“Une beauté à la Rubens,” her husband used to call her when he was in an amorous mood. He liked these massive, splendid, great women. None of your flexible drain-pipes for him. “Hélène Fourmont” was his pet name for her.
“Some day,” Madame used to tell her friends, “some day I really must go to the Louvre and see my portrait. By Rubens, you know. It’s extraordinary that one should have lived all one’s life in Paris and never have seen the Louvre. Don’t you think so?”
She was superb to-night. Her cheeks were flushed; her blue eyes shone with an unusual brilliance between their long lashes; her short, red-brown hair had broken wildly loose.
“To-morrow, Sophie,” she said dramatically, “we start for Rome. To-morrow morning.” She unhooked another dress from the wardrobe as she spoke, and threw it on to the bed. With the movement her dressing-gown flew open, and there was a vision of ornate underclothing and white exuberant flesh. “We must pack at once.”
“For how long, Madame?”
“A fortnight, three months—how should I know?”
“It makes a difference, Madame.”
“The important thing is to get away. I shall not return to this house, after what has been said to me to-night, till I am humbly asked to.”
“We had better take the large trunk, then, Madame; I will go and fetch it.”
The air in the box-room was sickly with the smell of dust and leather. The big trunk was jammed in a far corner. She had to bend and strain at it in order to pull it out. The worm and the coloured stars flickered before her eyes; she felt dizzy when she straightened herself up. “I’ll help you to pack, Sophie,” said Madame, when the servant returned, dragging the heavy trunk after her. What a death’s-head the old woman looked nowadays! She hated having old, ugly people near her. But Sophie was so efficient; it would be madness to get rid of her.
“Madame need not trouble.” There would be no end to it, Sophie knew, if Madame started opening drawers and throwing things about. “Madame had much better go to bed. It’s late.”
No, no. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was to such a degree enervated. These men…. What an embeastment! One was not their slave. One would not be treated in this way.
Sophie was packing. A whole day in bed, in a huge, soft bed, like Madame’s. One would doze, one would wake up for a moment, one would doze again.
“His latest game,” Madame was saying indignantly, “is to tell me he hasn’t got any money. I’m not to buy any clothes, he says. Too grotesque. I can’t go about naked, can I?” She threw out her hands. “And as for saying he can’t afford, that’s simply nonsense. He can, perfectly well. Only he’s mean, mean, horribly mean. And if he’d only do a little honest work, for a change, instead of writing silly verses and publishing them at his own expense, he’d have plenty and to spare.” She walked up and down the room. “Besides,” she went on, “there’s his old father. What’s he for, I should like to know? ‘You must be proud of having a poet for a husband,’ he says.”
She made her voice quaver like an old man’s. “It’s all I can do not to laugh in his face. ‘And what beautiful verses Hégésippe writes about you! What passion, what fire!’” Thinking of the old man, she grimaced, wobbled her head, shook her finger, doddered on her legs. “And when one reflects that poor Hégésippe is bald, and dyes the few hairs he has left.” She laughed. “As for the passion he talks so much about in his beastly verses,” she laughed—“that’s all pure invention. But, my good Sophie, what are you thinking of? Why are you packing that hideous old green dress?”
Sophie pulled out the dress without saying anything. Why did the woman choose this night to look so terribly ill? She had a yellow face and blue teeth. Madame shuddered; it was too horrible. She ought to send her to bed. But, after all, the work had to be done. What could one do about it? She felt more than ever aggrieved.
“Life is terrible.” Sighing, she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. The buoyant springs rocked her gently once or twice before they settled to rest. “To be married to a man like this. I shall soon be getting old and fat. And never once unfaithful. But look how he treats me.” She got up again and began to wander aimlessly about the room. “I won’t stand it, though,” she burst out. She had halted in front of the long mirror, and was admiring her own splendid tragic figure. No one would believe, to look at her, that she was over thirty. Behind the beautiful tragedian she could see in the glass a thin, miserable, old creature, with a yellow face and blue teeth, crouching over the trunk.
Really, it was too disagreeable. Sophie looked like one of those beggar women one sees on a cold morning, standing in the gutter. Does one hurry past, trying not to look at them? Or does one stop, open one’s purse, and give them one’s copper and nickel—even as much as a two-franc note, if one has no change? But whatever one did, one always felt uncomfortable, one always felt apologetic for one’s furs. That was what came of walking. If one had a car—but that was another of Hégésippe’s meannesses—one wouldn’t, rolling along behind closed windows, have to be conscious of them at all. She turned away from the glass.
“I won’t stand it,” she said, trying not to think of the beggar women, of blue teeth in a yellow face; “I won’t stand it.” She dropped into a chair.
But think of a lover with a yellow face and blue, uneven teeth! She closed her eyes, shuddered at the thought. It would be enough to make one sick. She felt impelled to take another look: Sophie’s eyes were the colour of greenish lead, quite without life. What was one to do about it? The woman’s face was a reproach, an accusation. And besides, the sight of it was making her feel positively ill. She had never been so profoundly enervated.
Sophie rose slowly and with difficulty from her knees; an expression of pain crossed her face. Slowly she walked to the chest of drawers, slowly counted out six pairs of silk stockings. She turned back towards the trunk. The woman was a walking corpse!
“Life is terrible,” Madame repeated with conviction, “terrible, terrible, terrible.”
She ought to send the woman to bed. But she would never be able to get her packing done by herself. And it was so important to get off to-morrow morning. She had told Hégésippe she would go, and he had simply laughed; he hadn’t believed it. She must give him a lesson this time. In Rome she would see Luigino. Such a charming boy, and a marquis, too. Perhaps…. But she could think of nothing but Sophie’s face; the leaden eyes, the bluish teeth, the yellow, wrinkled skin.
“Sophie,” she said suddenly; it was with difficulty that she prevented herself screaming, “look on my dressing-table. You’ll see a box of rouge, the Dorin number twenty-four. Put a little on your cheeks. And there’s a stick of lip salve in the right-hand drawer.”
She kept her eyes resolutely shut while Sophie got up—with what a horrible creaking of the joints!—walked over to the dressing-table, and stood there, rustling faintly, through what seemed an eternity. What a life, my God, what a life! Slow footsteps trailed back again. She opened her eyes. Oh, that was far better, far better.
“Thank you, Sophie. You look much less tired now.” She got up briskly. “And now we must hurry.” Full of energy, she ran to the wardrobe. “Goodness me,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands, “you’ve forgotten to put in my blue evening dress. How could you be so stupid, Sophie?”
THE PORTRAIT
“PICTURES,” said Mr. Bigger; “you want to see some pictures? Well, we have a very interesting mixed exhibition of modern stuff in our galleries at the moment. French and English, you know.”
The customer held up his hand, shook his head. “No, no. Nothing modern for me,” he declared, in his pleasant northern English. “I want real pictures, old pictures. Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds and that sort of thing.”
“Perfectly.” Mr. Bigger nodded. “Old Masters. Oh, of course we deal in the old as well as the modern.”
“The fact is,” said the other, “that I’ve just bought a rather large house—a Manor House,” he added, in impressive tones.
Mr. Bigger smiled; there was an ingenuousness about this simple-minded fellow which was most engaging. He wondered how the man had made his money. “A Manor House.” The way he had said it was really charming. Here was a man who had worked his way up from serfdom to the lordship of a manor, from the broad base of the feudal pyramid to the narrow summit. His own history and all the history of classes had been implicit in that awed proud emphasis on the “Manor.” But the stranger was running on; Mr. Bigger could not allow his thoughts to wander farther. “In a house of this style,” he was saying, “and with a position like mine to keep up, one must have a few pictures. Old Masters, you know; Rembrandts and What’s-his-names.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Bigger, “an Old Master is a symbol of social superiority.”
“That’s just it,” cried the other, beaming; “you’ve said
