Her discourse poured on. She had set the little tray with the plate of reddish-yellowish soup on a flat shelf of wood that turned out on a screw from underneath the bed; in the soup was a shining clinical thermometer that she moved and regarded from time to time, beside the plate a glass syringe, graduated. She said that Ils — They — had combined to render her soup of vegetables uneatable. They would not give her navets de Paris but round ones, like buttons; they contrived that the carrots should be pourris at their bottom ends; the leeks were of the consistency of wood. They were determined that he should not have vegetable soup because they wanted him to have meat juice. They were anthropophagi. Nothing but meat, meat, meat! That girl!…
She had always in the Grey’s Inn Road had Paris turnips from Jacopo’s in Old Compton Street. There was no reason why you should not grow navets de Paris in this soil. The Paris turnip was barrel-shaped, round, round, round like an adorable little pig till it turned into its funny little tail. That was a turnip to amuse you; to change and employ your thoughts. Ils — he and she — were incapable of having their thoughts changed by a turnip.
Between sentences she ejaculated from time to time:
“My poor man! What they have made of you?”
Her volubility flowed over Mark like a rush of water over a grating, only a phrase or so now and then coming to his attention. It was not unpleasant; he liked his woman. She had a cat that she made abstain from meat on a Friday. In the Gray’s Inn Road that had been easier, in a large room decorated with innumerable miniatures and silhouettes representing members of the Riotor family and its branches. Mme Riotor mère and Mme Riotor grand’mère too had been miniature painters and Marie Léonie possessed some astonishingly white statuary by the distinguished sculptor Casimir-Bar, a life-long friend of her family who had only never been decorated because of a conspiracy. So he had a great contempt for decorations and the decorated. Marie Léonie had been accustomed to repeat the voluminous opinions of Monsieur Casimir-Bar on the subject of decorations at great length on occasion. Since he, Mark, had been honoured by his sovereign she had less frequently recited them. She admitted that the democracy of to-day had not the sterling value that had distinguished democrats of the day of her parents, so it might be better to caser oneself — to find a niche amongst those whom the State distinguished.
The noise of her voice, which was deep-chested and not unpleasing, went on. Mark regarded her with the ironic indulgence that you accord to a child, but indeed, when he had been still in harness it had rested him always to come home as he had done every Thursday and Monday and not infrequently on a Wednesday when there had been no racing. It had rested him to come home from a world of incompetent imbecile’s and to hear this brain comment on that world. She had views on virtue, pride, downfalls, human careers, the habits of cats, fish, the clergy, diplomats, soldiers, women of easy virtue, Saint Eustachius, President Grévy, the purveyors of comestibles, custom-house officers, pharmacists, Lyons silk weavers, the keepers of boarding-houses, garotters, chocolate-manufacturers, sculptors other than M. Casimir-Bar, the lovers of married women, housemaids…. Her mind in fact was like a cupboard, stuffed, packed with the most incongruous materials, tools, vessels, and débris. Once the door was opened you never knew what would tumble out or be followed by what. That was restful to Mark as foreign travel might have been — only he had never been abroad except when his father, before his accession to Groby, had lived in Dijon for his chidren’s education. That was how he knew French.
Her conversation had another quality that continually amused him: she always ended it with the topic with which she had chosen to begin. Thus, to-day having chosen to begin with navets de Paris, with Paris turnips she would end, and it amused him to observe how on each occasion she would bring the topic back. She might be concluding a long comment on ironclads and have to get back suddenly to custards because the door-bell rang while her maid was out, but accomplish the transition she would before she answered the bell. Otherwise she was frugal, shrewd, astonishingly clean and healthy.
Whilst she was giving him his soup, inserting the glass syringe in his lips at half minute intervals which she timed by her wrist-watch, she was talking about furniture…. Ils would not let her apply to the species of rabbit-hutches in the salon a varnish that she imported from Paris; Monsieur her brother-in-law had really exhibited when she had actually varnished a truly discreditable chair — had exhibited a distraction that had really filled her with amusement. It was possible that the fashion of the day was for furniture of decrepitude or gross forms. That they would not let her place in the salon the newly gilt arm-chair of her late mother or the sculptural group representing Niobe and some of her offspring by the late Monsieur Casimir-Bar or the over-mantel clock that was an exact reproduction in bronze of the Fountain of the Medicis in the gardens of the Luxembourg at Paris — that was a matter of taste. Elle might very well feel umbrage that she, Marie Léonie, should possess articles of such acknowledged prestige. For what could be more unapproachable than a Second Empire fauteuil newly gilt and maintained, she could assure the world, at such a pitch of glitter as dazzled the eyes? Elle might very well feel umbrage when you considered that the skirt that she wore when gardening was… Well, in short was what it was! Nevertheless in that skirt she allowed herself to be seen by the clergyman. But why did Il who was admittedly a man of honour and sensibility and reputed to know all the things of this world and perhaps of the next — why did He join in the infinitely stupid conspiracy against the work of the great genius Casimir-Bar? She, Marie Léonie, could understand that He, in his difficult situation would not wish to give permission to instal in the Salon works at which Elle took umbrage because her possessions did not include objects of art which all the world acknowledged to be of classic rank, not to mention the string of pearls which she, Marie Léonie, Riotor by birth, owed to the generosity of him, Mark, and her own economies. And other objects of value and taste. That was reasonable. If your woman is poorly dot-ed… let us call it dot-ed… because, certainly she, Marie Léonie, was not one to animadvert upon those in situations of difficulty…. It would ill become her so to do! Nevertheless a great period of years of honesty, frugality, regularity of life and cleanliness… And she asked Mark if he had ever seen in her parlour traces of mud such as on wet days she had certainly observed in the salon of a certain person…. And certain revelations she could make as to what had used to be the condition of a cupboard under the stairs and the state to be observed behind certain presses in the kitchen! But if you have not had experience in the control of domestics, what would you?… Nevertheless a stretch of years passed in the state of housewifeliness such as she had already adumbrated upon gave one the right to comment — of course — with delicacy, upon the ménage of a young person even though her delicate situation might avert from her comment of an un-Christian nature as to certain other facts. It did however seem to her, Marie Léonie, that to appear before a clergyman in a skirt decorated with no less than three visible tâches of petrol, wearing gloves encrusted with mud as you encrust a truffle with paste before baking it under the cinders — and holding, of all implements, a common gardening-trowel…. And to laugh and joke with him!… Surely the situation called for a certain — let them call it, retirement of demeanour. She was far from according to the Priest the extravagant privileges to which priests laid claim. The late Monsieur Casimir-Bar was accustomed to say that if we accorded to our soi-disant spiritual advisers all that they would take we should lie upon a bed that had neither sheets, eidredons, pillows, bolsters, nor settle. And she, Marie-Léonie, was inclined to agree with Monsieur Casimir-Bar, though, as one of the heroes of the barricades in 1848, he was apt to be a little extreme in his tenets. Still a vicar is in England a functionary of the State and as such should be received with a certain modesty and reserve. On the other hand — she, Marie Léonie — formerly Riotor, her mother having been born Lavigne-Bourdreau and having in consequence a suspicion of Huguenot blood so that she, Marie Léonie, might be expected to know how the Protestant clergy should be received — she, then, Marie Léonie, from the little window on the side of the stairs, had distinctly seen Elle lay one hand on the shoulder of that clergyman and point — point, mind you, with the trowel — to the open front door and say — she had distinctly heard the words: “Poor man, if you have hunger you will find Mr. Tietjens in the dining-room. He is just eating a sandwich. It’s hungry weather!”… That was six months ago, but Marie Léonie’s ears still tingled at the words and the gesture. A trowel! To point with a trowel; pensez y! If a trowel why not a main de fer, a dustpan? Or a vessel even more homely!… And Marie Léonie chuckled.