CHAPTER VII
M. HERVART soon recognized in one of the visitors a friend of old days, Lanfranc, the architect. The young man, as he found out, was Lanfranc's nephew, pupil and probable successor. He was further informed that the two architects were installed in the old manor house of Barnavast, the restoration of which they had undertaken on behalf of Mme Suif, widow of that famous Suif who gave such a fine impulse to the art of mortuary and religious sculpture. Lanfranc, who had patched and painted every church in Normandy, had for twenty years bought his materials at Suif's and the widow had always appreciated him. Hence this job at Barnavast which would round off his fortune, make it possible for him to return to Paris and achieve a place in the Institute.
As soon as they had settled down in the shade of the chestnut trees on the rustic seat, Lanfranc began telling the story of Mme Suif, a story that was well known to everyone. Rose listened attentively. The moment Lanfranc could collect a friendly audience he always told the story of Mme Suif. It was, in some degree, his own story too. Mme Suif had been his mistress, then he had married, then he had resumed relations with her and had, with the cooling of their passion, remained her friend.
"Ah! If I hadn't been so childish as to marry for love, I would marry Mme Suif's millions to-day, for Mme Suif would be grateful to any man who would relieve her of her name. Being an architect of churches and ancient monuments, I could hardly get divorced, could I? But of course she may be willing to call herself Mme Leonor Varin. For she looks at my nephew with no unfavorable eye."
"Thanks, I don't want her," said Leonor, blushing.
Rose had looked at him and he had suddenly felt quite ashamed of his secret cupidity.
Leonor, who was nearly thirty, looked older from a distance and younger from close at hand. He was large, rather massive and slow in his movements. But when one came near him one was surprised at the sentimental expression of his eyes, surprised at the youthful appearance of a beard that still seemed to be newly sprouting, at the awkwardness of his gestures and, when he spoke, the abrupt shyness of his speech; for he could hardly open his mouth without blushing. It is true that the moment after he would frown and contract his whole face into an expression of harshness. But the eyes remained blue and gentle in this frowning mask. Leonor was a riddle for everybody, including himself. He liked pondering, and when he thought of love it was to come to the conclusion that his ideal hovered between the day dream and the debauch, between the happiness of kissing, on bended knees, a gloved hand and the pleasure of lying languidly in the midst of a troop of odalisques of easy virtue. He had no suspicion that he was like almost all other men. He was afraid of himself and contemptuous too, when he caught himself thinking too complacently of Mme Suif's millions, those millions that would give immediate satisfaction to his vices and, later on, to his sentimental aspirations.
He looked at Rose in his turn, but Rose did not drop her eyes. Meanwhile, M. Hervart was growing bored.
"Mme Suif," said Lanfranc, "is still quite well preserved. For instance...."
"Rose dear," interrupted M. Des Boys, "doesn't your mother want you?"
"Oh, no, I'm sure she doesn't. Mother would only find me in the way."
"Your father is right, Rose," said M. Hervart, glad to make trial of his authority.
She did not dare oppose her lover's wish, but she felt angry as she rose to go.
"Acting like my master already!" she thought. "I should so like to listen to M. Lanfranc..."
She dared not add: "... and to look at this M. Leonor and be looked at by him and, still more, to hear them talk of Mme Suif. What was he going to say? Oh, I do want to know!"
She entered the house, came out again by another door and hid herself in a shrubbery from which she could hear their voices quite clearly.
"It's not only her shoulders," M. Lanfranc was saying, "they're not the only things about her that tempt one. She's forty-five, but her figure is still good and not too excessively run to flesh. As a whole she is certainly a bit ample, but at the Art School one could still make a very respectable Juno of her. I've seen worse on the model's throne..."
"Time," said M. Hervart, "often shows angelical clemency. He pardons women who have been good lovers."
"And still are," said Lanfranc.
"There's no better recreation than love," said Leonor. "No sport more suited to keep one fit and supple."
M. Hervart looked in surprise at this dim young man who had so unexpectedly made a joke. Anxious to shine in his turn, he replied.
"No one has ever dared to put that in a manual of hygiene. What a charming chapter one could make of it, in the style of the First Empire: 'Love, the preserver of Beauty.'"
"A pretty subject too for the Prix de Rome," said Lanfranc.
"Seriously," broke in M. Des Boys, "I believe that the thing that so quickly shrivels up virtuous women is chastity."
"Virtuous women!" said Lanfranc, "they're meant to reproduce the species. When they have had their children, and that must take place between twenty and thirty, their rôle is finished."
"The only thing left for them to do," said M. Des Boys, "is to concoct philters to keep us young."
The others looked at him interrogatively; he laughed.
"You will see, or rather you'll taste, and you will understand. I wish you all as good a magician as Mme Des Boys."
"True," said M. Hervart, understanding him at last, "she has a real genius for cookery. Dinners of her planning are regular love-potions."
"You'll realise that when you get back to Paris."
"Yes, when I get back to Paris. I am taking a holiday here," said M. Hervart, pleased at this mark of confidence. He even added, so as to guard against possible suspicions:
"A holiday from love is not without a certain melancholy."
Rose had found it all very amusing, but when her father began speaking she stopped listening. Leonor, pleased at having made a witty remark and afraid of not being able to think of another, had got up and was walking about the garden. Rose looked at him. The sight of this young animal interested her. And what curious words about love had issued from that mouth! So love was an exercise like tennis, or bicycling, or riding! What a revelation! And the most singular fancies took shape in her mind as she followed with her eyes the now distant figure of this ingenious and decisive young man.
"How do people play the game of love," she wondered, "real love? Xavier teaches me nothing. He knows all about it though, more probably than this young Leonor, but he takes care not to tell me. He treats me like a little girl, while he makes fun of my innocence. Oh! it's gentle fun, because he loves me; but all the same he rather abuses his superior position. A sport, a sport..."
Quitting the shrubbery, she went and sat down on an old stone bench in a lonely corner, from which she could keep a watch between the trees on all that was happening in the neighborhood. She was fond of this nook and in it, before M. Hervart's arrival, she had spent whole mornings dreaming alone. She laughed at the childishness of those dreams now.
"It always seemed to me," she thought, "that the branches were just about to open, making way for some beautiful young cavalier ... Without saying a word, he would bring his horse to a stop at my side, would lean down, pick me up, lay me across the saddle and off we should go. Then there was to be a mad furious, endless gallop and in the end I should go to sleep. And in reality I used to wake up as though from a sleep, even though I hadn't dropped of. Nothing happened but this dumb ride in the blue air, and yet, when I came to myself, I felt tired...... How often I have dreamed this dream! How often have I seen the lilac plumes bending to make way for my lovely young knight and his black horse! The horse was always black. I remember very little of the face of the Perseus who delivered me, for a few hours at least, from the bondage of my boring existence .... A sport? That was indeed a sport! What did he do with his Andromeda, this Perseus of mine? I've never been able to find out. What do Perseuses do with their Andromedas?"
To this question Rose's tireless imagination provided, for the hundredth time, a new series of answers. The imagination of a young girl who knows and yet is ignorant of what she desires has an Aretine-like fecundity.
Into all these imaginations of hers Rose now introduced the complicity of M. Hervart. Even at the moment when she was on the look-out for Leonor's return, it was really of M. Hervart that she was thinking. Leonor was to be nothing more than a stimulant for her heart and her nerves, a musical accompaniment to something else. The stimulation which the young man's arrival had brought to her went to the profit of M. Hervart.
"Xavier," she murmured, "Xavier...."
Xavier, meanwhile, was congratulating himself that this paternal intervention had spared Rose's ears the hearing of those over-frank remarks of M. Lanfranc. The architect would of course have toned down his language; but is it good that a young girl should learn the use that wives make of marriage? He said:
"M. Lanfranc, keep an eye on your language at table. Don't forget that we have a young girl with us."
"Yes," said M. Des Boys, "I sent her away from here, but that would hardly be possible during luncheon."
"Girls," said Lanfranc, "understand nothing."
"They guess," said M. Hervart.
M. Des Boys had no opinions on maiden perspicacity, but he desired to conform to custom and allow his daughter to listen only to the choicest conversation.
"Well, then," said Lanfranc, "let us profitably employ these moments while we are alone." His lively blue eyes lit up his tanned face.
The conversation had deviated once more in the direction of Mme Des Boys' administrative merits.
"One meets so many different kinds of women," said M. Hervart. "The best of them is never equal to the dream one makes up about them."
"Silly commonplace," he thought. "What answer will he make to that?"
"I don't dream," said Lanfranc, "I search. But I scarcely ever find. Adventures have always disappointed me. That's why Paris is the only place for love affairs. One can find plenty of pleasant romances there with only one chapter—the last."
"Your opinion of women ceases to astonish me then!"
"His opinion is very reasonable," said M. Des Boys. "You talk as though you were still twenty-five, Hervart."
He reddened a little.
"Me! Oh no, thank God! I'm forty."
And seeing the appropriateness of the occasion, he added:
"You're jealous of my liberty, but I am becoming afraid that I may lose it."
"Are you thinking of marriage?" asked Lanfranc.
"Perhaps."
"Mme Suif would suit you very well. Leonor is being coy about her...."
Irritated by so much vulgarity, M. Hervart got up and walked into the garden. Rose and Leonor were strolling there together.