Authors: Marjorie Bowen
As Madame Sims entered the restaurant she noticed a faded little water-colour hanging on the wall, and asked the landlady, standing behind her tureen and soup plates at a side table, what it was?
‘I don’t know, Madame. A waxwork or a girl asleep, I suppose. It was here when I took the house.’
‘I think she is dead,’ said Madame Sims. ‘How fortunate she is! Young and dead, you know. So many of us don’t know when to die. We go on living when it is a disgrace to do so.’
The landlady stared at her doubtfully. Madame Sims was plainly fidgety, unbalanced, and most oddly dressed in black lace and white taffeta finery that wanted mending and cleaning and made a mockery of her ruined grace, which had become exaggerated into a mincing affectation.
‘A mole by the lip!’ she added, peering into the drawing. ‘I remember when I used to wear one! I never knew why.’
She glided to her table with a grand air that made the landlady and the maid helping her with the soup giggle.
‘She looks like a death’s head — with those ribbons in her hair too!’
Madame Sims had asked to be set near the Irishman who usually dined in the rue Richepanse. ‘I haven’t spoken to an Irishman for years and years. I shall be pleased to make this gentleman’s acquaintance.’
But that evening he was late, or not coming at all. There were very few people in the restaurant and the table by Madame Sims remained empty. But she chattered gaily to the maid who waited on her, and, when she could get the attention of that personage, the landlady, about her splendid prospects in Paris; about her friendship with the King of the French, her early days with him at Belle Chase and the Palais Royal. Much amused, her two listeners winked at one another.
Madame Sims fell suddenly silent when a newcomer shuffled in and took his place at the table next her. She asked, in a curious whisper, if that was the Irishman? And on the maid replying that it was, she studied him curiously.
He was a tall, stout, robust man of sixty or so, with a broad hard face, small bold eyes, a bitter mouth, a coarse chin. Very handsomely dressed. He ate voraciously and grumbled about his food. When he had satisfied his first hunger he stared curiously at his companion, who regarded him with a smiling coquetry.
‘Monsieur is Irish?’ she asked, catching his eye.
‘No, no, English, ma’am, English,’ he replied in that language. ‘I was in the government service, ma’am, till that damned fellow Canning got into power.’
He was quite eager to talk about himself. The lady proved a sympathetic listener. Over his wine he became quite confidential. He did not often find any one who spoke English in this wretched place.
‘Why do you come here, sir?’
‘I don’t know! I stayed here as a young man. One feels drawn. It’s odd —’
‘Very odd,’ said Madame Sims. Her eyes were turned on a ring that he wore on his little finger, a cornelian which she knew, though she could not see this, was engraved with a figure of a dancing satyr. ‘I suppose in those days you were a rebel, sir.’
‘No, Madame. I flatter myself I have always been a patriot. I acted for the British Government even then.’
‘My God!’ cried the lady, staring at him. ‘Doesn’t it seem long ago? A lifetime!’
‘Yes, but I can remember it very well —’
‘Why, so can I. I was in Ireland in ’98.’
‘Were you indeed, Madame?’
‘Yes. I suppose you were concerned in the rebellion?’
‘In putting it down, yes. I served Lord Castlereagh pretty well, and he was not unmindful. But this rascal Canning —’
‘How unfortunate they were, these rebels! Do you recall the bloody ends they came to? Mr. Bond and — another — leader died in prison, Mr. Byrne was hanged, so were the Sheares brothers, holding hands, hanged together! And Robert Emmett — they say that the dogs lapped his blood in the public place —’
‘You seem very well informed, Madame!’
‘And Wolfe Tone! How audacious he was with his attempts to land a French fleet! He cut his throat to escape the hangman, did he not?’
‘You’ve a good memory, Madame. Well, the rebellion was put down. And Pitt got the Union, and I suppose Ireland is quiet for a while, and I am proud to say that I had a hand in it. But look ye, Madame, I might have expected something better than a consulship in Iceland!’
Madame Sims leant from her table and said:
‘That is a pretty ring you are wearing! A lady’s ring, is it not?’
‘Why, yes. I wear it as a sort of souvenir. She was a charming little creature who gave it to me! And, let me whisper, of royal birth!’
Madame Sims laughed convulsively and rose.
‘I haven’t made a noble thing of my life either, Mr. Reynolds,’ she said. ‘Thirty years of stupid waste — how the futilities of every day can degrade one!’
He got awkwardly to his feet.
‘You know me!’
‘Ah, yes. I recognised you at once.’ She shook the crumbs from her taffeta frills. As she left the table she said: ‘Remember that Castlereagh also cut his throat.’
Thomas Reynolds winced. He dropped his glance from that haggard face and without asking who she was, turned away. Nor did he ever return to the restaurant in the rue Richepanse.
Madame Sims went upstairs to the high chamber where the cheap red damask peeled away from the faded green Chinese wall-paper, and sat huddled over the fire that burned to one corner of the marble hearth; but she knew that it was impossible for her to warm herself, for the chill of death was already in her blood.
A few months ago she had heard (for she still had a scattered correspondence with Ireland) that the leaden coffin which wrapped Lord Edward had perished, and the curious visitor to St. Werburgh’s vaults beneath the chancel might see his woollen shroud.
‘And I went on living — even now am here in this city to beg for a pension. Why, it is very ridiculous. Now that I am old — O God, old! — I’m no nearer the meaning of any of it. Thomas Reynolds is rich and not remorseful. And they are all dead. Why? O why? What was the use of any of it?’
She rocked herself to and fro before the fire that gave out little heat for her. ‘There is only this, perhaps some day they’ll be remembered in Ireland.’
She hung her head down low.
‘O God, am I the Pamela who was so happy in the little house in Kildare!’
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Dark Rosaleen
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