Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

There was still a little twilight, and standing at the window they looked down at the lighted quai with its double row of lofty plane-trees and across the jade-green Saône at St. Jean, the grey cathedral, and at the beautiful white archevêché glimmering in a soft, dimmed atmosphere that made him think of London.

“There’s a horrible modern cathedral up on the hill,” he said; “but we don’t need to see it. We need only see the river and the archevêché and St. Jean. And in the mornings there’s a market below, a mile of it, all under huge mushroom-coloured umbrellas; flowers and cheeses and every kind of country produce. I think you’ll like it here.”

“I like it very much. I think it’s beautiful,” said Adrienne. “I like our room, too,” and she turned and looked up at the painted ceiling and round at the consoles and mirrors, inlaid tables and richly curved, brocaded chairs. “Isn’t it splendid.”

“Madame Récamier is said to have lived here,” Oldmeadow told her. “And this is said to have been her room.”

“And now it’s mine,” said Adrienne, smiling slightly as though she found the juxtaposition amusing.

Already the stealing sense of deliciousness was breathing over him. The very way in which she said, “our room,” was part of it. Even the way in which she said that made him feel the peace, comfort, and charm of a shared life as he had never before felt it. And the sense grew and grew on that first evening.

It was delicious to hear the waiters address her as Madame, and to know that it was his madame they imagined her to be, when he sat opposite to her at their little table in the dining-room. She wore a grey dress now and, with her quiet, her calm glances cast about her, might indeed have been the veritable Madame Oldmeadow inscribed at the bureau. If they had the aspect of a devoted, long-mated couple, it was because of her calm. But she would have been as unperturbed, he felt sure, had she been stopping there under her own name instead of his and looked upon as his well-established mistress. Situations would never embarrass her as long as she knew what she was doing with them. That night when she gave him her hand at bedtime she said, looking at him with the affectionate, professional eyes: “I’ll come and put you to sleep if you need me; be sure to let me know.”

But he had no need to call her. He slept as soundly as though she sat beside him with her hand upon his brow.

So the mirage of conjugal felicity was evoked about him.

She poured out his coffee for him in the morning wearing a silk négligé edged with fur, and said, as they buttered their rolls, that they must buy some honey for their breakfasts. She said, too, that they must do a great deal of sight-seeing in the afternoons. “There is so much to be seen in Lyons. And I shall finish with my rapatrié work in the mornings.” He asked if he might not come with her to the rapatrié work, but was told that he was not yet strong enough for more than one walk in the day. “In our evenings, after tea,” she went on, “I thought perhaps you’d like to study Dante a little with me. My Dante is getting so rusty and I’ve brought a very fine edition. Are you good at Italian?”