“You enjoyed your voyage in Scotland, I hope.” said Aurélie, dutifully making conversation for her guest.
“Very much indeed. But I grew a little tired of it, and shall probably remain in London now until August. When may I expect to see you at my house?”
“You are very good, madame: I am very sensible of your kindness. But — Mrs Herbert looked up quickly — I set out immediately for Vienna, whence I go to Leipzig and many other cities. I shall not be at my own disposal again for a long time.”
Mrs. Herbert reflected for a moment, and then rose. Aurélie rose also.
“Adieu,” said Mrs. Herbert suavely, offering her hand.
“Adieu, madame,” said Aurélie, saluting her with earnest courtesy. Then Mrs. Herbert withdrew. On reaching the street she hailed a hansom, and drove to her son’s studio in the Fulham Road. She found him at his easel, working more rapidly and less attentively than in the old days.
“How d’ye do, mother,” he said, “Sit down on the throne.” The throne was a chair elevated on a platform for the accommodation of live models. “We should have gone to see you; but Aurélie is going abroad. She has not a moment to spare.”
“No, Adrian, that is precisely what you should not have done, though you might have done it. It was my duty to call on your wife first; and I have accordingly just come from your house.”
“Indeed?” said Adrian eagerly, and a little anxiously. “Did you see Aurélie?”
“I saw Aurélie.”
“Well? What did you think of her?”
“I think her manners perfect, and her dress and appearance above criticism.”
“And was there — did you get on well together?”
“Your wife is a lady, Adrian, and I am a lady. Under such circumstances there is no room for unpleasantness of any kind. It is quite understood, though not expressed, that I shall not present myself at your house again, and that your wife’s engagements will prevent her from returning my visit.”
“Mother, are you serious?”
“Quite serious, Adrian. I have come here to ask you whether your wife merely carries out your wishes, or whether she prefers for herself not to cultivate acquaintances in your family.”
“Pshaw! You must have taken some imaginary offence.”
“Is that the most direct and sensible answer you can think of?”
“There is no lack of sense in the supposition that Aurélie, being a foreigner, may not understand the English etiquette for the occasion. You may have mistaken her. Even you are fallible, mother.”
“I have already told you that your wife’s manners are perfect. If you assume that my judgment is not to be relied on, there is no use in our talking to one another at all. What I wish to know is this. Admitting, for the sake of avoiding argument, that I am right in my view of the matter, did your wife behave as she did by your orders, or of her own free will?”
“Most certainly not by my orders,” said Adrian, angrily. “I am not in the habit of giving her orders. If I were, they should not be of that nature. If Aurélie treated you with politeness, I do not see what more you had any right to expect. She admired you greatly when she first saw you; but I know she was hurt by your avoidance of her after our engagement became known, even when you were in the same room with her.”
“She has not the least right to feel aggrieved on that account. It was your business to have introduced her to me as the lady you intended to marry.”
“I did not feel encouraged to do so by what had passed between us on the subject,” said Adrian, coldly.
“Well we need not go over that again. I merely wish to ask you whether you expect me to make any further concessions. You have lately acquired a habit of accusing me of various shortcomings in my duty to you; and I do not wish you to impute any estrangement between your wife and me to my neglect. I have called on her; and she did not ask me to call again. I endeavored to treat her as one of my family: she politely insisted on the most distant acquaintanceship. I asked her to call on me and she excused herself. Could I have done more?”
“I think you might, in the first instance.”
“Can I do more now?”
“You can answer that yourself better than I can.”
I fear so, since you seem unable to give me a straightforward or civil answer. However, if you have nothing to suggest, please let it be understood in future that I was perfectly willing to receive your wife, that I made the usual advances, and that they came to nothing through her action, not through mine.
“Very well, though I do not think the point will excite much interest in the world.
“Thank you, Adrian. I think T will go now. I hope you treat your wife in a more manly and considerate way than you have begun to treat me of late.”
“She does not complain, mother. And I never intended to treat you inconsiderately. But you sometimes attack me in a fashion which paralyses my constant wish to conciliate you. I am sorry you have not succeeded better with Aurélie.”
“So am I. I did not think she was long enough married to have lost the wish to please you. Perhaps, though, she thought she she would please you best by holding aloof from me.”
“You are full of unjust suspicion. The fact is just the contrary. She knows that I have a horror of estrangements in families.”
“Then she doesn’t study very hard to please you.”
Adrian reddened and was silent.
“And you? Are you still as infatuated I as you were last year?”
“Yes, “ said Adrian defiantly, with his cheeks burning. “I love her more than ever. I am longing to be at home with her at this moment. When she goes away, I shall be miserable. Of all the lies invented by people who never felt love, the lie of marriage extinguishing love is the falsest, as it is the most worldly and cynical.”
Mrs. Herbert looked at him in surprise and doubt. “You are an extraordinary boy,” she said. “Why then do you not go with her to the Continent?”
“She does not wish me to,” said Herbert shortly, averting his face, and pretending to resume his work.
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Herbert. “And you will not cross her, even in that?”
“She is quite right to wish me to stay here. I should only be wasting time; and I should be out of place at a string of concerts. I will stay behind — if I can.”
“If you can?”
“Yes, mother, if I can. But I believe I shall rejoin her before she is absent a week. I may have been an indifferent son; and I know I am a bad husband; but I am the most infatuated lover in the world.”
“Yet you say you are a bad husband!”
“Not to her. But I fall short in my duty to myself.”
Mrs. Herbert laughed. “Do not let that trouble you,” she said. “Time will cure you of that fault, if it exists anywhere but in your imagination. I never knew a man who failed in taking care of himself. Goodbye, Adrian.”
“Goodbye, mother.”
“What an ass I am to speak of my feelings to her!” he said to himself, when she was gone. “Well, well: at least if she does not understand them, she does not pretend to do so, she has not sympathy enough for that. She did not even ask to see my pictures. That would have hurt me once. At present I have exchanged the burden of disliking my mother the heavier one of loving my wife.” He sighed, and resumed his work in spite of the fading light.
CHAPTER