The door shut softly. Those who had sought privacy in the gray boudoir
had retreated discouraged. No more intruders came near as the ball went
on. Pale faces had become burning crimson, flushed faces had darkened
to purple. A fog of powder, shaken from the faces and bosoms of
women, hung in the scorching, suffocating atmosphere, and made haloes
round the wax-lights dwindling in gilt wall-sconces and chandeliers.
Yawning servants renewed the candles as they were burned out. Not one
remembered those in the gray boudoir. And while they flickered low in
their silver branches, Henriette said to Dunoisse:
“Do you know the fortress of Ham?”
She continued before he could answer:
“Picture it as a hollow square of granite, set in the middle of a
vast, treeless, marshy plain. It has a huge round tower at two of its
angles, a powder-magazine at each of the others. A sluggish canal
crawls beneath the south and east ramparts, a river winds across the
marshy plain, passing beneath the walls of the town. There is only one
gateway, guarded by a square tower,--you enter, and are in a great
courtyard surrounded by lofty walls, commanded by heavy masses of
masonry, with water oozing from the blocks of stone that sparkle with
crystals of salt-peter.... One building has grated windows--by that you
know it is a prison. Another is the Barracks--a third is the dwelling
of the Commandant.”
She said, with a strange wild laugh, and a look of darkling remembrance:
“I spent my honeymoon there, as a bride of seventeen, eight years ago.
You have noticed that I am very pale, have you not? It is because
all my roses faded and died in that chill cavern of dripping stone.
My schoolfellows at the Convent, who used to joke about ‘Henriette’s
red cheeks,’ would not have known me. Indeed, I seemed a stranger to
myself.... The Tragedy of Existence had been revealed to me. I found it
overwhelming.... Perhaps I find it so still, but I have mastered the
art of hiding what I feel.”
She was playing a scene as the Henriettes alone know how to play it.
This atmosphere, vibrating with allusions, hints, references to hidden
griefs, quenched hopes and inward anguish, was the natural element
in which she breathed. From the quiver of her lips to the heave of
her beautiful bosom, every effect was thought out and calculated; no
inflection of her voice but was intended to make its effect, as by an
artist of the stage. And she went on:
“When a young wife lives by the side of a husband who is not young or
amiable, or even kind--in a place such as I have described, something
she must love if she is not to die.... Thus Henriette learned to
worship a Cause, and to devote herself, heart and soul, to an object.
That was the Restoration of the Empire. She lives for it to-day!...”
Her eyes were like green jewels burning under the shadow of her dusky
hair-waves. Her voice thrilled and rang and sighed. “Oh, how I thanked
you for those words I heard to-night! What man except yourself would
have spoken them! Yes--women can be chivalrous!--women can live and die
for a conviction! My terrible confession is made easier by your belief!”
She paused and resumed:
“I aided the escape of the Prince Imperial.... I conceived the idea,
thought of the disguise--provided the lay-figure that, dressed in
Prince Louis Napoleon’s clothes, lay upon the bed in his prison-cell,
while M. Conneau kept guard over the supposed sick man. And I gloried
in the success of the enterprise, and every louis I could obtain has
since been spent in furthering the Imperial cause. Ah, Heaven! how poor
its only hope has been!--he who should wield a scepter, he who should
have dipped his hands at will in a treasury of milliards! How poor he
still is, it pierces the heart to know. Yet how many have exhausted
their resources in supplying that need of his: General Montguichet and
M. de Combeville have been reduced to penury, Princess Mathilde and
the Comtesse de Thierry-Robec are impoverished by their gifts! Noble,
self-sacrificing women!--without envying I have emulated them.... You
see these rubies that I wear? Who would guess the stones were false?”
She lifted into the light a radiant forehead. Had you been there to see
and hear, you would have said with Dunoisse, “This is the voice--that
is the face of Truth!”
And yet, if those rubies had been carried to some expert, obliging
dealer in such gewgaws, say Bapst-Odier, late Jeweler to his Majesty,
111 Quai de l’Ecole,--they would--after that stately personage had
screwed a microscope into his eye and submitted them to a brief but
searching examination--have fetched a really handsome sum.
* * * * *
A fib, then?... Ah! but while Henriette told it she believed it.
The tale had seemed to need that one artistic touch of the false
jewels heaving on the loyal bosom of the fair Imperialist. And your
successful, irresistible deceiver is that he, or she, who, for the time
being, succeeds in humbugging and duping and bamboozling Self.
* * * * *
Thus, when Dunoisse, gripped by a sudden spasm of anger and contempt
and disgust, muttered:
“And _he_ stoops to take alms--to subsist on funds so gathered! Why
not rather sweep the streets?” she continued, in a voice that thrilled
with genuine emotion:
“The Arabs tells you that rubies are drops of the hearts’ blood of
lovers, shed countless ages ago, and crystallized into jewels by the
alchemy of Time. Well, I would empty my veins to-day for the Empire, if
need should arise!”
He looked at her and knew that she would do it. With what a spotless
flame she seemed to burn. Sweet, heroic zealot!--adored enthusiast!
What man, thought Dunoisse, could hesitate to pour his own life out
upon the trampled sand of a political arena if by the sacrifice that
white bosom might be spared the horrid wound!
“Judge, then, Monsieur, when it seemed, after long years, that the
hour of Restoration might be approaching,--when the throne began to
totter under the paralyzing weight of the Monarchy,--when I saw France,
languishing for a new breath to animate, new blood to revivify her,
stretch her weak hands towards the quacks and charlatans who crowd
round her sick-bed,--judge if I did not thrill and pant and tremble for
that absent one,--if I did not urge all those who recognize in Prince
Louis Napoleon France’s rescuer and savior, to exhaust themselves in
a supreme effort to bring him to her side. And knowing him in urgent
need, deceived by English guile, betrayed by the specious promises of
that powerful Minister who has only feigned to befriend him--I borrowed
money.... Yes, it must be told....”
She stretched out the little hand and touched the gold lace upon
Dunoisse’s sleeve, saying with a wistful smile:
“Borrowing degrades--even when one borrows from a woman. You see, I do
not spare myself.... I borrowed from a man.”
Dunoisse’s small square white teeth were viciously set upon his lower
lip. His black brows were knitted. His eyes were bent upon the carpet.
He heard her say:
“A man who loved me.... Ah! what a coward I am, and how you must
despise me! Who loves me, I should say!”
And the sentence was a knife in the heart of the poor dupe who heard.
Words were wrenched from him with the sudden pain. He cried, before he
could check himself:
“Who is the man?”
And then, meeting her look that conveyed: “You have no right to ask”
... he said with humility: “Forgive me! I was presumptuous and mad to
ask that question. Forget that I ever did!”
She gauged him with a keen bright glance, and said with a noble,
melancholy simplicity that was as pinchbeck as her abasement of the
moment previous:
“You are very young, or you would never have committed so great an
error. For if I loved him, I should never tell you for his sake, and if
I loved _you_----”
She registered his start, and finished:
--“I should never tell you for yours. But as I have no love left to
give to any man: as the fountains of my heart have long been frozen at
their source--I will say this.... You and he were friends once, long
years ago, before he became an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Ministry.
A cloud has shadowed your old friendship.... A misunderstanding has
thrust you apart. You know who it is I mean.”
* * * * *
A cloud had almost palpably come before Dunoisse’s eyes. Their
black-diamond brilliancy was dulled to opaqueness, as he looked at
Madame de Roux, and his lips, under the small black mustache, made a
pale, straight line against his burnt-sienna skin. And from them came a
grating voice that said:
“You are speaking of M. Alain de Moulny. I saw you together in
the courtyard of the Hotel of Foreign Affairs a moment before the
pistol-shot. And he----”
She stretched out, with a gesture of entreaty, her little hands,
sparkling with the jewels that were such marvelous imitations, and yet
would have fetched a good round sum at Bapst Odier’s.
“Wait--wait! Do not confuse me. Let me tell you in my roundabout
woman’s way! He----”
She drew her brows together; moved the toe of her little gray satin
slipper backwards and forwards through the silky fur of the chinchilla
rug. How little of actual fact may be held to constitute the entire
truth, is a problem which confronts the Henriettes at every turn of the
road.
“We had had an appointment to meet in my box at the Odéon Theater
that evening. M. de Moulny was to have brought me the money there.
The disturbances rendered it impossible that he could keep the
appointment--the Ministry was guarded by troops--M. Guizot uncertain
whether the King would support or abandon him--dispatches and
messengers coming every moment, messages and dispatches every instant
going out.... So I was to meet M. de Moulny in one of the more private
waiting-rooms opening from the Hotel vestibule and receive the money
from his hands. He is not rich--what younger son is wealthy? But where
there is devotion--what cannot be achieved? He would do anything for
me!”
She said, meeting Hector’s somber glance:
“I have heard it said that you are indifferent to women. If so, you are
lucky. We bring nothing but misery--even to those we love!”
She swept her little hands upwards through the mass of curls upon her
temples, with her favorite gesture:
“I was leaving the Hotel--where my husband was dining with M.
Guizot--when the great crowd of people, led by the drum and the Red
Flag, filled the Boulevard, and seemed as though about to charge the
soldiers, who were drawn up along the railings motionless as statues,
with their muskets at the present.... Upon a gray Arab, in command of
the half-battalion was a young officer who interested me much....”
Invisible, red-hot needles pricked the listener all over. Then
something icy cold seemed to trickle down his spine and escape through
the heels of his spurred military boots. The speaker did not look in
his direction. Her downcast eyelids fluttered, a faint mysterious smile
hovered upon the eloquent mouth.
“He sat his horse like a young Bedouin of the Desert, or such a
warrior of ancient Greece as one has seen sculptured on the walls of
the Parthenon at Athens. His skin was the ground-color of an Etruscan
vase.... Cold though I am--ah! you cannot dream how cold I am!--I have
never been insensible to the beauty that is male.”
Under the covert of her eyelashes she stole a glance at the victim.
* * * * *
“I guessed who you were, of course!--you had been minutely described
to me.... But it pleased me to pretend ignorance. I said, pointing you
out to M. de Moulny: ‘That must be the officer who has newly joined
us from Africa. His type is rare--at least in my experience. It is a
reincarnation of the Young Hannibal. He has the rich coloring, the bold
features, the slender shape.... De Roux must present him. He will bring
me purple stuffs and golden ingots and the latest news from Tyre.’ And
de Moulny answered, looking at you coldly: ‘He has millions of ingots,
but he cannot give you them--unless he cares to break a vow.’ I said:
‘So, then, you know my handsome Carthaginian?’ He answered: ‘I used
to, when we were boys at a military institute. It was he who induced
me to give up my intention of entering the Army.’ I asked: ‘How, then,
Monsieur?... Are you so easily persuaded? What means did your friend
employ to alter your determination?’ And de Moulny answered, looking at
me oddly: ‘_A false step, and a broken foil!_’”
The spider-web of fascination she had woven about Dunoisse was
weakened, perhaps, by the mention of de Moulny’s name. He looked at
Henriette with eyes that had become harder and brighter. He waited for
the rest.
“Naturally, so strange an utterance roused my curiosity. I wanted
to hear the story, if there is one? But M. de Moulny stuck out his
underlip--perhaps you remember a trick he has;--and I thought: ‘Some
day you shall tell me the rest.’ We talked of other things--standing
there under the portico. Of ourselves, France, the political crisis
that loaded the air with the stifling smell of garlic, of old
clothes, of unwashed human beings--that filled it with those cries
of, ‘Down with the Ministry! Long live Reform! Give us no more
thieves in velvet!’ and drowned them in the bellowed strophes of ‘The
Marseillaise.’ And as the crowd surged and roared and the Red Flag
waved like a bloody rag in the light of their torches, I asked of M. de
Moulny--I cannot tell you why I asked it.... Perhaps one is fated to
say these things....”
Real emotion was beginning to mingle with feigned feeling. She lifted
the chain of rubies that encircled her round white throat as though its
light weight oppressed, and tiny points of moisture glittered on her
temples and about her lips. She said, touching the lips with a filmy
handkerchief edged with heavy Spanish lace:
“I asked of Alain, as the great crowd seemed about to rush upon the
gates of the Hotel: ‘What would be, at this juncture, the greatest
misfortune that could befall the House of Bourbon?’ He answered: ‘That
your young Hannibal should give the word to fire!’”
She imposed silence upon Dunoisse, who was about to break into
impetuous speech, by laying a little velvet hand upon his lips, as she
had once laid them upon de Moulny’s. She kept the hand there as she
said:
“Do not interrupt--it takes all my courage to tell this! I carry
a loaded pistol upon all occasions--it is a habit I learned in
Spain--in Algeria I found it of use. And I drew the weapon from its
hiding-place,--I can hear my own voice saying as I did so: ‘_One shot
might hasten the crisis.--What if I fired?_’... And M. de Moulny said:
‘No, no! You must not!’ _And I did!_ I pulled the trigger, and before
the echo of the shot had died, and the salt blue smoke cleared from
before my face.”
* * * * *
She was at his feet, weeping, clinging to the shaking hands with which
Dunoisse strove to raise her, choking with sobs, burying her face upon
his arm, wetting the blue cloth with real tears, entangling silken
shining strands of night-dark hair in the rough gold embroidery of the
Staff brassard on the Assistant-Adjutant’s sleeve.
“This is my place! Let all the world come and find me here! I do not
care! What is humiliation if I can atone? Make no allowances or excuses
for me.... Do not say: ‘It was a moment of madness!’ Think of me as
your enemy and your destroyer! Ah! what a heart I must have to have
smiled in your eyes, as I did when we met this evening, and not have
cried out at the first look: ‘Pardon! Forgiveness!--you whom I have
wronged!’”
She drew some sobbing breaths, and said, lifting beautiful
tear-drenched eyes like pansies in a thunder-shower:
“Hate me for the cold, calculating selfishness--bred of the base desire
to save myself from the taint of all that blood--the cowardly fear
of the possible vengeance of Red Republicans--that led me to say to
you: ‘_Take the advice of a sister. Say that you were guilty of this
crime!_’ For it is a crime. It has defiled my soul with stains that
cannot be wiped away.”
The supple red hands of Dunoisse tightened upon the little hands they
clasped. He said, looking in her eyes:
“The pistol-shot was yours. But _he_ cried, ‘Fire!’”
She moved her lips soundlessly and nodded.
“I recognized his voice.... I should recognize it through the noise of
battle--above all the tumult of the Judgment Day. It claimed payment
for the false step--indemnity for the broken foil. Well, let him have
both, and find his joy in them!”
He laughed harshly, and his grip was merciless. Yet she bore the pain
of it without crying out. His eyes had quitted her face--they were
fixed upon the portrait of the nun-Princess of Orleans. And as though
some subtle, evil influence had passed from those proud voluptuous
painted eyes into his blood, he was conscious of the shaping of a
purpose within him and the surging of a flood that was to carry all
before it and undo the work of years.
“But one joy he shall not have....”
He hardly knew whether his own lips or another’s had uttered the words.
But he looked down and saw Henriette at his feet, between his hands.
And as his eyes fell upon the creamy treasure of the fair bosom that
heaved so near, Monsieur the Marshal, had he been enabled to look into
the gray boudoir at that particular moment, would no longer have been
able to say to Hector:
“You are an iceberg. You have Carmel in your blood!”
For the son of Marie Bathilde--carried away by a tidal wave of passion,
such as had swept Sister Thérèse de St. François out from among the
pallets of the Lesser Ward of the Mercy-House at Widinitz, out of her
nun’s cell into the wild, turbulent ocean that rolled and billowed
outside the convent walls--was to yield, and take, and eat as greedily
as any other son of Adam of the fruit of the Forbidden Tree.
How it matures, the first bite into the sweet, juicy pulp! He had
seemed to Henriette a brilliant boy; obstinate and stiff-necked,
scrupulous and absurd. Now she saw him transformed to a new being.
Vigorous, alert, decisive, masterful, a man to be reckoned with, to
be feared while you deceived. And on the boiling whirlpool of passion
her own light fragile craft began to dance, and rock, and spin in
ever-narrowing circles, as he said, with a strange smile that showed
the white teeth gleaming under the small black mustache, but set no gay
light dancing in the brilliant, cold black eyes:
“Have no fear. Try to believe me when I promise you, upon my word of
honor, that no harm shall come to you from--this that you have done.”
He stooped and kissed the little white hands, and said to their owner:
“Blood on these exquisite hands would be a horror. Well! from
henceforth I take their stains on mine.”
She faltered in real agitation:
“What are you going to do?”
The lovely lips were very near his own, as he said, still smiling in
that curious way:
“I shall take the advice--not of a sister!”
She panted, shuddering closer.
“No, no! You must not----”
His eyes were fastened on her lips. Instinctively his own were drawn to
them. His hot kiss would have burned them in another moment, but that
a chill breath seemed to flutter at his ear, and in a flash, he saw
the thing he was about to do in its true, ugly colors, and shame stung
through and through him, and he drew back.
He had gathered of the fruit of Pleasure and plucked its gaudy flowers
in the parterres where these things can be had at a price. He had
emptied the frothy cup of Passion and paid its exorbitant bill. But
though he may have coveted the mistress of another man, he had never
yet desired his neighbor’s wife.
De Roux might be a reprobate and a libertine, but he was Henriette’s
husband. And she was not the pure, unattainable planet, the chaste,
immaculate divinity he had imagined her; but yet she was a wife. She
felt the change in him--saw the fierce, eager light die out in his
black eyes, and rose up, saying hurriedly:
“How good you are!--how good! I shall rely upon your promise. We must
join the others now. It will not do to be missed!”
So they went out together and mingled with the spinning rout of
dancers, as the neglected wax-lights burned out in their silver
branches, and the waning moon peeped through the curtains of the gray
boudoir. One pale ray touched the portrait of the witch-Princess of
Orleans, grasping the Crucifix in the dimpled hand that had never
scrupled to pluck Sin’s reddest flowers--treading crowns and scepters
under the dainty, naked feet so many lovers had kissed as gayly they
danced downwards along the hellward path. And surely the proud,
sensuous eyes leered with wicked triumph, and could it be that the
smile upon the painted mouth had given place to laughter?