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_ He went home and, without lighting his candle, flung himself on his bed.
But he got no sleep till morning; he lay hour after hour tossing,
thinking, wondering; his mind had never been so active. It seemed to him
his friend had laid on him in those last moments a heavy charge and had
expressed herself almost as handsomely as if she had listened
complacently to an assurance of his love. It was neither easy nor
delightful thoroughly to understand her; but little by little her
perfect meaning sank into his mind and soothed it with a sense of
opportunity which somehow stifled his sense of loss. For, to begin with,
she meant that she could love him in no degree or contingency, in no
imaginable future. This was absolute--he knew he could no more alter it
than he could pull down one of the constellations he lay gazing at
through his open window. He wondered to what it was, in the background
of her life, she had so dedicated herself. A conception of duty
unquenchable to the end? A love that no outrage could stifle? "Great
heaven!" he groaned; "is the world so rich in the purest pearls of
passion that such tenderness as that can be wasted for ever--poured away
without a sigh into bottomless darkness?" Had she, in spite of the
detestable present, some precious memory that still kept the door of
possibility open? Was she prepared to submit to everything and yet to
believe? Was it strength, was it weakness, was it a vulgar fear, was it
conviction, conscience, constancy?
Longmore sank back with a sigh and an oppressive feeling that it was
vain to guess at such a woman's motives. He only felt that those of this
one were buried deep in her soul and that they must be of the noblest,
must contain nothing base. He had his hard impression that endless
constancy was all her law--a constancy that still found a foothold among
crumbling ruins. "She has loved once," he said to himself as he rose and
wandered to his window; "and that's for ever. Yes, yes--if she loved
again she'd be COMMON!" He stood for a long time looking out into the
starlit silence of the town and forest and thinking of what life would
have been if his constancy had met her own in earlier days. But life was
this now, and he must live. It was living, really, to stand there with
such a faith even in one's self still flung over one by such hands. He
was not to disappoint her, he was to justify a conception it had
beguiled her weariness to form. His imagination embraced it; he threw
back his head and seemed to be looking for his friend's conception among
the blinking mocking stars. But it came to him rather on the mild night-
wind wandering in over the house-tops which covered the rest of so many
heavy human hearts. What she asked he seemed to feel her ask not for her
own sake--she feared nothing, she needed nothing--but for that of his
own happiness and his own character. He must assent to destiny. Why else
was he young and strong, intelligent and resolute? He mustn't give it to
her to reproach him with thinking she had had a moment's attention for
his love, give it to her to plead, to argue, to break off in bitterness.
He must see everything from above, her indifference and his own ardour;
he must prove his strength, must do the handsome thing, must decide that
the handsome thing was to submit to the inevitable, to be supremely
delicate, to spare her all pain, to stifle his passion, to ask no
compensation, to depart without waiting and to try to believe that
wisdom is its own reward. All this, neither more nor less, it was a
matter of beautiful friendship with him for her to expect of him. And
what should he himself gain by it? He should have pleased her! Well, he
flung himself on his bed again, fell asleep at last and slept till
morning.
Before noon next day he had made up his mind to leave Saint-Germain at
once. It seemed easiest to go without seeing her, and yet if he might
ask for a grain of "compensation" this would be five minutes face to
face with her. He passed a restless day. Wherever he went he saw her
stand before him in the dusky halo of evening, saw her look at him with
an air of still negation more intoxicating than the most passionate
self-surrender. He must certainly go, and yet it was hideously hard. He
compromised and went to Paris to spend the rest of the day. He strolled
along the boulevard and paused sightlessly before the shops, sat a while
in the Tuileries gardens and looked at the shabby unfortunates for whom
this only was nature and summer; but simply felt afresh, as a result of
it all, the dusty dreary lonely world to which Madame de Mauves had
consigned him.
In a sombre mood he made his way back to the centre of motion and sat
down at a table before a cafe door, on the great plain of hot asphalt.
Night arrived, the lamps were lighted, the tables near him found
occupants, and Paris began to wear that evening grimace of hers that
seems to tell, in the flare of plate glass and of theatre-doors, the
muffled rumble of swift-rolling carriages, how this is no world for you
unless you have your pockets lined and your delicacies perverted.
Longmore, however, had neither scruples nor desires; he looked at the
great preoccupied place for the first time with an easy sense of
repaying its indifference. Before long a carriage drove up to the
pavement directly in front of him and remained standing for several
minutes without sign from its occupant. It was one of those neat plain
coupes, drawn by a single powerful horse, in which the flaneur figures a
pale handsome woman buried among silk cushions and yawning as she sees
the gas-lamps glittering in the gutters. At last the door opened and out
stepped Richard de Mauves. He stopped and leaned on the window for some
time, talking in an excited manner to a person within. At last he gave a
nod and the carriage rolled away. He stood swinging his cane and looking
up and down the boulevard, with the air of a man fumbling, as one might
say, the loose change of time. He turned toward the cafe and was
apparently, for want of anything better worth his attention, about to
seat himself at one of the tables when he noticed Longmore. He wavered
an instant and then, without a shade of difference in his careless gait,
advanced to the accompaniment of a thin recognition. It was the first
time they had met since their encounter in the forest after Longmore's
false start for Brussels. Madame Clairin's revelations, as he might have
regarded them, had not made the Count especially present to his mind; he
had had another call to meet than the call of disgust. But now, as M. de
Mauves came toward him he felt abhorrence well up. He made out, however,
for the first time, a cloud on this nobleman's superior clearness, and a
delight at finding the shoe somewhere at last pinching HIM, mingled with
the resolve to be blank and unaccommodating, enabled him to meet the
occasion with due promptness.
M. de Mauves sat down, and the two men looked at each other across the
table, exchanging formal remarks that did little to lend grace to their
encounter. Longmore had no reason to suppose the Count knew of his
sister's various interventions. He was sure M. de Mauves cared very
little about his opinions, and yet he had a sense of something grim in
his own New York face which would have made him change colour if keener
suspicion had helped it to be read there. M. de Mauves didn't change
colour, but he looked at his wife's so oddly, so more than naturally
(wouldn't it be?) detached friend with an intentness that betrayed at
once an irritating memory of the episode in the Bois de Boulogne and
such vigilant curiosity as was natural to a gentleman who had entrusted
his "honour" to another gentleman's magnanimity--or to his artlessness.
It might appear that these virtues shone out of our young man less
engagingly or reassuringly than a few days before; the shadow at any
rate fell darker across the brow of his critic, who turned away and
frowned while lighting a cigar. The person in the coupe, he accordingly
judged, whether or no the same person as the heroine of the episode of
the Bois de Boulogne, was not a source of unalloyed delight. Longmore
had dark blue eyes of admirable clarity, settled truth-telling eyes
which had in his childhood always made his harshest taskmasters smile at
his notion of a subterfuge. An observer watching the two men and knowing
something of their relations would certainly have said that what he had
at last both to recognise and to miss in those eyes must not a little
have puzzled and tormented M. de Mauves. They took possession of him,
they laid him out, they measured him in that state of flatness, they
triumphed over him, they treated him as no pair of eyes had perhaps ever
treated any member of his family before. The Count's scheme had been to
provide for a positive state of ease on the part of no one save himself,
but here was Longmore already, if appearances perhaps not appreciable to
the vulgar meant anything, primed as for some prospect of pleasure more
than Parisian. Was this candid young barbarian but a faux bonhomme after
all? He had never really quite satisfied his occasional host, but was he
now, for a climax, to leave him almost gaping?
M. de Mauves, as if hating to seem preoccupied, took up the evening
paper to help himself to seem indifferent. As he glanced over it he
threw off some perfunctory allusion to the crisis--the political--which
enabled Longmore to reply with perfect veracity that, with other things
to think about, he had had no attention to spare for it. And yet our
hero was in truth far from secure against rueful reflexion. The Count's
ruffled state was a comfort so far as it pointed to the possibility that
the lady in the coupe might be proving too many for him; but it
ministered to no vindictive sweetness for Longmore so far as it should
perhaps represent rising jealousy. It passed through his mind that
jealousy is a passion with a double face and that on one of its sides it
may sometimes almost look generous. It glimmered upon him odiously M. de
Mauves might grow ashamed of his political compact with his wife, and he
felt how far more tolerable it would be in future to think of him as
always impertinent than to think of him as occasionally contrite. The
two men pretended meanwhile for half an hour to outsit each other
conveniently; and the end--at that rate--might have been distant had not
the tension in some degree yielded to the arrival of a friend of M. de
Mauves--a tall pale consumptive-looking dandy who filled the air with
the odour of heliotrope. He looked up and down the boulevard wearily,
examined the Count's garments in some detail, then appeared to refer
restlessly to his own, and at last announced resignedly that the Duchess
was in town. M. de Mauves must come with him to call; she had abused him
dreadfully a couple of evenings before--a sure sign she wanted to see
him. "I depend on you," said with an infantine drawl this specimen of an
order Longmore felt he had never had occasion so intimately to
appreciate, "to put her en train."
M. de Mauves resisted, he protested that he was d'une humeur
massacrante; but at last he allowed himself to be drawn to his feet and
stood looking awkwardly--awkwardly for M. de Mauves--at Longmore.
"You'll excuse me," he appeared to find some difficulty in saying; "you
too probably have occupation for the evening?"
"None but to catch my train." And our friend looked at his watch.
"Ah you go back to Saint-Germain?"
"In half an hour."
M. de Mauves seemed on the point of disengaging himself from his
companion's arm, which was locked in his own; but on the latter's
uttering some persuasive murmur he lifted his hat stiffly and turned
away.
Longmore the next day wandered off to the terrace to try and beguile the
restlessness with which he waited for the evening; he wished to see
Madame de Mauves for the last time at the hour of long shadows and pale
reflected amber lights, as he had almost always seen her. Destiny,
however, took no account of this humble plea for poetic justice; it was
appointed him to meet her seated by the great walk under a tree and
alone. The hour made the place almost empty; the day was warm, but as he
took his place beside her a light breeze stirred the leafy edges of
their broad circle of shadow. She looked at him almost with no pretence
of not having believed herself already rid of him, and he at once told
her that he should leave Saint-Germain that evening, but must first bid
her farewell. Her face lighted a moment, he fancied, as he spoke; but
she said nothing, only turning it off to far Paris which lay twinkling
and flashing through hot exhalations. "I've a request to make of you,"
he added. "That you think of me as a man who has felt much and claimed
little."
She drew a long breath which almost suggested pain. "I can't think of
you as unhappy. That's impossible. You've a life to lead, you've duties,
talents, inspirations, interests. I shall hear of your career. And
then," she pursued after a pause, though as if it had before this quite
been settled between them, "one can't be unhappy through having a better
opinion of a friend instead of a worse."
For a moment he failed to understand her. "Do you mean that there can be
varying degrees in my opinion of you?"
She rose and pushed away her chair. "I mean," she said quickly, "that
it's better to have done nothing in bitterness--nothing in passion." And
she began to walk.
Longmore followed her without answering at first. But he took off his
hat and with his pocket-handkerchief wiped his forehead. "Where shall
you go? what shall you do?" he simply asked at last.
"Do? I shall do as I've always done--except perhaps that I shall go for
a while to my husband's old home."
"I shall go to MY old one. I've done with Europe for the present," the
young man added.
She glanced at him as he walked beside her, after he had spoken these
words, and then bent her eyes for a long time on the ground. But
suddenly, as if aware of her going too far she stopped and put out her
hand. "Good-bye. May you have all the happiness you deserve!"
He took her hand with his eyes on her, but something was at work in him
that made it impossible to deal in the easy way with her touch.
Something of infinite value was floating past him, and he had taken an
oath, with which any such case interfered, not to raise a finger to stop
it. It was borne by the strong current of the world's great life and not
of his own small one. Madame de Mauves disengaged herself, gathered in
her long scarf and smiled at him almost as you would do at a child you
should wish to encourage. Several moments later he was still there
watching her leave him and leave him. When she was out of sight he shook
himself, walked at once back to his hotel and, without waiting for the
evening train, paid his bill and departed.
Later in the day M. de Mauves came into his wife's drawing-room, where
she sat waiting to be summoned to dinner. He had dressed as he usually
didn't dress for dining at home. He walked up and down for some moments
in silence, then rang the bell for a servant and went out into the hall
to meet him. He ordered the carriage to take him to the station, paused
a moment with his hand on the knob of the door, dismissed the servant
angrily as the latter lingered observing him, re-entered the drawing-
room, resumed his restless walk and at last stopped abruptly before his
wife, who had taken up a book. "May I ask the favour," he said with
evident effort, in spite of a forced smile as of allusion to a large
past exercise of the very best taste, "of having a question answered?"
"It's a favour I never refused," she replied.
"Very true. Do you expect this evening a visit from Mr. Longmore?"
"Mr. Longmore," said his wife, "has left Saint-Germain." M. de Mauves
waited, but his smile expired. "Mr. Longmore," his wife continued, "has
gone to America."
M. de Mauves took it--a rare thing for him--with confessed, if
momentary, intellectual indigence. But he raised, as it were, the wind.
"Has anything happened?" he asked, "Had he a sudden call?" But his
question received no answer. At the same moment the servant threw open
the door and announced dinner; Madame Clairin rustled in, rubbing her
white hands, Madame de Mauves passed silently into the dining-room, but
he remained outside--outside of more things, clearly, than his mere
salle-a-manger. Before long he went forth to the terrace and continued
his uneasy walk. At the end of a quarter of an hour the servant came to
let him know that his carriage was at the door. "Send it away," he said
without hesitation. "I shan't use it." When the ladies had half-finished
dinner he returned and joined them, with a formal apology to his wife
for his inconsequence.
The dishes were brought back, but he hardly tasted them; he drank on the
other hand more wine than usual. There was little talk, scarcely a
convivial sound save the occasional expressive appreciative "M-m-m!" of
Madame Clairin over the succulence of some dish. Twice this lady saw her
brother's eyes, fixed on her own over his wineglass, put to her a
question she knew she should have to irritate him later on by not being
able to answer. She replied, for the present at least, by an elevation
of the eyebrows that resembled even to her own humour the vain raising
of an umbrella in anticipation of a storm. M. de Mauves was left alone
to finish his wine; he sat over it for more than an hour and let the
darkness gather about him. At last the servant came in with a letter and
lighted a candle. The letter was a telegram, which M. de Mauves, when he
had read it, burnt at the candle. After five minutes' meditation he
wrote a message on the back of a visiting-card and gave it to the
servant to carry to the office. The man knew quite as much as his master
suspected about the lady to whom the telegram was addressed; but its
contents puzzled him; they consisted of the single word "Impossible." As
the evening passed without her brother's reappearing in the drawing-room
Madame Clairin came to him where he sat by his solitary candle. He took
no notice of her presence for some time, but this affected her as
unexpected indulgence. At last, however, he spoke with a particular
harshness. "Ce jeune mufle has gone home at an hour's notice. What the
devil does it mean?"
Madame Clairin now felt thankful for her umbrella. "It means that I've a
sister-in-law whom I've not the honour to understand."
He said nothing more and silently allowed her, after a little, to
depart. It had been her duty to provide him with an explanation, and he
was disgusted with her blankness; but she was--if there was no more to
come--getting off easily. When she had gone he went into the garden and
walked up and down with his cigar. He saw his wife seated alone on the
terrace, but remained below, wandering, turning, pausing, lingering. He
remained a long time. It grew late and Madame de Mauves disappeared.
Toward midnight he dropped upon a bench, tired, with a long vague
exhalation of unrest. It was sinking into his spirit that he too didn't
understand Madame Clairin's sister-in-law.
Longmore was obliged to wait a week in London for a ship. It was very
hot, and he went out one day to Richmond. In the garden of the hotel at
which he dined he met his friend Mrs. Draper, who was staying there. She
made eager enquiry about Madame de Mauves; but Longmore at first, as
they sat looking out at the famous view of the Thames, parried her
questions and confined himself to other topics. At last she said she was
afraid he had something to conceal; whereupon, after a pause, he asked
her if she remembered recommending him, in the letter she had addressed
him at Saint-Germain, to draw the sadness from her friend's smile. "The
last I saw of her was her smile," he said--"when I bade her good-bye."
"I remember urging you to 'console' her," Mrs. Draper returned, "and I
wondered afterwards whether--model of discretion as you are--I hadn't
cut you out work for which you wouldn't thank me."
"She has her consolation in herself," the young man said; "she needs
none that any one else can offer her. That's for troubles for which--be
it more, be it less--our own folly has to answer. Madame de Mauves
hasn't a grain of folly left."
"Ah don't say that!"--Mrs. Draper knowingly protested. "Just a little
folly's often very graceful."
Longmore rose to go--she somehow annoyed him. "Don't talk of grace," he
said, "till you've measured her reason!"
For two years after his return to America he heard nothing of Madame de
Mauves. That he thought of her intently, constantly, I need hardly say;
most people wondered why such a clever young man shouldn't "devote"
himself to something; but to himself he seemed absorbingly occupied. He
never wrote to her; he believed she wouldn't have "liked" it. At last he
heard that Mrs. Draper had come home and he immediately called on her.
"Of course," she said after the first greetings, "you're dying for news
of Madame de Mauves. Prepare yourself for something strange. I heard
from her two or three times during the year after your seeing her. She
left Saint-Germain and went to live in the country on some old property
of her husband's. She wrote me very kind little notes, but I felt
somehow that--in spite of what you said about 'consolation'--they were
the notes of a wretched woman. The only advice I could have given her
was to leave her scamp of a husband and come back to her own land and
her own people. But this I didn't feel free to do, and yet it made me so
miserable not to be able to help her that I preferred to let our
correspondence die a natural death. I had no news of her for a year.
Last summer, however, I met at Vichy a clever young Frenchman whom I
accidentally learned to be a friend of that charming sister of the
Count's, Madame Clairin. I lost no time in asking him what he knew about
Madame de Mauves--a countrywoman of mine and an old friend. 'I
congratulate you on the friendship of such a person,' he answered.
'That's the terrible little woman who killed her husband.' You may
imagine I promptly asked for an explanation, and he told me--from his
point of view--what he called the whole story. M. de Mauves had fait
quelques folies which his wife had taken absurdly to heart. He had
repented and asked her forgiveness, which she had inexorably refused.
She was very pretty, and severity must have suited her style; for,
whether or no her husband had been in love with her before, he fell
madly in love with her now. He was the proudest man in France, but he
had begged her on his knees to be re-admitted to favour. All in vain!
She was stone, she was ice, she was outraged virtue. People noticed a
great change in him; he gave up society, ceased to care for anything,
looked shockingly. One fine day they discovered he had blown out his
brains. My friend had the story of course from Madame Clairin."
Longmore was strongly moved, and his first impulse after he had
recovered his composure was to return immediately to Europe. But several
years have passed, and he still lingers at home. The truth is that, in
the midst of all the ardent tenderness of his memory of Madame de
Mauves, he has become conscious of a singular feeling--a feeling of
wonder, of uncertainty, of awe.
THE END.
'Madame de Mauves', by Henry James. _
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