ABSTRACT
The servant who opened the door was twin sister to that efficient and hideous creature bearing a soup tureen into the First French Picture. Her round red face shone like freshly washed china. She had a pair of immense bare arms to match, and a quantity of mottled hair arranged in a sort of bow. I stammered in a ridiculous, breathless fashion, as though a pack of Russian wolves were behind me rather than five flights of beautifully polished French stairs. “ Have you a room? ” The servant girl did not know. She would ask Madame. Madame was at dinner. “ Will you come in, please ? ” Through the dark hall, guarded by a large black stove that had the appearance of a headless cat with one red all-seeing eye in the middle of its stomach, I followed her into the salon. “ Please to sit down,” said the servant girl, closing the door behind her. I heard her list slippers shuffle along the corridor, the sound of another door opening—a little clamour—instantly suppressed. Silence followed. The salon was long and narrow, with a yellow floor dotted with white mats. White muslin curtains hid the windows : the walls were white, decorated with pictures of pale ladies drifting down cypress avenues to forsaken temples, and moons rising over boundless oceans. You would have thought that all the long years of Madame’s virginity had been devoted to the making of white mats—that her childish voice had lisped its numbers in crochet work stitches. I did not dare to begin counting them. They rained upon me from every possible place, like impossible snowflakes. Even the piano stool was buttoned into one embroidered with P. F. I had been looking for a resting place all the morning. At the start I flew up innumerable stairs as though they were major scales—the most cheerful things in the world— but after repeated failures the scales had resolved into the minor, and my heart which was quite cast down by this time, leapt up again at these signs and tokens of virtue and sobriety. “ A woman with such sober passions,” thought I, “ is bound to be quiet and38 clean, with few babies and a much absent husband. Mats are not the sort of things that lend themselves in their making to cheerful singing. Mats are essentially the fruits of pious solitude. I shall certainly take a room here.” And I began to dream of unpacking my clothes in a little white room, and getting into a kimono and lying on a white bed, watching the curtains float out from the window in the delicious autumn air that smelled of apples and honey … until the door opened and a tall thin woman in a lilac pinafore came in, smiling in a vague fashion. “ Madame Seguin ? ” “ Yes, Madame.” I repeated the familiar story. A quiet room. Removed from any church bells, or crowing cocks, or little boys’ schools, or railway stations. “ There are none of such things anywhere near here,” said Madame, looking very surprised. “ I have a very beautiful room to let, and quite unexpectedly. It has been occupied by a young gentleman from Buenos Ayres whose father died, unfortunately, and implored him to return home immediately. Quite natural, indeed.” “ Oh, very ! ” said I, hoping that the Hamletlike apparition was at rest again and would not invade my solitude to make certain of his son’s obedience. “If Madame will follow me.” Down a dark corridor, round a corner I felt my way. I wanted to ask Madame if this was where Buenos Ayres père appeared unto his son, but I did not dare to. “ Here—you see. Quite away from everything,” said Madame.
