are on edge ... .”

“It is a pity you are all so idle,” she remarked, thinking of the old-iron trade.

“That’s true.”

But at that moment his busy eye was at work on her, his attention wandering among the tubes in his palette box. From the landing above she called down, forgivingly,

“I arranged for him to go to a boarding-school.”

One by one they came back, a little sheepish some of them, at their first entrance, soon rehabilitated by Minna’s unsuspicious greetings. For Sophia had kept her own counsel, even about Caspar and the Gardes Mobiles, sucking her paws in silence over this. One and another, they all reappeared, except Ingelbrecht. And since Minna had no suspicion, and all the rest of them were coming as usual, Sophia could remark in safety,

“It’s a long while since Ingelbrecht’s been here. I wonder where he is.”

“Buried himself,” was the answer.

No sooner were they back than Sophia began to curse herself for a marplot — for the worst of marplots; for it was her own plot she had marred. During that unvisited interval she had begun to build up a sort of daily routine, as though the constitution of her relationship with Minna needed an iron tincture which routine would supply. With horror she saw them lost, those habits of the two sprigged coffee-cups on the table by the window, the clock set by the compline bell, the paired plates and glasses that her hand could with certainty take down from the shelf and replace there.

Trained all her life long to look upon order and regularity as convenient, in the last few months she had come to regard them with an almost mystical admiration — and in this change of aspect perspective might have played a part, since to live with Minna swept order and regularity far away. But her plot had gone beyond the pleasure of regular coffee-cups and a reliable timepiece, and it was with more than the disapprobation of a character naturally orderly and precise that she saw it marred. Habit, method, the facets of a daily routine, she had been amassing them against the menace of that day when everything would fall to pieces, when the roof of the waiting-room would fall in.

So, quite unreasonably, she had taken hold of her regular visits to the Alpine Laundry as a reassurance against the impending ruin of that queer existence in which she knew such happiness; and while carrying material for that next revolution which must explode beneath their feet had found comfort because she carried it twice weekly. Like a hen, she told herself, like a silly hen walking along a chalked line. And yet, though it was destruction she served, it was a purposed destruction, something foreseen and deliberated; and here, if she could only get herself into the well-scrubbed fortress of the Alpine Laundry, become one of those Communists instead of an eccentric Englishwoman carrying a laundry-basket, might be a safety for the mind.

So, blindly and desperately, she had begun to build up that routine of coffee-cups and clock-setting, fastening these cobweb exactitudes round Minna like a first scaffolding of something that time (but there could not be much more time) might stiffen into a defence.

With the return of Minna’s friends, the cobweb fortifications broke. They came back more distracting than ever, those friends, more filled with rumours, theories and counter-theories. Macgusty had grown very militaristic. War, he said in his melancholy, piping voice, a war of liberation, must be the next step. The people must put on their might and liberate Ireland. As he declaimed he glanced at Sophia with fury, and added that the English aristocracy should yet tremble before Smith O’Brien. In another corner of the room Raoul was babbling about a congress of arts, pavilions of industry constructed in a gothic manner of glass and iron to be erected in the Champ de Mars. For demonstrations of civilisation, he said, must be the weapons of a civilised republic, and the setting-up and subsequent demolition of the pavilions would supply the unemployed with labour and livelihood.

“And who will visit your pavilions?” enquired Macgusty. “Who will inspect your inglorious machinery, your demonstration of a servile tutelage to commerce?”

“Not the Irish!” shouted Raoul. “They can keep out of it for all I care. France for the French!”

The lovers of France, the lovers of mankind, joined in a furious quarrel, and were hauled out of it by a newcomer announcing that not only were the workless to be drafted to the wastes of the Sologne, but that the Government had framed a scheme for shipping unemployed builders and paviors to Corsica, to erect fortifications. Their wives and children would accompany them, and rear silkworms.

Now into the most outrageous rumours and theories the question of the workless penetrated, and those words,
Bread or Lead
, clanged through every conversation. Sophia found herself believing, arguing, theorising, with the rest. The spreading madness had infected her, even while scorning the disputes of the nostrum cheap-jacks she beat her brains for some panacea of her own. If only Ingelbrecht would come, or if she could see Martin again! Neither of them had said a word, she recalled, of panaceas; they had laid bare causes only; but in the certainty of that analysis there had been a promise of some remedy they could and would apply. Minna, presumably more case-hardened, sat among her noisy visitors saying little, preserving that air of inspiration which she could always radiate in company. And when she poured out coffee and carried round the dish of cherries she seemed to be dispensing something so much more actual than the substance of those she nourished that it was as though, gravely and pityingly, she dispensed an All Souls’ Night meal to a tribe of ghosts.

More and more clearly, during those summer evenings, shone out her air of technique, of being a professional amongst amateurs. They, quarrelsome and excited, waited in all the fidgets of stage-fright for the rising of a curtain. She, uncommunicatively tranquil, sat wearily in an attitude that, for all her weariness, was from long learning both stately and as comfortable as circumstances would permit; nor was it possible to guess from her demeanour if she were going over her lines, or holding a mental roll-call of her greasepaints.

Had it not been for love and love’s lack of faith, Sophia might have drawn from Minna the reassurance she longed to get from Martin or Ingelbrecht; and while others were present Minna’s spell, her infallible sense of when to speak and how to move, stayed her. But as soon as they were left alone, solicitude undermined the stately idol, and Minna was once again a creature to ward and think for.

Since it was impossible to guess where safety lay, speaking of danger was idle. They continued to collect their scraps of metal, enjoy the green peas and wood-strawberries that the season had brought into the scope of their means, and discuss the management of Minna’s property.

For a while that property had seemed to Sophia the way to safety. She set herself to encourage Minna’s peculiar views on country life and to repress her own. Yes, there would be young lambs bounding in the hayfields, nightingales singing in a greengage tree, a vine-shaded dairy, sheets coarse but lavendered, a gnatless willow bower by a brook. Yes, there would be beehives, and nothing is easier than taking the honey. Everything would be as in Minna’s childhood, only cleaner, greener, more fertile.

Nothing came of these conversations save more conversations. She was trying a new line of approach, speaking of the neglect of roofs, the disrepair of fences, the inordinate negligence and inordinate demands of tenant-farmers, and feeling rather more sanguine as to the effect of it until the hunchback, Guitermann, walked in one evening.

It was some time since they had seen him, and in the interval he had changed a great deal. Just as the flesh had wasted from his bones it had wasted from his manner ... .Aloof, with glittering eyes, he stared at the company, speaking little, haughtily rebuffing all attempts to draw him into the talk. It was his flouted music, she guessed, working in him, frustrated and corroding; and she recognised the authenticity of the talent by the authenticity of the rage. When he did speak, it was with sneers and bitterness, and the coughing-fits that followed were like defiant cock-crowings. With a herd animosity the others put him in Coventry, patently rallying round Minna as though to protect her from such a guest.

So general a manifestation of dislike must needs include Sophia also, for now she was definitely unpopular among Minna’s friends. There was nothing for it but to talk to Guitermann, and she did so, wishing with all her heart that she had never given buns to any one so capable of resentment, or at any rate that he would not recollect the buns.

“How do you think Minna looks?”

“Badly,” said he. “Dulled and stupefied.”

Blinking under this, she spoke of country air, Minna’s legacy, the project of a visit of inspection.

“I suppose you like the country. Minna would not. An assault of clod-hoppers, rural conversation about the culture of beetroot and the swine disease would be the last blow to her talent. Who would she find to talk to, in the country?”

“Minna’s talent is in herself, not in her listeners,” she answered.

“Talent!” he exclaimed bitterly.

Hunting her wits for a tolerable subject for conversation she could find not one. So she told him how Caspar, sent to a school, had joined the Gardes Mobiles.

But later in the evening he had sought her out, saying, his manner furious as before, but coloured with concern and a kind of despairing trust,

“Don’t let Minna go into the country. It’s too dangerous.”

“Why? How?”

“The peasants may rise at any moment — a counter-revolution. They are enraged against any one from Paris, any one suspected of liberal ideas. None of us dare say it, but it’s true. Here, at any rate, she would have some friends. In the country, none.”

“When do you think it will happen, the next outbreak?”

“At any moment, now. Perhaps even while I am still alive.”

His youth, grandiose and dramatic, flowered in those words. As he went out it seemed as though his deformity were too great a weight for those threadbare limbs to carry, those wounded lungs to lift. She had seen too many of her tenant’s children die in a galloping consumption to have any doubts as to his ending.

From that night she said no more of country pleasures or cheating tenants. Whether she blew from the east or the west, her words had made little impression. A property in Normandy was not so real to Minna as a forest and a heath in Lithuania. Of them she spoke inexhaustibly, able to recall every hour of her childhood.