She attacked Rose about it. “A woman is responsible for all that happens to a man during his honeymoon, is she not?” she asked her. Rose, thinking that Madame was doubtful as to the state of Léon’s health, told her painstakingly that Léon was an “esprit fort.” Madame, with a happy little shriek, proclaimed that she was sure of it, but was not his wit like Madame’s own--this afternoon, at any rate--of the wonderful silent English type? Even Monsieur Gérard laughed at this, but on the whole Madame spared Rose; she kept as far as possible her hand off her. She would gladly have spared her altogether, and, in a sense, of course, she was doing so. She was giving her her husband back--not wiser, nor more appreciative, and certainly in a far worse state of mind--but for all that he would be returned to Rose this afternoon not so very much the worse for wear, as husbands go.
For half-an-hour Madame Gérard took upon her little supple shoulders the entertainment of her guests. She was for that half hour like the whole cast of the Comédie Française put together--brilliant, exquisitely decorative and incredibly, ironically knowing; then she turned to her husband with her eyes like an innocent caress, and said, “Now, mon ami, will you not make music for us?” Monsieur Gérard was not unwilling to use his magnificent gift. Léon, who felt that the end had come, politely echoed the request; and then Madame made her fatal mistake. The game was hers--she had only to stand aside and let it finish itself; but she could not stand aside--nervously, with happy flutterings, she must show them how she followed her husband’s work, and how she helped him: and she didn’t help him at all.
She drew out his music--it wasn’t what he wanted to sing and he said so crisply; he always knew what he wanted to sing. Then she said she must play his accompaniment, so that he could stand up and let his voice out.
Now Monsieur Gérard’s voice was not of a quantity to be lightly let out in a small bird-cage of a room; it would have been sufficient to roll over Capri like a rock-stream. Also, Monsieur Gérard was like a tiger to any accompanist but his own, who was taking at the moment a much-needed holiday.
It counted for nothing at all with Monsieur Gérard that his wife was dressed in white and scarlet and gold and that she had roused in him the temporary sentiments of attraction. From the moment that she mounted the music-stool nothing counted but her power of playing a correct accompaniment without too much expression. She had evoked the artist, and the artist upsets everything.
Monsieur Gérard began to sing; he modulated his great dramatic voice, but the sound of it shook the Villa degli Angeli; it poured out on the dancing air with the majestic roll of great billows breaking on the beach.
Madame tinkled mildly and prettily on the piano after him--too prettily of course, and not very accurately. The little ineffective notes were like a pee-wit chirping in a storm. In an instant Monsieur Gérard had swept her from the music-stool almost on to the floor. “You have no more music in you than a fly!” he broke off abruptly to inform her, then he sat down in her place and roared in velvet with magnificent effect.
Madame, shaken and reduced from triumph to the verge of tears, quivered for a little in the window-seat; but even then her prize was still within her grasp--Monsieur had simply for the moment forgotten her. She was capable, if she had waited, of reminding him successfully. Alas! she had that fatal longing to help which reduces the greatest women to the level of a nuisance. She could not let herself be forgotten even for a moment--even for his art. She would go back and turn over the leaves for Raoul. He frowned, he swore under his breath, he shook his heavy head at her; but she went on turning over the leaves--he was not playing to the score, he did not want his leaves turned over--her eager, fluttering figure drove him frantic. In ten minutes he banged the piano lid down, and threw the score on the carpet. He told her before Léon, before Rose, in the drawing-room of the Villa degli Angeli that she was an intrusive insect!
There was a horrible pause. Léon approached Madame in a state of mingled chivalry and satisfaction. She was a pitiable figure as she stood there biting at her dainty lace handkerchief to keep the tears back; her face was very white under its layer of powder. Probably it would have been better if she had sat down. She simply stood with imploring, helpless eyes fixed upon the angry tyrant before her.
No angry man likes to be looked at helplessly. Monsieur Gérard glared at her--then he made the gulf that had come between them impassable.