SITTING straight, with the reins well held up in the most correct
fashion, Paul Astier drove his two-wheeled cart at a stiff pace to the
scene of his mysterious breakfast ‘with some business people.’ ‘Tclk!
tclk!’ Past the Pont Royal, past the quays, past the Place de la
Concorde. The road was so smooth, the day so fine, that as terraces,
trees, and fountains went by, it would have needed but a little
imagination on his part to believe himself carried away on the wings of
Fortune. But the young man was no visionary, and as he bowled along
he examined the new leather and straps, and put questions about the
hay-merchant to his groom, a young fellow perched at his side looking as
cool and as sharp as a stable terrier. The hay-merchant, it seemed, was
as bad as the rest of them, and grumbled about supplying the fodder.
‘Oh, does he?’ said Paul absently; his mind had already passed to
another subject. His mother’s revelations ran in his head. Fifty-three
years old! The beautiful Duchess Antonia, whose neck and shoulders were
the despair of Paris! Utterly incredible! ‘Tclk! tclk!’ He pictured
her at Mousseaux last summer, rising earlier than any of her guests,
wandering with her dogs in the park while the dew was still on the
ground, with loosened hair and blooming lips; she did not look made up,
not a bit. Fifty-three years old? Impossible!
‘Tclk, tclk! Hi! Hi!’ That’s a nasty corner between the Rond Pont and
the Avenue d’Antin.--All the same, it was a low trick they were playing
her, to find a wife for the Prince. For let his mother say what she
would, the Duchess and her drawing-room had been a fine thing for them
all. Perhaps his father might never have been in the Académie but
for her; he himself owed her all his commissions. Then there was the
succession to Loisillon’s place and the prospect of the fine rooms under
the cupola--well, there was nothing like a woman for flinging you over.
Not that men were any better; the Prince d’Athis, for instance. To think
what the Duchess had done for him! When they met he was a ruined and
penniless rip; now what was he? High in the diplomatic service, member
of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, on account of a book
not a word of which he had written himself, ‘The Mission of Woman in
the World’. And while the Duchess was busily at work to fit him with an
Embassy, he was only waiting to be gazetted before taking French
leave and playing off this dirty trick on her, after fifteen years of
uninterrupted happiness. ‘The mission of woman in the world!’ Well, the
Prince understood what the mission of woman was. The next thing was to
better the lesson. ‘Tclk! tclk! Gate, please.’
Paul’s soliloquy was over, and his cart drew up before a mansion in the
Rue de Courcelles. The double gates were rolled, back slowly and heavily
as if accomplishing a task to which they had long been unused.
In this house lived the Princess Colette de Rosen, who had shut herself
up in the complete seclusion of mourning since the sad occurrence
which had made her a widow at twenty-six. The daily papers recorded the
details of the young widow’s sensational despair: how the fair hair was
cut off close and thrown into the coffin; how her room was decorated as
for a lying in state; how she took her meals alone with two places laid,
while on the table in the anteroom lay as usual the Prince’s walking
stick, hat, and gloves, as though he were at home and just going
out. But one detail had not been mentioned, and that was the devoted
affection and truly maternal care which Madame Astier showed for the
‘poor little woman’ in these distressing circumstances.
Their friendship had begun some years ago, when a prize for an
historical work had been adjudged to the Prince de Rosen by the
Académie, ‘on the report of Astier-Réhu.’ Differences of age and social
position had however kept them apart until the Princess’s mourning
removed the barrier. When the widow’s door was solemnly closed against
society, Madame Astier alone escaped the interdict. Madame Astier was
the only person allowed to cross the threshold of the mansion, or rather
the convent, inhabited by the poor weeping Carmelite with her shaven
head and robe of black; Madame Astier was the only person admitted
to hear the mass sung twice a week at St. Philip’s for the repose of
Herbert’s soul; and it was she who heard the letters which Colette wrote
every evening to her absent husband, relating her life and the way
she spent her days. All mourning, however rigid, involves attention to
material details which are degrading to grief but demanded by society.
Liveries must be ordered, trappings provided for horses and carriages,
and the heartbroken mourner must face the hypocritical sympathy of
the tradesman. All these duties were discharged by Madame Astier with
never-failing patience. She undertook the heavy task of managing the
household, which the tear-laden eyes of its fair mistress could no
longer supervise, and so spared the young widow all that could disturb
her despair, or disarrange her hours for praying, weeping, writing ‘to
him,’ and carrying armfuls of exotic flowers to the cemetery of Père
Lachaise, where Paul Astier was superintending the erection of a
gigantic mausoleum in commemorative stone brought at the express wish of
the Princess from the scene of the tragedy.
Unfortunately the quarrying of this stone and its conveyance from
Illyria, the difficulties of carving granite, and the endless plans and
varying fancies of the widow, to whom nothing seemed sufficiently huge
and magnificent to suit her dead hero, had brought about many hitches
and delays. So it happened that in May 1880, two years and more after
the catastrophe and the commencement of the work, the monument was still
unfinished. Two years is a long time to maintain the constant paroxysms
of an ostentatious grief, each sufficient to discharge the whole. The
mourning was still observed as rigidly as ever, the house was still
closed and silent as a cave. But in the place of the living statue
weeping and praying in the furthest recesses of the crypt was now a
pretty young woman whose hair was growing again, instinct with life in
every curl and wave of its soft luxuriance. The reappearance of this
fair hair gave a touch of lightness, almost of brightness, to the
widow’s mourning, which seemed now no more than a caprice of fashion. In
the movements and tones of the Princess was perceptible the stirring of
spring; she had the air of relief and repose noticeable in young widows
in the second period of their mourning. It is a delightful position. For
the first time after the restraints of girlhood and the restraints of
marriage, a woman enjoys the sweets of liberty and undisputed possession
of herself; she is freed from contact with the coarser nature of man,
and above all from the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the
young wife of the present day. In the case of the Princess Colette the
natural development of uncontrollable grief into perfect peacefulness
was emphasised by the paraphernalia of inconsolable widowhood with which
she was still surrounded. It was not hypocrisy; but how could she give
orders, without raising a smile on the servants’ faces, to remove the
hat always waiting in the ante-room, the walking stick conspicuously
handy, the place at table always laid for the absent husband; how
could she say, ‘The Prince will not dine to-night’? But the mystic
correspondence ‘with Herbert in heaven’ had begun to fall off, growing
less frequent every day, till it ended in a calmly written journal
which caused considerable, though unexpressed, amusement to Colette’s
discerning friend.
The fact was that Madame Astier had a plan. The idea had sprung up in
her practical little mind one Tuesday night at the Théâtre Français,
when the Prince d’Athis had said to her confidentially in a low voice:
‘Oh, my dear Adelaide, what a chain to drag! I am bored to death.’ She
at once planned to marry him to the Princess. It was a new game to play,
crossing the old game, but not less subtle and fascinating. She had
not now to hold forth upon the eternal nature of vows, or to hunt up
in Joubert or other worthy philosophers such mottoes as the following,
which the Princess had written out at the beginning of her wedding book:
‘A woman can be wife and widow with honour but once.’ She no longer went
into raptures over the manly beauty of the young hero, whose portrait,
full length and half length, profile and three quarters, in marble and
on canvas, met you in every part of the house.
It was her system now to bring him gradually and dexterously down. ‘Do
you not think, dear,’ she would say, ‘that these portraits of the Prince
make his jaw too heavy? Of course I know the lower part of his face
was rather pronounced, a little too massive.’ And so she administered
a series of little poisonous stabs, with an indescribable skill and
gentleness, drawing back when she went too far, and watching for
Colette’s smile at some criticism a little sharper than the rest.
Working in this way she at last brought Colette to admit that Herbert
had always had a touch of the boor; his manners were scarcely up to
his rank; he had not, for instance, the distinguished air of the Prince
d’Athis, ‘whom we met a few Sundays ago on the steps of St. Philip’s. If
you should fancy him, dear, he is looking for a wife.’ This last remark
was thrown out as a jest; but presently Madame Astier recurred to it and
put it more definitely. Well, why should the Princess not marry him?
It would be most suitable; the Prince had a good name, a diplomatic
position of some importance; the marriage would involve no alteration
of the Princess’s coronet or title--a practical convenience not to
be overlooked. ‘And, indeed, if I am to tell you the truth, dear, the
Prince entertains towards you an affection which’... &c. &c.
The word ‘affection’ at first hurt the Princess’s feelings, but she soon
grew used to hear it. They met the Prince d’Athis at church, then in
great privacy at Madame Astier’s in the Rue de Beaune, and Colette soon
admitted that he was the only man who might have induced her to
abandon her widowhood. But then poor dear Herbert had loved her so
devotedly--she had been his all.
‘Really,’ said Madame Astier with the quiet smile of a person who knows.
Then followed allusions, hints, and all the devices by which one woman
poisons the mind of another.
‘Why, my dear, there is no such thing in the world. A man of good
breeding--a gentleman--will take care, for the sake of peace, not to
give his wife pain or distress. But----’
‘Then you mean that Herbert----’
‘Was no better than the rest of them.’ The Princess, with an indignant
protest, burst into tears; painless, passionless tears, such as ease a
woman, and leave her as fresh as a lawn after a shower. But still she
did not give way, to the great annoyance of Madame Astier, who had no
conception of the real cause of her obduracy.
The truth was that frequent meetings to criticise the scheme of the
mausoleum, much touching of hands and mingling of locks over the plans
and sketches of cells and sepulchral figures, had created between Paul
and Colette a fellow feeling which had gradually grown more and more
tender, until one day Paul Astier detected in Colette’s eyes as she
looked at him an expression that almost confessed her liking. There rose
before him as a possibility the miraculous vision of Colette de Rosen
bringing him her million as a marriage gift. That might be in a short
time, after a preliminary trial of patience, a regularly conducted
beleaguering of the fortress. In the first place it was most important
to-betray no hint to ‘mamma,’ who, though very cunning and subtle, was
likely to fail through excess of zeal, especially when the interests of
her Paul were at stake. She would spoil all the chances in her eagerness
to hasten the successful issue. So Paul concealed his plans from Madame
Astier, in entire ignorance that she was running a countermine in the
same line as his. He acted on his own account with great deliberation.
The Princess was attracted by his youth and fashion, his brightness and
his witty irony, from which he carefully took the venom. He knew that
women, like children and the mob, and all impulsive and untutored
beings, hate a tone of sarcasm, which puts them out, and which they
perceive by instinct to be hostile to the dreams of enthusiasm and
romance.
On this spring morning it was with feelings of more confidence than
usual that young Astier reached the house. This was the first time that
he had been asked to breakfast at the Rosen mansion; the reason alleged
was a visit which they were to make together to the cemetery, in order
to inspect the works on the spot. With an unexpressed understanding they
had fixed on a Wednesday, the day when Madame Astier was ‘at home,’ so
as not to have her as a third in the party. With this thought in his
mind the young man, self-controlled as he was, let fall as he crossed
the threshold a careless glance which took in the large courtyard and
magnificent offices almost as if he were entering on the possession of
them. His spirits fell as he passed through the ante-room, where the
footmen and lacqueys in deep mourning were dozing on their seats. They
seemed to be keeping a funeral vigil round the hat of the defunct, a
magnificent grey hat, which proclaimed the arrival of spring as well
as the determination with which his memory was kept up by the Princess.
Paul was much annoyed by it; it was like meeting a rival. He did
not realise the difficulty which prevented Colette from escaping the
self-forged fetters of her custom. He was wondering angrily whether she
would expect him to breakfast in company with _him_, when the footman
who relieved him of his walking stick and hat informed him that the
Princess would receive him in the small drawing-room. He was shown at
once into the rotunda with its glass roof, a bower of exotic plants, and
was completely reassured by the sight of a little table with places
laid for two, the arrangement of which Madame de Rosen was herself
superintending.
‘A fancy of mine,’ she said, pointing to the table, ‘when I saw how fine
it was. It will be almost like the country.’
She had spent the night considering how she could avoid sitting down
with this handsome young man in the presence of _his_ knife and fork,
and, not knowing what to say to the servants, had devised the plan of
abandoning the situation and ordering breakfast, as a sudden whim, ‘in
the conservatory.’
Altogether the ‘business’ breakfast promised well. The _Romany blanc_
lay to keep cool in the rocky basin of the fountain, amidst ferns and
water plants, and the sun shone on the pieces of spar and on the bright
smooth green of the outspread leaves. The two young people sat opposite
one another, their knees almost touching: he quite self-possessed, his
light eyes cold and fiery; she all pink and white, her new growth of
hair, like a delicate wavy plumage, showing without any artificial
arrangement the shape of her little head. And while they talked on
indifferent topics, both concealing their real thoughts, young Astier
exulted each time that the silent servants opened the door of the
deserted dining-room, when he saw in the distance the napkin of the
departed, left for the first time cheerless and alone.