THE HAPPIEST OF THE FOUR
Suzanne knew the Baron's eagle eye too well to imagine that the scene in
the box had entirely escaped him. How much had he seen? What did he
think? These two questions were of capital importance to her. It was
impossible to formulate any reply to them during the few minutes
occupied--she leaning on his arm and he supporting her as though he
really believed her to be ill--in passing from the box to the entrance
reserved for carriages. The Baron's face remained impenetrable and she
herself felt unable to exercise her usual faculties of observation.
René's sudden onslaught had inspired her with such terror and pain that
her indisposition had been a sham only to a certain extent. She had been
afraid that the poet, evidently beside himself, might create a scene and
ruin her for ever. At the same time her sincere and deep-rooted passion
had received a severe blow in this terrible insult and still more
terrible discovery. As she lifted up the train of her dress and
descended the steps in her blue satin shoes she shuddered as we
sometimes do when we escape from a danger which we have had the courage
to brave. A faint smile hovered upon her quivering lips, but her face
was ashy pale, and it was a real relief to her when she sat down in the
corner of her carriage with her husband by her side. Before him, at
least, there was no necessity to control herself. As the horses started
she bent forward to bow her adieux. A gas-lamp shed its light full upon
the Baron's face, which now betrayed his real thoughts. Suzanne read
them in a second.
'He knows all,' she thought. 'What is to be done?'
For a few moments after the carriage had gone Desforges still stood
there twirling his moustache--with him a sign of extraordinary
preoccupation. It being a fine night, he had not ordered his brougham.
It was his custom, when the weather was dry, to walk to his favourite
club in the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas from any place in which he had been
spending the evening--even if such place was some small theatre situated
at the other end of the boulevards. Whilst smoking his third
cigar--Doctor Noirot only allowed him three a day--he loved to stroll
through the streets of that Paris which he justly prided himself upon
knowing and enjoying as well as anyone. Desforges was no cosmopolitan,
and had a horror of travelling, which he called 'a life of luggage.'
This promenade in the evening was his delight. He utilised it for
'making up his balance'--that was his expression--for going over the
different events of the day, placing his receipts in one column and his
expenses in another. 'Massage, fencing, and morning ride,' were put down
in the column of receipts to the credit of his health. 'Drinking
burgundy or port'--his pet sin--'or eating truffles or seeing Suzanne'
went into the column of expenditure. When he had indulged in some
trifling excess that contravened his well-regulated lines of conduct he
would carefully weigh the pros and cons, and conclude by pronouncing
with the solemnity of a judge whether 'it was worth it' or 'not worth
it.'
This Paris, too, in which he had dwelt since his earliest youth, always
awakened in him memories of the past. His cynicism went hand in hand
with cunning, and he practised only the Epicureanism of the senses. He
was a master in the art of enjoying happy hours long after they had
passed. In such a house, for instance, he had had appointments with a
charming mistress; another recalled to his mind exquisite dinners in
good company. 'We ought to make ourselves four stomachs, like oxen, to
ruminate,' he used to say; 'that is their only good point, and I have
taken it them.'
But when the Moraines had driven away in their brougham on this mild and
balmy May evening he began his walk, a prey to most sad and bitter
impressions, although the day had been a particularly pleasant one until
René Vincy's entry in the box. Suzanne had not been mistaken. He knew
all. The poet's visit had struck him all the more forcibly since, that
very afternoon, on leaving the house in the Rue de Rivoli, he had found
himself face to face with the young man, who stared hard at him. 'Where
the deuce have I seen that fellow before?' he had asked himself in vain.
'Where could my senses have been?' he said, when Paul Moraines mentioned
René's name to Suzanne. The expression on the visitor's face had
immediately aroused his suspicions; when Suzanne went into the ante-room
he had placed himself so as to follow the interview from the corner of
his eye. Without hearing what the poet said, he had guessed by the look
in his eyes, the frown on his brow, and the gestures of his hands that
he was taking Suzanne to task. The feigned indisposition of the latter
had not deceived him for a single moment. He was one of those who only
believe in women's headaches when there is nothing to be gained by them.
The manner in which his mistress's hand trembled on his arm as they
descended the staircase had strengthened his convictions, and now, as he
crossed the Place de l'Opéra, he told himself the most mortifying
truths instead of going into his usual raptures before the vast
perspective of the avenue, but lately lighted by electricity, or before
the façade of the Opera, which he declared to be finer than Notre Dame.
'I have been let in,' he said, 'and at my age, too! It's rather too
bad--and for whom?' All combined to render his humiliation more
complete--the absolute secresy with which Suzanne had deceived him, and
without arousing the slightest suspicion; the startling suddenness of
the discovery; lastly, the quality of his rival, a bit of a boy, a
scribbling poet! A score of details, one more exasperating than the
other, crowded in upon him. The forlorn and bashful look on the poet's
face when he had seen him on the day after Madame Komof's _soirée_;
Suzanne's inexplicable fits of abstraction, which he had scarcely
noticed at the time and her allusions to matutinal visits to the
dentist's, the Louvre, or the Bon Marché. And he had swallowed it
all--he, Baron Desforges!
'I have been an ass!' he repeated aloud. 'But how did she manage it?' It
was this that completely floored him; he could not understand how she
had gone about it, even when René's attitude in the box left him no
doubt as to their relations. No, there was no possibility of doubt.
Had Suzanne not been his mistress he would never have dared to speak to
her as he did, nor would she have allowed it. 'But how?' he asked
himself; 'she never received him at home, or I should have known it
through Paul. She did not see him out; he goes nowhere.' Once more he
repeated, 'I have been an ass!' and felt really angry with the woman who
was the cause of his perturbation. He had just passed the Café de la
Paix and had to brush aside two women who accosted him in their usual
shameless manner. 'Bah!' he exclaimed; 'they are all alike.' He walked
on for a few paces and saw that he had let his cigar go out. He threw it
away with a gesture of impatience. 'And cigars are like women.' Then he
shrugged his shoulders as it occurred to him how childishly he was
behaving. 'Frédéric, my dear fellow,' whispered an inner voice, 'you
have been an ass, and you are continuing the _rôle._' He took a fresh
cigar from his case, held it to his ear as he cracked it, and went into
a cigar-shop for a light. The havana proved to be delicious, and the
Baron, a connoisseur, thoroughly enjoyed it. 'I was wrong,' he thought;
'here is one that is not a fraud.'
The soothing effect of the cigar changed the tenour of his ideas.
He looked about him and saw that he had almost reached the end of the
boulevard. The pavement was as crowded as at midday, and the carriages
and cabs went hurrying by. The gas-lamps glinted upon the young foliage
of the trees in a fantastic manner, and on the right the dark mass of
the Madeleine stood out against the dark blue sky studded with stars.
This Parisian picture pleased the Baron, who continued his reflections
in a calmer frame of mind. 'Hang it all!' he cried; 'can it be that I am
jealous?' As a rule he shook his head whenever he was treated to an
example of that mournful passion, and would generally reply, 'They pay
your mistress attentions! But that is merely a compliment to your good
taste.' 'I, jealous! Well, that would be good!'
When we have accustomed ourselves to play a certain part in the eyes of
the world for years together we continue to play it even when alone.
Desforges was ashamed of his weakness--like an officer who, sent out on
a night expedition, blushes to find himself afraid and refuses to admit
the presence of that feeling. 'It is not true,' he said to himself; 'I
am not jealous.' He conjured up a vision of Suzanne in René's arms, and
it tickled his vanity to feel that the picture, though not a pleasant
one, did not cause him one of those fits of intense pain that constitute
jealousy. By way of contrast, he recalled the poet's entry in the box,
his agitated manner, and the unconquerable frenzy that betrayed itself
in every lineament. There you had a really jealous man, exposed to the
full fury of that terrible mania.
The antithesis between the relative calm he felt within him and his
rival's despair was so flattering to the Baron's vanity that for a
moment he was absolutely happy. He caught himself making use of his
customary expression, one he had inherited from his father, a clever
speculator, who had again had it from his mother, a fine Normandy woman
who had linked her fortunes with those of the first Baron Desforges, a
Prefect under the _grand empereur_, 'Gumption! Why should I be jealous?
In what has Suzanne deceived me? Did I expect her to love me with a love
such as this fool of a poet no doubt dreamt of? What could a man of more
than fifty ask of her? To be kind and amiable? That she has been. To
afford me an opportunity of spending my evenings agreeably? She has done
so. Well, what then? She has met a strapping youth, a bit wild, with a
fresh-looking complexion, and a fine pair of lips. As she couldn't very
well ask me to get him for her, she has indulged in a little luxury on
her own account. But, of the two of us, I should say that he is the
cuckold!'
This reflection, so purely Gallic in form, occurred to him just as he
reached the door of his club. The plain language in which it had found
expression relieved him for a moment. 'That's all very well,' he
thought; 'but what would Crucé say?' The adroit collector had once sold
him a worthless daub at an exorbitant figure, and Desforges had ever
since entertained for him that mixture of respect and resentment felt by
very clever men for those who have duped them well. He drew a picture of
the small club-room and the cunning Crucé relating Suzanne's adventure
with René to two or three of his most envious colleagues. The idea was
so hateful to the Baron that it stopped him from entering the club, and
he walked away in the direction of the Champs-Elysées trying to shake
off its influence. 'Bah! Neither Crucé nor the others will know
anything of it. It's lucky after all that she didn't hit upon any of
these men about town.' He threw a glance at the club windows that looked
out upon the Place de la Concorde, and which were all lit up. 'Instead
of that she has taken some one who is not in Society, whom I never meet,
and whom she has neither patronised nor presented. I must do her the
justice to admit that she has been very considerate. Her trepidation,
too, just now, was entirely on my account. Poor little woman!'
'Poor little woman!' he repeated, continuing his soliloquy under the
trees of the avenue. 'This beast is capable of making her repent her
caprice most bitterly. He seemed in a pretty rage to-night! What want of
taste and manners! In my box, too! What irony! If this good Paul were
not the husband I have made him, she would be a ruined woman. And then
he has discovered the secret of our meetings, and we shall have to leave
the Rue du Mont-Thabor. No--the fellow is impossible!' This was one of
his favourite expressions. A fresh fit of ill humour had seized him,
this time directed against the poet, but, as he prided himself upon
being a man of sense and upon his clear-sightedness, he suppressed it at
once. 'Am I going to be angry with him for being jealous of me? That
would be the height of folly! Let me rather think upon what he is likely
to do. Blackmail! No. He is too young for that. An article in some
paper? A poet with pretensions to sentiment--that won't be in his line.
I wonder whether his indignation will lead him to cast her off
altogether? That seems too good to be true. A young scribbler, as poor
as a church mouse, shall give up a beautiful and loving mistress,
surrounded by all the refinements of luxury, who costs him nothing! Get
out! But what if he asks her to break with me, and she is foolish enough
to yield?' He saw at once and clearly what disturbance such a rupture
would create in his life. 'Firstly, there would be the loss of Suzanne,
and where should I find another so charming, so sprightly, so accustomed
to my ways and habits? Then, again, I should have to find something to
do in the evenings, to say nothing of the fact that I have no better
friend in Paris than this excellent Paul.' To remove his fears
concerning these contingencies he was obliged to recapitulate the bonds
of interest that made him indispensable to the Moraines. 'No,' he
concluded, as he reached the door of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine,
'he will not let her go, she will not give me up, and everything will
come right. Everything always comes right in the end.'
This assurance and philosophy were probably not so sincere as the
Baron's vanity--his only weakness--would have him believe, and for the
first time in his life he got out of patience with his valet, a pupil of
his who for years had helped him to undress. Though he was still anxious
about the future, and more inwardly upset than he cared to admit, this
easy-going egoist nevertheless slept right off for seven hours,
according to his wont. Thanks to a life of moderate and continual
activity, to a careful system of diet, to absolute regularity in rising
and retiring, and, above all, to the care he took to rid his brain at
midnight of all troublesome thoughts, he had acquired such a fixed habit
of dropping off to sleep at the same hour that nothing less than the
announcement of another Commune--the most terrible calamity he could
think of--would have kept him awake. On opening his eyes in the morning,
his mind refreshed by his recuperative slumbers, all irritation was so
completely dispelled that he recalled the events of the preceding night
with a smile.
'I am sure that _he_ has not done as much,' he said to himself, thinking
of the sleepless hours that René must have spent, 'nor Suzanne
either'--she had been so agitated--'nor Moraines.' An indisposition of
his wife's always turned that poor fellow upside down. 'What a fine
title for a play--"The happiest of the four!" I must take credit for its
invention.' His joke pleased him immensely, and when Doctor Noirot,
during the process of massage, had said to him, 'Monsieur le Baron's
muscles are in excellent condition this morning; they are as healthy,
supple, and firm as those of a man of thirty,' the sensation of
well-being abolished the last traces of his ill humour.
He had now but one idea--how to prevent last night's scene from bringing
any change into his comfortable existence, so well adapted to his dear
person. He thought of it as he drank his chocolate, a kind of light and
fragrant froth which his valet prepared according to the precepts of a
master of the culinary art. He thought of it as he galloped through the
Bois on this bright spring morning. He thought of it as he sat down to
luncheon about half-past twelve opposite the old aunt whose duties
consisted of looking after the linen, the silver, and the servants'
accounts, until such time as she should be called upon to look after
him. He decided to adopt the principle of every wise policy, both public
and private--to wait! 'Better give the young man time to make a fool of
himself and slip away of his own accord. I must be very kind, and
pretend I have seen nothing.'
Turning this resolve over in his mind, he made his way on foot to the
Rue Murillo about two o'clock. He stopped before the shop window of an
art dealer whom he knew very well, and his eyes fell upon a Louis XVI.
watch, its chased gold case set in a wreath of roses and bearing a
charming miniature. 'An excellent means,' he thought, 'of proving to her
that I am for the _status quo._' He bought the pretty toy at a reasonable
price, and congratulated himself upon its acquisition when, on entering
Suzanne's little _salon_, he saw how anxiously she had awaited his
coming. Her careworn look and her pallor told him that she must have
spent the night in concocting plans to get out of the dilemma into which
the scene with René had led her, and by the way in which she eyed him
the Baron saw that she knew she had not escaped his perspicacity. This
compliment was like balm to his wounded vanity, and he felt real
pleasure in handing her the case containing the little bauble with the
words, 'How do you like this?'
'It is charming,' said Suzanne; 'the shepherd and shepherdess are most
life-like.'
'Yes,' replied Desforges; 'they almost look as though they were singing
the romance of those days:
'I gave up all for fickle Sylvia's sake,
She leaves me now and takes another swain . . .'
His fine and well-trained tenor voice had once gained him some success
in the drawing-rooms, and he hummed the refrain of the well-known lament
with a variation of his own:
'Love's pangs last but a moment,
Love's pleasures last for life . . .'
'If you will place this shepherd and shepherdess on a corner of your
table, they will be better than with me.'
'How you spoil me!' said Suzanne, with some embarrassment.
'No,' replied Desforges, 'I spoil myself. Am I not your friend before
all else?' Then, kissing her hand, he added in a serious tone that
contrasted with his usual bantering accents, 'And you will never have a
better.'
That was all. One word more and he would have compromised his dignity.
One word less and Suzanne might have believed him her dupe. She felt
deeply grateful for the consideration with which he had treated her--the
more so since that consideration left her free to devote her mind to
René. All her thoughts had been concentrated during her sleepless night
upon this one question--how to manage the one while keeping the other,
now that the two men had seen and understood each other? Break with the
Baron? She had thought of it, but how could it be done? She saw herself
caught in the web of lies which she had spun for her husband this many a
year. Their mode of life could not be kept up without the aid of her
rich lover. To break with him was to condemn herself to immediately seek
a new relationship of the same kind. On the other hand, to keep
Desforges meant breaking with René. The Baron, she had said to herself,
would never understand that in loving another she was not robbing him of
a whit of affection. Do men ever admit such truths? And now he was kind
and considerate enough not even to mention whatever he had noticed.
Never, even when paying the heaviest bills, had he appeared so generous
as at that moment, when, by his attitude, he allowed her to devote
herself to the task of winning back her young lover and the kisses she
neither could nor would do without.
'He is right,' she said to herself when Desforges had gone; 'he is my
best friend.' And immediately, with that marvellous facility women
possess for indulging in fresh hopes on the slightest provocation, she
was ready to believe that matters would arrange themselves as easily on
the other side. As she lay at full length on the sofa, her fingers idly
toying with the pretty little watch, her thoughts were busied with the
poet and with the means she should employ to win him back. She must
examine the situation carefully and look it full in the face. What did
René know? This first point had been already answered by himself; he
had seen both her and the Baron come out of the house in the Rue du
Mont-Thabor. Now Desforges, from motives of prudence, never went out the
same way as she did. René must therefore know of the existence of the
two exits. Had he seen her leave her carriage and walk as far as the
entrance in the Rue de Rivoli. It was very probable. If chance alone had
brought him into contact with her first, and then with the Baron, he
could have drawn no conclusions from the double meeting. No, he must
have watched her and followed her. But what had induced him to do so? At
their last interview at the beginning of the week she had left him so
reassured, so full of love and happiness! There was only one thing that
could possibly have caused a revival of suspicion so violent as to lead
him to watch her movements--Claude's return. Once more a feeling of rage
against that individual came over her.
'If it is to him that I owe this fresh alarm, he shall pay for it,' she
thought. But she soon returned to the real danger, which, for the
moment, was of more importance to her than her rancour against the
imprudent Larcher. The fact remained that in some way or other René had
detected the secret of her meetings with Desforges, and this evidently
caused him such intense pain that he had been compelled to fling his
discovery at her as soon as it was made. His mad conduct at the Opera
was but a proof of love, though it had nearly ruined her, and, instead
of her being angry with him for it, she only cherished him the more. His
passion was a sign of her power over him, and she concluded that a lover
who loved so madly would not be difficult to win back. Only she must see
him, speak to him, and explain her visit to the Rue du Mont-Thabor with
her own lips. She could say that she had gone to see a sick friend who
was also a friend of the Baron's. But what of the carriage sent back
from Galignani's? She had wanted to walk a little way. But the two
entrances? So many houses are built like that. She had had too much
experience of René's confiding nature to doubt that she would convince
him somehow or other. He had simply been overwhelmed at the moment by
proofs that corroborated his suspicions, and was probably already
doubtful and pleading with himself the cause of his love.
Her reflections had carried her as far as this when her carriage was
announced. The desire to get René back had taken such a hold upon her,
and she was, moreover, so convinced that her presence would overcome all
resistance, that a bold plan suddenly occurred to her. Why should she
not see the poet at once? Why not, now that she had nothing to fear from
Desforges? In love quarrels the quickest reconciliations are the best.
Would he have the courage to repulse her if she came to him in the
little room that had witnessed her first visit, bringing him a fresh and
indisputable proof of love? She would say, 'You have insulted,
slandered, and tortured me--yet I could not bear to think you in doubt
and pain--and I came!' No sooner had she grasped the possibility of
taking this decisive step than she clung to it as if it were a sure way
out of the anguish that had tortured her since the preceding evening.
She dressed so hurriedly that she quite astonished her maid, and yet she
had never looked prettier than in the light grey gown she had chosen.
Without a moment's hesitation, she told her coachman to drive to the Rue
Coëtlogon. To that point had this woman, generally so circumspect and
so careful of appearances, come.
'Just for once!' she said to herself as her brougham rolled along; 'I
shall get there quicker.' The ideas of worldly prudence had soon made
way for others. 'I wonder whether René is at home? Of course he is. He
is waiting for a letter from me, or for some sign of my existence.' It
was almost the same question she had asked herself and the same answer
she had given on the occasion of her first visit in March, two months
and a half before. By the difference in her feelings she could measure
the progress she had made since that time. Then, she had hastened to the
poet's dwelling in obedience to a violent caprice--but still only a
caprice. Now, it was love that coursed through her veins, the love that
thirsts for love in return, that sees nought else in the world but the
object it desires, and that would unflinchingly make for its goal under
the cannon's mouth. She loved now with all her body and soul; she had
proofs of it in her unreasonable impatience to get along still faster
and in her fears that the step she had taken might be in vain. Her
agitation was intense when the carriage stopped at the gate that barred
the entrance to the street. The latter, thanks to the trees whose
foliage overtopped the garden wall on the right, looked fresh and green
in the soft sunlight of this bright May afternoon.
She had undoubtedly been less moved on the former occasion when asking
the _concierge_ whether M. Vincy was at home. The man told her that he
was in. She rang the bell, and, as before, the sound of it caused a
thrill to run through her from head to foot. She heard a door open and
light footsteps approaching. Remembering the heavy tread she had once
heard in the same place, she concluded that the person now coming to the
door was neither the maid nor René; the footfall of the latter she knew
too well. She had a presentiment that she was about to face her lover's
sister--the woman whose absence had favoured her former visit. She had
no time to think of the drawbacks of this unexpected incident, for
Madame Fresneau had already opened the door. Her face left Suzanne no
doubt as to her identity, so great was the resemblance between the
brother and sister. Neither had Emilie any hesitation in deciding who
the visitor was. The sight of René's fresh sufferings during the past
few days, added to the information she had gleaned from Claude, had
intensified her hatred towards Madame Moraines, and as she replied to
Suzanne's question she could not help giving her words a tone of bitter
and unconcealed hostility.
'No, madame, my brother is not in.' Then, her sisterly affection
suggesting a way to avoid all further questions as to the time of
René's return, she added: 'He left town this morning.'
The reply given her by the _concierge_ told Suzanne that this was a lie,
but she had no reason for believing the lie to be an invention of
Emilie's. She was obliged to believe, and did believe, that Madame
Fresneau was obeying the orders given her by her brother. She tried to
learn nothing further, a graceful inclination of her head in the very
best form being the only revenge she took for the almost rude manners of
the _bourgeoise._ Her outward calm, however, hid a great deal of
disappointment and real pain. She did not stop to ask herself whether
Emilie's strange behaviour was due to René's indiscreet confidences or
not. She merely said to herself, 'He does not wish to see me again,' and
that idea hurt her deeply. On reaching the street she turned to cast a
glance at the window of the room into which she had once made her way,
and remembered how, on that occasion, she had also looked round on
leaving, and had seen the poet standing behind the half-drawn blinds.
Would he not take up the same position to see her go when his sister
told him who had called? She stood waiting for five minutes, and the
fact of the blinds remaining down was a source of fresh grief to her. As
she got into her brougham she was as agitated as only a woman can be who
loves sincerely and who is obliged to be incessantly changing her plans.
After turning the matter over again and again, she, who never wrote,
decided to send the following letter:
Saturday, 5 o'clock.
'Dear René,--I called at your house, and your sister told me you had
left town. But I know that is not true. You were there, only a few yards
away from me, in that room where every object must have reminded you of
my former visit, and yet you would not see me. You can surely have no
doubts of my sincerity on that occasion? Why should I have acted a lie?
I entreat you to let me see you, if it be only for a minute. Come and
read in my eyes what you swore never to doubt--that you are my all, my
life, my heaven. Since last night I am as one dead. Your horrible words
are continually in my ears. It cannot be you who spoke them. Where could
you have got that bitterness, almost akin to hatred? How can you condemn
me unheard on a suspicion for which you will blush when I have proved to
you how false it is? I ought, it is true, to be indignant and angry with
you, but my heart, dear René, contains only love for you, and a desire
to efface from your soul all that the enemies of our happiness have
engraved there. The step I took this morning, though contrary to all
that a woman owes herself, I took so cheerfully that, had you seen me,
you could have had no doubt respecting the sentiments that animate me.
Send me no answer. I feel even as I write how powerless a letter is to
describe the feelings of the heart. I shall expect you on Monday at
eleven in _our sanctuary._ It should be my right to tell you I demand to
see you there, for those accused have always the right to defend
themselves. I will only say, Come, if you ever loved, even for a day,
the woman who has never told you and never will tell you aught but the
truth. I swear it, my only love.'
When Suzanne had finished her letter she read it over. A lingering
instinct of prudence made her hesitate before signing it, but the
sincerity of her passion caused her to blush for her momentary weakness,
and, taking up her pen, she wrote her name at the bottom of this
faithful description of the strange moral condition into which she had
drifted. She lied once more in swearing that she spoke the truth, and
yet nothing was truer, more spontaneous, and less artificial than the
feelings which dictated the supreme deception that capped all the rest.
She summoned her footman, and, again scorning all ideas of prudence,
told him to give the letter--any single sentence in which would have
ruined her--to a commissionaire for immediate delivery. During the
thirty-six hours that separated her from the rendez-vous she had fixed
she lived in a state of nervous excitement of which she would never have
deemed herself capable.
This woman, who had such perfect control over herself, and who had
entered upon this adventure with the same Machiavelian _sangfroid_ she
had maintained in all her Society relations for years, now felt
powerless to follow, or even to form, any kind of plan respecting the
attitude to be assumed towards her lover. She was to dine out that
night, but she went through the process of dressing in an absolutely
listless way--an unusual thing for her--and without even looking in the
glass. During the whole of the dinner she found not a word to say to her
neighbour, the ubiquitous Crucé, and her brougham had been ordered for
ten o'clock on the plea that she was still suffering from her
indisposition of the preceding evening. On her way home she paid not the
slightest attention to her husband's words; his very presence was
intolerable to her, for it was on his account, remaining at home as he
did on Sundays, that she had been obliged to put off her meeting with
René until Monday. Would the poet consent to come? How anxiously, as
the servant helped her off with her cloak, did she scan the tray on
which were placed the letters that had come by the evening post! The
poet's writing was not to be seen on any envelope. She spent the whole
of Sunday in bed, under pretext of a bad headache, but in reality trying
to think out some plan in case René refused to believe her story of a
sick friend as an explanation of her visit to the Rue du Mont-Thabor.
But he would believe it. She could not admit to herself that he would
not; the supposition was too painful. Her fever of longing and suspense,
of hope and fear, reached its climax on Monday morning as she ascended
the stairs of the house in the Rue des Dames. If René were waiting for
her, hidden, as usual, behind the half-open door, it would prove that
her letter had conquered him, and in that case she was saved. But
no--the door was closed. Her hand trembled as she inserted the key in
the lock. She entered the first room and found it empty and the blinds
drawn. She sat down in the semi-darkness and gazed upon the objects that
recalled a happiness so recent and yet already so far away. There was
just the ordinary furniture of a modest drawing-room--a few arm-chairs
and a sofa in blue velvet, with antimacassars carefully hung at the
proper height. The handful of books René had brought were ranged in
perfect order on a well-dusted shelf, and the worthy landlady had even
taken care that the gilt clock, with its figure of Penelope, had been
kept going.
Suzanne listened to the swing of the pendulum as it broke the silence in
the apartment. Seconds passed, then minutes, then quarters, and still
René did not come. He would not come now. As this fact dawned upon her
Madame Moraines, accustomed from her earliest youth to having all her
wishes gratified, was seized with a fit of real despair. She began to
weep like a child, and her tears fell faster and faster, unaccompanied
now by any thoughts of simulation. She felt a desire to write, but no
sooner had she found some paper in the blotting-book left by her lover
and dipped the pen in the ink than she pushed the things away,
exclaiming, 'What is the good of it?' To show that she had been there in
case René should come after she was gone she left behind her the
scented handkerchief with which she had dried her bitter tears. She
murmured to herself, 'He used to like this scent!' and by the side of
the handkerchief she laid the gloves that he had always buttoned for her
as she was going. Then, with a heavy heart, she left the room in which
she had been so happy. Could it be possible that those happy hours had
gone--and for ever?