CHAPTER III
For a Frenchman of the type of Léon Legier there are a great many ways of being in love; there are also several goals. You needn’t, as he himself expressed it, finish the game in order to have received your entertainment.
In the case of Rose Pinsent, Léon wasn’t at first very serious, he was out for the fine shades. He had never had an intimacy with an Englishwoman before. It was simply a nationality he didn’t know, and he found it touching.
For her sake he led the Pinsents in compact and cheerful batches into unknown churches and gave them on unfrequented hillsides splendid Roman views.
He never made a visible point of the few moments alone he managed to snatch with Rose.
She took these moments with a certain unexacting grace which pleased him.
It was as if she had a special pleasure which never amounted to expectation in his presence. Her grave blue eyes never claimed him, but when he signaled his own joy into hers--he met with no rebuff. He had passed certain barriers with her and she made no attempt to set them up again.
She was secretly afraid, not of him, but of being so different when they were alone together. She tried very hard to be just the same as she was when those queens of chaff, Agatha and Edith, presided over their small festivities.
She had never supposed before you could have two relations with the same person, without doing anything wrong, and yet the most rigid of her scruples failed to warn her that when she and Léon were together they did anybody any harm.
Rose would have stopped all “nonsense” at once; what she couldn’t stop was the gradual dangerous tenderness, growing touch by touch under the hand of a master.
She tried not to think too much about Léon, and as long as he was with them she found that she succeeded.
Everything became so interesting and so vivid--but when Léon was out of their sight, buried in obscure private affairs, hidden, perhaps, by his French relations whom he persistently excused to the Pinsents as being poor dear people, so terribly provincial and shy! Rose found Rome wonderfully little of an absorption--she was forced to consider that what she really needed was, like her sisters, some definite active goal. Her mind became set upon a hobby. She felt if she had that, it wouldn’t really matter whether Rome was interesting or not. She could not have told quite how the idea came to her; perhaps it was because little Italian children in the streets looked so sweet--but she suddenly thought she would like, when she got back to England, to have a nice little home in the country for children to get well in, quite poor people’s children--only they would be washed there, of course, and probably have curly hair. She told Léon about it one day when they were in St. Maria in Trastevere and had snatched a moment to go off by themselves into the sacristy, to admire what Baedeker so aptly describes as “the admirable ducks.”
“Papa,” Rose explained to Léon, “had been so kind, he thought it could be managed.” For a moment Léon looked in silence at the admirable ducks--and then he laughed a gentle, caressing laugh and flushed a little, fixing his hard bright eyes on her upturned face.
“But Mademoiselle,” he said, “hasn’t it occurred to you that to have your own children--nice little healthy ones--wouldn’t that be just as amusing and not quite as expensive for Papa?”
It seemed as if Rose’s very heart had blushed under his eyes. She wanted for a moment to go away from him--to hide from out of his sight.
She said quickly and vaguely, “Oh, I don’t know--one doesn’t think about such things.” Léon said, “Doesn’t one? I assure you I do.”
He hadn’t said any more, but it was the moment of his own intention. He saw as clearly as the lines of the mosaic on the wall--the prospect of a definite new life.
This mere study of a delightful English temperament should develop into the most serious of all his affairs.
A girl as beautiful and as innocent with such a command of so compliant a parent (for little homes in the country for sick children must involve an elastic pocket on the part of Mr. Pinsent) struck Léon as a rare and favorable opportunity.
After all, he meant to settle down some day. His mother wanted it, and his father’s extravagance had done much to make a good match difficult in France, and Léon liked Rose, he appreciated her. She was innocent, but she wasn’t eager--she made no advances towards him--she was modest without being in any danger of striking him as a fool. She knew, for instance, when to hold her tongue.
She was the only one of the Pinsent family who had the good taste to ignore an awkward little episode which took place at about this time.
Léon had been very fortunate hitherto, he had also been skilful. Rome is not a large town, nor one in which it is easy to keep one’s acquaintances definitely apart.
Léon was at this time carrying on two perfectly different affairs. There was the Pinsent affair--which hadn’t arrived and which took up a good deal of time, and for which he chose a certain type of occupation, but there was another affair--which had arrived some time ago, very much less serious, of course, but also requiring time and a background from which he had so far succeeded in eliminating any appearance on the part of the Pinsent family.
Mr. Pinsent upset this arrangement by altering at the last moment, and without notifying Léon--the program prepared in advance by Léon and Mrs. Pinsent. Mr. Pinsent decided that he would go to Frascati and walk up a hill to a place called Tusculum. There wasn’t much to be seen when you got there--but what he suddenly felt was that he needed more exercise and they could get lunch at the Grand Hotel coming back.
It was at the Grand Hotel that the incident happened. Léon saw them coming inexorably across the garden in close formation, waving parasols and shouting their unfettered greetings.
He notified the brilliant lady who was his companion that they must instantly retire in the opposite direction. His companion stared, not at him--a glance had explained him to her quick intelligence--but at the Pinsent family. She said under her breath, “The English have no families--they have tribes--this appears to be a savage one.”
Léon never moved a muscle of his face--he turned his back resolutely upon the approaching Pinsents, and took his companion into the hotel--where he asked for a private room. If the Pinsents chose to follow him there--it would be a pity--but everything would be at an end. There are forms that must be preserved even in the face of self-interest. Léon knew that he would never forgive Rose if the Pinsents went any further. But they didn’t go any further--Rose diverted their attention--she loudly declared that it wasn’t Léon--and insisted on remaining in the garden. She owned when pressed that the walk had been too much for her. She felt not exactly faint, but that she would rather not go indoors. The Pinsents had their lunch under a magnolia tree in the garden. It was very like a picnic, and Agatha and Edith prepared a splendid method of “roasting Léon” when they got hold of him once more. They effected this seizure in the hall of the hotel that evening. They upbraided him roundly with the exception of Rose. Léon denied steadily that he was ever at Frascati, but of course not--how could he have been there and not rushed to greet them? It wasn’t conceivable--they had seen his double! Agatha and Edith described with much wealth of detail the lady he was with (only the English could walk so merrily into dangerous places).
Léon looked graver still. He turned to Rose. “And you, Mademoiselle,” he asked, “were you under the impression that you saw me?”
“It certainly did look exactly like you,” Mrs. Pinsent murmured, looking rather troubled. “I particularly noticed the hat.”
“Lots of people wear hats like Monsieur Legier,” Rose said, looking away from Léon.
She was the only one of the party he finally failed to convince.
He did more than admire her then, he respected her. There is no taste so perfect as that which permanently conceals a fact which is awkward for others.
Rose concealed it, but she paid for her good taste by her tears.