In fact, I am fain to confess, whether from humour or chagrin, I came to feel out of sorts with my theories, and disinclined for the present to elaborate them. Instead I returned to my clay and made figures.
She was with me there, watchful, mostly silent, yet not without ideas. I owed many a good touch to her sharp intelligence.
And so the days went on—went on as if our compact were for life, and no disturbance to that odd partnership were ever to be apprehended. We kept strictly to the letter of our undertaking with Marion, practising all precautions and inviting no risks. I always locked Fifine in when I went abroad, and I spoke no word to any one as to the change in my ménage. Indeed more and more I came to avoid acquaintances, more and more to limit my issues and returns to the dark hours. A queer attraction was beginning to attach itself to my quarters; I was never long away from them but I wished myself back. There was some lure there in the way of mental stimulant that I found it pleasant not to resist.
As for Fifine herself, confinement and lack of air and exercise seemed in no wise to disturb her. Physically she was of a serene constitution; and her small occupations were enough for what variety she seemed to need. Moreover, on whatever absurd perversion founded, she was sufficiently alive to the supposed danger of her position to endure gladly the inaction and close concealment it entailed upon her. I was aware that her fears, while I believed them wholly unjustified, were entirely genuine, though I had made it my rule to ask no leading questions of her whatever. But her face had become a book to me, in which I found some matter for curious reading.
Our plan of privacy was easily enough maintained, Madame Crussol abetting. I don’t know what the worthy lady thought of it all—but not the best, il va sans dire. However, her sarcasms were for my ears alone; I was a favourite with her, when all is said; and it did not disturb me to hear myself called a vieux garçon, still uncertain of his steps at an age when most men had learned to walk steadily. For the rest, whether through prescriptive sympathy, or on the strength of some unconfessed understanding with my step-sister, the concierge managed to hold all undesired visitors aloof. I was so much a rolling-stone that the task was no more than simple: she had merely to shrug her shoulders and say, “He has locked his door on the outside and taken away the key. God knows when he will return.”
Indeed I wanted no visitors just then: I was fully amused, and fully contented to be left to the world’s oblivion. It was all quite superbly correct—the heart serenely conscious of its own probity, and so forth; what did it matter what gross old door-keepers concluded or suspected? Fifine and I became quite matter-of-fact friends; our rallies were purely intellectual, and not seldom acrimonious; we lived together on a footing of the most dispassionate comradeship. She was seldom haughty to me after a little—save in fits and starts, as if when suddenly remembering a duty, which she would desperately recover, but without conviction on either side. Early she discarded her smart evening dress in favour of others more simple, which she would concoct out of materials I bought for her. She had plenty of money, as she had said, and insisted upon paying her share of the household expenses. She was wonderfully deft with her needle, at which I rather marvelled, until I remembered that I had made a compact with myself to be surprised at nothing. But still on some festive occasions she would play the bedizened sylphid, enrapturing my eyes, and just awakening in me some faintly disturbing tremors. She liked me to design her frocks for her; and in truth I was nothing loth. It was a little thrilling to have a mannequin all of my own, and a very shapely one, on whom to hang my idle fancies. And she repaid my trouble, both by word and effect, though we were always very particular and formal in our relations of costumier and dummy. Never suppose that I forgot my responsibility to my charge, or my tremendous respect for the rank that condescended to me, or that Fifine herself made any motion of unbending in the matter of that mutual understanding. She trusted in me without question, and I never gave her cause to question.
Not that I will pretend the situation found me entirely without qualms of a sort. Nature, it must be admitted, abhors a Platonism, and I was not superior to Nature. Moreover, I could never quite forget Marion’s curiously ambiguous language in delivering my trust to me. It had seemed to take so small account of reputation provided the main issue were not involved. Still, no doubt, that apparent confusion had been due to the stress of the moment. Marion could never be anything but deeply moral and religious.
In any case I was—I had Marion’s word for it—a gentleman, and determined stoutly to justify that election. I had no choice about it, in fact, since I am speaking of emotions, trifling at best, which I felt were entirely unreciprocated. But I want the credit of my conscientiousness.
And so a fortnight passed; and deliverance came not. My sister did not appear, nor did she vouchsafe word or sign. Was the safe moment yet to strike? I did not seem to care at last; and that was a puzzling symptom.