"_Bien._ It will interest you. You like him very much, don't you?" she
added, suddenly, looking up and fixing the girl with her bright eyes.
"Like him? Indeed I do. I think him simply glorious," was the answer,
given in a gushing voice, but for a moment the girl felt vaguely uneasy.
During the last twelve weeks she had not, although seeing Joyselle's
wife every day, learned to regard her as a real factor in the game.
Joyselle, always tender and considerate of her, yet seemed to regard her
as a kind of cross between a mother and a nurse, and she, never
precisely retiring, and almost always present during Brigit's visits,
appeared to be perfectly used to the _rôle_ that he assigned her, and
sat, usually silent, a kindly spectator of whatever might be going on.
This was the first time that Brigit had realised that she had a real
personality, and the girl wondered at her own blindness, for every line
in Madame Joyselle's face meant, she now saw, an individuality stronger
rather than weaker than the average woman's, even in these days of
clamorous individualism.
"Do tell me about him--when he was young," Lady Brigit Mead continued,
her thick-looking white eyelids, eyelids that the hapless Mr. Babington
compared in his twenty-second sonnet to magnolia-petals, drooping till
her lashes made shadows on her cheeks.
And Félicité Joyselle told her story.
"He lived at St. Pol--a mile from Falaise on the way to Caen. His father
was gamekeeper to M. de Cérisay. My father, Jacques Rion,--there is his
picture to the right, with the beard,--was a tanner in Falaise. We were
all poor, but it was very pleasant. Falaise is a beautiful city.
Sometimes I used to think there was nothing so beautiful in London as
the Place St. Gervais on a market-day in summer, with the fountain
playing, and all the friendly people selling their wares. But that," she
added simply, "was before I had seen the Albert Memorial. Victor's
mother used to sell her fruit in the town, and her sister had married my
uncle, anyway! and Victor used to come with her. The first time I
remember seeing him, however, was at Mass. It was winter, and very cold,
and he kept blowing his hands to warm them. I was twelve, and he about
ten. He was a beautiful little boy. Then one day his father brought him
to see his aunt--who had married Monsieur Chalumeau, my uncle, you
see?--and I was there. And we went up to the castle. You have been
there? It is where the Conqueror--who conquered England--was born, in a
tiny little stone room high above the tower. You know the story of
Arlette?" Brigit nodded, but she did not know. She wanted to hear about
Joyselle.
"_Bon._ And then, when I was twenty, and he eighteen, he came back from
Rouen where, did I tell you?--M. de Cérisay had sent him to learn to
play the violin--and he told me he wanted me to marry him. He was very
splendid then, with city clothes, and oil on his hair, and his hands
smooth as a gentleman's.
"We were married at St. Gervais. Then he went back to Rouen and he
studied again. That," she added, "was the worst time of my life."
"But why?"
The elder woman looked up. "Because--I was just getting to know him,"
she returned slowly, "and--he was very wild."
Brigit nodded sympathetically. "Poor you," she said in English.
"Yes. The music made him half-mad, and then he had friends who taught
him to gamble. There were other things, too. Women. He was so handsome
and so fascinating, and his success was just beginning, they all ran
after him, and he enjoyed it. I," she added, "didn't. Then we went to
Paris. That was bad, too, only Théo was on the way, which made things
better. He was good to me during my illness--ah, very good; and
beautiful it was to see the big strong man, mad with his music and his
success, washing the little baby and dressing him. When Théo was
two--Victor had been working with his violin since he was fourteen--we
went to Berlin, and then began his craze for work. He used to work four
and five hours at a time for months. Once his health gave way, and we
were very poor, so he went to some place for a cure, and the little one
and I stayed at home. Then he met a great Prince,--I can never remember
his name,--and he invited us to stay with him. It was in a big castle
near Munich. Victor loved it, but I was very miserable. I never went
anywhere with him again."
"Why were you miserable, _petite mère_?" Brigit's voice was very gentle;
she seemed to see the young violinist, handsome and, as his wife put it,
driven half-mad by his music, the centre of attraction at the German
castle, and his little plain wife sitting forlorn by herself, looking
on.
"It was a Lady Créfinne Cranewitz,"--this name at least, she remembered!
"This Créfinne (it means countess) was very beautiful, but too big;
large all over like a statue, and blond. She used to wear one flower in
her bosom at dinner, and then give it to him afterwards. Also she gave
him a lock of her hair."
"And what did he give her?"
Félicité smiled placidly. "He gave her--his love. Ah, yes, he loved her,
his Créfinne Gigantesque."
"But----"
The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at
the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves
them--for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"
Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to
charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing
that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day
came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she
could make him love her almost in a moment. So, so far as she knew, he
still enjoyed her beauty without _arrière pensée_, although he saw her
through his own eyes, not Théo's. Yet now, at this phrase of his wife's,
"He always loves them--for the time," she started, half angrily.
When--if--the day came when he loved her, would this "clean old
peasant," as Carron had called her, sit and darn his socks and say to
herself--"for the time"?
"You are very--placid about it."
"Yes. In the beginning--no. Then I was jealous, and angry. But a jealous
woman is always ridiculous, my child, and men are so vain that the
implied homage upsets them. Many a woman has lost a man's love through
showing jealousy. So--in time I got used to it, and _tout passe_," she
continued comfortably.
"And you wouldn't mind now, if----" asked Brigit, her elbows on her knees,
her chin on her hands.
Madame Joyselle laughed. "_Wouldn't mind?_ Oh, _ma chère_! Just before
you came, he had a very bad turn--it was an Italian actress--a
pantomimiste, with the most beautiful arms in the world, and the face of
a vicious little boy. And he? _Épaté._ His ties wouldn't tie, he got new
shoes--fresh gloves every time he went to see her--scent, a new kind,
very expensive--he sent her flowers by the cartload, and went every
evening to see her act. Every day little mauve letters and wires from
her (he always forgot to burn them, and I was afraid Toinon might see
them), etc., etc., etc."
"And how did it end?" asked Brigit, her throat dry and hot. She hated
the pantomimiste.
"End? My faith, my dear, it is of a simplicity, the end. _You came._"
"I came----"
"Yes. And he was so delighted with his new--daughter--that he promptly
forgot his--love."
"But what did she do?"
"She made a fool of herself, poor thing; wrote, and telegraphed, and
threatened to kill herself. So we sent Théo to see her, and she quieted
down."