The Old Wives' Tale
Book III
SOPHIA
Chapter II
SUPPER
I
They had been to Versailles and had dined
there. A tram had sufficed to take them out; but for the return, Gerald, who had
been drinking champagne, would not be content with less than a carriage.
Further, he insisted on entering Paris by way of the Bois and the Arc de
Triomphe. Thoroughly to appease his conceit, it would have been necessary to
swing open the gates of honour in the Arc and allow his fiacre to pass through;
to be forced to drive round the monument instead of under it hurt the sense of
fitness which champagne engenders. Gerald was in all his pride that day. He had
been displaying the wonders to Sophia, and he could not escape the cicerone's
secret feeling: that he himself was somehow responsible for the wonders.
Moreover, he was exceedingly satisfied with the effect produced by Sophia.
Sophia, on arriving in Paris with the ring on her triumphant
finger, had timidly mentioned the subject of frocks. None would have guessed
from her tone that she was possessed by the desire for French clothes as by a
devil. She had been surprised and delighted by the eagerness of Gerald's
response. Gerald, too, was possessed by a devil. He thirsted to see her in
French clothes. He knew some of the shops and ateliers in the Rue de la Paix,
the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, and the Palais Royal. He was much more skilled
in the lore of frocks than she, for his previous business in Paris had brought
him into relations with the great firms; and Sophia suffered a brief humiliation
in the discovery that his private opinion of her dresses was that they were not
dresses at all. She had been aware that they were not Parisian, nor even of
London; but she had thought them pretty good. It healed her wound, however, to
reflect that Gerald had so marvellously kept his own counsel in order to spare
her self-love. Gerald had taken her to an establishment in the Chaussee d'Antin.
It was not one of what Gerald called les grandes maisons, but it was on the very
fringe of them, and the real haute couture was practised therein; and Gerald was
remembered there by name.
Sophia had gone in trembling and ashamed, yet in her heart
courageously determined to emerge uncompromisingly French. But the models
frightened her. They surpassed even the most fantastic things that she had seen
in the streets. She recoiled before them and seemed to hide for refuge in
Gerald, as it were appealing to him for moral protection, and answering to him
instead of to the saleswoman when the saleswoman offered remarks in stiff
English. The prices also frightened her. The simplest trifle here cost sixteen
pounds; and her mother's historic 'silk,' whose elaborateness had cost twelve
pounds, was supposed to have approached the inexpressible! Gerald said that she
was not to think about prices. She was, however, forced by some instinct to
think about prices—she who at home had scorned the narrowness of life in the
Square. In the Square she was understood to be quite without commonsense,
hopelessly imprudent; yet here, a spring of sagacity seemed to be welling up in
her all the time, a continual antidote against the general madness in which she
found herself. With extraordinary rapidity she had formed a habit of preaching
moderation to Gerald. She hated to 'see money thrown away,' and her notion of
the boundary line between throwing money away and judiciously spending it was
still the notion of the Square.
Gerald would laugh. But she would say, piqued and blushing, but
self-sure: "You can laugh!" It was all deliciously agreeable.
On this evening she wore the first of the new costumes. She had
worn it all day. Characteristically she had chosen something which was not too
special for either afternoon or evening, for either warm or cold weather. It was
of pale blue taffetas striped in a darker blue, with the corsage cut in basques,
and the underskirt of a similar taffetas, but unstriped. The effect of the
ornate overskirt falling on the plain underskirt with its small double volant
was, she thought, and Gerald too, adorable. The waist was higher than any she
had had before, and the crinoline expansive. Tied round her head with a large
bow and flying blue ribbons under the chin, was a fragile flat capote like a
baby's bonnet, which allowed her hair to escape in front and her great chignon
behind. A large spotted veil flew out from the capote over the chignon. Her
double skirts waved amply over Gerald's knees in the carriage, and she leaned
back against the hard cushions and put an arrogant look into her face, and
thought of nothing but the intense throbbing joy of life, longing with painful
ardour for more and more pleasure, then and for ever.
As the carriage slipped downwards through the wide, empty gloom of
the Champs Elysees into the brilliant Paris that was waiting for them, another
carriage drawn by two white horses flashed upwards and was gone in dust. Its
only occupant, except the coachman and footman, was a woman. Gerald stared after
it.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "That's Hortense!"
It might have been Hortense, or it might not. But he instantly
convinced himself that it was. Not every evening did one meet Hortense driving
alone in the Champs Elysees, and in August too!
"Hortense?" Sophia asked simply.
"Yes. Hortense Schneider."
"Who is she?"
"You've never heard of Hortense Schneider?"
"No!"
"Well! Have you ever heard of Offenbach?"
"I—I don't know. I don't think so."
He had the mien of utter incredulity. "You don't mean to say
you've never heard of Bluebeard?"
"I've heard of Bluebeard, of course," said she. "Who hasn't?"
"I mean the opera—Offenbach's."
She shook her head, scarce knowing even what an opera was.
"Well, well! What next?"
He implied that such ignorance stood alone in his experience.
Really he was delighted at the cleanness of the slate on which he had to write.
And Sophia was not a bit alarmed. She relished instruction from his lips. It was
a pleasure to her to learn from that exhaustless store of worldly knowledge. To
the world she would do her best to assume omniscience in its ways, but to him,
in her present mood, she liked to play the ignorant, uninitiated little
thing.
"Why," he said, "the Schneider has been the rage since last year
but one. Absolutely the rage."
"I do wish I'd noticed her!" said Sophia.
"As soon as the Varietes reopens we'll go and see her," he
replied, and then gave his detailed version of the career of Hortense
Schneider.
More joys for her in the near future! She had yet scarcely
penetrated the crust of her bliss. She exulted in the dazzling destiny which
comprised freedom, fortune, eternal gaiety, and the exquisite Gerald.
As they crossed the Place de la Concorde, she inquired, "Are we
going back to the hotel?"
"No," he said. "I thought we'd go and have supper somewhere, if it
isn't too early."
"After all that dinner?"
"All what dinner? You ate about five times as much as me,
anyhow!"
"Oh, I'm ready!" she said.
She was. This day, because it was the first day of her French
frock, she regarded as her debut in the dizzy life of capitals. She existed in a
rapture of bliss, an ecstasy which could feel no fatigue, either of body or
spirit.
II
It was after midnight when they went into the Restaurant Sylvain;
Gerald, having decided not to go to the hotel, had changed his mind and called
there, and having called there, had remained a long time: this of course! Sophia
was already accustoming herself to the idea that, with Gerald, it was impossible
to predict accurately more than five minutes of the future.
As the chasseur held open the door for them to enter, and Sophia
passed modestly into the glowing yellow interior of the restaurant, followed by
Gerald in his character of man-of-the-world, they drew the attention of
Sylvain's numerous and glittering guests. No face could have made a more
provocative contrast to the women's faces in those screened rooms than the face
of Sophia, so childlike between the baby's bonnet and the huge bow of ribbon, so
candid, so charmingly conscious of its own pure beauty and of the fact that she
was no longer a virgin, but the equal in knowledge of any woman alive. She saw
around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips,
powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent
bosoms. What had impressed her more than anything else in Paris, more even than
the three-horsed omnibuses, was the extraordinary self-assurance of all the
women, their unashamed posing, their calm acceptance of the public gaze. They
seemed to say: "We are the renowned Parisiennes." They frightened her: they
appeared to her so corrupt and so proud in their corruption. She had already
seen a dozen women in various situations of conspicuousness apply powder to
their complexions with no more ado than if they had been giving a pat to their
hair. She could not understand such boldness. As for them, they marvelled at the
phenomena presented in Sophia's person; they admired; they admitted the style of
the gown; but they envied neither her innocence nor her beauty; they envied
nothing but her youth and the fresh tint of her cheeks.
"Encore des Anglais!" said some of them, as if that explained
all.
Gerald had a very curt way with waiters; and the more obsequious
they were, the haughtier he became; and a head-waiter was no more to him than a
scullion. He gave loud-voiced orders in French of which both he and Sophia were
proud, and a table was laid for them in a corner near one of the large windows.
Sophia settled herself on the bench of green velvet, and began to ply the ivory
fan which Gerald had given her. It was very hot; all the windows were wide open,
and the sounds of the street mingled clearly with the tinkle of the supper-room.
Outside, against a sky of deepest purple, Sophia could discern the black
skeleton of a gigantic building; it was the new opera house.
"All sorts here!" said Gerald, contentedly, after he had ordered
iced soup and sparkling Moselle. Sophia did not know what Moselle was, but she
imagined that anything would be better than champagne.
Sylvain's was then typical of the Second Empire, and particularly
famous as a supper-room. Expensive and gay, it provided, with its discreet
decorations, a sumptuous scene where lorettes, actresses, respectable women, and
an occasional grisette in luck, could satisfy their curiosity as to each other.
In its catholicity it was highly correct as a resort; not many other restaurants
in the centre could have successfully fought against the rival attractions of
the Bois and the dim groves of the Champs Elysees on a night in August. The
complicated richness of the dresses, the yards and yards of fine stitchery, the
endless ruching, the hints, more or less incautious, of nether treasures of
embroidered linen; and, leaping over all this to the eye, the vivid colourings
of silks and muslins, veils, plumes and flowers, piled as it were pell-mell in
heaps on the universal green cushions to the furthest vista of the restaurant,
and all multiplied in gilt mirrors—the spectacle intoxicated Sophia. Her eyes
gleamed. She drank the soup with eagerness, and tasted the wine, though no
desire on her part to like wine could make her like it; and then, seeing
pineapples on a large table covered with fruits, she told Gerald that she should
like some pineapple, and Gerald ordered one.
She gathered her self-esteem and her wits together, and began to
give Gerald her views on the costumes. She could do so with impunity, because
her own was indubitably beyond criticism. Some she wholly condemned, and there
was not one which earned her unreserved approval. All the absurd fastidiousness
of her schoolgirlish provinciality emerged in that eager, affected torrent of
remarks. However, she was clever enough to read, after a time, in Gerald's tone
and features, that she was making a tedious fool of herself. And she adroitly
shifted her criticism from the taste to the WORK—she put a strong accent on the
word—and pronounced that to be miraculous beyond description. She reckoned that
she knew what dressmaking and millinery were, and her little fund of expert
knowledge caused her to picture a whole necessary cityful of girls stitching,
stitching, and stitching day and night. She had wondered, during the few odd
days that they had spent in Paris, between visits to Chantilly and other places,
at the massed luxury of the shops; she had wondered, starting with St. Luke's
Square as a standard, how they could all thrive. But now in her first real
glimpse of the banal and licentious profusion of one among a hundred
restaurants, she wondered that the shops were so few. She thought how splendid
was all this expensiveness for trade. Indeed, the notions chasing each other
within that lovely and foolish head were a surprising medley.
"Well, what do you think of Sylvain's?" Gerald asked, impatient to
be assured that his Sylvain's had duly overwhelmed her.
"Oh, Gerald!" she murmured, indicating that speech was inadequate.
And she just furtively touched his hand with hers.
The ennui due to her critical disquisition on the shortcomings
of
Parisian costume cleared away from Gerald's face.
"What do you suppose those people there are talking about?" he
said with a jerk of the head towards a chattering group of three gorgeous
lorettes and two middle-aged men at the next table but one.
"What are they talking about?"
"They're talking about the execution of the murderer Rivain that
takes place at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. They're arranging to make up a
party and go and see it."
"Oh, what a horrid idea!" said Sophia.
"Guillotine, you know!" said Gerald.
"But can people see it?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well, I think it's horrible."
"Yes, that's why people like to go and see it. Besides, the man
isn't an ordinary sort of criminal at all. He's very young and good-looking, and
well connected. And he killed the celebrated Claudine…."
"Claudine?"
"Claudine Jacquinot. Of course you wouldn't know. She was a
tremendous—er—wrong 'un here in the forties. Made a lot of money, and retired to
her native town."
Sophia, in spite of her efforts to maintain the role of a woman
who has nothing to learn, blushed.
"Then she was older than he is."
"Thirty-five years older, if a day."
"What did he kill her for?"
"She wouldn't give him enough money. She was his mistress—or
rather one of 'em. He wanted money for a young lady friend, you see. He killed
her and took all the jewels she was wearing. Whenever he went to see her she
always wore all her best jewels—and you may bet a woman like that had a few. It
seems she had been afraid for a long time that he meant to do for her."
"Then why did she see him? And why did she wear her jewels?"
"Because she liked being afraid, goose! Some women only enjoy
themselves when they're terrified. Queer, isn't it?"
Gerald insisted on meeting his wife's gaze as he finished these
revelations. He pretended that such stories were the commonest things on earth,
and that to be scandalized by them was infantile. Sophia, thrust suddenly into a
strange civilization perfectly frank in its sensuality and its sensuousness,
under the guidance of a young man to whom her half-formed intelligence was a
most diverting toy—Sophia felt mysteriously uncomfortable, disturbed by
sinister, flitting phantoms of ideas which she only dimly apprehended. Her eyes
fell. Gerald laughed self-consciously. She would not eat any more pineapple.
Immediately afterwards there came into the restaurant an
apparition which momentarily stopped every conversation in the room. It was a
tall and mature woman who wore over a dress of purplish-black silk a vast
flowing sortie de bal of vermilion velvet, looped and tasselled with gold. No
other costume could live by the side of that garment, Arab in shape, Russian in
colour, and Parisian in style. It blazed. The woman's heavy coiffure was bound
with fillets of gold braid and crimson rosettes. She was followed by a young
Englishman in evening dress and whiskers of the most exact correctness. The
woman sailed, a little breathlessly, to a table next to Gerald's, and took
possession of it with an air of use, almost of tedium. She sat down, threw the
cloak from her majestic bosom, and expanded her chest. Seeming to ignore the
Englishman, who superciliously assumed the seat opposite to her, she let her
large scornful eyes travel round the restaurant, slowly and imperiously meeting
the curiosity which she had evoked. Her beauty had undoubtedly been dazzling, it
was still effulgent; but the blossom was about to fall. She was admirably rouged
and powdered; her arms were glorious; her lashes were long. There was little
fault, save the excessive ripeness of a blonde who fights in vain against
obesity. And her clothes combined audacity with the propriety of fashion. She
carelessly deposed costly trinkets on the table, and then, having intimidated
the whole company, she accepted the menu from the head-waiter and began to study
it.
"That's one of 'em!" Gerald whispered to Sophia.
"One of what?" Sophia whispered.
Gerald raised his eyebrows warningly, and winked. The Englishman
had overheard; and a look of frigid displeasure passed across his proud face.
Evidently he belonged to a rank much higher than Gerald's; and Gerald, though he
could always comfort himself by the thought that he had been to a university
with the best, felt his own inferiority and could not hide that he felt it.
Gerald was wealthy; he came of a wealthy family; but he had not the habit of
wealth. When he spent money furiously, he did it with bravado, too conscious of
grandeur and too conscious of the difficulties of acquiring that which he threw
away. For Gerald had earned money. This whiskered Englishman had never earned
money, never known the value of it, never imagined himself without as much of it
as he might happen to want. He had the face of one accustomed to give orders and
to look down upon inferiors. He was absolutely sure of himself. That his
companion chiefly ignored him did not appear to incommode him in the least. She
spoke to him in French. He replied in English, very briefly; and then, in
English, he commanded the supper. As soon as the champagne was served he began
to drink; in the intervals of drinking he gently stroked his whiskers. The woman
spoke no more.
Gerald talked more loudly. With that aristocratic Englishman
observing him, he could not remain at ease. And not only did he talk more
loudly; he brought into his conversation references to money, travels, and
worldly experiences. While seeking to impress the Englishman, he was merely
becoming ridiculous to the Englishman; and obscurely he was aware of this.
Sophia noticed and regretted it. Still, feeling very unimportant herself, she
was reconciled to the superiority of the whiskered Englishman as to a natural
fact. Gerald's behaviour slightly lowered him in her esteem. Then she looked at
him—at his well-shaped neatness, his vivacious face, his excellent clothes, and
decided that he was much to be preferred to any heavy-jawed, long-nosed
aristocrat alive.
The woman whose vermilion cloak lay around her like a
fortification spoke to her escort. He did not understand. He tried to express
himself in French, and failed. Then the woman recommenced, talking at length.
When she had done he shook his head. His acquaintance with French was limited to
the vocabulary of food.
"Guillotine!" he murmured, the sole word of her discourse that he
had understood.
"Oui, oui! Guillotine. Enfin…!" cried the woman excitedly.
Encouraged by her success in conveying even one word of her remarks, she began a
third time.
"Excuse me," said Gerald. "Madame is talking about the execution
at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. N'est-ce-pas, madame, que vous parliez de
Rivain?"
The Englishman glared angrily at Gerald's officious interruption.
But the woman smiled benevolently on Gerald, and insisted on talking to her
friend through him. And the Englishman had to make the best of the
situation.
"There isn't a restaurant in Paris to-night where they aren't
talking about that execution," said Gerald on his own account.
"Indeed!" observed the Englishman.
Wine affected them in different ways.
Now a fragile, short young Frenchman, with an extremely pale face
ending in a thin black imperial, appeared at the entrance. He looked about, and,
recognizing the woman of the scarlet cloak, very discreetly saluted her. Then he
saw Gerald, and his worn, fatigued features showed a sudden, startled smile. He
came rapidly forward, hat in hand, seized Gerald's palm and greeted him
effusively.
"My wife," said Gerald, with the solemn care of a man who is
determined to prove that he is entirely sober.
The young man became grave and excessively ceremonious. He bowed
low over Sophia's hand and kissed it. Her impulse was to laugh, but the gravity
of the young man's deference stopped her. She glanced at Gerald, blushing, as if
to say: "This comedy is not my fault." Gerald said something, the young man
turned to him and his face resumed its welcoming smile.
"This is Monsieur Chirac," Gerald at length completed the
introduction, "a friend of mine when I lived in Paris."
He was proud to have met by accident an acquaintance in a
restaurant. It demonstrated that he was a Parisian, and improved his standing
with the whiskered Englishman and the vermilion cloak.
"It is the first time you come Paris, madame?" Chirac addressed
himself to Sophia, in limping, timorous English.
"Yes," she giggled. He bowed again.
Chirac, with his best compliments, felicitated Gerald upon his
marriage.
"Don't mention it!" said the humorous Gerald in English, amused at
his own wit; and then: "What about this execution?"
"Ah!" replied Chirac, breathing out a long breath, and smiling at
Sophia. "Rivain! Rivain!" He made a large, important gesture with his hand.
It was at once to be seen that Gerald had touched the topic which
secretly ravaged the supper-world as a subterranean fire ravages a mine.
"I go!" said Chirac, with pride, glancing at Sophia, who smiled
self-consciously.
Chirac entered upon a conversation with Gerald in French. Sophia
comprehended that Gerald was surprised and impressed by what Chirac told him and
that Chirac in turn was surprised. Then Gerald laboriously found his
pocket-book, and after some fumbling with it handed it to Chirac so that the
latter might write in it.
"Madame!" murmured Chirac, resuming his ceremonious stiffness in
order to take leave. "Alors, c'est entendu, mon cher ami!" he said to Gerald,
who nodded phlegmatically. And Chirac went away to the next table but one, where
were the three lorettes and the two middle-aged men. He was received there with
enthusiasm.
Sophia began to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was not
quite his usual self. She did not think of him as tipsy. The idea of his being
tipsy would have shocked her. She did not think clearly at all. She was lost and
dazed in the labyrinth of new and vivid impressions into which Gerald had led
her. But her prudence was awake.
"I think I'm tired," she said in a low voice.
"You don't want to go, do you?" he asked, hurt.
"Well—"
"Oh, wait a bit!"
The owner of the vermilion cloak spoke again to Gerald, who showed
that he was flattered. While talking to her he ordered a brandy-and-soda. And
then he could not refrain from displaying to her his familiarity with Parisian
life, and he related how he had met Hortense Schneider behind a pair of white
horses. The vermilion cloak grew even more sociable at the mention of this
resounding name, and chattered with the most agreeable vivacity. Her friend
stared inimically.
"Do you hear that?" Gerald explained to Sophia, who was sitting
silent. "About Hortense Schneider—you know, we met her to-night. It seems she
made a bet of a louis with some fellow, and when he lost he sent her the louis
set in diamonds worth a hundred thousand francs. That's how they go on
here."
"Oh!" cried Sophia, further than ever in the labyrinth.
"'Scuse me," the Englishman put in heavily. He had heard the words
'Hortense Schneider,' 'Hortense Schneider,' repeating themselves in the
conversation, and at last it had occurred to him that the conversation was about
Hortense Schneider. "'Scuse me," he began again. "Are you—do you mean Hortense
Schneider?"
"Yes," said Gerald. "We met her to-night."
"She's in Trouville," said the Englishman, flatly.
Gerald shook his head positively.
"I gave a supper to her in Trouville last night," said the
Englishman.
"And she plays at the Casino Theatre to-night."
Gerald was repulsed but not defeated. "What is she playing in
to-night?
Tell me that!" he sneered.
"I don't see why I sh'd tell you."
"Hm!" Gerald retorted. "If what you say is true, it's a very
strange thing I should have seen her in the Champs Elysees to-night, isn't
it?"
The Englishman drank more wine. "If you want to insult me, sir—"
he began coldly.
"Gerald!" Sophia urged in a whisper.
"Be quiet!" Gerald snapped.
A fiddler in fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at that
moment and began to play wildly. The shock of his strange advent momentarily
silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the
noisy music,—the common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose higher and higher.
The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac cautiously observed it.
Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel.
Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The
English voices grew more menacing.
Then suddenly the whiskered Englishman, jerking his head towards
the door, said more quietly:
"Hadn't we better settle thish outside?"
"At your service!" said Gerald, rising.
The owner of the vermilion cloak lifted her eyebrows to Chirac in
fatigued disgust, but she said nothing. Nor did Sophia say anything. Sophia was
overcome by terror.
The swain of the cloak, dragging his coat after him across the
floor, left the restaurant without offering any apology or explanation to his
lady.
"Wait here for me," said Gerald defiantly to Sophia. "I shall be
back in a minute."
"But, Gerald!" She put her hand on his sleeve.
He snatched his arm away. "Wait here for me, I tell you," he
repeated.
The doorkeeper obsequiously opened the door to the two unsteady
carousers, for whom the fiddler drew back, still playing.
Thus Sophia was left side by side with the vermilion cloak. She
was quite helpless. All the pride of a married woman had abandoned her. She
stood transfixed by intense shame, staring painfully at a pillar, to avoid the
universal assault of eyes. She felt like an indiscreet little girl, and she
looked like one. No youthful radiant beauty of features, no grace and style of a
Parisian dress, no certificate of a ring, no premature initiation into the
mysteries, could save her from the appearance of a raw fool whose foolishness
had been her undoing. Her face changed to its reddest, and remained at that, and
all the fundamental innocence of her nature, which had been overlaid by the
violent experiences of her brief companionship with Gerald, rose again to the
surface with that blush. Her situation drew pity from a few hearts and a
careless contempt from the rest. But since once more it was a question of ces
Anglais, nobody could be astonished.
Without moving her head, she twisted her eyes to the clock:
half-past two. The fiddler ceased his dance and made a collection in his
tasselled cap. The vermilion cloak threw a coin into the cap. Sophia stared at
it moveless, until the fiddler, tired of waiting, passed to the next table and
relieved her agony. She had no money at all. She set herself to watch the clock;
but its fingers would not stir.
With an exclamation the lady of the cloak got up and peered out of
the window, chatted with waiters, and then removed herself and her cloak to the
next table, where she was received with amiable sympathy by the three lorettes,
Chirac, and the other two men. The party surreptitiously examined Sophia from
time to time. Then Chirac went outside with the head-waiter, returned, consulted
with his friends, and finally approached Sophia. It was twenty minutes past
three.
He renewed his magnificent bow. "Madame," he said carefully, "will
you allow me to bring you to your hotel?"
He made no reference to Gerald, partly, doubtless, because his
English was treacherous on difficult ground.
Sophia had not sufficient presence of mind to thank her
saviour.
"But the bill?" she stammered. "The bill isn't paid."
He did not instantly understand her. But one of the waiters had
caught the sound of a familiar word, and sprang forward with a slip of paper on
a plate.
"I have no money," said Sophia, with a feeble smile.
"Je vous arrangerai ca," he said. "What name of the hotel?
Meurice, is it not?"
"Hotel Meurice," said Sophia. "Yes."
He spoke to the head-waiter about the bill, which was carried away
like something obscene; and on his arm, which he punctiliously offered and she
could not refuse, Sophia left the scene of her ignominy. She was so distraught
that she could not manage her crinoline in the doorway. No sign anywhere outside
of Gerald or his foe!
He put her into an open carriage, and in five minutes they had
clattered down the brilliant silence of the Rue de la Paix, through the Place
Vendome into the Rue de Rivoli; and the night-porter of the hotel was at the
carriage-step.
"I tell them at the restaurant where you gone," said Chirac,
bare-headed under the long colonnade of the street. "If your husband is there, I
tell him. Till to-morrow…!"
His manners were more wonderful than any that Sophia had ever
imagined. He might have been in the dark Tuileries on the opposite side of the
street, saluting an empress, instead of taking leave of a raw little girl, who
was still too disturbed even to thank him.
She fled candle in hand up the wide, many-cornered stairs; Gerald
might be already in the bedroom, … drunk! There was a chance. But the
gilt-fringed bedroom was empty. She sat down at the velvet-covered table amid
the shadows cast by the candle that wavered in the draught from the open window.
And she set her teeth and a cold fury possessed her in the hot and languorous
night. Gerald was an imbecile. That he should have allowed himself to get tipsy
was bad enough, but that he should have exposed her to the horrible situation
from which Chirac had extricated her, was unspeakably disgraceful. He was an
imbecile. He had no common sense. With all his captivating charm, he could not
be relied upon not to make himself and her ridiculous, tragically ridiculous.
Compare him with Mr. Chirac! She leaned despairingly on the table. She would not
undress. She would not move. She had to realize her position; she had to see
it.
Folly! Folly! Fancy a commercial traveller throwing a compromising
piece of paper to the daughter of his customer in the shop itself: that was the
incredible folly with which their relations had begun! And his mad gesture at
the pit-shaft! And his scheme for bringing her to Paris unmarried! And then
to-night! Monstrous folly! Alone in the bedroom she was a wise and a
disillusioned woman, wiser than any of those dolls in the restaurant.
And had she not gone to Gerald, as it were, over the dead body of
her father, through lies and lies and again lies? That was how she phrased it to
herself…. Over the dead body of her father! How could such a venture succeed?
How could she ever have hoped that it would succeed? In that moment she saw her
acts with the terrible vision of a Hebrew prophet.
She thought of the Square and of her life there with her mother
and Sophia. Never would her pride allow her to return to that life, not even if
the worst happened to her that could happen. She was one of those who are
prepared to pay without grumbling for what they have had.
There was a sound outside. She noticed that the dawn had begun.
The door opened and disclosed Gerald.
They exchanged a searching glance, and Gerald shut the door.
Gerald infected the air, but she perceived at once that he was sobered. His lip
was bleeding.
"Mr. Chirac brought me home," she said.
"So it seems," said Gerald, curtly. "I asked you to wait for me.
Didn't
I say I should come back?"
He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man who is
ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others that he has recently
behaved like an ass.
She resented the injustice. "I don't think you need talk like
that," she said.
"Like what?" he bullied her, determined that she should be in the
wrong.
And what a hard look on his pretty face!
Her prudence bade her accept the injustice. She was his. Rapt away
from her own world, she was utterly dependent on his good nature.
"I knocked my chin against the damned balustrade, coming
upstairs," said Gerald, gloomily.
She knew that was a lie. "Did you?" she replied kindly. "Let me
bathe it."