Генри Джеймс
Four Meetings
“Two months ago.”
“Happy man! Tell me something about it What were they doing? Oh, for an hour of the boulevard!”
“They were doing about what they are always doing,—amusing themselves a good deal.”
“At the theatres, eh?” sighed the Countess. “At the cafés-concerts, at the little tables in front of the doors? Quelle existence! You know I am a Parisienne, monsieur,” she added, “to my fingertips.”
“Miss Spencer was mistaken, then,” I ventured to rejoin, “in telling me that you are a Provençale.”
She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had a dingy, desultory aspect. “Ah, I am a Provençale by birth; but I am a Parisienne by—inclination.”
“And by experience, I suppose?” I said.
She questioned me a moment with her hard little eyes. “Oh, experience! I could talk of experience if I wished. I never expected, for example, that experience had this in store for me.” And she pointed with her bare elbow, and with a jerk of her head, at everything that surrounded her,—at the little white house, the quince-tree, the rickety paling, even at Mr. Mixter.
“You are in exile!” I said, smiling.
“You may imagine what it is! These two years that I have been here I have passed hours—hours! One gets used to things, and sometimes I think I have got used to this. But there are some things that are always beginning over again. For example, my coffee.”
“Do you always have coffee at this hour?” I inquired.
She tossed back her head and measured me.
“At what hour would you prefer me to have it? I must have my little cup after breakfast.”
“Ah, you breakfast at this hour?”
“At midday—comme cela se fait. Here they breakfast at a quarter past seven! That ‘quarter past’ is charming!”
“But you were telling me about your coffee? I observed sympathetically.
“My cousine can’t believe in it; she can’t understand it. She’s an excellent girl; but that little cup of black coffee, with a drop of cognac, served at this hour,—they exceed her comprehension. So I have to break the ice every day, and it takes the coffee the time you see to arrive. And when it arrives, monsieur! If I don’t offer you any of it you must not take it ill. It will be because I know you have drunk it on the boulevard.”
I resented extremely this scornful treatment of poor Caroline Spencer’s humble hospitality; but I said nothing, in order to say nothing uncivil. I only looked on Mr. Mixter, who had clasped his arms round his knees and was watching my companion’s demonstrative graces in solemn fascination. She presently saw that I was observing him; she glanced at me with a little bold explanatory smile. “You know, he adores me,” she murmured, putting her nose into her tapestry again. I expressed the promptest credence, and she went on. “He dreams of becoming my lover! Yes, it’s his dream. He has read a French novel; it took him six months. But ever since that he has thought himself the hero, and me the heroine!”
Mr. Mixter had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he was too preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment Caroline Spencer came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little tray. I noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick, vaguely appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt that it signified a sort of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world who had been in France, I thought of the Countess. It made me extremely uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the Countess was very possibly the runaway wife of a little hair-dresser. I tried suddenly, on the contrary, to show a high consideration for her. But I got up; I could n’t stay longer. It vexed me to see Caroline Spencer standing there like a waiting-maid.
“You expect to remain some time at Grimwinter?” I said to the Countess.
She gave a terrible shrug.
“Who knows? Perhaps for years. When one is in misery!—Chere belle” she added, turning to Miss Spencer, “you have forgotten the cognac!”
I detained Caroline Spencer as, after looking a moment in silence at the little table, she was turning away to procure this missing delicacy. I silently gave her my hand in farewell. She looked very tired, but there was a strange hint of prospective patience in her severely mild little face. I thought she was rather glad I was going. Mr. Mixter had risen to his feet and was pouring out the Countess’s coffee. As I went back past the Baptist church I reflected that poor Miss Spencer had been right in her presentiment that she should still see something of that dear old Europe.
