So Dunoisse, with a step in rank in lieu of the promised heap of gold,
and the suspicion rankling in him that his banishment had long been
contemplated, went back to the Rue de Sèvres and found Henriette and de
Moulny there together.
It was early upon a chill October evening. They were talking low and
earnestly before the fire that glowed in its polished steel basket. The
rose-shaded lamp threw a tender light upon the pair. And the portrait
of the nun-Princess of Orleans, treading with dimpled, naked feet
upon scattered crowns and scepters, looked down upon them with her
triumphant harlot’s smile.
There was a silence, poignant and tense. They had risen upon Dunoisse’s
entrance--both faces wore a set, artificial smile of greeting. He
looked from one to the other and waited, the venomed sentences of the
anonymous letter rankling in his sickened mind. He noted, dully, that
Henriette wore a loose, flowing robe of creamy white, the skirt edged,
the low neck and loose sleeves bordered, with a Greek key-pattern in
dull gold; and that de Moulny’s tall, official figure--arrayed in
the unrelieved magpie-garb of black-and-white that Fashion had but
recently decreed as the only evening wear for the ultra-fashionable
civilian--bulked gigantic in the small boudoir that was no longer gray,
but pranked it gayly, as one of Monseigneur’s own pages, in a coat of
green-and-gold. His own face was sharp and hard as though sculptured in
Egyptian granite, and his black eyes were glittering and chill. And it
seemed as though the silence would last unbroken forever.... The Sèvres
clock upon the mantelshelf ticked, the wood-ashes fell from the grate
with a little rustling sound.... Dunoisse could hear de Moulny’s deep,
even respiration and Henriette’s agitated, hurried breathing. It seemed
to him that his heart did not beat--that he himself did not breathe
at all. And then the spell was broken by a woman’s soft utterance.
Henriette said:
“Dear friend, your arrival is opportune. M. de Moulny has called
upon me to entreat that I would use such influence as I am--perhaps
mistakenly--credited with possessing--to effect a reconciliation
between you both.... The misunderstanding that has divided you so long
shall be cleared up, shall it not--as he wishes?” She added, looking
from one man to the other with softly-beaming eyes: “I too wish this,
so very greatly.... Will you not be friends, to please me?”
De Moulny’s deep voice said:
“Have we ever been enemies?”
And he held out to Dunoisse his large, thick, white hand with
the fleshy, round-tipped fingers; and, as a man in a dream will
unquestionably accept some inconceivable, impossible situation,
Dunoisse took the hand in his. It loosely grasped and was withdrawn.
Then, there had followed some moments of conventional, ordinary, social
commonplace. They had discussed the Message to the Senate, and the
protest of the Count de Chambord against the contemplated restoration
of the Empire; the probable results of the _plebiscite_, and the
superior becomingness of the Marie Stuart style of _coiffure_ to a
roll _à la Chinoise_. And then de Moulny had taken his leave, and,
freed from the hateful oppression of his presence, Dunoisse could think
clearly again.
Ah! could it be--without any bridging of the wide gulf of silence and
neglect by any explanation--without any clearing up of that trifling
matter of the command to fire, that had followed the pistol-shot at
the Foreign Ministry nearly four years previously--could it be that
Redskin and Alain were reconciled? With the anonymous letter festering
in his memory--with the knowledge of impending banishment gnawing at
his heart--Dunoisse answered No, no, no! to the question.... And then,
a sudden, unexpected surge of joy lifted the poor dupe off the shoals
of Disillusion, and swept him--how willingly!--back into the deceptive
deeps beyond.
He broke to Henriette the news of the Eastern mission. She paled ...
cried out ... threw herself half-swooning--bathed in tears, upon his
breast. Cruel, cruel Monseigneur!... Her beautiful bosom heaved as she
inveighed against the implacable tyrant at the Élysée. She vowed she
would not submit to such a heartless abuse of authority.... She would
go to the Prince, she declared--throw herself before him--plead upon
her knees for a reversal of the pitiless appointment. And Dunoisse
dissuaded her with difficulty from adopting such a course; inwardly
blessing the power she reviled, for the discovery that, after all, he
was loved....
And indeed, during the few, the very few, days that intervened between
the reconciliation with de Moulny and Dunoisse’s departure, Henriette’s
passion, that shriveled rose of Jericho, soaked in warm tears from
lovely eyes, regained its pristine color, bloom, and fragrance. The
ancient glamour was upon all earth and heaven, and the cup once more
offered by those exquisite hands to the thirsting lips of her lover
brimmed with the intoxicating wine of old.