Part 2 (1/2)
This was said in the tone which, coming from a woman means: ”If you refuse we shall quarrel.”
”Willingly, madame,” replied the captain. ”But as I have not the fortune of a count, have the kindness to call me captain.”
”Very good, captain; give me your arm,” she said,--taking it and leading the way to the dining-room with the flattering familiarity which enchants all lovers.
The countess placed the captain beside her; his behavior was that of a poor sub-lieutenant dining at his general's table. He let Clementine talk, listened deferentially as to a superior, did not differ with her in anything, and waited to be questioned before he spoke at all. He seemed actually stupid to the countess, whose coquettish little ways missed their mark in presence of such frigid gravity and conventional respect. In vain Adam kept saying: ”Do be lively, Thaddeus; one would really suppose you were not at home. You must have made a wager to disconcert Clementine.” Thaddeus continued heavy and half asleep.
When the servants left the room at the end of the dessert the captain explained that his habits were diametrically opposite to those of society,--he went to bed at eight o'clock and got up very early in the morning; and he excused his dulness on the ground of being sleepy.
”My intention in taking you to the Opera was to amuse you, captain; but do as you prefer,” said Clementine, rather piqued.
”I will go,” said Paz.
”Duprez sings 'Guillaume Tell,'” remarked Adam. ”But perhaps you would rather go to the 'Varietes'?”
The captain smiled and rang the bell. ”Tell Constantin,” he said to the footman, ”to put the horses to the carriage instead of the coupe. We should be rather squeezed otherwise,” he said to the count.
”A Frenchman would have forgotten that,” remarked Clementine, smiling.
”Ah! but we are Florentines transplanted to the North,” answered Thaddeus with a refinement of accent and a look in his eyes which made his conduct at table seem a.s.sumed for the occasion. There was too evident a contrast between his involuntary self-revelation in this speech and his behavior during dinner. Clementine examined the captain with a few of those covert glances which show a woman's surprise and also her capacity for observation.
It resulted from this little incident that silence reigned in the salon while the three took their coffee, a silence rather annoying to Adam, who was incapable of imagining the cause of it. Clementine no longer tried to draw out Thaddeus. The captain, on the other hand, retreated within his military stiffness and came out of it no more, neither on the way to the Opera nor in the box, where he seemed to be asleep.
”You see, madame, that I am a very stupid man,” he said during the dance in the last act of ”Guillaume Tell.” ”Am I not right to keep, as the saying is, to my own specialty?”
”In truth, my dear captain, you are neither a talker nor a man of the world, but you are perhaps Polish.”
”Therefore leave me to look after your pleasures, your property, your household--it is all I am good for.”
”Tartufe! pooh!” cried Adam, laughing. ”My dear, he is full of ardor; he is thoroughly educated; he can, if he chooses, hold his own in any salon. Clementine, don't believe his modesty.”
”Adieu, comtesse; I have obeyed your wishes so far; and now I will take the carriage and go home to bed and send it back for you.”
Clementine bowed her head and let him go without replying.
”What a bear!” she said to the count. ”You are a great deal nicer.”
Adam pressed her hand when no one was looking.
”Poor, dear Thaddeus,” he said, ”he is trying to make himself disagreeable where most men would try to seem more amiable than I.”
”Oh!” she said, ”I am not sure but what there is some _calculation_ in his behavior; he would have taken in an ordinary woman.”
Half an hour later, when the cha.s.seur, Boleslas, called out ”Gate!” and the carriage was waiting for it to swing back, Clementine said to her husband, ”Where does the captain perch?”
”Why, there!” replied Adam, pointing to a floor above the porte-cochere which had one window looking on the street. ”His apartments are over the coachhouse.”
”Who lives on the other side?” asked the countess.
”No one as yet,” said Adam; ”I mean that apartment for our children and their instructors.”
”He didn't go to bed,” said the countess, observing lights in Thaddeus's rooms when the carriage had pa.s.sed under the portico supported by columns copied from those of the Tuileries, which replaced a vulgar zinc awning painted in stripes like cloth.