A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will
soon be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not
consider that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not
for you to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy.
The rain spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down,
edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the
mist. Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty's
dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter.
Clop-trop! It is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the
blinds are drawn.
"In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the
gate without giving me a smile!"
You're a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the
pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about.
Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming
to Malmaison to-night.
White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the
antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust.
Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth!
Over the glass domes of the hot-houses drenches the rain. Behind her a
clock ticks--ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the
echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but
the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each
knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and
cold pouring rain.
"I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am
no more."
Rain! Heavy, thudding rain!
V
The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles,
geraniums, camelias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the
year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and
give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have
been brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France.
There is the 'Bonapartea' from Peru; the 'Napoleone Imperiale'; the
'Josephinia Imperatrix', a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the
calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a
lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself
to hide the hollow within.
The glass-houses grow and grow, and every year fling up hotter
reflections to the sailing sun.
The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console
herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and
then patience and backgammon, and stake gold napoleons on each game won.
Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her
jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her
fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd
that she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her
ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never
before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure?
Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She owes her
chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her
grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper
who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of
shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes
masons and carpenters, vintners, lingeres. The lady's affairs are in
sad confusion.
And why? Why?
Can a river flow when the spring is dry?
Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The
clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit
of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is
soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing
against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes
her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over
Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon.
Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of
soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial
harnesses, four caparisoned postilions, a carriage with the Emperor's
arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where
else under the Heavens could you see such splendour!
They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a Colonel
of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seed-pod, and as pale.
The house has memories. The satin seed-pod holds his germs of Empire.
We will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She
draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her
soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her
of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she
shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant.
But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with
violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit
room.
Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the
looping Seine.