“Is it possible! I beg your pardon, monsieur: I mistook you for a zhentleman of that name, whom I met at Paris. You resemble him very much.”
“No, I assure you,” said Charlie eagerly. “I am not in the least like him. I know the fellow you mean: he was a drunken wretch whom you rescued from being run over or robbed in the street, and who made a most miserable ass of himself in return. He is dead.”
“Jesu Christ!” ejaculated Aurélie with an irrepressible start: “do not say such things. What do you mean?”
“Dead as a doornail,” said Charlie, triumphant at having shaken her composure, but still very earnest. “He was killed, scotched, stamped out of existence by remorse, and by being unable to endure the contrast between his worthlcssness and your — your goodness. If you would only forget him, and not think of him whenever you see me, you would confer a great favor on me — far greater than I deserve. Will you do this please, Mrs Herbert?
“I believe you will make great success as poet,” said Aurélie, looking oddly at him. “You are — what you call clever. Ach! This underground railway is a horror.”
They said nothing more to one another until they left the train at High Street, fromm which they walked in the same order as before. Charlie again at a loss for something to say, but no longer afraid to speak. His first effort was:
“I hope, Madame Sczympliça is quite well.”
“Thank you, she is qute well. You will see her presently.”
“What! Is she staying with you?”
“Yes. You are glad of that?”
“No, I’m not,” he said blunt1y.”How could I be glad? She remembers that vagabond of whom we were speaking. What shall I do?”
Aurélie shook her head gravely. “Truly, I do not know,” she replied. “You had better prepare for the worst.”
“It is very easy for you to make a jest of the affair, Mrs Herbert. If you had as much cause to be ashamed of meeting her as I have, you would not laugh at me. However, since you have forgiven me, I think she may very well do so.”
Madame Sczympliça did, in fact, receive him without betraying the slightest emotion. She did not remember him. All her attention was absorbed by other considerations, which led her to draw her daughter into a private conversation on the stairs whilst their guests supposed her to be fetching the baby.
“My child: have you brought home dinner as well as guests? What are they to eat? Do you think that the proprietress can provide a double dinner at a moment’s notice?”
“She must, maman. It is very simple. Let her go to the shops — to the pastrycooks. Let her go wherever she will, so that the dinner be ready. Perhaps there is enough in the house.”
“And how—”
“There, there. She will manage easily. If not, how can I help it? I know nothing about such things. Go for the bambinotelegraph; and do not fret about the dinner. All will be well, depend upon it.” And she retreated quickly into the drawingroom. Madame Szczympliça raised her hands in protest; let them fall in resignation; and went upstairs, whence she presently returned with a small baby who looked very sad and old.
“Behold it!” said Aurélie, interlacing her fingers behind her back, and nodding from a distance towards her child. “See how solemn he looks! He is a true Englishman.” The baby uttered a plaintive sound and stretched out one fist. “Aha! Knowest thou thy mother’s voice, rogue? Does he not resemble Adrian?”
Mary took the infant gently; kissed it; shook its toes, called it endearing names; and elicited several inarticulate remonstrances from it. Adrian felt ridiculous, and acknowledged his condition by a faint smile. Charlie kept cautiously aloof. Mary was in act of handing the child carefully hack to Madame Sczympliça, when Aurélie interposed swiftly; tossed it up to the ceiling; and caught it dexterously.Adrian stepped forward in alarm; Madame uttered a Polish exclamation; and the baby itself growled angrily. Being sent aloft a second time, it howled with all its might.
“Now you shall see,” said Aurélie, suddenly placing it supine and screaming, on the pianoforte. She began to play the Skater’s Quadrille from Meyerbeer’s opera of The Prophet. The baby immediately ceased to kick, became silent, and lay still with the bland expression of a dog being scratched, or a lady having her hair combed.
“Ït has a vile taste in music,” she said, when the performance was over. “It is old fashioned in everything. Ah Monsieur Sutherland: would you kindly pass the little one to my mother?”
Madam Madame Sczympliça hastily advanced to forestall Charlie’s compliance with this request, made purposely to embarrass him. But he lifted the baby very expertly, and even gave it a kiss before he handed it to the old lady, who watched him as if he were handling a valuable piece of china.
“There. Take it away,” said Aurélie. “You would make a good nurse, monsieur.”
“What a mother!” whispered Madame Szczympliça. “Poor infant!” and she indignantly carried it away.
“I wish he would grow up all at once,” said Aurélie. “By the time he is a man, I shall be an old woman, half deaf, with gout in my fingers. He will go to hear the new players, and wonder how I got my reputation. Ah, it is a stupid world! One may say so before you, madame, because you are a philosopher.”
Madame Szczympliça soon returned, and was of much service in maintaining conversation, as she was not, like the other three, unable to avoid keeping a furtive watch on her daughter. At dinner, Aurélie, when she found that the talk would go on without her help, said no more, eating but little, and drinking water. In her abstraction, she engaged their attention more than ever. Mary, trying to puzzle out the real nature of Adrian’s wife, considered her carefully, but vainly. The pianist’s character appeared as vaguely to her mind as the face did to her shortsighted eyes. Even Herbert, though he ate with the appetite of a husband, often glanced along the table with the admiration of a lover. Charlie did not dare to look often; but he sought for distorted images of her face in glass vessels and bowls of spoons, and gazed at them instead. At last Mary, oppressed by her silence, determined to make her speak.
“Is it possible that you never drink wine?” she said: “you, who work so hard!”
“Never,” said Aurélie, resuming her volition instantly. “I have in the tip of every finger a sensation of touch the most subtle, the most delicate, that you can conceive. It is a — chose — a species of nervous organization. One single glass of wine would put all those little nerves to sleep. My fingers would become hammers, like the fingers of all the world; and I should be excited, and have a great pleasure to hammer, as all the world has. But I could no longer make music.”
“Aurélie has rearkable theories of what she calls her fine touch,” said Herbert. “Practically, I find that when she is in a musical humor, and enjoys her own playing, she says she has ‘found her fingers’; but when only other people enjoy it, then the touch is gone; the fingers are like the fingers of all the world; and I receive formal notice that Mlle Sczympliça is about to retire from the musical profession.
“Yes, yes, you are very wise. You have not this fine touch; and you do not understand. If you had, ah, how you would draw! You would greater than no matter what artist in the world.”
Mary burned with indignation at Aurélie, knowing how it hurt Herbert to be reminded that he was not a firstrate artist. Aurélie, indifferent to the effect of her speech, relapsed into meditation until they left the table, when she seated herself at the pianoforte and permitted Charlie to engage her in conversation, whilst Herbert became engrossed by a discussion with Mary on painting. and Madame Sczympliça sat still in a corner, knitting.
“What!” said Aurélie, when Charlie had been speaking for some time: “were you at that concert too?”
“Yes.”