II
As Mrs. Mote sat by her open window, her eyes seeking to distinguish among those walking on the terrace below the upright, graceful form of her mistress, she deliberately let her thoughts wander back to certain passages in her own and Mrs. Robinson's joint lives. In moments of danger we recall our hairbreadth escapes with a certain complacency; they induce a sense of sometimes false security, and just now this old woman, who loved Penelope so dearly, felt very much afraid.
The memory of two episodes came to still her fears. Though both long past, perhaps forgotten by Penelope, to Mrs. Mote they returned to-night with strange, uncomfortable vividness.
The hero of the one had been a Frenchman, of the other a Spaniard.
As for the Frenchman, Motey thought of him with a certain kindness, and even with regret, though he, too, as she put it to herself, had 'given her a good fright.' The meeting between the Comte de Lucque and Mrs. Robinson had taken place not very long after Melancthon Robinson's death, in that enchanted borderland which seems at once Switzerland and Italy.
The French lad—he was little more—was stranded there in search of health, and Penelope had soon felt for him that pity which, while so little akin to love, so often induces love in the creature pitied. She allowed, nay, encouraged, him to be her companion on long painting expeditions, and he soon made his way through, as others had done before him, to the outer ramparts of her heart.
For a while she had found him charming, at once so full of surprising naïvetés and of strange, ardent enthusiasms; so utterly unlike the younger Englishman of her acquaintance and differing also greatly from the Frenchmen she had known.
Brought up between a widowed mother and a monk tutor, the young Count was in some ways as ignorant and as enthusiastic as must have been that ancestor of his who started with St. Louis from Aiguesmortes, bound for Jerusalem. His father had been killed in the great charge of the Cuirassiers at the Battle of Reichofen, and Penelope discovered that he above all things wished to live and to become strong, in order that he might take a part in 'La Revanche,' that fantasy which played so great a rôle in the imagination of those Frenchmen belonging to his generation.
But when one evening Mrs. Robinson asked suddenly, 'Motey, how would you like to see me become a French Countess?' the nurse had not taken the question as put seriously, as, indeed, it had not been. Still, even the old servant, who regarded the fact of any man's being made what she quaintly called 'uncomfortable' by her mistress as a small, well-merited revenge for all the indignities heaped by his sex on hers—even Motey felt sorry for the Count when the inevitable day of parting came.
At first, Penelope read with some attention the long, closely-written letters which reached her day by day with faithful regularity, but there came a time when she was absorbed in the details of a small exhibition of the very latest manifestations of French art, and the Count's letters were scarcely looked at before they were thrown aside. Then, suddenly he made abrupt and most unlooked-for intrusion into Mrs. Robinson's life, at a time when the old nurse was accustomed to expect freedom from Penelope's studies in sentiment—that is, during the few weeks of the years which were always spent by Mrs. Robinson working hard in the studio of some great Paris artist.
Penelope had known how to organize her working life very intelligently; she so timed her visits to Paris as to arrange with a French painter, who was, like herself, what the unkind would call a wealthy amateur, to take over his flat, his studio, and his servants.
During nine happy weeks each spring Mrs. Robinson lived the busy Bohemian life which she loved, and which, she thought, suited her so well; but Mrs. Mote was never neglected, or, at least, never allowed herself to feel so, and occasionally her mistress found her a useful, if over-vigilant, chaperon. Mrs. Mote was on very good terms with the French servants with whom she was thus each year thrown into contact. Their easy gaiety beguiled even her grim ill-temper, and, fortunately, she never conceived the dimmest suspicion of the fact that they were all firmly persuaded that she was the humble, but none the less authentic, 'mère de madame'!
Now in the spring following her stay in Switzerland, not many days after she had settled down to work in Paris, Mrs. Robinson desired the excellent maître d'hôtel to inform Mrs. Mote that she was awaited in the studio. 'Motey, you remember the French count we met in Switzerland last year?' Before giving the maid time to answer, she continued: 'Well, I heard from him this morning. He asks me to go and see him. He says he is very ill, and I want you to come with me.' Penelope spoke in the hurried way usual to her when moved by real feeling.
Then, when the two were seated side by side in one of the comfortable, shabby, open French cabs, of which even Mrs. Mote recognized the charm, Penelope added suddenly: 'Motey—you don't think—do you doubt he is really ill? It would be a shabby trick——'
'All gentlemen, as far as I'm aware, ma'am, do shabby tricks sometimes. There's that saying, "All's fair in love and war"; it's very advantageous to them. I don't suppose the Count's heard it, though; he knew very little English, poor young fellow!' But Motey might have spoken more strongly had she realized how very passive was to be on this occasion her rôle of duenna.
At last the fiacre stopped opposite a narrow door let into a high blank wall forming the side of one of those lonely quiet streets, almost ghostly in their sunny stillness, which may yet be found in certain quarters of modern Paris. Penelope gave her companion the choice of waiting for her in the carriage or of walking up and down. Mrs. Mote did not remonstrate with her mistress; she simply and sulkily expressed great distrust of Paris cabmen in general, and her preference for the pavement in particular. Then, with some misgiving, she saw Mrs. Robinson ring the bell. The door in the wall swung back, framing a green lawn, edged with bushes of blossoming lilac, against which Penelope's white serge gown was silhouetted for a brief moment, before the bright vision was shut out.
First walking, then standing, on the other side of the street, finally actually sitting on the edge of the pavement, but not before she had assured herself even in the midst of her perturbation of spirit that it was spotlessly clean, the old nurse waited during what seemed to her an eternity of time, and went through what was certainly an agony of fright.
The worst kind of fear is unreasoning. Mrs. Mote's imagination conjured up every horror; and nothing but the curious lack of initiative which seems common to those who have lived in servitude held her back from doing something undoubtedly foolish.
At last, when she was making up her mind to something very desperate indeed, though what form this desperate something should take she could not determine, there fell on her ears, coming nearer and nearer, the sound of deep sobbing. A few moments later the little green door, opening slowly, revealed two figures, that of Mrs. Robinson, pale and moved, but otherwise looking much as usual, and that of a stout, middle-aged woman, dressed in black, who, crying bitterly, clung to her, seeming loth to let her go.
Very gently, and not till they were actually standing on the pavement outside the open door, did Penelope disengage herself from the trembling hands which sought to keep her. Motey did not understand the words, 'Mon pauvre enfant, il vous aime tant! Vous reviendrez demain, n'est ce pas, madame?' but she understood enough to say no word of her long waiting, to give voice to no grumbling, as she and her mistress walked slowly down the sunny street, after having seen the little green door shut behind the short, homely figure, lacking all dignity save that of grief.
In those days, as Mrs. Mote, sitting up there remembering in the darkness, recalled with bitterness, Mrs. Robinson had had no confidante but her old nurse, and Penelope had instantly begun pouring out, as was her wont, the tale of all that had happened in the hour she had been away.
'Oh, Motey, that is his poor mother! It is so horribly sad. He is her only child. Her husband was killed in the Franco-Prussian War when she was quite a young woman, and she has given up her whole life to him. Now the poor fellow is dying'—Penelope shuddered—'and I have promised to go and see him every day till he does die.'