Our first meeting had been brief. Whatever his intention in seeking me out in my boudoir, it took him not more than five minutes to find out that there was nothing to be gained by a prolonged conversation, and on the whole, nothing to be feared from me, did he but leave me alone, but I imagined that I read upon his face more disappointment than relief. He had not been afraid, perhaps just a little uneasy, but he had been curious. He had expected something, and as he left me the expression of his back and the vague fumbling of his hand in the tail pocket of his coat, gave me the impression that whatever it was he had wanted, he was going away without it. This impression, however, was fleeting, a deeper and more painful one remained, and kept me a long time idle at my desk. He was changed in a way that for some subtle inexplicable reason had made me ashamed to look at him. There was in his pallid puffy face, in the sag of his shoulders and the crook of his knees, something that I did not want to understand, something that he had no right to show me. Inside his immaculate clothes he was shrivelled to half his size. His wonderful padded coat sat on him as if on a lifeless and flaccid dummy out of which had escaped a good deal of the sawdust stuffing. Bianca had done with him. She had worn him out. He looked old. His eccentric elegance no longer became him. It was as unsuccessful as a plastered make-up on the face of an old woman. That was the sharpest impression of all, he looked a failure. I wondered that he had the courage to show himself, not to me but to Paris, where he had always walked with such impudent assurance. His showing himself to me seemed to me not half so daring. It seemed to me to prove once more and finally his complete contempt for my opinion.
I went on with my life. If I found that the savour had gone out of it, I did not admit this all at once to myself. The situation didn’t bear thinking about. If one thought about it one would be likely to find it quite extraordinary enough to upset one’s mentality, and I proposed not to be upset by it, and Philibert, apparently, with a certain exercise of tact that reminded one of a burglar arranging the furniture and putting out the lights after ransacking a room, made things as easy for me as he could, by, as I say, keeping out of my sight. I soon found, however, that he wasn’t keeping out of other people’s. On the contrary, I began to be conscious of him moving about near me among his friends. It was really rather funny. Only at home under the roof that housed us both, was I quite free from him. In other people’s houses I was constantly meeting his shadow. He had either been there, or was coming, occasionally I was certain, that he had but just taken his departure as I came in. Something of him remained in the room. I caught myself looking about for his hat, and the faces of my acquaintances betrayed varying shades of discomfiture or amusement. Mostly I gathered as time went on, was their feeling one of amusement. Paris had not been at all squeamish in welcoming Philibert, and it found our continued chassé-croisé rather ridiculous. But with its very special adaptibility and its extraordinary flair for situations, it continued to be tolerant of my evident absurd wish not to be coupled with my husband, and did not ask us out together.
Aunt Clothilde, sitting enthroned like some comic Juno above the social earth, put an end to this. As was her habit she sent for me and barged into the subject in hand.
“Now then, Jane, this sort of thing must stop.”
“What sort of thing, Aunt?”
“You and Philibert playing hide and seek all over Paris like a couple of silly children. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You chose your ‘parti’ long ago when you didn’t insist upon a separation, so now you must go through with it. Nothing is so stupid as doing things half way. You’ve ignored his behaviour. You’ve not bolted the door in his face, and to all appearances you’re a reunited couple.”
I tried to interrupt.
“Don’t interrupt me. I don’t care, and nobody cares what goes on between you and Philibert in your private apartments. Whether you’re nasty or affectionate is nobody’s business but your own, but as regards society, society expects people in it to behave in a certain way, and to make things easy and agreeable and smooth. That’s its main object, its only raison d’être. We people who think ourselves something are nothing if we’re not well bred, that is, if we don’t know how to help other people to keep up the pretence that every one is happy, that life is harmonious and that there’s nothing dreadful under the sun. Society, French society, is very intolerant of bad manners, not as you know of anything else. It is exclusive with this object and adamant on this point. It let you in, now it expects you to behave. You’ve enjoyed its favour, you owe it something in return. What a bore to lecture you like a school-mistress, but there you are. I’m going to give a dinner and you and Philibert are both to come, and that will be the end of this nonsense.”
And of course I did as she said.
And again your mother’s manner to me conveyed a sense of my action having made a difference, but this time an enormously happy difference. She beamed, she was more affectionate than she had ever been. She called me “Ma chère petite” “Ma fille aimée.” Drawing me down to her with her delicate blue-veined hand, she would press her lips to one of my cheeks then the other, lingeringly, and with a pathetic trembling pressure, and look from me to Philibert with happy watery eyes in which was no scrutiny or questioning. She was growing old. Something of her fine discernment was gone. She was no longer curious to know what lay behind appearances. It was enough for her to have recovered her son and been spared the sight of his ruin. Like a child she clung to Philibert. I admit that his manner to her was very charming. He went to see her, I believe, every day.