The Bond/Part 3/Chapter 1
I
BEFORE Leonardo's picture of the Virgin, the Child, and St. Anne, in the Louvre, Teresa had lingered for some time. The expression of maternity in its two phases fascinated her; the caressing, youthful attitude of the Virgin as she leans toward the child, full of joy in its grace; and above all the face of St. Anne smiling on the two, with a whole world of sad and deep experience behind the smile. Teresa stood with her two gloved hands on the railing, studying the marvellous sweetness of that face. Her own was grave and wistful. She was pale and languid in the heat of the day; dressed in thin trailing black, except for the white gloves wrinkling up to her elbows, and she was alone.
She looked with sad eyes at the Virgin's face. There was happy maternity, physical and spiritual joy. Why had not such happiness come to her? Was it her fault that she had not desired her first child? Was it her fault that she had lost the second? Her eyes filled with tears.
She turned away, remembering an appointment with Nina, and came face to face with a man whom she had noticed vaguely as he entered the room, soon after herself. She had been conscious several times that he was looking at her rather than at the pictures, and that there was something distantly familiar to her about him. She stood looking at him, her blue eyes still misty with tears, her face perfectly pale under the thick bandeaux of her hair. He seemed slightly embarrassed, but there was such distinct recognition in his glance that she bowed to him mechanically. He came up to her at once, addressing her by her name, and Teresa gave him her hand.
"But you don't remember me, I see," he said, smiling.
He was of medium height, with a wiry, soldierly look. His thin face was deeply sunburnt; with its grave, intense eyes and impassive mouth that the slight black moustache did not hide, it was a sufficiently uncommon one; but Teresa could not place it, quite evidently.
"My name is Crayven—we met several years ago in New York," he explained.
"Oh, I remember perfectly—of course!" Teresa cried. "First at my house and then at dinner somewhere"
"And then I went to see you, next day, and you were not in. You had told me I might come."
"Had I? Why wasn't I in, then? I can't remember, "it's so long ago."
"More than three years. That was in April, and this is June. … Are you staying in Paris?"
"Yes, for a week or so longer. I'm with my sister, Countess di Pepoli. And you?"
"I'm off in a few days for Switzerland, for a little climbing."
"That's odd, we are going there, too, but only to the Val d'Iliez, for the summer. Your route will lie quite differently, I imagine. I remember you were bound for the high mountains when I saw you last."
"Yes, but I shall be somewhere near you, as it happens. I'm going to Chamounix, and I have to meet my wife in Montreux in August. … You—forgive me, you're not looking as well as when I saw you. I hope"
He stopped, and Teresa realised the meaning of his glance at her black dress.
"I have been rather ill this last winter—hence Switzerland," she said quickly. "My husband joins me there in the fall."
"Oh, I'm glad! I mean," he said, smiling, "so many things might have happened in three years! I didn't know if you were in mourning."
"Yes—so many things," murmured Teresa, absently. She was tired, unnerved by the heat; she felt the tears again in her eyes, and she stammered:
"I—I am in mourning. Six months ago I lost my baby."
"Oh," said Crayven, and she thought he looked at her strangely, uncertainly. She dried her eyes and added quickly:
"My other boy is with nie here. He is nearly two and a half now. … I'm afraid I must go on——I've an appointment for tea with my sister."
Crayven's eyes were so frankly expressive that she added at once:
"Perhaps you would come, too, and meet her."
"I will, with pleasure. Thank you, very much."
She turned for a final glance at the St. Anne.
"I can't get away from that picture," she said musingly. "Her face haunts me. She has lived through all that young joy herself, and she knows what comes after it—all the bitterness, all the sorrow. She knows what is to come. And yet she can smile on youth, too, so sweetly. …"
She moved abruptly away, and said to Crayven as they went out together: "What was it that you came in to see?"
"Well—in this case, you," he answered with the faint embarrassment he had shown before. "I saw you in the cab."
"And recognised me, after all this time? Really? How amazing!"
"No—not so very. You see, in my life people count for more than in most. They take the place of books and most other occupations. I never forget a face."
Teresa glanced at him with some surprise.
"I should not have thought that people counted much with you. I mean—you struck me somehow as a solitary person, one living apart from people. But after all, what do first impressions count?"
"They count much with me—for I have to act on them, generally, pretty promptly. I assure you, my life out there is anything but solitary. I have to deal with people every day—not in the afternoon-tea fashion, you know, but in matters involving life and death, often for them—and occasionally for myself."
He said it smiling, as a matter of course, and went on, as if it were a part of the same subject.
"I shall never forget my first impression of you—or rather the second, at Mrs. Blackley's. There was a radiance about you that night, a look of happiness, that one somehow doesn't often see."
"Yes. I was happy. …"
She said no more till Crayven had called a cab, and they were driving toward the tea-shop. Then they talked a little about Alice Blackley. Alice had not carried out her plan of invading the desert.
"I hope she has managed to amuse herself elsewhere," Crayven said with a smile. "But I don't think there are many people who can make a successful business of amusement. There are a few—generally men. Women are too much handicapped."
"I know one who does—one man—my brother-in-law. You'll see him, probably, if you come to Montreux, for he'll spend most of his time there. You would like him, I think—at least people always do. He's the most invariably pleasant person I've ever known."
"People can be who live for pleasure—not only to get it, but to give it."
"Yes, but it isn't all they give," said Teresa.
In Nina, who was waiting at the tea-place—for Teresa was late and Nina was always prompt—Teresa now saw always the wife of the man who amused himself. And Nina was more a mother than a wife. Her blonde beauty, for she had been really beautiful, was now somewhat worn and haggard. She looked ten years older than Teresa, instead of the actual three. She was dressed—not exactly carelessly—but without regard to her best points. Her figure, badly corseted, was almost middle-aged. Beside her Teresa looked like a young girl. When the other two came up to her table, Nina was scanning a long shopping-list and counting the money in her purse with a worried air; and responding brusquely to the incessant questions of her eldest girl, a sallow, deep-eyed child of nine. She put by her business when Crayven was presented, and made an effort to be social; but it was plainly an effort, Teresa saw that she was tired, and her mind preoccupied by the flood of grievances about the shops, and the behaviour of the French governess, and the fact that Ernesto would not come to Paris but had written from Monte Carlo for more money—which she had already poured out at luncheon. Ernestine, the little girl, sat silent while the tea was brought, devouring cakes and studying with her uncannily old eyes the persons of Crayven and Teresa. She was given a large cup of tea, and then began to ask her mother something, in rapid Italian.
"Speak English, child, I've told you," said Nina sharply.
"Oh, I thought," said Ernestine, slowly and distinctly, for her English was somewhat difficult, "that you said that Aunt Teresa said that she had no friends in Paris."
Teresa laughed.
"One finds friends unexpectedly sometimes," she said. "Everyone comes to Paris, you know, Ernestine."
"Oh," said Ernestine. She added, before her elders could fill the breach: "I wonder why my father doesn't come? He never will come when we're here. I wish he'd come, for he promised to take"
"Never mind, Ernestine," her mother interrupted, and went on rapidly to say that Paris in June was intolerable and that the weather this year was worse than ever.
Ernestine looked sulky at being checked, and sat pulling up her long silk mitts with an offended air. She was dressed entirely in white, with a care which contrasted strongly with her mother's toilette. When she had finished studying Crayven, which took some time, she transferred her attention to her own dress and her fluffy, beplumed hat, reflected in a mirror opposite, and a ray of pleasure appeared in her small face.
Teresa watched her with amusement, shadowed by a certain commiseration for Nina. The girl was so absolutely her father's daughter, except for her sharpness, which was Nina's quality somehow translated into unpleasantness.
Ernestine, to Teresa, summed up all the difficulties of Nina's marriage. She was frail physically, and mentally morbid. There was almost no relation between the child and her mother, except one of conflict. Whatever affection Ernestine had was given to her father, and she had said once:
"When I'm grown up, I shall be exactly like Papa. He does have the best time. Mamma is always working and worrying, and Papa just enjoys himself. I shall be good-looking, too, like him. Mamma looks so old and fat and never does her hair nicely. She never has any good clothes. Papa's boots cost eighty lire a pair! I shall have good clothes. Do you think I'm pretty, Aunt?"
"No, not exactly. You have nice eyes and hair," Teresa had said coolly.
"I have beautiful eyes—you know it. And that's the main thing. I know I shall be pretty."
"Is that all you think about, Ernestine—clothes and looks?"
"Well, no. I think about my animals—I have a King Charles spaniel and four cats. And I think about stories, and my friends, and about people a lot—what grown-up people do, and what I shall do when I'm grown-up. It isn't very amusing being a little girl—everybody thinks you're a stupid thing and always in the way. Mamma thinks I'm stupid because I don't do my lessons well, or learn the beastly piano. But you don't think so, do you, Aunt?"
"No, I think you're horridly sharp," Teresa had said.
"That's what Papa says," was Ernestine's satisfied response.
Teresa had perceived, at the end of two weeks' stay in Paris with Nina and her two elder children, that Ernestine liked her. The other daughter, Elaine, was a shy creature, always ailing, with Nina's blue eyes. The three boys, whom Teresa had never seen, were already in Switzerland, with the second governess and the Italian servants. None of the children was strong. Teresa sincerely pitied Nina under the weight of this establishment, but she had declined staying at the Swiss chalet as Nina's guest. The hotel would be quite near enough. She wanted to be as much alone as possible, or with the small Ronald. She was longing now, in the midst of sultry Paris, for the mountains, the pines, the snow and rushing streams, and for quiet—above all, quiet. Nina tired her, with her incessant demand for sympathy or at least for a listener; and she thought she would be better able to respond to this demand when she herself was a little stronger.
Crayven, on the contrary, was a restful person; he gave her a foretaste of that natural calm and silence she desired. She asked him to dinner, at this first meeting, and then he took Nina and herself out to dine and, at Teresa's request, to a popular theatre, which reminded her of her slumming expeditions in New York. He came twice afterward to see her, during the week they had still to spend in Paris; quietly attentive to her, always looking cool and strong in the midst of the wilting heat; self-contained, not amusing exactly, but attentive, and an agreeable person to have about. When they said good-bye it was with distinct pleasure that Teresa found he had advanced the date of his visit to her neghbourhood from August to early in July.
"But your mountains?" she said, smiling.
"Ah, mountains—they won't run away, you know. One can find them any time," he answered gravely.