The effect of time was such that even Mr. Critchlow appeared to have forgotten even that she had been indirectly responsible for her father's death.
She had nearly forgotten it herself; when she happened to think of it she felt no shame, no remorse, seeing the death as purely accidental, and not altogether unfortunate.
On two points only was the town inquisitive: as to her husband, and as to the precise figure at which she had sold the pension.
The town knew that she was probably not a widow, for she had been obliged to tell Mr. Critchlow, and Mr. Critchlow in some hour of tenderness had told Maria.
But nobody had dared to mention the name of Gerald Scales to her.
With her fashionable clothes, her striking mien of command, and the legend of her wealth, she inspired respect, if not awe, in the townsfolk.
In the doctor's attitude there was something of amaze; she felt it.
Though the dull apathy of the people she had hitherto met was assuredly not without its advantageous side for her tranquillity of mind, it had touched her vanity, and the gaze of the doctor soothed the smart.
He had so obviously divined her interestingness; he so obviously wanted to enjoy it.
"I've just been reading Zola's 'Downfall,'" he said.
Her mind searched backwards, and recalled a poster.
"Oh!" she replied. "'La Debacle'?"
"Yes.
What do ye think of it?"
His eyes lighted at the prospect of a talk.
He was even pleased to hear her give him the title in French.
"I haven't read it," she said, and she was momentarily sorry that she had not read it, for she could see that he was dashed.
The doctor had supposed that residence in a foreign country involved a knowledge of the literature of that country.
Yet he had never supposed that residence in England involved a knowledge of English literature.
Sophia had read practically nothing since 1870; for her the latest author was Cherbuliez.
Moreover, her impression of Zola was that he was not at all nice, and that he was the enemy of his race, though at that date the world had scarcely heard of Dreyfus.
Dr. Stirling had too hastily assumed that the opinions of the bourgeois upon art differ in different countries.
"And ye actually were in the siege of Paris?" he questioned, trying again.
"Yes."
"AND the commune?"
"Yes, the commune too."
"Well!" he exclaimed. "It's incredible!
When I was reading the
'Downfall' the night before last, I said to myself that you must have been through a lot of all that.
I didn't know I was going to have the pleasure of a chat with ye so soon."
She smiled.
"But how did you know I was in the siege of Paris?" she asked, curious.
"How do I know?
I know because I've seen that birthday card ye sent to Mrs. Povey in 1871, after it was over.
It's one of her possessions, that card is.
She showed it me one day when she told me ye were coming."
Sophia started.
She had quite forgotten that card.
It had not occurred to her that Constance would have treasured all those cards that she had despatched during the early years of her exile.
She responded as well as she could to his eagerness for personal details concerning the siege and the commune.
He might have been disappointed at the prose of her answers, had he not been determined not to be disappointed.
"Ye seem to have taken it all very quietly," he observed.
"Eh yes!" she agreed, not without pride.
"But it's a long time since."
Those events, as they existed in her memory, scarcely warranted the tremendous fuss subsequently made about them.
What were they, after all?
Such was her secret thought.
Chirac himself was now nothing but a faint shadow.
Still, were the estimate of those events true or false, she was a woman who had been through them, and Dr. Stirling's high appreciation of that fact was very pleasant to her.
Their friendliness approached intimacy.