Jean was very kind and very protective; on the way home he explained to Margot that if there were to be any serious difficulty about the four hundred francs he would get his uncle’s assistance; it was an affair of honour and concerned his whole family—the D’Ucelles would protect Margot. “It is I who have driven you into this mud,” Jean asserted. “Rely on me to rescue you from it!”
Margot should have felt very much relieved. The whole affair was taken out of her hands, Jean was not in the least angry with her; he had been wonderfully angry with Flaubert—and he informed her that he was going to speak, with reservations, of course, to Madame. Perhaps Margot was very much relieved—that at any rate was the impression which Jean carried away with him.
CHAPTER XXV
MADAME Torialli had once told Jean that if he ever wanted a private talk with her he might send his name up to her maid early in the morning, and she would see him in the dressing-room. She often received visitors there while she was putting those finishing touches which, besides making her look ten years younger than her age and the most dangerous woman in Paris, slipped into the interviews themselves and were apt to make the rawest materials change swiftly into the most miraculous results. Jean hardly knew why he had not taken advantage of the invitation before; he did not realize that what held him back was the reverence of a great passion which had now reached its maturity and was unconsciously afraid of its own strength. He had not gone to her room because he had known how much it would mean to him.
Even now he trembled as he sent up his name, and almost hoped that the maid would bring him down a refusal; but she did not. Madame would receive him. Jean followed her blindly to a new quarter of the house over the noiseless carpets, and through passages which seemed full of light and air, the discreetest colours, and an absence of superfluous things. Jean felt that he would have turned and run downstairs if he had had to knock at the door himself; but the maid knocked for him. And when he heard Madame’s “Entrez donc!” his courage came back to him again. It was a part of Gabrielle’s charm that no situation was ever unusual with her, and when Jean found himself a moment later seated in a chair beside her dressing-table he felt as if he had been there all his life, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Gabrielle was dressed in a soft green chiffon peignoir, with pale blue forget-me-not embroideries. Her maid had just finished piling up the golden masses of her hair (an astounding quantity of which was still her own), and she was seated in the shaded light of a big bay window, delicately manipulating various small boxes and bottles in front of her, and carrying into the operation the masterly light handling of an artist. Her room was painted a rich creamy pink, and everything in it was either mother-of-pearl or of such material as exactly matched it. The door opening into Madame’s bedroom was shut, but another door stood open leading down four marble steps into a spacious bath, very deep and wide, taking up the entire room and lined with old dutch tiles.
Gabrielle gave Jean her left hand while she continued to use a long thin brush in her right.
“So you’ve come at last,” she said, “to see me—ah, how vainly, my dear Jean—trying to cheat old time! I don’t dare look at you, for I know how terribly well youth appears early in the morning, and I don’t at this moment want to be reminded how little one can manage to replace its beautiful bloom! All these little pots and pans help, but when you are thirty-five you’ll know what it feels like to remember that you can’t for one moment get on without them! And even then you won’t know the dreadful pang a woman has when she discovers a new wrinkle and has to fall back on a paint brush. When she doesn’t, poor, dreadful old thing, any longer dare to trust to the use of her smile!” Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder at Jean as she spoke, and if she did not trust to the use of her smile she was needlessly sceptical of her powers; for if there had been anything in Jean which had not wholly succumbed to her it succumbed to her then. A stupid woman would only have owned to thirty years, for Gabrielle looked very little more; but Gabrielle knew that to have made Torialli’s career in Paris required time, so that it would be wiser to allow for it. It was very wise, for Jean perfectly believed her; and she was forty-three.
“As if you needed to talk like that, Madame,” he said in a low voice. “One never thinks of youth or of age when one is with you, for you have all that is most beautiful in either; one thinks only of—you.”
“As a reward for that sweet little speech,” said Gabrielle laughing quietly, “I shall ask you to manicure my hands. I know well enough that those clever musician’s hands of yours can do anything they are put to. Here are mine, then; make of them what you can!” And Gabrielle slipped both her dainty, slim, little hands into his, while he held his breath and wondered. They were ringless and soft as a child’s, and the palms and finger-tips were pink as sea-shells. Their touch made his blood run like fire.