It made me uncomfortable to play the rôle I was playing among these misguided but harmless people; that I showed it in my face is certain, for the Countess 38 looked up at me and said, smilingly: “You must not look at us so sorrowfully, Monsieur Scarlett. It is we who pity you.”
And I replied, “Madame, you are generous,” and took my place among them and ate and drank with them in silence, listening to the breeze in the elms.
Mademoiselle Elven, in her peasant’s dress, rested her pretty arm across her chair and sighed.
“It is all very well not to resist violence,” she said, “but it seems to me that the world is going to run over us some day. Is there any harm in stepping out of the way, Dr. Delmont?”
The Countess laughed outright.
“Not at all,” she said. “But we must not attempt to box the world’s ears as we run. Must we, doctor?”
Turning her lovely, sun-burned face to me, she continued: “Is it not charming here? The quiet is absolute. It is always still. We are absurdly contented here; we have no servants, you see, and we all plough and harrow and sow and reap—not many acres, because we need little. It is one kind of life, quite harmless and passionless, monsieur. I have been raking hay this morning. It is so strange that the Emperor should be troubled by the silence of these quiet fields—”
The distress in her eyes lasted only a moment; she turned and looked out across the green meadows, smiling to herself.
“At first when I came here from Paris,” she said, “I was at a loss to know what to do with all this land. I owe much happiness to Dr. Delmont, who suggested that the estate, except what we needed, might be loaned free to the people around us. It was an admirable thought; we have no longer any poor among us—”
She stopped short and gave me a quick glance. “Please understand me, Monsieur Scarlett. I make 39 no merit of giving what I cannot use. That would be absurd.”