“But, still—”
“Oh, yes, of course, we all know what a problem that is, at every turn, with your kindness and your consideration absolutely wasted: and in fact, as I so often think, if I could just have two rooms somewhere, and do my own cooking—” Another thread was bitten through by the loveliest teeth in the world.
“You aspire to such simple pleasures, my wife, as are denied to a Duchess of Puysange. No, one must be logical. We have the duties of our estate. And among these duties, as I was just saying, I now discover the deplorable need of absenting myself from the delights of your society and conversation—”
“I shall miss you, monsieur my husband,” replied Melior, abstractedly holding up a very small undershirt, and looking at it as if with the very weightiest of doubts, “of course. But still, it is not as if I cared to be travelling now, and, besides, there really is a great deal of sewing to be done for months to come. And with everything in this upset condition, I do hope that—if by any chance you are sitting on that other pair of scissors? I thought they must be there. Yes, I do hope that you will be most careful in this affair, because I already have enough to contend with. You ought to send the lace at once, though: and I suppose we might as well have pink yarn and ribbons, since the chances are equal in any event—”
“But in what affair, delight of my existence, are you requesting me to be careful?”
“Why, how should I know?” And Melior, he perceived, had still the air of one who is dealing patiently with an irrational person. “It is probably a very good thing that I do not, since you are plainly up to something with your friend Orleans which you want nobody to find out about. All men are like that: and, for my part, I have no curiosity whatever, because, as I so often think, if everybody would just attend to their own affairs—”
He bowed and, murmuring “Your pardon, madame!” he left her contentedly sewing. It seemed to Florian a real pity that a creature in every way so agreeable to his eye should steadily betray and tease his ear. He did not find that, as wives average, his Melior was especially loquacious: it was, rather, that when she discoursed at any length, with her bewildering air of commingled self-satisfaction and shrewdness, he could never make out quite clearly what she was talking about: and as went intelligence, his disenchanted princess seemed to him to rank somewhere between a magpie and a turnip.
This, upon the whole, adorable idiocy might have made it appear, to some persons, surprising that Melior should divine, as she had so obviously divined, that Florian, in going to Philippe d’Orléans, was prompted by motives which discretion preferred to screen. But Florian had learned by experience that your wives very often astound you by striking the target of your inmost thinking, fair and full, with just such seemingly irrational shots of surmise. You might call it intuition or whatever else you preferred: no husband of any at all lengthy standing would be quick to call it accident. Rather, he would admit this to be a faculty which every married woman manifested now and then: and he would rejoice that, for the health of the world’s peace, such clairvoyancy was intermittent. Florian esteemed it to be just one of the inevitable drawbacks of matrimony that the most painstaking person must sometimes encounter discomfortable moments when his wife appears to be looking over his secret thoughts somewhat as one glances over the pages of a not particularly interesting book. So the experienced husband would shrug and would await this awkward moment’s passing, and the return of his wife’s normal gullibility and charm.
Melior, too, then, had her instants of approach to wifely, if not precisely human, intelligence. And Melior was beautiful. There was no flaw anywhere in her beauty. This Florian repeated, over and over again, as he prepared for travel. Here, too, one must be logical. That ideal beauty which he had hopelessly worshipped, and had without hope hungered for, ever since his childhood, was now attained: and the goddess of his long adoration was now enshrined in, to be exact, the next room but one, already hemming diapers for their anticipated baby. Nobody could possibly have won nearer to his heart’s desire than Florian had come; he had got all and more than his highest dreaming had aspired to: and so, if he was now sighing over the reflection, it must be, he perceived, a sigh of content.
Then he kissed his wife, and he rode away from Bellegarde, toward the vexatious duties which awaited him at court. Florian stopped, of course, to put up a prayer, for the success of his nearing venture into homicide, at the Church of Holy Hoprig. That ceremonial Florian could not well have omitted without provoking more or less speculation as to why the Duke of Puysange should be defaulting in a pious custom of long standing; nor, for that matter, without troubling his conscience with doubts if he was affording the country-side quite the good example due from one of his rank.
Through just such mingled considerations of expediency and duty had Florian, since his return from Brunbelois, continued his giving to this church with all the old liberality, if with somewhat less comfort to himself. It was a nuisance to reflect that so many irregularities which Florian had believed compounded, to everybody’s satisfaction, had never been attended to at all by his patron saint. It was annoying to know that the church had got, and was continuing to get, from the estate of Puysange so many pious offerings virtually for nothing. Even so, replied logic, what was to be gained by arousing criticism or by neglecting your religious duties in a manner that was noticeable? Let us adhere to precedent, and then, if we can no longer count assuredly on bliss in the next world, we may at least hope for tranquillity in this one.
So Florian, for the preservation of the local standards, now put up a fervent prayer to his patron saint in heaven; and reflected that, after all, the actual whereabouts, and the receptivity to petitions, of Holy Hoprig was none of Florian’s affair. A little wonder, however, about just where the saint might be doing what, was, Florian hoped, permissible, since he had found such wondering not to be avoided.
12. Niceties of Fratricide
NOW that Florian came out of the provinces, he wished to take matters in order. Not merely a snobbish pride of race led him to give his family affairs precedence to those of the Bourbons. It was, rather, that Florian yet had a day to wait before the coming of the winter solstice. He was unwilling to waste these twenty-four hours, because Florian looked with some uneasiness toward the inevitable encounter with his wife-ridden brother, and Florian was desirous to get this worry off his mind. For, a thing done, as Janicot had mentioned, has an end. …
Florian therefore made inquiries as to where Raoul was passing that evening; and the two brothers thus met, as if by chance, at the home of the Duc de Brancas. The circle of Monsieur de Brancas was not gallant toward women, and his guests were gentlemen in middle age, the most of whom came each with a boy of seventeen or thereabouts.
Florian was grieved when, as he approached the group clustered about the big fireplace, he saw with what ceremony Raoul bowed. Raoul had fattened, he seemed taller, he was to-night superb in this crimson coat, with huge turned-back cuffs,—that must be the very latest mode,—and in this loose gold-laced white waistcoat, descending to the knees, and unfastened at the bottom. Raoul had the grand air of their father: a tall man was always so much more impressive. For the rest, it was fully apparent that the dear fellow’s abominable wife had been at her mischief-making.
“Monsieur the Duke,” Raoul began, “this encounter is indeed fortunate.”