The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

The hero of the one had been a Frenchman, of the other a Spaniard.

As for the Frenchman, Motey thought of him with a certain kindness, and even with regret, though he, too, as she put it to herself, had 'given her a good fright.' The meeting between the Comte de Lucque and Mrs. Robinson had taken place not very long after Melancthon Robinson's death, in that enchanted borderland which seems at once Switzerland and Italy.

The French lad—he was little more—was stranded there in search of health, and Penelope had soon felt for him that pity which, while so little akin to love, so often induces love in the creature pitied. She allowed, nay, encouraged, him to be her companion on long painting expeditions, and he soon made his way through, as others had done before him, to the outer ramparts of her heart.

For a while she had found him charming, at once so full of surprising naïvetés and of strange, ardent enthusiasms; so utterly unlike the younger Englishman of her acquaintance and differing also greatly from the Frenchmen she had known.

Brought up between a widowed mother and a monk tutor, the young Count was in some ways as ignorant and as enthusiastic as must have been that ancestor of his who started with St. Louis from Aiguesmortes, bound for Jerusalem. His father had been killed in the great charge of the Cuirassiers at the Battle of Reichofen, and Penelope discovered that he above all things wished to live and to become strong, in order that he might take a part in 'La Revanche,' that fantasy which played so great a rôle in the imagination of those Frenchmen belonging to his generation.

But when one evening Mrs. Robinson asked suddenly, 'Motey, how would you like to see me become a French Countess?' the nurse had not taken the question as put seriously, as, indeed, it had not been. Still, even the old servant, who regarded the fact of any man's being made what she quaintly called 'uncomfortable' by her mistress as a small, well-merited revenge for all the indignities heaped by his sex on hers—even Motey felt sorry for the Count when the inevitable day of parting came.

At first, Penelope read with some attention the long, closely-written letters which reached her day by day with faithful regularity, but there came a time when she was absorbed in the details of a small exhibition of the very latest manifestations of French art, and the Count's letters were scarcely looked at before they were thrown aside. Then, suddenly he made abrupt and most unlooked-for intrusion into Mrs. Robinson's life, at a time when the old nurse was accustomed to expect freedom from Penelope's studies in sentiment—that is, during the few weeks of the years which were always spent by Mrs. Robinson working hard in the studio of some great Paris artist.

Penelope had known how to organize her working life very intelligently; she so timed her visits to Paris as to arrange with a French painter, who was, like herself, what the unkind would call a wealthy amateur, to take over his flat, his studio, and his servants.

During nine happy weeks each spring Mrs. Robinson lived the busy Bohemian life which she loved, and which, she thought, suited her so well; but Mrs. Mote was never neglected, or, at least, never allowed herself to feel so, and occasionally her mistress found her a useful, if over-vigilant, chaperon. Mrs. Mote was on very good terms with the French servants with whom she was thus each year thrown into contact. Their easy gaiety beguiled even her grim ill-temper, and, fortunately, she never conceived the dimmest suspicion of the fact that they were all firmly persuaded that she was the humble, but none the less authentic, 'mère de madame'!

Now in the spring following her stay in Switzerland, not many days after she had settled down to work in Paris, Mrs. Robinson desired the excellent maître d'hôtel to inform Mrs. Mote that she was awaited in the studio. 'Motey, you remember the French count we met in Switzerland last year?' Before giving the maid time to answer, she continued: 'Well, I heard from him this morning. He asks me to go and see him. He says he is very ill, and I want you to come with me.' Penelope spoke in the hurried way usual to her when moved by real feeling.