Grahame, Lucia Page 3

  And as soon as he spoke, he dispelled my misperception that he might be a candidate for French lessons. For although Sir Anthony had not been born to the tongue, he used it, in a low voice which I found disarmingly pleasant, with as much appreciation and sensitivity as if it had been a woman and he her lover.

  But he did nothing to suggest that he wished to impress anyone with his fluency. Indeed, he spoke very little, and although unerringly polite, he was so unforthcoming that I began to imagine he had been dragged along against his will.

  Lord Marsden was warm and voluble, attentive and amusing; his cousin was remote and virtually mute. At first I thought he was unspeakably bored; soon I began to sense that behind his indifferent facade, he was alert to everything, although he contributed nothing. Perhaps, as he was undoubtedly accustomed to luxury, he was dismayed by the shabbiness of his present surroundings.

  When I made a polite effort to bring him into the conversation, which had been bubbling along quite easily without his help, his response was not encouraging.

  “How long are you in Paris, Sir Anthony?” I asked him at one point.

  “Several months possibly, Madame Brooks,” was his not very illuminating reply. Then he fell utterly silent as if he could think of nothing further to add.

  With an inward shrug, I turned all my attention back to Lord Marsden. One thing I particularly liked about Lord Marsden was that I could speak to him of Frederick without pain. Lord Marsden had known Frederick at his best and at his worst, and it was Frederick at his best that he remembered. Now, instead of dredging up our mutual sorrow over Frederick’s death, he and I began to discuss a commission that Lord Marsden had proposed to Frederick before the final tragedy. By that time even Marsden had come to see that Frederick was regaining his powers, and he had tentatively indicated to Frederick his interest in commissioning further scenes from his beloved Shakespeare. In consequence of that, Frederick and I, during the last weeks before his death, had been reading the history plays aloud to each other at night. That was when I’d at last dared to believe that we had truly reached the turning point and that the closeness and the passion between us, which had been so damaged, might one day be fully restored.

  Now as I recounted to Lord Marsden one of Frederick’s wicked puns about Henry V and the Hundred Years War between England and France, out of the corner of my eye I caught Sir Anthony gazing at me with an unfathomable expression. It nettled me. I was proud that instead of collapsing with grief I had managed to accept my loss so well and could smile and laugh when I spoke of Frederick to those who had loved him, too. But I interpreted Sir Anthony’s unrevealing stare as evidence that he was appalled by such levity in a woman who was only four months a widow.

  For this, I decided to tweak his nose a little.

  “And what is the object of your invasion of France?” I asked Sir Anthony. “Is it conquest?”

  He did not answer immediately. The expression which I had taken for disapproval turned very slowly into a faint, rather private smile.

  “Yes, Madame Brooks,” he said at last. “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  By this time I was really annoyed by his laconic replies to my questions. I decided that I would no longer allow him the luxury of withdrawing into himself and leaving the entire burden of conversation to his cousin and me.

  I was about to make a pointed comment when his eyes began to sparkle a little. It seemed that he was about to amplify his statement, after all.

  “But France has nothing to fear from me,” he said. “The territory I hope to win is really very small.”

  “I would hardly call it insignificant,” I replied. “I understand that you are an art collector, so you may as well admit that you have come here to plunder.”

  Sir Anthony looked entirely unchastened.

  “That is a strong accusation,” he said, still with that half smile. “But if it is plunder to admire something of extraordinary beauty and to dream of possessing and cherishing it, then I am guilty.”

  It was at this point that I began to find Sir Anthony more intriguing than I had at first suspected. It seemed that he had the French gift of conversation; in speaking of a most ordinary matter, he had given his words a subtly flirtatious twist. It’s a courtier’s trick—the sort of thing which gives a woman pleasure without making her feel compromised.

  “If you intended only to dream,” I replied, “I would not be concerned. But I fear you are about to besiege poor France with a far more powerful weapon than the longbow and will march off with all her treasures.”

  At this he actually laughed. It was a delightful laugh, low and soft like a caress.

  “I suppose you are referring to my pocketbook,” he said with unembarrassed candor. “But mine will be a very hollow victory, Madame Brooks, if I take back to England only what I am able to buy.”

  Before I could puzzle out the meaning of that remark, he assumed a far less playful tone and began to quiz me very earnestly about my own admiration for the Symbolists.

  Pleased at having managed to pry him out of his shell of reserve, I responded in the same vein, and a lively discussion ensued among the three of us.

  At the end of the visit, however, when I expressed the polite hope that Sir Anthony would call again, I never imagined that he would pursue the acquaintance.

  CHAPTER TWO

  But Sir Anthony made a second call. Again he seemed to have come as a sort of reluctant equerry to Lord Marsden. Again his manner was distant, and this time I did not put myself to the trouble of trying to draw him out. Toward the end of the visit, however, he surprised me by making a languid remark to the effect that the dealer, Julien, with whom he was slightly acquainted, had once mentioned that I had an extraordinarily fine eye.

  “Monsieur Julien is more than kind,” I said, coloring a little, for the point that Julien had made to Sir Anthony was a rather sore one with me. Julien was forever praising my discernment, but when I’d dragged myself out of the slough of despond to face the fact that Frederick had drunk and gambled all our money away, and that he had buried his splendid gifts in a haze of alcohol and false bravado, Julien had done something I found it painful to recall.

  I’d been desperate to find a means of supporting Frederick, since he could no longer support me.

  So I had gone to Julien, bashful and anxious, to remind him of all that extravagant praise, and to remind him, too, of the explanations he had long ago made for his initial refusals to examine Frederick’s work—he was old, he was tired, he was already overstretched, he hadn’t the energy or the inclination to take on a new talent—all of which suggested that he might welcome an opportunity to entrust some of his burdens to another person. I’d asked him timidly whether he would consider making me his assistant and teaching me what he knew. I offered to work for nothing at first, until I had proven my abilities. I told him there was no task so lowly that I would refuse it. I would have washed his floors, swept his grates, dusted his marble busts, and trudged all over Paris on menial errands, if only he would take me on and educate me in the secrets of his trade.

  And he’d said no.

  What his objection came down to was that I was a woman, and not only a woman, but a lady, a delicate flower from an English hothouse.

  I might have laughed in his face had I not been so angry and disappointed. Me—a lady!

  But it was my own fault. It was the illusion I’d intended to create from the moment I’d first arrived in Paris and had strolled its fashionable boulevards on Frederick’s arm, wearing the polonaise-style silk dress he’d bought for me from what was left of the little nest egg he’d inherited and scarcely knew how to manage. The dress had been a wild extravagance—one of the very few to which I’d surrendered before I was able to persuade him that until he had established his reputation we would have to make every centime do the work of two.

  Eventually, even when not so exquisitely attired, I managed to pass myself off to all of Paris, with the exception of my husband, as a mysteri
ous, splendid, and refined creature. Not a soul could have guessed the truth about my origins, the humiliations of my youth, or that my gloss had come, not from a privileged upbringing, but from my grandmother’s ruthless determination to make me an even more successful courtesan than she had once been—a fate I’d eluded by the skin of my teeth. I’d loved Frederick from the moment I set eyes on him, but it was to escape my grandmother and the repellent destiny toward which she was so intent upon driving me, that I’d fled with him to France.

  After that she always told me I’d pay for it, that one bitter day I’d learn that I could have taken far better care of myself than Frederick would.

  Of course, when it came to that point and I’d tried to take care of us both, I’d failed miserably. When I’d pressed Julien to elaborate upon his polite refusal, he’d confessed that it wasn’t merely my gender and presumed refinement which so unsuited me for his trade, it was my nature as well.

  “You’re too… transparent, Madame Brooks,” he’d told me. “You’re not subtle enough, you show your hand on your face, you can’t conceal your enthusiasms, you can’t dissemble. You have the eye, yes, but not the instincts for this business. I’m sorry.”

  Now I lifted my eyes, those liabilities which hid too little, to Sir Anthony’s face.

  He had just finished asking whether I would object to joining him on his next visit to the Louvre; it would give him pleasure to savor its fabulous collections in the company of a real connoisseur.

  Although the words themselves flattered, I expected, from the tone of his request, to find an expression of bored indifference upon his face, and certainly it seemed as if he were making an effort to wear precisely such a look. But for a second his eyes gave something else away; it was impossible to define the significance of the mute appeal in them. I only knew that some feeling had flickered across his face which seemed entirely out of keeping with our brief and casual acquaintance.

  In an instant it was gone. As I tried to absorb its meaning, I did not realize that two little furrows must have appeared on my brow, until Sir Anthony broke the silence again.

  “I beg your pardon, Madame Brooks,” he said hastily. “It was a most unsuitable suggestion under the circumstances. I do hope you will forgive me….”

  By now he was stumbling over his words—this polished, impeccably bred English gentleman! But I understood exactly what he meant. In issuing his invitation, he had not demonstrated the proper consideration for my bereavement.

  Perhaps I ought to have felt embarrassed for him. Lord Marsden did, I think, for he was determinedly studying the cracks in the wall, and although his face was impassive, his eyes suggested that he was trying not to smile at his cousin’s discomfiture.

  But I wasn’t embarrassed. Not at all. I felt a warm rush of delight. As haughty and impenetrable as Sir Anthony’s manner appeared to be, it seemed that neither the inherent arrogance of his class nor the rigid discipline of English schooling had entirely eradicated his humanity. In that moment he seemed very young indeed and endearingly vulnerable.

  “Oh no! It was not an unsuitable suggestion at all!” I exclaimed. “Quite the opposite! My late husband was the very last person to have begrudged me such an innocent pleasure as you have proposed. He never had any regard for hollow social forms, you know, and still less for weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

  Sir Anthony laughed.

  “I must confess,” I went on, to assuage any awkwardness he might still feel, “that I take issue with the ladies of the Faubourg St.-Germain where the etiquette of mourning is concerned, for I believe it is unhealthy to wallow in one’s sorrows. I would be delighted to accompany you to the Louvre, Sir Anthony. I used to visit it so often, and I have missed it.”

  Had I gone to the Louvre alone, everyone might have felt sorry for me, a frail figure in black. Certainly I would have looked gratifyingly woebegone, for I would have felt Frederick’s absence so keenly as to make pleasure impossible. But Sir Anthony might well distract me very pleasantly from any unmanageable onslaughts of loneliness and self-pity, and I found I welcomed the possibility. I was so tired of dwelling on the sorrows and failures of my irreparable past. I was twenty-five years old. I wanted to enjoy myself.

  “It is most kind of you, Madame Brooks,” Sir Anthony was saying in his low voice.

  We smiled at each other until, by shifting slightly in his chair, Lord Marsden called us back to an awareness of his presence in the room.

  As a fiacre carried us toward the Louvre, Sir Anthony asked me which of its collections I most wished to see.

  “But you are the visitor!” I protested. “The choice is yours.”

  “But you are my guide,” was his lazy rebuttal. “How can I learn from your enthusiasms if you won’t reveal them?”

  He spoke in the calm and measured way that I had at first misinterpreted as a symptom of chronic ennui. But today I observed a hint of restrained gaiety in his manner that told me he was as intent upon enjoying himself as I was.

  By the time we arrived at the Louvre’s Pavilion Denon, we had agreed that the antique sculpture collection must be our first port of call. I was a step or two ahead of Sir Anthony, who had paused to leave my parasol and his umbrella in the custody of an attendant, and the crush of visitors was so great that, rather than diving forward, I hesitated momentarily from a vague and rather irrational fear of becoming separated from my companion.

  Then I felt his warm hand at my waist guiding me subtly toward the left.

  I was very glad that Sir Anthony was behind me and could not see my face: His touch, brief and light but supremely assured, had unleashed a tidal wave of pure physical feeling in me, and during the moment or two that it took me to reestablish the connection between my tingling body and my practical brain, I could feel that my cheeks had gone scarlet. Sir Anthony, had he seen this, might well have once again imagined that he had offended me. He could not possibly have guessed how infrequently, in recent years, I had known a man’s touch. And not once during that time had my body responded as eagerly as it had to this stranger.

  By an effort of will, I managed to slow my racing pulse and turn my eyes calmly upon my companion, knowing that they betrayed nothing.

  In the Rotonde, we contemplated Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, moved on to admire the first Lycian Apollo, and presently came to the wonderful Silenus tending the infant Bacchus.

  “Have you ever been to Florence, Madame Brooks?” Sir Anthony inquired as we stood before the affecting pair.

  “Oh no,” I said, with a pang. That unknown city was laden with private significance for me. My grandmother had once lived there, for what I suspected was one of the few truly happy intervals in her life; Frederick had studied there; and in the early days of our marriage we had often promised each other that one day we would visit it together.

  Frederick.

  I seized upon his name as a defense against the amazing flood of sheer animal hunger that had swept through me only minutes earlier.

  “My husband studied in Florence,” I told Sir Anthony, “and we often planned to visit it together. He wanted so much to show me Michelangelo’s David.”

  “Oh yes, the David is perfection itself,” agreed Sir Anthony. “But if you ever go to Florence, be sure not to overlook his Bacchus, which is in the Bargello. I like it better than the David, even if it is not so impressive a work.”

  “And why are you so fond of it?” I asked with a little smile, for it amused me to think that while my drunken husband had favored the alert and utterly sober David, the sober Sir Anthony would harbor a preference for the god of intoxication.

  “The Bacchus himself is exquisite, but the little satyr at the god’s feet is utterly enchanting,” explained Sir Anthony. “When you come upon those eyes from a certain angle, it seems like a living thing. The first time I saw it, it brought me up short. I felt as if I’d stumbled upon something from another world.”

  As he went on to describe, in his low voice, the effect of that sed
uctive, pagan gaze, I wondered what wayward string in his reserved English soul had vibrated to it so strongly.

  “How you surprise me!” I told him artlessly, as we moved on. Regrettably, I had never mastered the art of proper English conversation, which dictates that, unless one is with intimate friends, one must rigidly confine oneself to the most impersonal subjects. However, I had already gone too far to turn back, so I plunged on. “I would have taken you for a worshiper of Apollo, not of Bacchus!”

  “And you’d have been right, I suppose,” said Sir Anthony with a rueful laugh. “Certainly Apollo is far more admirable. He never spoke a false word, you know. But Bacchus was always gentle, even in anger, while Apollo, as you must recall, could be very cruel.”

  “Cruel?” I said. “Apollo, the healer?”

  “He slew Niobe’s children,” Sir Anthony reminded me.

  I felt my face close up.

  “Yes,” I murmured. “He was very cruel.”

  Thereafter, for a time, every image I saw evoked thoughts of destruction and loss and drew my mind relentlessly back to the sorrows I had come here to forget. They seemed to chastise me for the frivolous spirit in which I had undertaken the day’s adventure.

  But once we had moved into the Salle de Psyche, the frivolity of my nature began to reassert itself—with some help from Sir Anthony.

  We spent a long time admiring the Venus de Milo.

  “The perfect woman,” I remarked as I studied the serene loveliness of her features.

  “Not quite perfect,” said Sir Anthony dryly.

  I glanced up at him.

  “You don’t regard her as the ne plus ultra of feminine beauty?”

  His eyes lingered on me with the same unrevealing expression I had seen in them at our first meeting.

  “No,” was all he said.

  But later, just before we left, we agreed that we must pay our respects to the Nikè of Samotbrace, and Sir Anthony admired her so extravagantly that at last I felt compelled to observe, “So that is your belle idéale! A woman with wings!”