CHAPTER VIII
An affair of importance had brought Monsieur Gérard to the Hotel Paradiso. He excused himself to Rose for wishing to consult her husband privately. Rose accepted his excuses sedately and retired to her balcony.
She liked Léon to be consulted. It showed how wise he was, that an older man, even if he wasn’t very nice, should stand in need of his judgment.
It was very interesting to watch the two men walking up and down the garden. Léon slim and smart, with his little unconscious air of having arrived without premeditation at the perfection of appearance. Monsieur Gérard heavy, with a kind of sleepy uncertainty in his movements, and the effect of forcible compression about the waist. There was something to Rose very repulsive in the muffled greediness of Monsieur Gérard’s expression. He looked at once selfish and burdened; it made her nervous to see the two men together--for she had an idea that the burdens of the selfish are apt to be readily transferred.
She could not hear what they said, but she could see they were saying a tremendous amount. First Monsieur Gérard would begin emphatically with a puffy white forefinger attacking the air. His shoulders, his eyebrows, his hat were volcanically active, speech broke from him in a cascade as overwhelming and magnificent as the Tivoli Falls. Then he would pull himself up abruptly, broken in upon by another torrent from Léon. Even when they listened to each other their attention was as vivid as speech, and they were capable at moments of catching each other’s speech without discontinuing the rapid flow of their own.
Rose thought their conversation must be about an opera; and she was sure that if the opera was like their conversation it would be very exciting.
There were moments when she thought the two men were angry, there were others when the emotion between them seemed to rise up like a sudden wind and possess the garden.
On the whole it was Léon who was the most excited--he repeatedly said “Non!”--but even from the balcony Rose gathered in his passionate negative a reluctance for it to be taken as final.
They parted with great affection; there was gratitude in Monsieur Gérard’s attitude, and there was protection and soothing in that of Léon’s. “But above all,” she heard her husband say, “with women one must be practical.” They shook hands three times, then Monsieur Gérard waved his hat to Rose and hurried out of the garden.
Léon rejoined her, lighting a cigarette; his hands trembled a little, his eyes were intensely bright. It struck Rose that he was restless, more restless than usual.
He hummed a little tune to himself and then, breaking off suddenly, told her to bring him out her best hat.
“It has an air,” he explained, “quite too much of the Sunday. I want to eradicate it! A tranquil hat afflicts me! It has no power to move the heart. In a hat, one should have peril. It should not be an accident, I admit many are! But it should have an intention with a hint of danger. Pass me the scissors.”
Rose passed him the scissors. “I hope,” she ventured, “that Monsieur Gérard hadn’t anything dreadful to say.”
She thought it couldn’t have been very dreadful, for Léon was looking distinctly pleased.
However, he put a decent amount of gravity into the headshake with which he answered her.
“Everything is of the most complicated,” he assured her. “The affair Gérard has literally come to pieces. The marriage has as little integrity as the inside of a volcano. They walk on broken glass. It is no longer a honeymoon--it is an inferno!”
Rose cried out in horror. “But what has happened to them?” she asked anxiously.
“It is a long story,” said Léon, who had by now completely unpicked her hat and was trying the trimming upside down, and rather liking the effect. “But I shall tell you as much as I can. One must make the troubles of others one’s own--must we not? Both our religions agree upon that. Non?
“It appears, in the first instance, the marriage was of Madame’s making.
“She had the idea--common to many women--that she was born to be the wife of a great artist. As a matter of fact, no women are born for that, because no great artist should have a wife. They should have from time to time a tragic union with a mistress--that develops them; wives do not. Raoul was the only artist Madame knew. She was twenty-three, an heiress, and as you see for yourself a charming little woman of the world. She made a good impression upon Raoul. He discovered that marriage with her would have a solid foundation. Now he has got it and naturally he does not know what to do with it. Above all he finds that Madame considers herself ill-used. She is, as I told you before, romantic. She expected a grand passion, she knew him capable of one, but she did not grasp that it could never be in her direction.
“I find it myself a little bourgeois of her to expect Raoul to develop such a thing for a wife. Do not look so like the Sunday hat, dear Rose! Remember their marriage was a French one. Ours is English--therefore we were in love. Still, of course, both were marriages!” Léon manipulated the hat afresh, it was beginning to look less and less like Sunday. Rose said nothing. She had a silly feeling that if she spoke she might cry. She was very sorry for Madame Gérard.
“That, then, is the grievance of Madame,” Léon went on. “She is young, excitable and disappointed. You have that on one side. I must say that I think she lacks management, but for all that one sympathizes with her.
“His grievance is, however, more serious still. Because he has no grand passion for her, Madame turns round and asserts that there is no real marriage between them!--that, in short, if she cannot have the silver moon, she won’t be put off with very good cheese of the day. You follow me? She does not wish to be a wife to Raoul.”
“Oh,” cried Rose incredulously, “oh, Léon, surely Monsieur Gérard did not tell you this about his wife?”
“But yes--” said Léon calmly, “why not? I, however, consider that if Madame lacks management, Raoul lacks souplesse. Things should never have been allowed to reach such a sharpness. I don’t say he could have given her a grand passion, one can’t invent such things, but he might, all the same, have lent himself to the situation during the honeymoon. If a good woman cannot have a honeymoon, what can she have? The type will die out if they are to be starved all round.”
“Do you mean to say you want him to pretend?” Rose asked. She spoke quietly, but the feeling behind her words made Léon throw down the hat and catch her hands in his.
“Ah!” he said, “you Queen of the Puritans! No! not pretend--but he might--mightn’t he?--have for the moment have gone a trifle in advance of the facts?”
Rose withdrew her hand from his. “It seems to me,” she said, “all of it, simply horrible! I don’t understand. How could he come here and tell you such things--to talk about his wife and her feelings? Why, it’s all so incredibly private! It’s as dreadful as if he’d killed her. I don’t think I should have minded it half so much if he had. And what is the use of it, Léon--why did he come to you?”
“Ah, that is why I told you at all,” Léon explained, a little crestfallen. “Of course, I knew you would shrink from this affair. It is natural that you should, though I cannot, for my part, see why, in a strange land, surrounded by Italians, the poor Raoul shouldn’t be allowed to consult a compatriot and a friend. However, it is really for my assistance that he came, and I cannot give him that, Rose, without your consent. It is simply a question of whether or no you are sufficiently magnanimous.”
“How do you mean?” asked Rose, more frightened still. “You know I can’t talk French properly, and if I could I shouldn’t know what to say to people like that!”
“Oh, I didn’t ask you to mix yourself up in it,” Léon answered reassuringly. “It is, however, perhaps even harder for most women--what I have to ask of you! It is to stand aside and let me mix myself up in it.”
She shivered a little. “Oh, but why,” she asked, “should you be mixed up in it? We only saw them yesterday!”
Léon picked up the hat again. “It appears,” he said, “that I managed to entertain Madame yesterday. Poor thing! she has been living the life of a tortured Romantic. For the first time Raoul heard her laugh, saw her smile, and he became attracted by the idea. He thought if I managed to amuse her a little, she would be less tragic, and then, after a time, she might submit her case to me, and I could, little by little, you know, much as I have done with this hat--a feather here, a ribbon there, readjust the situation. Such things have been done, you know, by people of tact, and to save a marriage when one has oneself made such a success of one’s own--isn’t that a duty one perhaps owes, in return for one’s happiness?”
Rose thought the situation over, that is to say, she felt it over. Here and there her heart winced under the probes she gave it. She knew that Léon was magnificent, and she felt humiliatingly conscious that she was not as magnificent as Léon. She saw plainly enough what was required of her. She was to stand aside for the sake of these strangers, she was to give up her honeymoon, she was to be alone, and to let Léon spend his time with this French lady, who was charming, and whom she could not understand. She remembered what Léon had said, that he must not be constrained, she remembered it perhaps too well. Her whole being centered in the desire to leave him free.
She shut her eyes and prayed. Léon did not know that she was praying, but he felt a little uncomfortable. He was deeply sorry for the Gérards, but there was no doubt that their complications had made the Island of Capri more amusing.
Rose opened her eyes wide. “Léon,” she said, “I want you to do whatever you think right, and I will help you all I can.”
He kissed her joyously. “There,” he said, “the perfect wife! What a pity Madame cannot hear you! She would see the path of happiness without a lesson! Of course you will help me. You will help me profoundly. Day by day I shall bring you the history of my little attempt. It is on your advice I will lean, the drama of it will be for both of us an immense resource, and I have a feeling that for all of us it will have a happy ending!”
Rose did not share the feeling. She picked up the hat which he had finished and tried it on. “It is very French,” she said doubtfully, “but does it really suit me, Léon?”
“Ah, you must make it suit you,” said Léon a little ironically. “I cannot help you to that! It’s all a question of how you wear it!”