IN THE TOILS
Suzanne thought she was very clever--and not without reason; but by
being too clever people often defeat their own ends. Accustomed to
confound love and mere gallantry, she knew nothing of the generous
expansion of feeling to be found in one so young as the object of her
semi-romantic, semi-sensual caprice. She presumed that the insidious
accusation she had thrown out against Claude would put René on his
guard. It resulted, however, in giving the poet an irresistible desire
to talk to Larcher. It grieved him to think that the latter should
entertain a false opinion of Madame Moraines. Which of us, at
twenty-five, has not felt a desire that our dearest friend should
reserve a special place in his esteem for the woman we loved? It is as
strong then as is at forty the wise desire to hide ourselves most of all
from that same friend.
René's first act on leaving Suzanne was to proceed at once to the Rue
de Varenne. He had not been to see Claude since the day when he had met
Colette in his rooms, and as he passed through the gateway and made his
way across the spacious courtyard he could not help comparing this visit
with his last. They were separated by a very few hours only, but yet by
what a gulf! The poet was a prey to that fever of delight which makes
reasoning impossible. He did not reflect that his Madonna had been
wonderfully clever in bringing matters to such a pass so soon. The
amazing rapidity with which his hopes were being realised only delighted
him, and showed him how strong his love really was. He felt so light and
happy that he bounded up the old staircase two steps at a time, just as
he used to do when as a boy he came home from school after reaching the
top of the class. To-day Larcher's man admitted him without the
slightest hesitation, but he wore such a long face that René asked him
what was the matter.
'It isn't right, sir,' sighed Ferdinand, shaking his head. 'Master has
been at it now for forty-eight hours--writing, writing, writing--and
with only about six hours' sleep altogether. You ought really to tell
him, sir, that he'll damage his constitution. Why can't he get into a
nice, comfortable habit of working a little every day, like everybody
else?'
The man's wise remonstrances prepared René for the sight that he knew
so well--the 'den' in which he had seen Colette enthroned turned into a
writer's workshop. He went in. The broad leather-covered couch on which
the graceful but frivolous actress had reclined was now covered with
sheets of paper flung down and covered with great straggling characters
written in haste; similar sheets, all torn or crumpled, being strewn
about the floor, and the chimney-piece encumbered with half-opened
bundles of proofs.
Larcher, with a beard of three days' growth and unkempt hair, was seated
at his writing-table, dressed like a beggar, in a dirty coat devoid of a
single button, a pair of worn-out slippers on his feet, and a silk
handkerchief tied in a knot round his neck. The real Bohemian, utterly
regardless of appearance from his earliest youth, came to the surface
every time the would-be swell was obliged to step out of his part and
put his shoulder to the wheel. And this he was obliged to do pretty
frequently. Like all literary workers whose time is their sole capital,
and who, therefore, lead most irregular lives, Claude was always
behindhand with his work and short of money, especially since his
relations with Colette had involved him in that most ruinous expense of
all--the expense incurred by a young man for a woman he does not keep.
Besides the salary she drew from the theatre, the actress had an income
of twenty thousand francs, left her by an old admirer, a Russian noble
who was killed at Plevna; but what with riding about and dining out with
his mistress, and buying her heaps of flowers and presents, Claude had
to find many a bank-note. The proceeds of the two plays being long
spent, the writer was forced to earn these wretched notes by overworking
his brain in the intervals of his enervating debauches.
'At it again!' he cried, looking up with his pale face and clasping
René's hand in his feverish grasp. 'Fifteen chapters to be delivered at
once. A splendid stroke of business with the _Chronique Parisienne_, the
new eight-page paper financed by Audry. They came and asked me for a
story the other day to run as a _feuilleton_ for a fortnight. A franc a
line. I told them I had one ready--only wanted copying. My dear
fellow--hadn't got a word written--not that! But I had an idea. Re-write
"Adolphe" up to date in our jargon, and put in our local colouring. It
will be a beastly hash, but all that's nothing. Do you know what it
means to sit down and write while your heart is being tortured by
jealousy? I am here at my table, scribbling a phrase; an idea occurs to
me, and I want to hold it. Now for it, I think. Suddenly a voice within
me says: "What is Colette doing now?" And I put down my pen as the
pain--ah! such terrible pain!--comes over me. Balzac used to say that he
had discovered how much brain matter was wasted in a night's debauch:
half a volume; and he used to add, "There is not a woman breathing worth
two volumes a year." What nonsense! It isn't love that wears out an
artist, but the continual worry of some fixed idea causing one long
heart-ache. Is it possible to think and feel at the same time? We must
choose one or the other. Victor Hugo never felt anything--nor did
Balzac. If he had really loved his Madame Hanska he would have run after
her all over Europe, and would have cared for his "Comédie humaine" as
much as I do for this rubbish. Ah! my dear René,' he continued with an
air of dejection as he gathered up the sheets scattered all over his
desk, 'keep to your simple mode of life. I hope you have not been weak
enough to accept the invitations of any of the sharks you met at Madame
Komof's.'
'I have only paid one visit,' replied René, 'and that was to Madame
Moraines.' He could scarcely control himself as he pronounced her name.
Then, with the involuntary impetuosity of a lover who, though come
expressly to speak of his mistress, is afraid of criticism, and staves
off the reply as he would thrust aside the point of a dagger, he added,
'Isn't she sweetly pretty and graceful? And what lofty ideas she has! Do
you think ill of her too?'
'Bah!' exclaimed Claude, too full of his own sufferings to pay much heed
to René's words, 'I dare say we could find something ugly in her past
or her present if we tried. All women have within them the toad that
springs from the mouth of the princess in the fairy tale.'
'Is there anything you know about her?' asked the poet.
'Anything _I_ know!' replied Claude, struck by the strange tone of his
friend's voice. He looked at René and saw how matters stood.
Mixing as he did in Parisian society, he was well acquainted with the
rumours concerning Suzanne and Baron Desforges, and with the
easy-going--though sometimes mistaken--credulity of a misanthrope to
whom every infamy seems probable because possible, he believed them. For
a moment he was tempted to inform René of these rumours, but he held
his tongue. Was it from motives of prudence, and in order not to make an
enemy of Desforges, in case Suzanne should get to know what he had said,
and tell the Baron? Was it out of pity for the grief his words would
cause René? Was it for the cruel delight of having a companion in his
torture--for how much better was Suzanne than Colette? Was he impelled
by the curiosity of an analyst and the desire to witness another's
passion? Who shall determine the exact point of departure of so many and
such complex motives as go to make up a sudden resolve?
Claude paused for a moment, as if to ransack his memory, and then
repeated his friend's question. 'Is there anything I know about her?
Nothing at all. I am a _professional woman-hater_, as the English say. I
only know the woman through having met her here and there, and I thought
her a little less foolish than most of her kind. It's true she is very
pretty!' And then, either out of malice or in order to sound René's
heart, he added, 'Allow me to congratulate you!'
'You talk as though I were in love with her,' replied René, growing red
with shame. He had come there with the intention of singing Suzanne's
praises, and now Claude's bantering tone caused his confidences to
freeze upon his lips.
'So you are not in love with her!' cried Larcher, with his most horribly
cynical laugh. Then, with one of those generous impulses in which his
better and truer nature revealed itself, he took his friend's hand and
begged his pardon. Seeing in René's eyes that this was about to provoke
a fresh outburst, he stopped him. 'Don't tell me anything. You'd only
hate me for it afterwards. I'm not fit to listen to you to-day. I am
enduring torture, and that makes me cruel.'
So it happened that even Suzanne's clumsy manœuvring turned out
favourably for her plan of capture. The only man whose hostility she had
to fear had voluntarily imposed silence upon himself. Since René was in
absolute need of a confidante to receive the overflow of his feelings,
it was to Emilie that he turned, and poor Emilie, out of sheer sisterly
vanity, was already the abettor of the unknown lady whom she had seen
through her brother's eyes encircled with a halo of aristocracy.
The very next morning after the _soirée_ at Madame Komof's she had
guessed from René's words that Madame Moraines was the only woman he
had met there whom he really liked, and the only one, too, upon whom he
had made any strong impression. Mothers and sisters possess some
peculiar sense for perceiving these shades of feeling. For the next few
days after making her discovery René's restlessness was very plain to
Emilie. Bound to him by the double bond of affection and moral affinity,
no feeling could traverse her brother's heart without finding an echo in
her own. She knew that René was in love as well as if she had been
present in the spirit during the two meetings in the Rue Murillo. She
felt delighted, too, without being at all jealous, though her brother's
attachment to Rosalie had caused her not only jealousy, but anxiety.
With peculiarly feminine logic, she thought it but natural that the poet
should enter upon an intrigue with a woman who was not free. She
recognised that exceptional men require a mode of life and a standard of
morality as exceptional as themselves, and she felt that this love of
René's for a grand lady, whilst realising the proud dreams she had
formed for her idol, would not rob her of a jot of affection.
His passion for Rosalie, on the contrary, she had regarded as an
infringement upon her rights. This was because Rosalie resembled her,
and was of her world, and because René's attachment to her could only
result in marriage and the setting up of another home. It was therefore
with secret joy that she beheld the birth of a fresh passion in her
brother. She would have been glad if he had taken her further into his
confidence, and so completed the confession he had made on awakening
only a few hours after the _soirée_ at Madame Komof's. But this he had
not done, neither had she led him on to do so, her instinct telling her
that René's confidences would only be the more complete for being
spontaneous. So she waited, watching his eyes, whose every look she knew
so well, for that expression of supreme joy which is the fever of
happiness. Her silence was also to a great extent due to the fact that
she only saw René when Fresneau was present. With that natural
cowardice begotten of certain false positions, the poet left the house
as soon as he was up and returned only in time for lunch. Then he again
took himself off until dinner, going out immediately after, in order to
avoid meeting Rosalie. The professor's abstraction was so great that he
did not even notice this change in René's habits. Such, however, was
not the case with Madame Offarel. Having come on two consecutive
evenings with her two daughters and seen nothing of him whom she already
looked upon as her son-in-law, she did not hesitate to remark upon his
unwonted absence.
'Does Monsieur Larcher present Monsieur René to a fresh comtesse every
evening that we never see him here now, nor at our house either?'
'It's true,' observed Fresneau, 'I never see him now. Where does he get
to?'
'He has set to work again upon his "Savonarola,"' replied Emilie, 'and
he spends his evenings at the Bibliothèque.'
Early on the morning after this conversation, which was also the morrow
of René's second visit to Suzanne, Emilie entered her brother's room to
give him a full account of what had been said. She found him getting out
a few sheets of fine note-paper--some that she had bought for him--on
which he was about to copy, in his best handwriting, the verses he was
to read to Madame Moraines. The table was covered with sheet upon sheet
of his poems, from which he had already made a selection.
When Emilie told him of her innocent fib he kissed her, and exclaimed,
with a laugh, 'How clever you are!'
'There is nothing clever in it,' she replied; 'I am your sister, and I
love you.' Then, taking up some of the papers scattered about, she
asked, 'Do you really think of getting on with your book?'
'No,' answered René, 'but I have promised to read a few of my verses to
some one.'
'To Madame Moraines?' exclaimed his sister.
'You have guessed it,' replied the poet, looking slightly confused. 'Ah!
if you only knew!'
And then the pent-up confidence burst forth. Emilie had to listen to an
enthusiastic eulogy of Suzanne and all that concerned her. In the same
breath René spoke of the lofty nobility of this woman's ideas and of
the shape of her shoes, of her marvellous intelligence and of the
figured velvet oh her blotting-book. That childish astonishment at these
luxurious details should be united to the more poetic fancies in the
fabric of love did not surprise Emilie. Had she herself in her love for
René not always associated petty desires with boundless ambition? She
wished, for instance, with almost equal fervour, that he might have
genius and horses, that he might write another 'Childe Harold,' and
possess Byron's income of four thousand a year. In this she was as
ingenuously plebeian as he himself, confounding--in excusable fashion,
after all--real aristocracy of sentiment with that aristocracy expressed
by outer and worldly forms. Those who come of a family in which the
struggle for bread has lowered the tone of thought easily mistake the
second of these aristocracies for a condition inseparable from the
first.
Those words, therefore, which might have led an unkind listener to think
that René loved Suzanne for her surroundings, and not for herself,
charmed Emilie instead of shocking her, and she had so fully entered
into her brother's infatuation that on leaving him she said: 'You are
not at home to anyone--I'll see that no one comes in. You must show me
your verses when you have written them--mind you choose them well.'
The task of making this selection cheated the poet's ardour, and he was
able to await the day fixed for his next visit to the paradise in the
Rue Murillo without much impatience. The hours of solitude, broken only
by his talks with Emilie, passed by in alternate fits of happiness and
melancholy. Often a delightful vision of Suzanne would rise up before
him. He would then lay down his pen, and all the objects about him would
melt away, as if by magic. Instead of the red hangings of his room, it
was the little _salon_ of Madame Moraines that he saw; gone were his
dear Albert Dürers, his Gustave Moreaus, his Goyas, his small library
on whose shelves the 'Imitatio' rubbed shoulders with 'Madame
Bovary'--gone were the two leafless trees that stood out black against a
light blue sky. But in their place he could see Suzanne, her dainty
ways, the poise of her head, the peculiar golden tint of her hair, and
the transparent pink of her lovely complexion.
This apparition, which had nothing of a pale or shadowy phantom about
it, appealed to René's senses in a way that ought to have made him
understand that Madame Moraines' attitudes did but mask the true woman,
the voluptuous though refined courtesan. But of this he took no note,
and, whilst madly desirous to possess her, he believed that his worship
of her was of the most ethereal kind. This mirage of sentiment is a
phenomenon frequently observed in men who lead chaste lives, and one
which renders them the defenceless prey of the most barefaced hypocrisy.
The inability to understand their own feelings makes them still more
incapable of analysing the tricks of the women who arouse in them the
accumulated passion of a lifetime. The poet, however, became perfectly
lucid as soon as Suzanne's image made way for that of Rosalie. On going
through his papers he was continually coming across some page headed, in
boyish fashion, 'For my flower;' that was the name he had given Rosalie
in the heyday of his love, when he had written her a fresh poem almost
every morning.
'O Rose of candour and sincerity!' were the terms in which he addressed
her at the end of one of these effusions. When his eyes fell upon such
lines he was again obliged to lay down his pen, and once more his
surroundings would melt away, but this time to make room for a vision of
torture. The rooms occupied by the Offarels lay before him, cold and
silent. The old woman was busy with her cats. Angélique was turning
over the leaves of an English dictionary, and Rosalie was looking at
him, René--looking at him through an ocean of space with eyes in which
he read no reproach, but only deep distress. He knew as well as if he
were there, near her, that she had guessed his secret, and that she was
suffering the pangs of jealousy. If such were not the case would he have
been so terribly afraid to meet the girl's eyes? Would that he could go
to her and say, 'Let us be only friends!' It was his duty to do so. The
only means of preserving one's self-esteem is by acting with absolute
loyalty in these subsidings of love, which are like fraudulent
bankruptcies of the heart. But that loyalty was thrust aside by weakness
in which both egoism and pity were equally represented. He took up his
pen again, and saying, as on the first day, 'We shall see--later on,' he
tried to work. Soon he had to stop once more as his mind reverted to
Rosalie's sufferings. He thought of the long nights she would spend in
tears, knowing as he did every trifling habit of the simple creature who
had given him her heart. She had often told him that the only time she
could indulge in her own grief was at night. Then he hid his face in his
hands and waited till the vision had passed, meanwhile saying to
himself, 'Is it my fault?'
A law in our nature bids our passions grow stronger in proportion to the
number of obstacles to be overcome, so that the remorse of his
infidelity to poor Rosalie resulted in making René's heart beat faster
as the time fixed by Madame Moraines for their next meeting drew near.
She, on her side, awaited him with an almost feverish impatience that
astonished even herself. She had looked out for the young poet whenever
she had been in the street, and again at the Opera when Friday came
round. Had she seen his eyes fixed upon her in that simple adoration
which is as compromising as a declaration, she would have said, 'How
imprudent!' Not to see him, however, gave her a slight fit of doubt,
which brought her caprice to its climax. She looked forward to this
visit all the more anxiously because she considered it decisive. It was
the third time René visited her, and, out of these three times, twice
unknown to her husband. Further than that she could not go, on account
of the servants. A day or two back Paul, meaning no harm, had said to
her at dinner, 'I was talking to Desforges about René Vincy. He doesn't
seem to have made a good impression on the Baron. It is decidedly better
not to see the authors too closely whose works we admire.'
If the servant who had announced the poet had been in the dining-room at
the moment these words were uttered Suzanne would have had to speak. The
same thing might happen the next or any other day. She was therefore
determined to find a peg in her conversation with René on which to hang
an appointment elsewhere. An idea suddenly occurred to her of going
somewhere with the poet under pretence of curiosity--a meeting in Notre
Dame, for instance, or in some old church sufficiently distant from the
fashionable quarter of Paris to be beyond the risk of danger, and she
relied upon one or other of René's poems to furnish her with an
opportunity of making such an appointment.
On this occasion she once more wore a walking-dress, for, having
attended a marriage ceremony in the morning, she had kept on the rather
smart mauve gown in which her shapely figure, elegant shoulders, and
slim waist were so well set off. Thus attired, and lounging back in a
low arm-chair--an attitude that marked the adorable outlines of her
body--she begged the poet, after the usual commonplaces had passed, to
commence his reading. She listened to his poetry without betraying any
surprise at the peculiar drawl with which even the best scholars intone
their verses, her great intelligent eyes and the repose of her face
seeming to indicate the closest attention. At rare intervals she would
venture upon some apparently involuntary exclamation, such as: 'How
beautiful that is!' or, 'Will you repeat those lines?--I like them so
much!'
In reality, she cared little for the poet's verses, and understood them
less. To comprehend even superficially the work of a modern artist--in
whom there is always a critic and a scholar--requires such mental
development as is only met with in a small number of Society women,
sufficiently interested in culture to read much and to think more in the
midst of a life entirely opposed to all kind of study and reflection.
What made Suzanne's pretty face and big blue eyes look so pensive was
the desire not to let the important word slip by upon which to hang her
project. But line came after line, stanzas succeeded sonnets, and yet
she had not been able to seize upon anything which could reasonably be
made to give the conversation the turn she wanted. What a pity it was!
For René's eyes, that continually wandered from the page; his voice,
that shook occasionally as he read; his hands, that trembled as he
turned the leaves--all showed that her pretended admiration had
completely intoxicated the Trissotin that lurks in every author.
And now there was only one piece left! This the poet had purposely kept
to the last; it was his favourite, and bore a title which was a
revelation to Suzanne, 'The Eyes of the Gioconda.' It was rather a long
poem, half metaphysical, half descriptive, in which the writer had
striven to collect and reproduce in sonorous verse all the opinions of
the modern school of critics concerning Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.
In this portrait of an Italian woman we ought, perhaps, to see nothing
beyond a study of the purest and most technical naturalism, one of those
struggles against conventionality in art in which the great painter
appears to have been so frequently engaged. Can it not have been an
attempt of the master to seize the unseizable--the play of a face, and
to paint the fleeting expression on the lips as they pass from repose to
a smile? In his poem René, who took a childish pride in the fact that
his family name resembled that of the village which lends its
appellation to the most subtle master of the Renaissance, had condensed
into thirty verses an entire system of natural and historical
philosophy. He valued this symbolical medley higher than the
'Sigisbée,' which contained only what was natural and appertaining to
the passions--two qualities fit only for the vulgar herd.
What then was his delight to hear Madame Moraines say, 'If I might be
allowed to express any preference, I would say that this is the piece
which pleases me most. How well you understand true art! To see the
great masterpieces with you must be a revelation! I am sure that if I
visited the Louvre under your guidance you would explain to me so much
that I see in the pictures but cannot understand. I have often wandered
about there, but quite alone!'
She waited. As soon as René had started reading this last poem she had
said to herself, 'How foolish of me not to have thought of that before!'
closing her eyes for a moment as if to retain some beautiful dream. At
the finish she had purposely used such words as would give him an
opportunity of seeing her again. He would propose a visit together to
the Louvre, to which she would accede, after having cleverly raised just
sufficient difficulties. She saw the suggestion trembling on his lips,
but he had not the courage to make it. She was therefore compelled to do
so herself.
'If I were not afraid of wasting your time----?' Then, with a sigh, 'But
we have not been acquainted long enough.'
'Oh; madame!' cried René, 'it seems to me as if I had been your friend
for years!'
'That is because you feel I am sincere in what I say,' she replied, with
a frank and open smile. 'And I am going to prove it to you once more.
Will you show me the Louvre one day next week?'