‘Keep quiet, won’t you? Don’t interfere. You are too unlucky for me.’
He left with a crowd of visitors who were driven away by the end of the entr’acte, and she went back to her seat on Madame Ancelin’s left. Her hostess worshipped with the same ecstasy as before, and it was one perpetual giving of thanks.
‘Oh, look at Coquelin! What humour he has! My dear, do look at him!’
‘My dear’ was indeed not attending; her eyes wandered, and on her lips was the painful smile of a dancer hissed off the boards. With the excuse that the footlights dazzled her, she was turning every moment towards the audience to look for her son. Perhaps there would be a duel with the Prince, if he was there. And all her fault—all through her stupid bungling.
‘Ah, there’s Delaunay! Di’ y’ see him? Di’ y’ see?’
No, she had seen nothing but the Duchess’s box, where some one had just come in, with a youthful elegant figure, like her Paul. But it was the little Count Adriani, who had heard of the rupture like the rest of Paris and was already tracking the game. Through the rest of the play the mother ate her heart out in misery, turning over innumerable confused plans for the future, mixed in her thoughts with past events and scenes which ought to have forewarned her. Stupid, how stupid of her! How had she failed to guess?
At last came the departure, but oh how long it took! She had to stop every moment, to bow or smile to her friends, to say good-bye. ‘What are you going to do this summer? Do come and see us at Deauville.’ All down the narrow passage crammed with people, where ladies finish putting on their wraps with a pretty movement to make sure of their ear-rings, all down the white marble staircase to the men-servants waiting at the foot, the mother, as she talks, still watches, listens, tries to catch in the hum of the great fashionable swarm dispersing for some months a word or hint of a scene that evening in a box. Here comes the Duchess, haughty and erect in her long white and gold mantle, taking the arm of the young officer of the Papal Guard. She knows the shabby trick her friend has played her, and as the two women pass they exchange a cold expressionless glance more to be dreaded than the most violent expletive of a fishwoman. They know now what to think of each other; they know that in the poisoned warfare, which is to succeed their sisterly intimacy, every blow will tell, will be directed to the right spot by practised hands. But they discharge the task imposed by society, and both wear the same mask of indifference, so that the masterful hate of the one can meet and strike against the spiteful hate of the other without producing a spark.
Downstairs, in the press of valets and young clubmen, Léonard Astier was waiting, as he had promised, for his wife. ‘Ah, there is the great man!’ exclaimed Madame Ancelin; and with a final dip of her fingers into the holy water she scattered it around her broadcast, over the great Astier-Réhu, the great Danjou, and Coquelin, you know! and Delaunay, you know! Oh! Oh! Oh!—Astier did not reply, but followed with his wife on his arm and his collar turned up against the draught. It was raining. Madame Ancelin offered to take them home; but it was only with the conventional politeness of a ‘carriage’ lady afraid of tiring her horses and still more afraid of her coachman’s temper (she has invariably the best coachman in Paris). Besides, ‘the great man’ had a cab; and without waiting for the lady’s benediction—‘Ah, well, we know you two like to be alone. Ah! what a happy household!’—he dragged off Madame Astier along the wet and dirty colonnade.
When, at the end of a ball or evening party, a fashionable couple drive off in their carriage, the question always suggests itself, ‘Now what will they say?’ Not much usually, for the man generally comes away from this kind of festivity weary and knocked up, while the lady continues the party in the darkness of the carriage by inward comparisons of her dress and her looks with those she has just seen, and makes plans for the arrangement of her drawing-room or a new costume. Still the restraint of feature required by society is so excessive, and fashionable hypocrisy has reached such a height, that it would be interesting to be present at the moment when the conventional attitude is relaxed, to hear the real natural tone of voice, and to realise the actual relations of the beings thus suddenly released from trammels and sent rolling home in the light of their brougham lamps through the empty streets of Paris. In the case of the Astiers the return home was very characteristic. The moment they were alone the wife laid aside the deference and pretended interest exhibited towards the Master in society, and spoke her mind, compensating herself in so doing for the attention with which she had listened for the hundredth time to old stories which bored her to death. The husband, kindly by disposition and accustomed to think well of himself and everyone else, invariably came home in a state of bliss, and was horrified at the malicious comments of his wife on their hosts and the guests they had met. Madame Astier would utter calmly the most shocking accusations, exaggerating gossip in the light unconscious way which is characteristic of Parisian society. Rather than stimulate her he would hold his tongue and turn round in his corner to take a little doze. But on this evening Léonard sat down straight, regardless of the sharp ‘Do mind my dress!’ which showed that somebody’s skirts were being crumpled. What did he care about her dress? ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he said, in such a tone that the windows rattled.
Oh dear, the autographs! She had not been thinking of them, least of all just now, when tormented by very different anxieties, and there was nothing feigned in her surprise.