At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations.
First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gâtinais estates?--but beyond
question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is
easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk
about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you
conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come
to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not
well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my
own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her."
Hélène had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Hélène's gold
hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and
that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she
was at the most seventeen. Well, Hélène had always been admirable in her
management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of
hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she
was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find
that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did
not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled
with any of her husband's vices....
As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the
beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order
her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk
would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate
Ormskirk would obey her to the letter.
Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting,
and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was
getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's
personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot,
at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism,
are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would
most naturally do, since his _métier_ was simply to shout well-rounded
common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract
attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably
prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and
comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note
of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt
at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality
of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man
was a genius!
As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women,
one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive
interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest,
not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to
their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs!
Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these
contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something
very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which
he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with
thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than
Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an
ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species.
It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather
preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was
performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to
dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous
oblivion of the past.
And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some
particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely
smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and
was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and
weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen
items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that
she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why,
in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his
twaddle, mark you. And Hélène seemed to be really not much more sensible
about Gaston....
It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not
one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that,
beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and
he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled
into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years'
consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out
of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common,
and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely
viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the
perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would
have nothing changed."
Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in
your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by
holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own
duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his
father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up
with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions
about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless
associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no
pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise
with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral
somewhere: but he could not find it.