The Immortal Part 2

Astier-Rehu did not move an eyebrow.

'It is not a bad story,' said he, clapping his jaw with a magisterial air. 'But, as I have said somewhere in my history, in France the provisional is the only thing that lasts. Loisillon has been dying any time this ten years. He'll see every one of us buried yet--every one of us,' he repeated angrily, pulling at his dry bread. It was clear that Teyssedre had put him into a very bad temper indeed.

Madame Astier went to another subject, the special meeting of all the five Academies, which was to take place within a few days, and to be honoured by the presence of the Grand Duke Leopold of Finland. It so happened that Astier-Rehu, being director for the coming quarter, was to preside at the meeting and to deliver the opening speech, in which his Highness was to receive a compliment. Skilfully questioned about this speech, which he was already planning, Leonard described it in outline.

It was to be a crus.h.i.+ng attack upon the modern school of literature--a sound thras.h.i.+ng administered in public to these pretenders, these dunces. And at this his eyes, big with his heavy meal, lighted up his square face, and the blood rose under his thick bushy eyebrows. They were still coal-black, and contrasted strangely with the white circle of his beard.

'By the way,' said he suddenly, 'what about my uniform coat? Has it been seen to? The last time I wore it, at Montribot's funeral----'

But do not women think of everything? Madame Astier had seen to the coat that very morning. The silk of the palm leaves was getting shabby; the lining was all to pieces. It was very old. Oh, dear, when did he wear it first? Why, it was as long ago--as long ago--as when he was admitted!

The twelfth of October, eighteen-sixty-six! He had better order a new one for the Meeting. The five Academies, a Royal Highness, and all Paris! Such an audience was worth a new coat. Leonard protested, not energetically, on the ground of expense. With a new coat he would want a new waistcoat; knee-breeches were not worn now, but a new waistcoat would be indispensable.

'My dear, you really must!' She continued to press him. If they did not take care they would make themselves ridiculous with their economy.

There were too many shabby old things about them. The furniture of her room, for instance! It made her feel ashamed when a friend came in, and for a sum comparatively trifling.

'Ouais! quelque sot,' muttered Astier-Rehu, who liked to quote his cla.s.sics. The furrow in his forehead deepened, and under it, as under the bar of a shutter, his countenance, which had been open for a minute, shut up. Many a time had he supplied the means to pay a milliner's bill, or a dressmaker's, or to re-paper the walls, and after all no account had been settled and no purchase made. All the money had gone to that Charybdis in the Rue Fortuny. He had had enough of it, and was not going to be caught again. He rounded his back, fixed his eyes upon the huge slice of Auvergne cheese which filled his plate, and said no more.

Madame Astier was familiar with this dogged silence. This att.i.tude of pa.s.sive resistance, dead as a ball of cotton, was always put on when money was mentioned. But this time she was resolved to make him answer.

'Ah,' she said, 'I see you rolling up, Master Hedgehog. I know the meaning of that. "Nothing to be got! nothing to be got! No, no, no!"

Eh?' The back grew rounder and rounder. 'But you can find money for M.

f.a.ge.' Astier started, sat up, and looked uneasily at his wife. Money for M. f.a.ge? What did she mean?' Why, of course,' she went on, delighted to have forced the barrier of his silence, 'of course it takes money to do all that binding. And what's the good of it, I should like to know, for all those old sc.r.a.ps?'

He felt relieved; evidently she knew nothing; it was only a chance shot.

But the term 'old sc.r.a.ps' went to his heart: unique autograph doc.u.ments, signed letters of Richelieu, Colbert, Newton, Galileo, Pascal, marvels bought for an old song, and worth a fortune. 'Yes, madam, a fortune.' He grew excited, and began to quote figures, the offers that had been made him. Bos, the famous Bos of the Rue de l'Abbaye (and he knew his business if any one did), Bos had offered him eight hundred pounds merely for three specimens from his collection--three letters from Charles the Fifth to Francois Rabelais. Old sc.r.a.ps indeed!

Madame Astier listened in utter amazement. She was well aware that for the last two or three years he had been collecting old ma.n.u.scripts.

He used sometimes to speak to her of his finds, and she listened in a wandering absent-minded way, as a woman does listen to a man's voice when she has heard it for thirty years. But this was beyond her conception. Eight hundred pounds for three letters! And why did he not take it?'

He burst out like an explosion of dynamite.

'Sell my Charles the Fifths! Never! I would see you all without bread and begging from door to door before I would touch them--understand that!' He struck the table. His face was very pale, and his lips thrust out This fierce maniac was an Astier-Rehu whom his wife did not know. In the sudden glow of a pa.s.sion human beings do thus take aspects unknown to those who know them best The next minute the Academician was quite calm, again, and was explaining, not without embarra.s.sment, that these doc.u.ments were indispensable to him as an author, especially now that he could not command the Records of the Foreign Office. To sell these materials would be to give up writing. On the contrary, he hoped to make additions to them. Then, with a touch of bitterness and affection, which betrayed the whole depth of the father's disappointment, he said, 'After my time, my fine gentleman of a son may sell them if he chooses; and since all he wants is to be rich, I will answer for it that he will be.'

'Yes; but meanwhile----'

This 'meanwhile' was said in a little flute-like voice so cruelly natural and quiet that Leonard, unable to control his jealousy of this son who left him no place in his wife's heart, retorted with a solemn snap of the jaw, 'Meanwhile, madam, others can do as I do. I have no mansion, I keep no horses and no English cart. The tramway does for my going and coming, and I am content to live on a third floor over an _entresol_, where I am exposed to Teyssedre. I work night and day, I pile up volume after volume, two and three octavos in a year. I am on two committees of the Academie; I never miss a meeting; I never miss a funeral; and even in the summer I never accept an invitation to the country, lest I should miss a single tally. I hope my son, when he is sixty-five, may be as indefatigable.'

It was long since he had spoken of Paul, and never had he spoken so severely. The mother was struck by his tone, and in her look, as she glanced sidelong, almost wickedly, at her husband, there was a shade of respect, which had not been there before.

'There is a ring,' said Leonard eagerly, rising as he spoke, and flinging his table napkin upon the back of his chair. 'That must be my man.'

'It's some one for you, ma'am; they are beginning early to-day,' said Corentine, as, with her kitchen-maid's fingers wiped hastily on her ap.r.o.n, she laid a card on the edge of the table. Madame Astier looked at it. 'The Vicomte de Freydet.' A gleam came into her eyes. But her delight was not perceptible in the calm tone in which she said, 'So M.

de Freydet is in Paris?'

'Yes, about his book.'

'Bless me! His book! I have not even cut it. What is it about?'

She hurried over the last mouth fuls, and washed the tips of her white fingers in her gla.s.s while her husband in an absent-minded way gave her some idea of the new volume. 'G.o.d in Nature,' a philosophic poem, entered for the Boisseau prize.

'Oh, I do hope he will get it. He must, he must. They are so nice, he and his sister, and he is so good to the poor paralysed creature. Do you think he will?'

Astier would not commit himself. He could not promise, but he would certainly recommend Freydet, who seemed to him to be really improving.

'If he asks you for my personal opinion, it is this: there is still a little too much for my taste, but much less than in his other books. You may tell him that his old master is pleased.'

Too much of what? Less of what? It must be supposed that Madame Astier knew, for she sought no explanation, but left the table and pa.s.sed, quite happy, into her drawing room--as the study must be considered for the day. Astier, more and more absorbed in thought, lingered for some minutes, breaking up with his knife what remained in his plate of the Auvergne cheese; then, being disturbed in his meditations by Corentine, who, without heeding him, was rapidly clearing the table, he rose stiffly and went up, by a little staircase like a cat-ladder, to his attic, where he took up his magnifying gla.s.s and resumed the examination of the old ma.n.u.script upon which he had been busy since the morning.

CHAPTER II.

SITTING straight, with the reins well held up in the most correct fas.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sed to another subject. His mother's revelations ran in his head. Fifty-three years old! The beautiful d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess and her drawing-room had been a fine thing for them all. Perhaps his father might never have been in the Academie 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Academie 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 d.u.c.h.ess was busily at work to fit him with an Emba.s.sy, 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances.

Their friends.h.i.+p had begun some years ago, when a prize for an historical work had been adjudged to the Prince de Rosen by the Academie, 'on the report of Astier-Rehu.' 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 ma.s.s 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 Pere 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 coa.r.s.er 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, amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Theatre Francais, 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 p.r.o.nounced, a little too ma.s.sive.' 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 t.i.tle--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, pa.s.sionless 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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.