The reader has not been invited to contemplate, in the person of
Dunoisse, the phenomenon of the Young Man of Virtue. Of kindred
passions with his fellow-men, of unblemished health, hot blood and
vivid imagination, he was, _per_ grace of certain honorable principles
instilled into a boy’s mind by a poor old gentlewoman, no less than
by an innate delicacy and fastidiousness, a cleanly liver: a man whom
Poverty had schooled in self-restraint. Now Poverty was banished, and
self-restraint was flung to the winds. And, regrettable as it is to
have to state the fact, the lapse of Miss Caroline Smithwick’s late
pupil from the narrow path of Honor was attended by no chidings of
conscience, visited by no prickings of remorse.
Dunoisse was happy. The world took on a brighter aspect, the air he
breathed seemed purer and more fragrant, the sunshine brighter and the
moonlight lovelier, because of this his sin.
The eyes of men and women--especially of women!--met his own
more kindly; there was no sense of strangeness barring social
intercourse.... Life was pleasanter as the months rolled into years.
People found him agreeable now--a charming fellow. He was asked
everywhere, petted and flattered, quoted and caressed. Not only because
he spent his money lavishly, but because there is a freemasonry
between the votaries of illicit pleasure which does not extend to the
conscientious and cleanly. Vice is a boon-companion in whose society
you may lounge unbuttoned. Virtue and Integrity are the two flagrant
offenses the world can never pardon or condone.
An agreeable, even brilliant man: well-bred, well-read, and in one
branch at least of his profession, marvelously competent. These were
among the encomiums bestowed by his world upon Dunoisse, who learned to
dress in the height of the prevailing fashion; to spend heaps of money
upon jewelry, cigars, wines, restaurant-dinners and little suppers, and
to lose as much at cards in a single night at the Club as would have
formerly kept him for a year. Other things indispensable to a young
man moving in the inner circle of fast Parisian Society were mastered
by him in due course--such as the art of living on terms of daily,
familiar, friendly intercourse with a man hated, loathed, and envied
above all men. Also, the secret of saying one thing and conveying
another; the art of taking formal leave and slipping back again; and of
applying to the solution of every sum of existence the Ancient Rule of
Three.
* * * * *
For in spite of Adjmeh and one or two other brief amatory episodes, the
Book of the Ways of Women had not until now been placed open between
the hands of Hector Dunoisse.
When you have read that book from Preface to Finis you will have
learned much, and yet not all there is to learn. For every page of the
manuscript is a palimpsest. When the writing is washed off with tears
of blood, the true characters start out from their concealment, the
mystery of mysteries is revealed.
But no man has ever lived long enough to master that Book from cover
to cover, though some, wiser or more patient than their fellows, have
learned a chapter or two by heart before they died. And those deep
scholars know that it is never possible to determine whether a woman
be prompted to the gift of her beauty and the sacrifice of her honor
by love of herself, or love of him who covets it. And also they are
aware that the last chapter of the tome is never to be finished. Some
Henriette adds a fresh gloss to it every day.
Dunoisse read in that Book with raptures and exultations, and fierce
delight and passionate triumph. He was to read it with agonies and
humiliations and galling, unspeakable shame. He was to shed secret
scalding tears over the cruel pages. He was to laugh over them with
the laughter that is born of despair. But the sweetness of honey came
before the tang of gall, the pleasure before the torment. So it was and
will be while the world goes spinning round.
Women like Henriette give out fascination as radium dispenses its
invisible energies. Every tone of their voices is a call, every glance
an appeal or an invitation, every rustle of their garments, every heave
of their bosoms, constitutes an appeal to the senses and a stimulant to
the passions of men.
She was half-a-dozen women in one; you were master of a whole harem
of beauties possessing her; a jewel cut in innumerable facets lay in
your hand. She could be fierce and tender, pathetic and cynical, gay
and sorrowful, delicate and robust, in the space of half-an-hour.
Cigarettes calmed her nerves; moonlight, music, tiny glasses of
Benedictine, and minute pills of Turkish opium. Chloral and morphia had
not at that date been discovered, else what a votary of the tabloid
would have been found in Henriette.
She adored sweets, Chinese bezique and good cookery. Green oysters,
bouillabaisse, _poulet sauté Marengo_, and peaches in Kirsch, were
among her passions. But she was a pious Catholic, and observed with
scrupulous rigor the fasts and feasts of the Church.
She had campaigned with the 999th in Algeria, wore a dagger sometimes
in her girdle; carried a tiny ivory-and-silver mounted pistol--fellow
to one de Moulny kept locked up--and was expert in its use, as in the
handling of the fencing-foil and the womanlier weapon, the needle.
What webs of cunning embroidery grew under those little fingers! She
wrought at these, sometimes for days together. Then she would pine
for exercise and the open air: ride furiously in the Bois, with her
plumed hat cocked _à la mousquetaire_, and her silver-gray veil and
smoke-colored habit streaming; use the jeweled whip until her horse
lathered, drive home the little silver-gilt spur of the dainty polished
boot until his flank was specked with blood. Or she would shoot pigeons
at Tivoli, handling her gun with ease, and vying with crack masculine
sportsmen in her skilled capacity for slaughter. Or she would be driven
in her barouche or landau, lying back among her silken cushions, as
though too indolent to lift an eyelash, languid and voluptuous as any
odalisque. Returning from these excursions, she would lie upon the
sofa, silent, pale and mysterious, her vinaigrette at her nostrils,
a silken handkerchief bound about her brows. For a crown of diamonds
she could not, would not go to theater, or ball, or supper that night!
She was fit to die--wanted nothing but to be left in solitude.... But
she never failed to go; and towards the end of some gay, boisterous
midnight banquet she would move with that long, gliding, supple step
of hers into the middle of the room, and dance you the cachucha, with
coffee-spoons for castanets, if nobody could produce these.
Who could resist her then? With the proud little head swaying on the
rounded throat, and the long eyes darting fiery glances as the lithe
body swung, and whirled, and the white arms beckoned and waved. With
the silken swish of skirts calling attention to the lovely supple curve
that went from hip to knee, and from the swelling calf to the delicate
rounded ankle, and bidding you note and worship the elastic arch of
the Andalusian instep, under which water could run and never wet the
sole....
Nor was she less bewitching, be sure, at those other moments when
Dunoisse would be alone with her; when, snatching her Spanish guitar
from clumsier hands, she would warble the naughtiest ballads of the
cafés chantant, reproducing the cynical improprieties of Fanny Hervieu
or Georgette Bis-Bis, with inimitable _chic_ and go. Or she would sing
a Spanish love-song, vibrating with Southern passion; or sigh forth
some Irish ballad, breathing of the green isle whence Norah Murphy
sailed, to conquer with her beauty a guerrilla chief of Spain, and
bear him Henriette, and die of sorrow; bequeathing her daughter a
passionate, emotional nature and an hereditary religion, and the memory
of some kisses and cradle-songs.
The simile of the changeful fay in the rainbow was never inappropriate
to her. What a charming mingling of inconsistencies, what a
creature of contradictions was she.... When her Brazilian cockatoo
“Coco,” a magnificent bird, emerald-green as the Prince-Pretender’s
dress-waistcoat, with a crest of sulphur-yellow and a beak as crimson
as the Colonel’s own, was murdered by the Convent tom-cat, how tragic
was her grief! Coco was interred in the Convent gardens, beautiful
still in those days, though filched from even then for the builders’
diabolical uses. And the glove-box that served Henriette’s slaughtered
darling as a coffin had been won at a pigeon-shooting match at
Tivoli....
Those decapitated birds, fluttering on the smooth green turf in their
death-struggles, had not drawn from the beautiful eyes a single tear.
But Coco, who had been taught to shriek “Vive l’Empereur!” when he
wanted fruit or bonbons, with loyalty quite as genuine as M. de
Persigny’s--Coco was quite a different affair....
Mistigris must pay the death-penalty--upon that point Coco’s bereaved
mistress was inexorable. The Augustinian Sisters pleaded for their
darling; Madame de Roux would not budge. When she spoke of an appeal to
the authorities--never reluctant at any time to impose penalties upon
the Church--the Sisters caved in. At any rate, they ultimately produced
a tail.... And whether the caudal appendage had really belonged to
Mistigris, or had been filched from an old cat-skin belonging to the
portress, touched up with red ink at the end where it had been attached
to the original wearer, to impart a delusive air of freshness, was
never absolutely known. When a cat strangely resembling Mistigris, but
called by another name, attracted the attention of Coco’s bereaved
mistress a few weeks later, the retort was unanswerable:
“But see, Madame--he has a tail!”
* * * * *
That tail was a morsel that stuck in Dunoisse’s throat. Another thing,
as difficult to swallow, was the undeniable, apparent fact of the
amiable, even affectionate relations existing between Madame de Roux
and her fiery-faced, dyed, bandoliered and corseted mate.... A further,
even more indigestible discovery, was, that although the springs of the
young bride’s heart had been so early frozen at their sources by etc.,
etc., the union of the couple had been blessed by children.
Three little girls in pigtails with ribbon bows, and Scotch plaid
pelisses, ending in the dreadful frilled-cambric funnels that more
adult skirts concealed, and which were known as pantalettes. Happening
to come across a daguerreotyped group of these darlings--Henriette had
been turning out a drawer in her writing-table--Dunoisse inquired who
the children were? And was horribly discomfited at her reply:
“They are mine. Didn’t you know? Do you think them like me?”
* * * * *
They certainly were not like her. Nor did they resemble de Roux. And
she kissed the three glassy countenances, and murmured caressingly:
“My treasures!”
Adding, as Dunoisse looked round, uncertain whether the treasures
might not appear in answer to this ebullition of maternal tenderness:
“They do not live with us, but with their foster-mother at Bagneres: an
excellent person--married to a market-gardener. They had measles when
last I heard of them, so of course I cannot go there just now. When
they are well again you must see them. Ah! how I hope they will love
you!... Dear, what is the matter now?”
Dunoisse did not quite know. But he was sensible of a vigorous growth
of distaste for plaid pelisses in combination with frilled pantalettes,
and for at least a week, pigtails, whenever encountered--and they were
everywhere--smote upon his naked conscience like scourges set with
thorns.
He rid himself of the absurd obsession presently, and was happier than
ever. The world was a gay, bright, pleasant place when one took it
easily, and did not demand too much virtue of oneself or the people of
one’s set.
But yet, on those rare occasions when one was hipped and blue with
overmuch wine, or gambling, or pleasure, there were moments when
the words of that old boyish vow, so earnestly made, so painfully
kept, so recently broken, would start out against the background of
half-conscious thought as plainly as the Writing on the Wall, and
he would hear himself saying to a woman whose face he had nearly
forgotten, that he hoped the day that should see him broach that
banked-up store of thousands might bear him fruit of retribution, in
bitterness, and sorrow, and shame....
What a fool he had been!--what a narrow-minded, straitlaced idiot! Why,
the money had procured Dunoisse everything that was worth having in the
world.
The open companionship and secret possession of a beautiful, amorous,
high-bred woman; the friendship of many others, only a little less
adorable, and the good-fellowship of crowds of agreeable men.
Membership of many fashionable Clubs, invitations to all the best
houses. His _brevet_ as Major, or _chef de bataillon_, though the
General Staff appointment that should have accompanied it unaccountably
delayed upon the road. And to cap all, life had been made yet easier by
the removal of de Roux to a distant post abroad.
For happy as Dunoisse was, it had been constantly borne in upon him
that he would be a great deal happier if the reproach of this man’s
presence could be removed.
He hinted as much to Henriette. She looked at him with sweet, limpid
eyes of astonishment. What! did he actually feel like that? How odd!
Dunoisse was secretly a little angry with her for not understanding. It
showed a want of delicacy, not suspected in her before.
“Poor Eugène! So easy-going, good-humored and amiable. And you really
wish him ... out of the way?”
She crumpled her slender eyebrows and pondered a while, her
little jeweled fingers cupping her adorable chin. “Perhaps the
Prince-President could offer him some foreign appointment,” she said at
last. “Monseigneur is always so good!”