"Precisely. But John wouldn"t be marrying the heiress of Henry Allegre."
It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea, came into the conversation and it made me feel ill with a sort of enraged faintness.
"No," I said. "It would be Mme. de Lastaola then."
"Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes after the success of this war."
"And you believe in its success?"
"Do you?"
"Not for a moment," I declared, and was surprised to see her look pleased.
She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really didn"t care for anybody. She had pa.s.sed through the Empire, she had lived through a siege, had rubbed shoulders with the Commune, had seen everything, no doubt, of what men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even for honour; and in her precarious connection with the very highest spheres she had kept her own honourability unscathed while she had lost all her prejudices. She was above all that. Perhaps "the world" was the only thing that could have the slightest checking influence; but when I ventured to say something about the view it might take of such an alliance she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise.
"My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life.
It"s the best that there is, but that"s only because there is nothing merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything, forget anything in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a few hours every year, riding by the side of a man of unique distinction and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been-except for that something radiant in her that marked her apart from all the other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in society and who were admitted into Henry Allegre"s Pavilion treated her with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know she sat there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what can they say about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death of Allegre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be allowed one mistake in her life. The worst they can say of her is that she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she found out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him she had remained generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this, you will allow, is rather uncommon upon the whole."
"You make her out very magnificent," I murmured, looking down upon the floor.
"Isn"t she?" exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still nave and romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. "I don"t think there is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is there in my son. I suppose you won"t deny that he is uncommon." She paused.
"Absolutely," I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my mettle that she should not discover what there was humanly common in my nature. She took my answer at her own valuation and was satisfied.
"They can"t fail to understand each other on the very highest level of idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my John thrown away on some enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn"t even begin to understand what he feels or what he needs."
"Yes," I said impenetrably, "he is not easy to understand."
"I have reason to think," she said with a suppressed smile, "that he has a certain power over women. Of course I don"t know anything about his intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating in the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to know the exact degree."
I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and was very careful in managing my voice.
"May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?"
"For two reasons," she condescended graciously. "First of all because Mr. Mills told me that you were much more mature than one would expect.
In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for."
"Madame," I interrupted her, "I may have a certain capacity for action and for responsibility, but as to the regions into which this very unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are outside my interest. I have had no experience."
"Don"t make yourself out so hopeless," she said in a spoilt-beauty tone.
"You have your intuitions. At any rate you have a pair of eyes. You are everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far they are ..."
I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of polite enquiry:
"You think her facile, Madame?"
She looked offended. "I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is in question here."
And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my part I was just beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise.
But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for a heathen idol. It lay there prostrate, handless, without its head, pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime.
"John is fastidious, too," began Mrs. Blunt again. "Of course you wouldn"t suppose anything vulgar in his resistances to a very real sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology. He can"t leave himself in peace. He is exquisitely absurd."
I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in identical terms. But perhaps "exquisitely absurd" was the Blunt family saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some truth in them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. She continued:
"We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires. I don"t feel guilty. It"s he who is tormenting himself with his infinite scrupulosity."
"Ah," I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some atrocious murder. "Ah, the fortune. But that can be left alone."
"What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn"t contained in a bag, you can"t throw it into the sea. And moreover, it isn"t her fault. I am astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it isn"t her fortune that cheeks my son; it"s something much more subtle.
Not so much her history as her position. He is absurd. It isn"t what has happened in her life. It"s her very freedom that makes him torment himself and her, too-as far as I can understand."
I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.
Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.
"For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain extent its current opinions. He has no power over her. She intimidates him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old mother. There is no doubt about it-he loves her, Monsieur George. He loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect _homme du monde_."
The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: "It"s a matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings so sensitive, so proud.
It has to be managed."
I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness that I had to beg her permission to leave her alone as I had an engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down-and I sat down again.
"I told you I had a request to make," she said. "I have understood from Mr. Mills that you have been to the West Indies, that you have some interests there."
I was astounded. "Interests! I certainly have been there," I said, "but ..."
She caught me up. "Then why not go there again? I am speaking to you frankly because ..."
"But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Dona Rita, even if I had any interests elsewhere. I won"t tell you about the importance of my work. I didn"t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I needn"t point it out to you."
And now we were frankly arguing with each other.
"But where will it lead you in the end? You have all your life before you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps dreams, at any rate your own tastes and all your life-time before you. And would you sacrifice all this to-the Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of ill.u.s.trated papers.""
"I never think of him," I said curtly, "but I suppose Dona Rita"s feelings, instincts, call it what you like-or only her chivalrous fidelity to her mistakes-"
"Dona Rita"s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible complications of her life in Paris has produced an excellent effect on my son. It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as material. It"s extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future, and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of course, mainly of my son. He is most exacting."
I felt extremely sick at heart. "And so I am to drop everything and vanish," I said, rising from my chair again. And this time Mrs. Blunt got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn"t dismiss me yet.
"Yes," she said distinctly. "All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such an accident. What have you got to do here? You look to me like somebody who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps less dangerous than this one."
She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up.
"What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?" But she did not condescend to hear.
"And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings," she went on, unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. "You are not absurd. But my son is.