Coppet," as Sylvia called it. The expedition seemed to be partly sacred
and partly sylvan; a pilgrimage-picnic. When Ford took leave, Mrs.
Winthrop and Mr. Percival accompanied him as far as the water-steps. As
his skiff glided out on the calm lake, he heard the gentleman's voice
suggesting that they should stroll up and down awhile in the moonlight,
and the lady's answer, "Yes; for ten minutes." He remembered that Mrs.
Winthrop's ten minutes was sometimes an hour.
The next day they went to Coppet; Mrs. Winthrop and Mr. Percival in the
carriage, Sylvia and Cousin Walpole in the phaeton, and Ford on
horseback.
"Oh! isn't this almost too delightful!" said Miss Pitcher, when they
reached the gates of the old Necker château. Cousin Walpole was engaged
in tying his horse, and Mr. Percival had politely stepped forward to
assist her from the phaeton. It is but fair, however, to suppose that
her exclamation referred as much to the intellectual influences of the
home of Madame de Staël as to the attentions of the poet. "I could live
here, and I could die here," she continued, with ardor. But as Mr.
Percival had now gone back to Mrs. Winthrop, she was obliged to finish
her sentence to her nephew, which was not quite the same thing.
"Couldn't _you_, John?" she said.
"It would be easy enough to die, I should say," replied Ford,
dismounting.
"We must all die," remarked Cousin Walpole from the post where he was at
work upon the horse. He tied that peaceful animal in such intricate and
unexpected convolutions that it took Mrs. Winthrop's coachman, later,
fully twenty minutes to comprehend and unravel them.
The Necker homestead is a plain, old-fashioned château, built round
three sides of a square, a court-yard within. From the end of the south
side a long, irregular wing of lower outbuildings stretches towards the
road, ending in a thickened, huddled knot along its margin, as though
the country highway had refused to allow aristocratic encroachments, and
had pushed them all back with determined hands. Across the three high,
pale-yellow façades of the main building the faded shutters were tightly
closed. There was not a sign of life, save in a little square house at
the end of the knot, where, as far as possible from the historic mansion
he guarded, lived the old custodian, who strongly resembled the
portraits of Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin knew Mrs. Winthrop (and Mrs. Winthrop's purse). He
hastened through the knot in his shuffling woollen shoes, and unlocked
the court-yard entrance.
"We must _go_ all through the dear old house again, for John's sake,"
said Sylvia.
"Do not sacrifice yourselves; I have seen it," said her nephew.
"But not lately, dear John."
"I am quite willing to serve as a pretext," he answered, leading the way
in.
They passed through the dark old hall below, where the white statue of
Necker gleams in solitude, and went up the broad stairway, the old
custodian preceding them, and throwing open the barred shutters of room
after room. The warm sunshine flowed in and streamed across the floors,
the dim tapestries, the spindle-legged, gilded furniture, and the
Cupid-decked clocks. The old paintings on the walls seemed to waken
slowly and survey them as they passed. Lorimer Percival seated himself
in a yellow arm-chair, and looked about with the air of a man who was
breathing a delicate aroma.
"This is the room where the 'incomparable Juliette' danced her
celebrated gavotte," he remarked, "probably to the music of that old
harpsichord--or is it a spinet?--in the corner."
"Pray tell us about it," entreated Sylvia, who had seated herself
gingerly on the edge of a small ottoman embroidered with pink
shepherdesses on a blue meadow, and rose-colored lambs. Mrs. Winthrop
meanwhile had appropriated a spindle-legged sofa, and was leaning back
against a tapestried Endymion.
Percival smiled, but did not refuse Sylvia's request. He had not the
objection which some men have to a monologue. It must be added, however,
that for that sort of thing he selected his audience. Upon this occasion
the outside element of John Ford, strolling about near the windows, was
discordant, but not enough so to affect the admiring appreciation of the
little group nearer his chair.
"Madame de Staël," he began, with his eyes on the cornice, "was a woman
of many and generous enthusiasms. She had long wished to behold the
grace of her lovely friend Madame Récamier, in her celebrated gavotte,
well known in the salons of Paris, but as yet unseen by the exile of
Coppet. By great good-fortune there happened to be in the village, upon
the occasion of a visit from Madame Récamier, a French dancing-master.
Madame de Staël sent for him, and the enchanted little man had the
signal honor of going through the dance with the beautiful Juliette, in
this room, in the presence of all the distinguished society of Coppet:
no doubt it was the glory of his life. When the dance was ended,
Corinne, carried away by admiration, embraced with transport--"
"The dancing-master?" said Cousin Walpole, much interested.
"No; her _ravissante amie_."
Cousin Walpole, conscious that he had made a mistake, betook himself to
the portrait near by. "Superb woman!" he murmured, contemplating it.
"Superb!"
The portrait represented the authoress of _Corinne_ standing, her
talented head crowned by a majestic aureole of yellow satin turban,
whose voluminous folds accounted probably for the scanty amount of
material left for the shoulders and arms.
"If I could have had the choice," said Miss Pitcher, pensively gazing at
this portrait, "I would rather have been that noble creature than any
one else on history's page."
Later they went down to the old garden. It stretched back behind the
house for some distance, shut in by a high stone wall. A long, straight
alley, shaded by even rows of trees, went down one side like a
mathematical line; on the other there was some of the stiff
landscape-gardening of the last century. In the open space in the centre
was a moss-grown fish-pond, and near the house a dignified little
company of clipped trees. They strolled down the straight walk: this
time Ford was with Mrs. Winthrop, while Sylvia, Mr. Percival, and Cousin
Walpole were in front.
"I suppose she used to walk here," observed Mrs. Winthrop.
"In her turban," suggested Ford.
"Perhaps she has sat upon that very bench--who knows?--and mused," said
Sylvia, imaginatively.
"Aloud, of course," commented her nephew. But these irreverent remarks
were in undertone; only Mrs. Winthrop could hear them.
"No doubt they all walked here," observed the poet; "it was one of the
customs of the time to take slow exercise daily in one of these
dignified alleys. The whole society of Coppet was no doubt often here,
Madame de Staël and her various guests, Schlegel, Constant, the
Montmorency, Sismondi, Madame Récamier, and many others."
"Would that I too could have been of that company!" said Cousin Walpole,
with warmth.
"Which one of the two ladies would you have accompanied down this walk,
if choice had been forced upon you?" said Mrs. Winthrop.
"Which one?--Madame de Staël, of course," replied the little bachelor,
chivalrously.
"And you, Mr. Percival?"
"With the one who had the intellect," replied the poet.
"We must be even more lacking in beauty than we suppose, Sylvia, since
they all chose the plain one," said Katharine, laughing. "But you have
not spoken yet, Mr. Ford: what would your choice have been?"
"Between the two, there would hardly have been one."
"Isn't that a little enigmatical?"
"John means that he admires them equally," explained the aunt.
"That is it," said her nephew.
Lunch was spread upon the grass. Mrs. Winthrop's coachman had made an
impromptu carpet of carriage rugs and shawls. Percival threw himself
down beside the ladies; Cousin Walpole, after trying various attitudes,
took the one denominated "cross-legged." Ford surveyed their group for a
moment, then went off and came back with a garden bench; upon this he
seated himself comfortably, with his back against a tree.
"You are not sufficiently humble, Mr. Ford," said Katharine.
"It is not a question of humility, but of grace. I have not the gifts of
Mr. Percival."
Percival said nothing. He was graceful; why disclaim it?
"But you are very strong, John," said Sylvia, with an intention of
consolation. "And if not exactly graceful, I am sure you are very well
shaped."
Her hearers, including Ford himself, tried not to laugh, but failed.
There was a burst of merriment.
"You think John does not need my encouragement?" said the little lady,
looking at the laughers. "You think I forget how old he is? It is quite
true, no doubt. But I remember him so well, you know, in his little
white frock, with his dear little dimpled shoulders! He always would
have bread and sugar, whether it was good for him or not, and he was so
pretty and plump!"
These reminiscences provoked another peal.
"You may laugh," said Miss Pitcher, nodding her head sagely, "but he did
eat a great deal of sugar. Nothing else would content him but that bowl
on the high shelf."
"Do you still retain the same tastes, Mr. Ford?" said Katharine. "Do you
still prefer what is out of reach--_on a high shelf?_"
"When one is grown," said Ford, "there is very little that is absolutely
out of reach. It is, generally speaking, a question merely of
determination, and--a long arm."
The sun sank; his rays came slanting under their tree, gilding the grass
in bars. The conversation had taken a turn towards the society of the
eighteenth century. Percival said the most. But a poet may well talk in
a memorial garden, hushed and sunny, on a cushioned carpet under the
trees, with a long-stemmed wineglass near his hand, and fair ladies
listening in rapt attention. Ford, leaning back against his tree, was
smoking a cigarette; it is to be supposed that he was listening also.
"Here is something I read the other day, at least as nearly as I can
recall it," said the speaker. He was gazing at the tops of the trees on
the other side of the pond. He had a habit of fixing his eyes upon
something high above his hearers' heads when speaking. Men considered
this an impertinence; but women had been known to allude to it as
"dreamy."
"'Fair vanished ladies of the past,'" quoted the poet in his delightful
voice, "'so charming even in your errors, do you merit the judgment
which the more rigid customs of our modern age would pronounce upon you?
Was that enthusiasm for virtue and for lofty sentiments with which your
delicious old letters and memoirs, written in faded ink and flowing
language, with so much wit and so much bad spelling, are adorned--was it
all declamation merely, because, weighed in our severer balances, your
lives were not always in accordance with it? Are there not other
balances? And were you not, even in your errors, seeking at least an
ideal that was fair? Striving to replace by a sensibility most devoted
and tender a morality which, in the artificial society that surrounded
you, had become well-nigh impossible? Let us not forget how many of you,
when the dread hour came, faced with unfaltering courage the horrors of
the Revolution, sustained by your example the hearts of strong men which
had failed them, and atoned on the red guillotine for the errors and
follies of your whole generation with your delicate lives.'"
He paused. Then, in a lighter tone, added: "Charming vanished dames, in
your powder and brocade, I salute you! I, for one, enroll myself among
your faithful and tender admirers."
Mr. Percival remained two weeks at Miolans. He was much with Mrs.
Winthrop. They seemed to have subjects of their own for conversation,
for on several occasions when Ford came over in the morning they were
said to be "in the library," and Miss Pitcher was obliged to confess
that she did not feel at liberty to disturb them. She remarked, with a
sigh, that it must be "very intellectual," and once she asked her nephew
if he had not noticed the poet's "brow."
"Oh yes; he is one of those tall, slim, long-faced, talking fellows whom
you women are very apt to admire," said Ford.
Miss Pitcher felt as much wrath as her gentle nature allowed. But again
her sentiments were divided, and she sacrificed her personal feelings.
That evening she confided to Katharine, under a pledge of deepest
secrecy, her belief that "John" was "jealous."
Mrs. Winthrop greeted this confidence with laughter. Not discouraged,
the aunt the next day confided to her nephew her conviction that, as
regarded the poet, Katharine had not yet "at all made up her mind."
"That is rather cruel to Percival, isn't it?" said Ford.
"Oh, he too has many, many _friends_," said Sylvia, veering again.
"Fortunate fellow!"
At last Percival went. Ford was again the only visitor. And if he did
not have long mornings in the library, he had portions not a few of
afternoons in the garden. For if he came up the water-steps and found
the mistress of the house sitting under the trees, with no other
companion than a book, it was but natural that he should join her, and
possibly make some effort to rival the printed page.
"You do not like driving?" she said, one day. They were in the parlor,
and the carriage was coming round; she had invited him to accompany
them, and he had declined.
"Not with a coachman, I confess."
"There is always the phaeton," she said, carelessly.
He glanced at her, but she was examining the border of her lace scarf.
"On the whole, I prefer riding," he answered, as though it were a
question of general preferences.
"And Katharine rides _so_ well!" said Sylvia, looking up from her wax
flowers. Sylvia made charming wax flowers, generally water-lilies,
because they were "so regular."
"There are no good horses about here," observed Ford. "I have tried them
all. I presume at home in America you keep a fine one?"
"Oh, in America! That is too far off. I do not remember what I did in
America," answered Mrs. Winthrop.
A day or two later. "You were mistaken about there being no good
saddle-horses here," she remarked. "My coachman has found two; they are
in the stable now."
"If you are going to be kind enough to offer one of them to me," he
said, rather formally, after a moment's silence, "I shall then have the
pleasure of some rides with you, after all."
"Yes," answered Mrs. Winthrop. "As you say--after all!" She was smiling.
He smiled too, but shook his head. Sylvia did not see this little
by-play. Whatever it meant, however, it did not prevent Ford's riding
with Mrs. Winthrop several times, her groom following. Miss Pitcher
watched these little excursions with much interest.
Meanwhile letters from Lorimer Percival came to Miolans almost daily.
"That is the Percival crest," said Sylvia to her nephew, one of these
epistles, which had just arrived, being on the hall table, seal upward,
as they passed. "_So_ appropriate for a poet, I think--a flame."
"Ah! I took it for steam," said Ford.
Now the elder Percival had been a successful builder of locomotives.
"John," said Miss Pitcher, solemnly, "do you mean that for derision?"
"Derision, my dear aunt! There is nothing in the world so powerful as
steam. If I only had more, I too might be a poet. Or if my father had
had more, I too might have enjoyed a fortune."
"Mr. Percival enjoys no fortune," said Sylvia, still solemnly.
"What has he done with it, then? Enjoyed it all out?"
"He tells me that it dissolved, like a mist, in his grasp."
"Yes; they call it by various names," said Ford.
Mrs. Winthrop, dressed in her habit, now came down the stairway; she
took the letter and put it in her pocket. That day the groom could not
accompany them: the horse he rode was lame. "We are sufficiently brave
to do without him for one afternoon, are we not?" said the lady.
"I confess I am timid; but I will do my best," answered Ford, assisting
her to mount. Sylvia, standing in the doorway, thought this a most
unfortunate reply.
They rode southward. "Shall we stop for a few moments?" said Katharine,
as they came towards Coppet.
"Yes; for ten," he answered.
The old custodian let them in, and threw open the windows as before. The
visitors went out on the little shelf-like balcony which opened from
the drawing-room.
"You notice there is no view, or next to none," said Ford, "although we
are on the shore of Lake Leman, and under the shadow of Mont Blanc. They
did not care for views in the eighteenth century--that is, views of the
earth; they were all for views of the 'soul.' Madame de Staël detested
the country; to the last, Coppet remained to her a dreary exile. She was
the woman who frankly said that she would not cross the room to look at
the Bay of Naples, but would walk twenty miles to talk with an agreeable
man."
"They were as rare then, it seems, as they are now," said Mrs. Winthrop.
"But to-day we go more than twenty miles; we go to Europe."
"She did the same--that is, what was the same in her day; she went to
Germany. There she found two rather agreeable men--Goethe and Schiller.
Having found them, she proceeded to talk to them. They confessed to each
other, long afterwards, the deep relief they felt when that gifted woman
departed."
"Ah, well, all she wanted, all she was seeking, was sympathy."
"She should have waited until it came to her."
"But if it never came?"
"It would--if she had not been so eager and voracious. The truth is,
Corinne was an inordinate egotist. She expected all minds to defer to
her superiority, while at the very moment she was engaged in extracting
from them any poor little knowledge or ideas they might possess which
could serve her own purposes. All her books were talked into existence;
she talked them before she wrote them. It was her custom, at the
dinner-table here at Coppet, to introduce the subject upon which she was
engaged, and all her guests were expected, indeed forced, to discuss it
with her in all its bearings, to listen to all she herself had to say,
and never to depart from the given line by the slightest digression
until she gave the signal. The next morning, closeted in her own room,
she wrote out the results of all this, and it became a chapter."
"She was a woman of genius, all the same," said Mrs. Winthrop, in a
disagreeing tone.
"A woman of genius! And what is the very term but a stigma? No woman is
so proclaimed by the great brazen tongue of the Public unless she has
thrown away her birthright of womanly seclusion for the miserable mess
of pottage called 'fame.'"
"The seclusion of a convent? or a prison?"
"Neither. Of a home."
"You perhaps commend obedience, also?"
"In one way--yes."
"I'm glad to know there are other ways."
"I shall be very obedient to the woman I love in several of those other
ways," replied Ford, gathering some of the ripening grapes near the
balcony rail.
Mrs. Winthrop went back into the faded drawing-room. "It is a pity there
is no portrait here of Madame Récamier," she remarked. "That you might
have admired."
"The 'incomparable Juliette' was at least not literary. But in another
way she was as much before the public as though she had been what you
call a woman of genius. It may be said, indeed, that she had genius--a
genius for attracting admiration."
"You are hard to please."
"Not at all; I ask only the simple and retiring womanly graces. But
anything retiring was hard to find in the eighteenth century."
"You dislike literary women very much," said Mrs. Winthrop. She had
crossed the room to examine an old mirror made of squares of glass,
welded together by little leaden frames, which had once been gilded.
"Hardly. I pity them."
"You did not know, then, that I was one?"
He had crossed the room also, and was now standing behind her; as she
asked the question she looked at his image in the glass.
"I did not know it," he answered, looking at hers.
"I am, anonymously."
"Better anonymously than avowedly."
"Will you read something I have written?"
"Thanks. I am not in the least a critic."
"I know that; you are too prejudiced, too narrow, to be one. All the
same, will you read?"
"If you insist."
"I do insist. What is more, I have it with me. I have had it for several
days, waiting for a good opportunity." She drew from her pocket a small
flat package, and gave it to him.
"Must it be now?"
"Here and now. Where could we find a more appropriate atmosphere?"
He seated himself and opened the parcel; within was a small square book
in flexible covers, in decoration paper and type, a daintily rich little
volume.
"Ah! I know this," he said. "I read it when it first came out."
"So much the better. You can give me your opinion without the trouble of
reading."
"It received a good deal of praise, I remember," he said, turning over
the leaves.
She was silent.
"There was a charming little description somewhere--about going out on
the Campagna to gather the wild narcissus," he went on, after a pause.
And then there was another silence.
"But--" said Mrs. Winthrop.
"But, as you kindly suggest, I am no judge of poetry. I can say nothing
of value."
"Say it, valuable or not. Do you know, Mr. Ford, that you have scarcely
spoken one really truthful word to me since we first met. Yet I feel
sure that it does not come natural to you, and that it has cost you some
trouble to--to--"
"To decorate, as I have, my plain speech. But if that is true, is it not
a compliment?"
"And do I care for your compliments? I have compliments in abundance,
and much finer ones than yours. What I want from you is the truth, your
real opinion of that little volume in your hand. You are the only man I
have met in years who seems to feel no desire to flatter me, to make me
think well of myself. I see no reason why I should not think well of
myself; but, all the same, I am curious. I can see that you judge me
impartially, even severely."
She paused. He did not look up or disclaim; he went on turning the pages
of the little volume.
She had not seated herself; she was standing beside a table opposite
him. "I can see that you do not in the least like me," she added, in a
lower tone.
"My dear lady, you have so many to like you!" said Ford.
And then he did look up; their eyes met.
A flush came to her cheeks. He shut the little book and rose.
"Really, I am too insignificant a victim," he said, bowing as he
returned it.
"You mean that I--that I have tried--"
"Oh no; you do it naturally."
For the moment her self-possession had failed her. But now she had it in
hand again. "If I _have_ tried, naturally or artificially, I have made a
failure--have I not?"
"It must be a novel experience for Mrs. Winthrop."
She turned away and looked at a portrait of Voltaire. After some
moments, "Let us come back to the real point between us," she said, as
he did not speak--"that is, your opinion of my little book."
"Is that the real point between us?"
"Of course it is. We will walk up and down Corinne's old rooms, and you
shall tell me as we walk."
"Why do you force me to say unpleasant things?"
"They are unpleasant, then? I knew it! Unpleasant for me."
"For us both."
"For you, I doubt it. For me, they cannot be more unpleasant than the
things you have already said. Yet you see I forgive them."
"Yes; but I have not forgiven you, Mrs. Winthrop."
"For what, pray?"
"For proposing to make me a victim."
"Apparently you had small difficulty in escaping."
"As you say--apparently. But perhaps I conceal my wounds."
"You are trying to turn the subject, so that I will not insist about the
little book."
"I wish, indeed, that you would not insist."
"But if I am the sort of woman you have indicated, I should think you
would enjoy punishing me a little."
"A little, perhaps. But the punishment would be too severe."
They were walking slowly through the rooms; she turned her head and
looked at him. "I have listened to you, Mr. Ford; I have let you say
pretty much what you pleased to me, because it was amusing. But you
cannot seriously believe that I really care for what you say, severe or
otherwise?"
"Only as any right-minded woman must care."
"Say on. Now I insist."
"Good-bye to Miolans, then. You will never admit me within its gates
again; that is, unless you have the unusual justice--unusual in a
woman--to see that what I say is but the severity of a true friend."
"A friend is not severe."
"Yes, he is; in such a case as this, must be."
"Go on. I will decide afterwards."