CHAPTER LIV
FRIENDS IN NEED
“What a sky! what weather! what a look-out! what an apartment, and what chocolate!” exclaimed Madame de Montmirail to her maid, in an accent of intense Parisian disgust; while the latter prepared her mistress to go abroad and encounter in the streets of London the atmosphere of a really tolerably fine day for England at the time of year. “Quick, Justine! do not distress yourself about costume. My visits this morning are of business rather than ceremony. And what matters it now? Yet, after all, I suppose a woman never likes to look her worst, especially when she is growing old.”
Justine made no answer. The ready disclaimer which would indeed have been no flattery died upon her lips; for Justine also felt aggrieved in many ways by this untoward expedition to the English capital. In the first place, having spent but one night in Paris, she had been compelled to leave it at the very period when its attractions were coming into bloom: in the next, she had encountered, while crossing the Channel, such a fresh breeze, as she was pleased to term, “un vent de Polichinelle!” and which upset her digestive process for a week; in the third, though disdaining to occupy a hostile territory with her war material disorganised, she was painfully conscious of looking her worst; while, lastly, she had no opportunity for resetting the blunted edge of her attractions, because in the whole household below-stairs could be discovered but one of the opposite sex, sixty years old, and obviously given, body and soul, to that mistress who cheers while she inebriates.
So Justine bustled about discontentedly, and her expressive French face, usually so pleasant and lively, now looked dull, and bilious, and cross.
She brightened up a little, nevertheless, when a chair stopped at the door, and a visitor was announced. The street, though off the Strand, then a fashionable locality, was yet tolerably quiet and retired.
It cheered Justine’s spirits to bring up a gentleman’s name for admission; and she almost recovered her good-humour when she learned he was a countryman of her own.
The Marquise, sipping chocolate and dressed to go out, received her visitor more than cordially. She had been restless at Chateau-la-Fierté, restless in Paris, restless through her whole journey, and was now restless in London. But restlessness is borne the easier when we have some one to share it with; and this young man had reason to be gratified with the welcome accorded him by so celebrated a beauty as Madame de Montmirail.
She might almost have been his mother, it is true; but all his life he had accustomed himself to think of her as the brilliant Marquise with whom everybody of any pretence to distinction was avowedly in love, and without looking much at her face, or affecting her society, he accepted the situation too. What would you have? It was de rigueur. He declared himself her adorer just as he wore a Steinkirk cravat, and took snuff, though he hated it, from a diamond snuff-box.