CHAPTER VI
Everything had been done, the last trunk was packed, the last joke, not a very good one, accomplished by Agatha. The two elder sisters, tired out and unequal to their natural play of spirits, had gone to bed.
Rose flew downstairs to the telephone. The Swiss manageress, a sharp-tongued, good-hearted woman, rose wearily and shouted through the receiver. After a violent exchange of reproaches with an irate porter at the other end, she accomplished the feat of getting hold of Léon, and put the receiver into the girl’s hand. “He is there, Mademoiselle,” she said with a curious glance at the girl’s flushed face.
“Oh, thank you,” Rose murmured. “Léon, Léon, are you there?”
“But it is Rose?” His voice answered a little as if he was surprised that it was Rose.
“Yes,” she said quickly, “I want to see you. Can you come at once?”
“Something has happened?” he asked anxiously. “Something has gone wrong?”
Rose reassured him. “Oh, no--nothing, but I felt suddenly as if I must see you.”
There was a moment’s pause, a buzzing sound came across the wires, and then Rose heard a strange voice--it sounded like a woman’s saying very slowly, “Mais--c’est la dernière nuit?” And then Léon’s again, “I am very busy to-night, Rose--this that you want to see me about, is it important?”
She was surprised at his hesitation, and surprised at her own insistence. It seemed to her suddenly very important that she should insist. “Please, please come,” she said urgently. There was another pause, then Léon said again, “Is it a command?”
A moment earlier she would not have said that it was a command, but her wish to see him had been mysteriously sharpened into a strange imperative instinct.
“Isn’t my wish a command?” she asked, trying to laugh. But Léon did not echo her laughter. “Very well, then,” he said, “in ten minutes.”
The big red salon was empty. For the first time Rose noticed the yellow lamp, the blue velvet tablecloth, the enormous imperishable roses in bulging angular vases under the great gilt mirror.
She had been so happy all these weeks she hadn’t really seen what anything was like, and she had hardly ever been alone for ten minutes. Now she was alone. She remembered with a little smile that Léon had once said of the salon that as an interior it was not seductive.
The Pinsents did not use irony, but Rose thought she rather liked it. In ten minutes precisely Léon was with her. Fortunately Madame de Brenteuil had gone to bed.
Léon entered quickly, looking about him as if he had expected one or more of the Pinsent family to be in attendance. Only Rose, feeling suddenly rather small and very far away, stood under an imitation palm close by the mantelpiece.
Léon took her hands, kissed them, pressing them, and letting them go in one quick movement.
“I am here,” he said, drawing a seat up close to her. “Well--what is this thing that has suddenly become necessary for us to talk about?”
Rose looked at him questioningly. Really she hardly knew what it was that she wanted to see him for, perhaps it was after all only to see him! To count over her riches, to feel the wonderful golden coins slip through her eager fingers. Only now as she met his eyes it seemed to her that he shut her out. He had a strange hard look, and though he smiled, his smile itself had a new quality, a quality which seemed to put her a little to one side. “I don’t quite know, Léon,” she murmured. “I did want to see you--but I think I must have had some reason.”
Léon glanced through the glass door of the salon at the back of the Manageress’ head. “Let us hope so,” he said cheerfully, “for it is ten o’clock and I see no one here but Madame at the Bureau.”
“Father was here--but I sent him away,” Rose explained conscientiously.
Léon gave an odd little laugh. “To-night,” he said, “you are very imperative. But you see we are all your slaves. He went--I came--well--what do you wish of us?”
“Léon,” she whispered, frightened by the coldness of his voice, “weren’t you glad to come?”
He gave himself a tiny shake as if he were trying to pull himself into a fresh frame of mind.
“But of course,” he said, “you are adorable.” To a critical ear his tone lacked conviction, but Rose’s ear was not critical; that is to say, not yet. She gave a little sigh of relief.
“I think I know what it was I meant to say,” she stated, “Mamma has been talking to me about marriage.”
“Ah--!” said Léon quickly.
“Something she said,” Rose continued, “made me wonder. You see, I had always supposed when you were in love--that was enough. But what she said made me wonder if perhaps it didn’t matter a good deal how?”
Léon looked a trifle puzzled, but he was also amused, his hardness was beginning to melt under the spell of her wistful loveliness; something--some other spell, perhaps, receded from him.
“Bien sur,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. “It matters how one loves.”
“And I couldn’t help thinking,” Rose went on with gathering confidence, “that you knew rather more about it than I do.”
Léon’s eyes flickered under the yellow lamps. It was almost as if they were laughing at her.
“Yes,” he said caressingly, “yes--that is always possible.”
“You see,” Rose explained, “all along I have felt as if you knew me, and what I wanted, and how you could please me, so astonishingly well.”
Léon smiled. He did not tell her that compared to other women--many other women--she was easy to please.
“Of course,” Rose went on, “in a way I understand you. I told Mamma that! Better than if you were English, because we’ve talked so much, you see--but I’m not sure--not quite sure--that I know all the things you don’t like.
“What I wanted to ask you to-night was--will you always tell me what you want and not mind if I’m stupid and don’t know things until you tell me? You need never tell me more than once--I shall always remember.”
She had touched him now, touched him so much that he sprang to his feet and walked hastily to the window. She could not see his face. She waited patiently and a little anxiously for him to come back to her. He said, when he came back, and stood behind her chair:
“You are adorable,” but he said it quite differently, he said it as if he really found her adorable. “It is true,” he said at last, very gently and tenderly. “There are things that we must teach each other, and to-night I will teach you one of them. You should not have sent for me here.”
“Ah, but why, Léon?” she cried. “It was just the last night”--her voice faltered--some queer little trick of the brain forced into her memory the voice she had heard on the telephone. That woman, too, had said to somebody that it was the last night.
“In the first place,” he said, still gently, but a little gravely, “you should not have seen me at all--on the evening before our marriage, it is the reason itself! You should have spent it with your mother and sisters. It surprised me--it surprised me very much--your sending for me.”
She flushed crimson. “Do not think I blame you,” he said quickly. “But I am a Frenchman, and you must learn a little how we think.” Rose bowed her head. “And in the second place,” he said, “my very dear child--you must not constrain me to come to you--it is my delight--my joy to be with you--be very careful that you never make it my duty! I am your lover--to-morrow I shall be your husband. So--so you will remember, never try to constrain me to be with you--let me come, let me go, do not try to hold me, and do not seek to know where I have been.”
“But,” she cried eagerly, “Léon--I didn’t mean to do anything like that! I--I was frightened. I wanted you! Just to see you! I never will again--I mean--I don’t think--do you?--I shall ever be frightened again. It wasn’t that I meant to--oh, what a horrible word--constrain you--only I thought you would be alone and wanting me, too!”
“Mon Dieu!” he cried, with sudden exasperation. “Of course I want you!”
She drew back a little from the savage light in his eyes--he had caught her arm suddenly and roughly--but in an instant he had himself in hand. “Now I am going,” he said. “You are not to be frightened any more. You are mine, my sweetheart, my wife, my darling! How I love the pretty English words!--and you will love a little your funny French husband, will you not?--and forgive him, if you do not always understand him.”
He took her very gently in his arms, and kissed her troubled eyes and put his lips lingeringly and tenderly to hers. There were tears on her eyelashes, but she smiled bravely up at him. “I will never forget what you have said,” she murmured, “and I will love you always.”
Then he went away. After he had gone, it occurred to Rose that she was to belong to him, but if they were to be happy he must not belong to her. She did not put it quite as sharply as this, but she reminded herself that the great thing was for Léon never to feel bound.
Madame came in from the bureau to put out the lights. “You will not need them any more, Mademoiselle,” she asked, “now that Monsieur has gone?”
“No,” said Rose. “Thank you very much. Madame, are you French?”
“No, Mademoiselle,” the Manageress replied. “I am a Swiss from Basle.”
“But you know French people?” Rose insisted.
Madame shrugged her shoulders. “I know most people,” she observed. “Even Arabs, I once kept a hotel in Egypt; but why do you ask, Mademoiselle?”
“I wondered,” Rose said, “if you thought them--the French, I mean--very difficult to please?”
“No people are easy to please,” Madame replied, putting out the lights with a sharp twist, as if she disliked them. “And all are unpleasant when they are not pleased. I do not say the French are more unpleasant than the others. They know what they are about and they don’t ask for the moon and expect to get it for two sous, but what they ask for--that they do expect to get no matter what it costs others that they should have it. In general, I find the French have very little heart. I have no complaint to make against them. They are orderly, they do not waste time, they have the sense of how to behave. But I find it is better to expect nothing from them, and to remain independent. Is there anything further you require, Mademoiselle?”
Rose thanked her again and turned thoughtfully away. Madame, with the last switch in her hand, looked curiously after her. “The English,” she said to herself, “are not practical. Nevertheless, Madame de Brenteuil is quite wrong about them. They mean no harm. The whole family Pinsent walks about with its eyes shut, as innocent as the newly baptized. They are a race of mystics without manners. It is what comes of a meat breakfast so early in the morning. The senses become clogged. I must not forget to remind Alfonso that the father Pinsent wants bacon with his eggs.”