“My good children, I tell you we’ll go by train,” said Clementina,
putting her foot down. “I don’t care a brass button for the chauffeur’s
loneliness, and the prospect of his pining away on his journey back to
London leaves me cold.”
She had exhausted the delights of the car of thirty-five million
dove-power, and was anxious to settle Sheila in Romney Place as quickly
as possible.
“As for you two,” she added, “you have had as big a dose of each other
as is good for you.”
Only one thing tempted her to linger in Paris—curiosity as to the
sentimental degree of the friendship between the lady of her disfavour
and Quixtus. That she was a new friend and not an old friend, the
exchange of a few remarks with the ingenuous Lady Louisa had enabled her
very soon to discover. Clementina looked askance on such violent
intimacies. Quixtus, for whose welfare now she felt herself, in an
absurd way, responsible, had not the constitution to stand them. The
lady might be highly connected and move in the selectest of circles, but
she had a hard edge, betraying what Clementina was pleased to call the
society hack; she was shallow, insincere; talked out of a hastily
stuffed memory instead of an intellect; she had the vulgarity of good
breeding, as noticeable a quality as the good-breeding of one in lowly
station; she was insufferable—an impossible companion for a man of
Quixtus’s mental equipment and sensitive organisation. There was
something else about her that baffled Clementina, and further whetted
her curiosity.
Neither was Clementina perfect, nor did she look for perfection in this
compromise of a world. As an artist she demanded light and shade. “I
wouldn’t paint an angel’s portrait,” she said once, “for fifty thousand
pounds. And if an angel came to tea with me, the first thing I should do
would be to claw off his wings.” Now, no one could deny the light and
shade in Lena Fontaine. But there is such a thing as false chiaroscuro,
and it offends and perplexes the artist. Lena Fontaine offended and
perplexed Clementina.
Again, Clementina, with regard to the chambers of her heart, was
somewhat house-proud. Very few were admitted; but once admitted, the
favoured mortal was welcome to stay there for ever. Now, behold an
exasperating aggravation. She had just received Quixtus in the very best
guest-room, and, instead of admiring it and taking his ease in it, here
he was hanging halfway out of window, all ears to a common hussy. If she
had an insane desire to pull him back by the coat-tails, who can blame
her?
No sensible purpose being attainable, however, by lingering in Paris,
she gruffly sent temptation packing, and, with her brood under her wing,
took the noon train from the Gare du Nord on the following day.
Quixtus was there, at the station, to see them off, his arms filled with
packages. As he could not raise his hat when the party approached, he
smiled apologetically, looking, according to Tommy, like Father
Christmas detected at Midsummer. There was a great bouquet of orchids
for Clementina (such a handy, useful thing on the journey from Paris to
London!) an enormous bonbonnière of sweets for Etta; a stupendous woolly
lamb for Sheila which, on something being done to its anatomy, opened
its mouth and gramaphonically chanted the “Jewel Song” from _Faust_; and
a gold watch for Tommy.
The singing of the lamb, incautiously exploited on the platform, to
Sheila’s ecstasy, caused considerable dislocation of railway business. A
crowd collected to see the gaunt, scholarly Englishman holding the
apocalyptic beast in his arms, all intent on the rapture of the tiny
flower-like thing standing open-mouthed before him. Even porters forgot
to say “_Faites attention_,” and stopped their barrows, to listen to the
magic song and view the unprecedented spectacle. It was only when the
lamb bleated his last note that Quixtus became conscious of his
surroundings.
“Good heavens!” said he.
“Do it again,” said Sheila, in her clear contralto, whereat the
bystanders laughed.
“Not for anything in the world, my dear. Tommy, take the infernal thing.
My dear,” said he, lifting Sheila in his arms, “if I know anything of
Tommy, he will have that tune going for the next seven hours.”
She allowed herself to be carried in seraphic content to the entrance of
the car in which was the compartment reserved for the party. Tommy
carrying the lamb, Clementina and Etta followed.
“That kid’s a wonder,” said Tommy. “She would creep into the heart of a
parsnip.”
Clementina, to whom the remark was addressed, walked three or four steps
in silence. Then she said:
“Tommy, if I hear you say a thing like that again, I’ll box your ears.”
He stared at her in amazement. He had paid a spontaneous and sincere
tribute to the child over whom she had gone crazy. What more could she
want? She moved a step in advance, leaving him free to justify himself
with Etta, who agreed with him in the proposition that Clementina for
the last two days was in a very cranky mood. Very natural, the
proposition of the two innocents. How could they divine that the
moisture in Clementina’s eyes had nothing whatsoever to do with Sheila’s
appreciation of the vocal lamb or her readiness to be carried by
Quixtus? How could they divine that, at the possibility of which the
cruelty and insolence of youth would have caused them both to shriek
with inextinguishable laughter? And how was Tommy, generous-hearted lad
that he was, to know that this one unperceptive speech of his sent him
hurtling out of the land of Romance down to common earth? Henceforward
Tommy, whilst retaining his chamber in Clementina’s heart, was to walk
in and out just as he chose. Not the tiniest pang was he again to cause
her. But what could Tommy know—what can you or I or any other male
thing ever born know of a woman? We walk, good easy men; with confident
and careless tread through the familiar garden, and then suddenly terra
firma miraculously ceases to exist, and head-over-heels we go down a
precipice. How came it that we were unaware of its existence? _Mystère!_
Who could interpret the soul of La Giaconda? Leonardo da Vinci least of
all. It is all very well to give a man a vote; he is a transparent
animal, and you know the way the dunderhead is going to use it; but the
incalculable and pyrotechnic way in which women will use it will make
humanity blink. Let us therefore pardon Tommy for staring in amazement
at Clementina. He sought refuge in Etta. From Scylla, perhaps, to
Charybdis; but for the present, Charybdis sat smiling under her
fig-tree, the most innocent and bewitching monster in the world.
Leaving the three children in the compartment, Clementina and Quixtus
walked, for the last few moments before the train started, up and down
the platform.
“I suppose you’ll soon be coming back to London?” said Clementina.
“I think so,” said he. “Now that the Grand Prix is over Paris is
emptying rapidly.”
“Parrot!” thought Clementina, once more confounding the instructress;
but she said blandly; “What difference in the world can it make to you
whether Paris is empty or not?”
He smiled good-naturedly. “To tell the honest truth, none. Yes. I must
be getting home again.”
“Of course there’ll be a certain amount of worry over Hammersley’s
affairs,” she said; “but I hope you’ve got something else to do to
occupy your mind.”
“I want to settle down to systematic work,” replied Quixtus.
“What kind of work?”
“Well,” said he, with an apologetic air, “I mean to extend my little
handbook on ‘The Household Arts of the Neolithic Age’ into an
authoritative and comprehensive treatise. I’ve been gathering material
for years. I’m anxious to begin.”
“Begin to-morrow,” said Clementina. “And whenever you feel lonely come
and read bits of it to Sheila and me.”
And thus came about the surprising and monstrous alliance between
Clementina and Prehistoric Man. Dead men’s jawbones had some use after
all.
“_En voiture!_” cried the guard.
“Good-bye, my dear Clementina,” said Quixtus, “we have had a memorable
meeting.”
“We have, indeed. You are sending away three very happy people.”
“Why not four?”
But she only smiled wryly and said: “Good-bye, God bless you. And keep
out of mischief,” and clambered into the train.
The train began to move, to the faint strains of the “Jewel Song” in
_Faust_, and Sheila blew him kisses from the carriage window. He
responded until the little white face disappeared. Then he thought of
Clementina.
“The very best, but the most enigmatic woman in the world,” said he.
Which was a very sweeping statement for a man of his scientific
accuracy.
Entirely ignorant of the word of the enigma, he went back to the
spotless flower of insulted womanhood, who took him off to lunch with
her French friends. She welcomed his undivided homage. That fishfag of a
creature, as she characterised Clementina in conversation with Lady
Louisa, made her feel uncomfortable. Even now that she had gone, the
problem of Quixtus’s removal from her sphere of influence remained. The
child was the stake to which he was fettered within that sphere. Could
she break the chains? Therein seemed to lie the only solution—unless by
audacity and adroitness she uprooted the stake and carried it, with
Quixtus, chains and all, into her own territory.
She had a talk after lunch with Huckaby. The luncheon-party had broken
up into groups of two or three, who wandered about the cool enclosure of
the Bois de Boulogne restaurant where the feast had been given, and,
half by chance, half by design, the two had joined company. Their
conversation on the evening of Quixtus’s departure from Paris had deeply
affected their mutual relations. Each felt conscious of presenting a
less tarnished front to the other, and each, not hypocritically, began
to assume a little halo of virtue in the pathetic hope that the other
would be impressed by its growing radiance. During the few days of
Quixtus’s absence they had become friends and exchanged confidences.
Huckaby convinced her of the sincerity of his desire to reform. He
described his life. He had worked when work came his way—but work has a
curious habit of shrinking from the drunkard’s way; a bit of teaching, a
bit of free-lance journalism, a bit of hack compilation in the British
Museum; he had borrowed far and wide; he had not been over-scrupulous on
the point of financial honour. Hunger had driven him. Lena Fontaine
shivered at the horrors through which he had struggled. All he desired
was cleanliness in life and body and surroundings. She understood.
Material cleanliness had been and would be hers; but cleanliness of life
she yearned for as much as he did. But for him, the man, with the given
boon of honourable employment, it was an easy matter. For her, the
woman, tired and soul-sick, what avenue lay open? She, in her turn, told
him of incidents in her career at which he shuddered. “Throw it up,
throw it up,” he counselled. She smiled bitterly. What could be the end
of the bird of prey who assumed the habits of the dove? She could marry,
he replied, before it was too late. Marry, ay! But whom? She had not
dared confide to him her hope. So close, however, being their relations,
Huckaby had not failed to acquaint her with the important scope of his
conversation with Quixtus the day before. Quixtus’s changed demeanour,
obvious to her at once, confirmed his announcement. She welcomed it with
more joy than Huckaby could appreciate. For behind the pity that had
paralysed beak and talon, the new-born hope and the curious liking she
had conceived for the mild, crazy gentleman, stalked the instinctive
aversion which the sane feel towards those whose wits have gone ever so
little astray. The news had come as an immense relief. Now she could
meet him on normal ground. All was fair.
They found two chairs by a little table under a tree, at the back of the
Châlet Restaurant and secluded from the gaiety and laughter of the
front. Nothing human was in sight save, through the tall, masking
acacias and shrubs, the white gleams of cooks and hurrying, aproned
waiters.
“Let us sit,” she said. “How good it is to get a little cool and quiet.
This _vie de cabaret_ is getting on my nerves. I’m weary to death of
it.”
Huckaby laughed. “It’s still enough novelty to me to be pleasant.”
She accepted a cigarette. They smoked for a while.
“How’s goodness getting on?” she asked.
“By leaps and bounds daily. I’m becoming a fanatical believer in the
copy-book. I’m virtuous. I’m happy. Industry is a virtue. My virtue is
to be rewarded by industry. Therefore virtue is its own reward.”
“What industry?”
“I’m going to collaborate with our friend in the new book he’s talking
about,” replied Huckaby, with a surviving touch of boastfulness. “There
is also a possibility of my taking over the secretaryship of the
Anthropological Society.”
“You’re lucky,” said Lena Fontaine.
“How’s goodness with you?”
“The usual slump. Shares going dirt cheap. No one seems to have any use
for virtue in a woman.”
“Husbands seem to have, as I’ve already suggested to you.”
“Have you any particular husband to suggest?”
He cast on her a glance of admiration, for in her outward seeming she
was an object for any man’s forgivable desire, and he said in a tone not
wholly of banter:
“The humble individual in front of you would have no chance, I suppose?”
She laughed. “None whatever.”
“You’ll pardon my presumption in making the offer; but could I, _en
galant homme_, do otherwise?”
“No,” she replied, good-humouredly, “you couldn’t. If you had five
thousand a year, it would give me to think, for you’re not
unsympathetic. But as you haven’t, I’ve no use for you—as a husband,
_bien entendu_.”
It was a jest. They laughed. Presently a cloud obscured the sunshine of
her laughter. She leaned over the table.
“Eustace Huckaby, are you or are you not my friend?”
For once in her dealings with a man whose goodwill she desperately
craved, she was sincere. She dropped the conscious play of glance and
tone; but she forgot the liquid splendour of her eyes and the dangerous
nearness of her face to his.
“Your friend?” he cried, laying his hand on her wrist. “Can you doubt
it? I am indeed. I swear it.”
“Do you know why I’m staying here—apparently wasting my time?”
“I’ve supposed something was up; but my supposition seemed too absurd!”
“Why absurd?”
“Quixtus as a husband?”
“Yes. Why not?”
He released her wrist and fell back in his chair. He frowned and tugged
at his beard.
“Do you care for him?”
“Yes. In a way. I sincerely do. If you mean—have I fallen desperately
in love with him?—well, I haven’t. That would be absurd. It’s not my
habit to fall in love.”
“What would you get out of it?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Rest. Peace. Happiness. He’s a wealthy
man and would give me all the comfort I need. I couldn’t face poverty.
And he would be kind to me.”
“And he—pardon the brutality of my question—what would he get out of
it?”
“I’m a lady, after all,” she said, “and I know how to run a large
house—and as a woman I’m not unattractive. And I’d run straight.
Temperamentally I am straight. That’s frank. Whatever impulses I’ve had
within me with regard to running off the rails have been the other way.
Oh, God, yes,” she added, with a little shiver and averted eyes, “I’d
run straight.”
“What about ghosts of the past rising up and queering things?”
“I’d take my chance. I’ve bluffed myself out of tight places already,
and I could bluff again.”
Huckaby lit another cigarette. “He looks on you as a spotless angel of
purity,” said he. “If he married you on that assumption, and learned
things afterwards, there would be the devil to pay. He’s been hit like
that already, and he went off his head. I shouldn’t like him to have
another experience. Why not tell him something—just a little?”
She raised both hands in nervous protest. “Oh, no, no. The woman who
does that is a fool. It never comes off. Let him take me for what he
thinks I am, and I’ll see that I remain so. Trust me. It will be all
right. You’re the only impediment.”
“I?”
“Of course. You have it in your power to give me away at any time.
That’s why I asked you whether you were my friend.”
Huckaby tugged at his beard, and pondered deeply. He meant, with all the
fresh energy of new resolve, to be loyal to Quixtus. But how could he
stand in the way of a woman seeking salvation? Moral sense, however, is
a plant of gradual growth. Huckaby’s as yet was not adequate to the
solution of the perplexing problem. Lena Fontaine held out her hand,
palm upward, across the table.
“Speak,” she said.
He took her hand and pressed it.
“I’ll be your friend in this,” said he.
She thanked him with her eyes, and rose.
“Let us go back to the others, or they’ll think we’re having a horrible
flirtation.”
On this and on the succeeding days she discovered a subtle change in
Quixtus’s attitude towards her. His manner had grown, if possible, more
courteous; it betrayed a more delicate admiration, a more graceful
homage to the beautiful and charming woman. Before his Marseilles visit
she had found it an easy task to appeal to the fool that grins in every
man. A trick of eyes and voice was enough to set him love-making in what
she had termed the Quixtine manner. Now the task was more difficult. She
found herself confronted by a greater sensitiveness that did not respond
to the obvious invitation. He was up in the clouds, more chivalrous,
more idealistic. With a sigh, she gathered her skirts together and
climbed to the higher plane.
And all this on Quixtus’s part was sheer remorse—atonement for the
unspeakable insult. The thought of having dared to make coarse love to
this exquisite creature filled him with horrified dismay. That the lady
had appeared rather to like the coarse love-making he did not stop to
consider. Certainly, in his crazy exultation, he had proclaimed her a
fruit ripe to his hand, but that was only an additional vulgarity which
had stained that peculiar phase of his being. The result of the reaction
was to accentuate the reverential conception of woman, which, by reason
of a temperament dreamy and poetic and of a scholarly life remote from
the disillusionising conflicts of sex, he had always entertained. He
comported himself therefore towards her with scrupulous delicacy,
resolved that not a word or intonation that could be construed into an
affront should ever pass his lips.
The fine weather broke. Torrential rains swept Paris. The meteorologists
talked learnedly about cyclonic disturbances in the Atlantic which would
affect the weather adversely for some time to come. Lena Fontaine began
to reflect. Summer Paris in rain is no place for junketing, even on the
high planes. It offers to the visitor nothing but the boredom of hotel
and restaurant. She knew the elementary axiom of sex relations, that the
woman who bores a man is lost. The high planes were all right when you
looked down from them on charming objective things; but, after all, a
man has to be amused, and fun on the high planes is a humour dangerously
attenuated. She announced an immediate departure from Paris.
“If you would accept the escort of Huckaby and myself, we should be
honoured,” said Quixtus. “Unless of course we should be in the way.”
She laughed. “My dear friend, did you ever hear of men being in the way
when women were travelling? A lone woman is never more conspicuously
lonesome than _en voyage_. All the other women around who have men to
look after them look at one with a kind of patronising pity, as though
they said; ‘Poor thing that can’t rake up a man from anywhere.’ And it
makes one want to scratch.”
“Does it really?” smiled Quixtus.
“It does.” She laughed again and sighed. “A lone woman has much to put
up with. Malicious tongues not the least.”
“My dear Mrs. Fontaine,” said he, “what tongue could be so malicious as
to speak evil of you?”
“There are thousands in this gossipy world. Our little friendship and
_camaraderie_ of the last fortnight—sweetness and innocence itself—who
knows what misinterpretation slanderers might put on it?”
Quixtus flushed, and drew his gaunt body to its full height. “I’m not
pugilistic by habit,” said he, “but if any man made such an insinuation,
I should knock him down.”
“It would be more likely a woman.”
“Then,” said he, “I think I could manage to convey to her, without
brutality, that she was a disgrace to her sex.”
She fluttered a glance at him. “I should like to have you always as a
champion.”
“If I understand the word gentleman aright,” said Quixtus, “he is always
the champion of the unprotected woman.”
His tone assured her that this Early-Victorian sentiment was not mere
gallantry. He meant it, indignant still at the idea of misconstruction
of their friendship.
“I happen to be a woman,” she said, “and seek the particular rather than
the general. I said _my_ champion, Dr. Quixtus. Now don’t say that the
greater includes the less, or I shall fall through the floor.”
He was too much in earnest to smile with her in her coquetry.
“Mrs. Fontaine,” said he, with a bow, “no one will ever dare speak evil
of you in my presence.”
She rose—they were sitting in the lounge.
“Thank you,” she said, falling in with his earnest mood. “Thank you. I
shall go back to London with a light heart.”
And like a wise woman, she cut short the conversation, and went upstairs
to dress for dinner.