The courtyard of M. de Thiviers’s house in Seuilly had a charming fountain attributed to Jean Goujon; the sculptured frieze running above the ground-floor windows was said to be . . . the niches and bust of the first floor were credibly supposed . . . the clock—but why go on with a list which is unjust to an admirable Louis XVI house, of decent proportions, and mature simple charm? In restoring it, Thiviers had only given way to the mania for authorities which made his books a trickle of text in a desert of footnotes drawn from the most respectable sources. He imagined he had proved his point when he could quote a similar opinion from another writer, and until he had thought of attaching Jean Goujon’s name to his fountain he was not convinced that it was fine and delicate.
He had collected for his library the busts—all, he believed, even the head of Socrates as a young man with a superb youthful beard, authentic—of famous writers and philosophers: sitting among them, himself almost authentic, dictating long falsely exact phrases to his secretary, he pursued these famous shades with his eloquence and cloudy abstractions, so certain of their approval that when a ray of sun touched Bossuet’s lips he smiled back at him.
Before Mme de Freppel came in, he had just succeeded in putting together two sentences without joining them by a quotation. He looked at her gravely. His afternoons were slightly sacred to writing. Besides, her finger resting on it threw a doubt on the bust of Ronsard, attributed to . . . He dismissed his secretary, and took both her hands in a friendly grasp.
She freed one hand and tapped him lightly on the cheek. Was she surprised to find it warm? She drew back.
“My dear, I’m interrupting you.”
She was amused. Behind his dignity—almost real, in any case not a wilful fake—he was nervous. The thought: I still disturb him, gave her confidence. Resting her arms on his desk, she faced him across a corner of it, and began with her air of simplicity to talk about Colonel Rienne. He was—surely?—dangerous. And his influence made Émile so reckless. . . .
“Can’t you get rid of him, my dear Robert? Have him sent to the front? Such a fire-eater——”
“In any emergency—don’t be anxious—Colonel Rienne will be watched,” Thiviers said, with a smile.
He patted her arm. Mme de Freppel seized his hand in both hers and leaned forward so that he found himself looking in her eyes, at the gleam of animal brightness under their soft black. She knew the effect she had on him. She was using her body to subdue him, without shame—you use, or defend, what you have: one woman is quicker to use, another to defend. There were things Mme de Freppel was passionate to defend, but her body was not one of them.
“Tell me what to do,” she said with energy. “I’m distracted. You needn’t tell me we’re going to lose the war. I know. Tell me what I ought to do. I thought of putting everything into diamonds. In New York I could sell them to savages called Smith or Franklin. If we ever get to New York. Do you think diamonds?”
Thiviers drew his hand away. She was startled. Is he afraid of me? Or bored? She watched him, listening with only part of her mind.
“Yes, yes, I know,” she interrupted. “You explained days ago that Seuilly can’t be defended, if the Germans get here the war’s lost, and so on and so on——”
“You didn’t take it in,” Thiviers said gently. “We expected you to make Émile see reason.”
Who does he mean by we? “What are you talking about?”
“Émile is almost a criminal——”
“That’s not true,” she said vehemently.
She checked herself. . . . I mustn’t irritate him. . . . To soften her words she gave him an affectionate glance.
“Listen, Marguerite,” Thiviers said in a cold voice. “Émile’s efforts will land him in prison. I’m serious. If he persists in rousing the mob he will have to be put out of the way for his own sake and the sake of order and stability. Émile—it horrifies me; I expected so much of him, with his training—you don’t look in the Political Science School for anarchists—but he’s an anarchist.”
He is really horrified, she thought. She felt a baffled impatience. Why is he so moral? Why must Émile run these insane risks?
“An anarchist who has sent money to the United States,” Thiviers added.
She looked at him. “Émile is not the only one,” she said calmly.
“No. But he might be the only one to be ruined.”
She was silent. She did not feel defeated. Her instincts—she had an instinctive disrespect for men as animals—promised her that she was still partly controlling him. Looking at her hands on the desk, she imagined them, but did not bring herself to it, touching the quilt of soft flesh between her fingers and the bones of his body. Like embracing an adult child. The wave of repulsion starting at the ends of her fingers dragged her back with it. She trembled with a little horror of herself. So far as she was concerned Thiviers’s body was dead. She became alert and calm.
“I couldn’t face poverty,” she said in a frank voice.
Thiviers glanced at her with a curious, almost disinterested respect.
“Why should you be poor? I’m a rich man. You can rely on me to help you. You know that. There’s very little you don’t know about me.”
With both hands she made a gesture of lifting something and letting it fall. A touch of fear came to weaken her. . . . Perhaps I can’t use him; he’s stronger, less rigid than I imagined. . . . The thought made her angry. Hiding her anger, she said, with a friendly smile,
“You exaggerate Émile’s obstinacy. I know him better than you do. I assure you he’s very reasonable. I’ll talk to him.”
She stood up. Thiviers got up more heavily. Only the corner of the desk separated them, and she felt that in a moment he would embrace or insult her. Either act would be fatal to her power over him. She must speak.
“Dear Robert, you’re quite charming,” she said gaily, “you’re a scholar, a philosopher, a banker—what a monster!—but you have very little tact and you simply don’t understand less exalted people. You don’t know how to talk to us.”
She saw, with pleasure, that she had hurt his vanity. He reddened and said stiffly,
“Not in the least.” Her eyes sparkled. Suddenly she felt that her will was stronger than his. The certainty that she would outwit him made her feel madly happy.
She walked towards the door. It opened when she was almost there. Mme de Thiviers came in.
She was in outdoor dress, swaddled in spite of the heat in a thick coat. She was always cold. Leaning the awkward weight of her body on her maid’s arm, she moved forward slowly. She looked at Mme de Freppel with contempt.
“I see you’re going, Countess,” she said. “I regret that I wasn’t at home to receive you. I didn’t know you did me the honour of calling on me.”
“But I came to see your husband,” Mme de Freppel said, smiling. “On business.”
“I understand,” Mme de Thiviers said. “I can choose my callers, my husband cannot choose his business associates.”
“Nini——” Thiviers said, alarmed.
“But don’t apologise for Madame de Thiviers’s awkwardness,” Marguerite said in a clear voice. “I can see she is a sick woman.”
She knew she was looking remarkably beautiful at this moment, her eyes brilliant, her body giving off its energy. And at this moment of triumph and happiness she made a mistake. Thiviers was holding the door open; as she passed through she let him see that she was laughing at his embarrassment. This second wound to his vanity went too deep. His face became gloomy and he looked at her with an anger he saw no reason to hide. It jumped into his mind that she would make a laughingstock of him among her friends. It would be too easy, and he knew she enjoyed using her shrewd vulgar wit. Ridicule was the one injury he could not forgive. At this moment he would have sent her to a concentration camp to be punished.