Suddenly Dallas stopped short, grasping his father’s arm. “Oh, by Jove,” he exclaimed.
They had come out into the great tree-planted space before the Invalides. The dome of Mansart floated ethereally above the budding trees and the long grey front of the building: drawing up into itself all the rays of afternoon light, it hung there like the visible symbol of the race’s glory.
Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square near one of the avenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter as quiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit it up. Now, by some queer process of association, that golden light became for him the pervading illumination in which she lived. For nearly thirty years, her life–of which he knew so strangely little–had been spent in this rich atmosphere that he already felt to be too dense and yet too stimulating for his lungs. He thought of the theatres she must have been to, the pictures she must have looked at, the sober and splendid old houses she must have frequented, the people she must have talked with, the incessant stir of ideas, curiosities, images and associations thrown out by an intensely social race in a setting of immemorial manners; and suddenly he remembered the young Frenchman who had once said to him: “Ah, good conversation–there is nothing like it, is there?”
Archer had not seen M. Riviere, or heard of him, for nearly thirty years; and that fact gave the measure of his ignorance of Madame Olenska’s existence. More than half a lifetime divided them, and she had spent the long interval among people he did not know, in a society he but faintly guessed at, in conditions he would never wholly understand. During that time he had been living with his youthful memory of her; but she had doubtless had other and more tangible companionship. Perhaps she too had kept her memory of him as something apart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim chapel, where there was not time to pray every day. . . .
They had crossed the Place des Invalides, and were walking down one of the thoroughfares flanking the building. It was a quiet quarter, after all, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gave one an idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes as this were left to the few and the indifferent.
The day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and there by a yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little square into which they had turned. Dallas stopped again, and looked up.
“It must be here,” he said, slipping his arm through his father’s with a movement from which Archer’s shyness did not shrink; and they stood together looking up at the house.
It was a modern building, without distinctive character, but many-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-coloured front. On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the rounded tops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were still lowered, as though the sun had just left it.
“I wonder which floor–?” Dallas conjectured; and moving toward the porte-cochere he put his head into the porter’s lodge, and came back to say: “The fifth. It must be the one with the awnings.”
Archer remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end of their pilgrimage had been attained.
“I say, you know, it’s nearly six,” his son at length reminded him.
The father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.
“I believe I’ll sit there a moment,” he said.
“Why–aren’t you well?” his son exclaimed.
“Oh, perfectly. But I should like you, please, to go up without me.”
Dallas paused before him, visibly bewildered. “But, I say, Dad: do you mean you won’t come up at all?”
“I don’t know,” said Archer slowly.
“If you don’t she won’t understand.”
“Go, my boy; perhaps I shall follow you.”
Dallas gave him a long look through the twilight.
“But what on earth shall I say?”
“My dear fellow, don’t you always know what to say?” his father rejoined with a smile.