Set a thief to catch a thief, and a woman to unravel the character of
a woman. Such was the aphorism my Lord Gore had bestowed in confidence
upon Hortense when he had bequeathed Anne Purcell’s daughter to the
Italian’s cleverness. If there were anything beneath that sullen and
lethargic surface, Hortense would discover it, and perhaps resurrect the
girl’s instinct to laugh and live.
Few guests met in the painted salon that summer evening: three girls of
Barbara’s age, an elderly knight with sharp, humorous eyes, a
sentimental widow, and Hortense. The windows were open toward the park,
where dull, rain-ladened clouds shut out the stars. A few shaded candles
in sconces along the walls made a glimmering twilight in the room, and
in one corner a little brazen lamp burned perfumed oil, so that the air
was richly scented.
A girl stood singing beside the harpsichord when Anne Purcell and her
daughter entered the salon. Hortense herself was accompanying the song,
while those who listened were like figures in a picture, each with a
shadowy individuality of its own. There was an atmosphere of opulence
and sensitive refinement about the scene. The breeze of youth had been
banished and the salon made sacred to musing maturity.
Hortense excelled in the art of welcoming a friend. Even the flowing
lines of her figure could put forth an intoxicating graciousness that
fascinated women as well as men. She suggested infinite sympathy, yet
infinite shrewdness. Strangers might have mistrusted her if she had
shown only the one or the other.
My Lady Anne looked commonplace beside Hortense. Her smile had a crude
affectation of good-will that did not completely conceal latent distrust
and jealousy. The Englishwoman was there with a purpose, and a purpose
is often one of the most difficult things on earth to smother. It was in
the daughter that Hortense discovered a vacant unapproachableness, a
callous apathy that piqued her interest. The girl was not gauche,
despite her silence. It was as though her individuality refused to
mingle with the individuality of others.
Hortense disposed of my lady by setting her to chat with the grim old
gentleman in the big periwig, whose interest in life gravitated between
the latest piece of learned gossip he might pick up at the meetings of
the Royal Society and the lighter, more glittering gossip of Whitehall.
My lady could at least satisfy him in the lighter vein. The three girls
were given a pack of cards and a table in a corner; the sentimental
widow—some new book. Hortense herself drew Barbara aside toward one of
the windows, as though she was the one person whom she chose to actively
amuse.
The prelude between them resembled a game of chess in which one player
made tentative moves to which the other blankly refused to respond. A
series of challenges provoked nothing but monosyllabic answers. Hortense
had no difficulty, as a rule, in persuading even dull or frightened
people to talk. There were the many mundane topics to be invoked when
necessary: clothes, music, books, men, amusements—and other women.
“Mère de Dieu!” she confessed to herself, at last, “the child is
impenetrable. There is a magic spring in every mortal. I have not
touched it—here—as yet.”
She studied Barbara with the easy air of the woman of the world who does
not betray the glance behind the eyes.
“And who is your great friend—in England, cara mia? We women must
always have a confidential mirror, though it does not always tell us the
truth. When I was quite young I used to write down all my thoughts and
adventures in a book. Some of us make friends with our own souls—in our
diaries.”
Barbara looked at her as though all the Italian’s subtle suggestiveness
beat on nothing more intelligent than the blank surface of a wall.
“Do you keep a diary, madam?”
Hortense laughed.
“Oh, life is my diary, and then—I write on the faces of those I meet.”
“Do you—how?”
“You must guess my meaning.”
“I can never guess anything.”
“How dull! Have you travelled much—with your mother?”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Is she not charming? so young—and Junelike! She should promise
you a long youth.”
“I do not care whether she does or not.”
“Then you have not learned to envy her?”
“What have I to envy?”
Hortense paused, with a momentary gleam of impatience in her eyes.
“Has the child any enthusiasm? Let us try her on another surface. Do you
remember your father, cara mia?”
Barbara’s eyes met the Mancini’s with a sudden intense stare.
“My father?”
“He was a great scholar, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Books become such friends to us! Did he teach you—at all?”
“Oh, sometimes. He was very patient. How dark the sky looks!”
Hortense smiled. She had a suspicion that she was no longer fumbling in
the dark. She had touched the girl beneath her apathy and her reserve.
“Have you your father’s books—still?”
“They are in the library—covered with dust.”
“Why do you not keep the dust away by reading them. You could fancy
yourself talking with him when you turned the pages he had turned.”
“Could I?”
Hortense became silent suddenly, her face turned with an expression of
sadness toward the night.
“Of course. It is in our memories that we live again. The past may
become a kind of religion to us.”
She did not look at the girl, but her brilliant and sensitive
consciousness waited for impressions. Barbara remained motionless, with
stolid, morose face.
“What clever things you think of!” she said, abruptly. “But the books
are nearly all in Latin. I wish I had not eaten so much supper. It
always makes me sleepy and stupid.”
Hortense turned with a sharpness that contradicted her soft and
sympathetic attitude.
“Perhaps you would like some wine?”
“No, I thank you, madam. Mother made me drink half a jugful before we
came. She said that it might make me talk.”
Hortense gave her one searching stare.
“Either you are very clever or very dull,” she said to herself. “I must
try other methods, for I want to see you show yourself. Then—we may
understand.”
It was possible that the Mancini knew that her salon would not maintain
its air of Platonic tranquillity throughout the whole evening. She who
queened it for the moment above a galaxy of queens could not be left
long uncourted by the courtiers of her King. She was the Spirit of Wit
and the Pyre of Passion for that year at least; a fire about which the
moths might flutter; a Partisan of Princes; a shrewd, roguish,
laughter-loving woman. She was never unwilling that a fashionable rout
should storm and take possession of her house, for they came to
entertain her with their nonsense and to flatter her pride by attending
at her court.
A flare of links across the park, and the sound of laughter warned
Hortense of a possible invasion. The torches flowed in the direction of
her house, with a confusion of voices that betrayed the spirit of the
invaders. Barbara, who sat watching the stream of fire, saw the
link-boys running on ahead, with the glare of their torches flashing
over the grass and upon the trunks of the trees, while behind these
fire-flies came a stream of gentlemen in bright-colored cloaks, arguing
and laughing, some of them flourishing their swords like sticks.
Hortense appealed to her guests.
“Alas! my friends, here come the court innocents with all manner of
nonsense in their noddles. Shall we stand a siege?”
“You will never keep fools out of heaven, madam,” said the Fellow of the
Royal Society, with a cynical sniff; “have them in, and let us moralize
on the wasted energies of youth.”
“And you—my vestals?”
The girls at the card-table betrayed no immoderate shyness.
“And my Lady Purcell?”
“Should a woman be afraid of a boy’s tongue? We can clip it with our
wit.”
“They are in the court-yard already, the mad children! Let us see what
power music may have over them.” And she sat down at the harpsichord and
began to play with great unction a dolorous chant that was familiar to
serious singers of psalms.
Comus and his crew came in right merrily with a superfluity of ironical
obeisances and vivid color-contrasts in their clothes. The party was
headed by a figure in a black silk gown, with huge lawn ruffles at the
wrists, a white periwig, and a big lace bib. Barbara recognized my Lord
Gore among the gentlemen, and in the background she caught a glimpse of
the brown and imperturbable face of John Gore, his son.
Hortense still fingered out her psalm as though ignoring the irruption
of the world, the flesh, and the devil into her house. The three girls
at the card-table sat with eyes cast down and hands folded demurely in
prim laps. The grim old gentleman reclined in his chair, and stared at
the intruders with the inimitable assurance of a Diogenes. Barbara
remained by the window in isolation, while her mother and the widow were
smiling and whispering together in a corner.
The gentry of Whitehall appreciated the satirical humor of their
welcome. Hortense was laughing at them with that dolorous canticle of
hers.
“Now, Thomas, where is your wit?”
“Prick the bishop’s calves, he has gone to sleep.”
They laughed and applauded as the figure in the silk gown moved forward
into the room. Mr. Thomas Temple could play a variety of parts. His
mimicry excelled in burlesquing the episcopate.
“My children, let peace be upon this house.” And he gave them a pompous
blessing with upraised hands.
Hortense rose from the harpsichord with the assumed fire of a fanatic.
“Children of Belial!”
“Lady, pardon me, they are already qualifying as saints.”
“What sayest thou, Antichrist, thou Red Man of Rome? Woe, woe unto this
city when its priests wax fat in purple and fine linen!”
The bishop extended reproving hands.
“Woman, blaspheme not! We are here to save all souls with the kiss of
peace. My children, come hither. Have you been baptized?”
The three girls tittered. Hortense stood forward, flinging out one arm
with a passionate gesture of scorn.
“Behold the book of the beast. Behold the Serpent without a surplice!
And you—ye children of iniquity—make way for Thomas with the wine!”
There was a shout of laughter as my lord the bishop, picking up his
skirts, cut a delighted caper.
“Alas, she has bewitched me! St. Sack, where art thou—oh, strengthener
of my soul?”
A footman bearing a tray with flasks and glasses moved stolidly through
the crowd. The mock churchman extended a protecting arm.
“Bless you, my son. Blessed are all vintners and tavern-keepers! And
you, madam” (he turned to her with a stately obeisance), “our Lord the
King of his nobleness hath sent us to unbind your eyes—and to lead you
into the paths of light. We will baptize those innocents yonder into the
one true church, even the church of Sack—and Sashes. Let all the
heathen rejoice for the souls we shall save this day from the pit of
prudery. No woman can be saved unless she be kissed. Amen.”