Eugène Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Café Égalité,
allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of
sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an
expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier,
but rather a fleeting shade of unhappiness which showed he was a man to
whom the world was being unkind. On the opposite side of the little
round table sat his friend and sympathising companion, Henri Lacour. He
sipped his absinthe slowly, as absinthe should be sipped, and it was
evident that he was deeply concerned with the problem that confronted
his comrade.
"Why, in Heaven's name, did you marry her? That, surely, was not
necessary."
Eugène shrugged his shoulders. The shrug said plainly, "Why, indeed?
Ask me an easier one."
For some moments there was silence between the two. Absinthe is not a
liquor to be drunk hastily, or even to be talked over too much in the
drinking. Henri did not seem to expect any other reply than the
expressive shrug, and each man consumed his beverage dreamily, while
the absinthe, in return for this thoughtful consideration, spread over
them its benign influence, gradually lifting from their minds all care
and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at
times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the
vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque
morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, and a blue sky
overhead.
"A man must live," said Caspilier at last; "and the profession of
decadent poet is not a lucrative one. Of course there is undying fame
in the future, but then we must have our absinthe in the present. Why
did I marry her, you ask? I was the victim of my environment. I must
write poetry; to write poetry, I must live; to live, I must have money;
to get money, I was forced to marry. Valdorême is one of the best
pastry-cooks in Paris; is it my fault, then, that the Parisians have a
greater love for pastry than for poetry? Am I to blame that her wares
are more sought for at her shop than are mine at the booksellers'? I
would willingly have shared the income of the shop with her without the
folly of marriage, but Valdorême has strange, barbaric notions which
were not overturnable by civilised reason. Still my action was not
wholly mercenary, nor indeed mainly so. There was a rhythm about her
name that pleased me. Then she is a Russian, and my country and hers
were at that moment in each other's arms, so I proposed to Valdorême
that we follow the national example. But, alas! Henri, my friend, I
find that even ten years' residence in Paris will not eliminate the
savage from the nature of a Russian. In spite of the name that sounds
like the soft flow of a rich mellow wine, my wife is little better than
a barbarian. When I told her about Tenise, she acted like a mad woman--
drove me into the streets."
"But why did you tell her about Tenise?"
"_Pourquoi?_ How I hate that word! Why! Why!! Why!!! It dogs one's
actions like a bloodhound, eternally yelping for a reason. It seems to
me that a11 my life I have had to account to an inquiring why. I don't
know why I told her; it did not appear to be a matter requiring any
thought or consideration. I spoke merely because Tenise came into my
mind at the moment. But after that, the deluge; I shudder when I think
of it."
"Again the why?" said the poet's friend. "Why not cease to think of
conciliating your wife? Russians are unreasoning aborigines. Why not
take up life in a simple poetic way with Tenise, and avoid the Rue de
Russie altogether?"
Caspilier sighed gently. Here fate struck him hard. "Alas! my friend,
it is impossible. Tenise is an artist's model, and those brutes of
painters who get such prices for their daubs, pay her so little each
week that her wages would hardly keep me in food and drink. My paper,
pens, and ink I can get at the cafés, but how am I to clothe myself? If
Valdorême would but make us a small allowance, we could be so happy.
Valdorême is madame, as I have so often told her, and she owes me
something for that; but she actually thinks that because a man is
married he should come dutifully home like a bourgeois grocer. She has
no poetry, no sense of the needs of a literary man, in her nature."
Lacour sorrowfully admitted that the situation had its embarrassments.
The first glass of absinthe did not show clearly how they were to be
met, but the second brought bravery with it, and he nobly offered to
beard the Russian lioness in her den, explain the view Paris took of
her unjustifiable conduct, and, if possible, bring her to reason.
Caspilier's emotion overcame him, and he wept silently, while his
friend, in eloquent language, told how famous authors, whose names were
France's proudest possession, had been forgiven by their wives for
slight lapses from strict domesticity, and these instances, he said, he
would recount to Madame Valdorême, and so induce her to follow such
illustrious examples.
The two comrades embraced and separated; the friend to use his
influence and powers of persuasion with Valdorême; the husband to tell
Tenise how blessed they were in having such a friend to intercede for
them; for Tenise, bright little Parisienne that she was, bore no malice
against the unreasonable wife of her lover.
Henri Lacour paused opposite the pastry-shop on the Rue de Russie that
bore the name of "Valdorême" over the temptingly filled windows. Madame
Caspilier had not changed the title of her well-known shop when she
gave up her own name. Lacour caught sight of her serving her customers,
and he thought she looked more like a Russian princess than a
shopkeeper. He wondered now at the preference of his friend for the
petite black-haired model. Valdorême did not seem more than twenty; she
was large, and strikingly handsome, with abundant auburn hair that was
almost red. Her beautifully moulded chin denoted perhaps too much
firmness, and was in striking contrast to the weakness of her husband's
lower face. Lacour almost trembled as she seemed to flash one look
directly at him, and, for a moment, he feared she had seen him
loitering before the window. Her eyes were large, of a limpid amber
colour, but deep within them smouldered a fire that Lacour felt he
would not care to see blaze up. His task now wore a different aspect
from what it had worn in front of the Café Égalité. Hesitating a
moment, he passed the shop, and, stopping at a neighbouring café,
ordered another glass of absinthe. It is astonishing how rapidly the
genial influence of this stimulant departs!
Fortified once again, he resolved to act before his courage had time to
evaporate, and so, goading himself on with the thought that no man
should be afraid to meet any woman, be she Russian or civilised, he
entered the shop, making his most polite bow to Madame Caspilier.
"I have come, madame," he began, "as the friend of your husband, to
talk with you regarding his affairs."
"Ah!" said Valdorême; and Henri saw with dismay the fires deep down in
her eyes rekindle. But she merely gave some instructions to an
assistant, and, turning to Lacour, asked him to be so good as to follow
her.
She led him through the shop and up a stair at the back, throwing open
a door on the first floor. Lacour entered a neat drawing-room, with
windows opening out upon the street. Madame Caspilier seated herself at
a table, resting her elbow upon it, shading her eyes with her hand, and
yet Lacour felt them searching his very soul.
"Sit down," she said. "You are my husband's friend. What have you to
say?"
Now, it is a difficult thing for a man to tell a beautiful woman that
her husband--for the moment--prefers some one else, so Lacour began on
generalities. He said a poet might be likened to a butterfly, or
perhaps to the more industrious bee, who sipped honey from every
flower, and so enriched the world. A poet was a law unto himself, and
should not be judged harshly from what might be termed a shopkeeping
point of view. Then Lacour, warming to his work, gave many instances
where the wives of great men had condoned and even encouraged their
husbands' little idiosyncrasies, to the great augmenting of our most
valued literature.
Now and then, as this eloquent man talked, Valdorême's eyes seemed to
flame dangerously in the shadow, but the woman neither moved nor
interrupted him while he spoke. When he had finished, her voice sounded
cold and unimpassioned, and he felt with relief that the outbreak he
had feared was at least postponed.
"You would advise me then," she began, "to do as the wife of that great
novelist did, and invite my husband and the woman he admires to my
table?"
"Oh, I don't say I could ask you to go so far as that," said Lacour;
"but----"
"I'm no halfway woman. It is all or nothing with me. If I invited my
husband to dine with me, I would also invite this creature--What is her
name? Tenise, you say. Well, I would invite her too. Does she know he
is a married man?"
"Yes," cried Lacour eagerly; "but I assure you, madame, she has nothing
but the kindliest feelings towards you. There is no jealousy about
Tenise."
"How good of her! How very good of her!" said the Russian woman, with
such bitterness that Lacour fancied uneasily that he had somehow made
an injudicious remark, whereas all his efforts were concentrated in a
desire to conciliate and please.
"Very well," said Valdorême, rising. "You may tell my husband that you
have been successful in your mission. Tell him that I will provide for
them both. Ask them to honour me with their presence at breakfast to-
morrow morning at twelve o'clock. If he wants money, as you say, here
are two hundred francs, which will perhaps be sufficient for his wants
until midday to-morrow."
Lacour thanked her with a profuse graciousness that would have
delighted any ordinary giver, but Valdorême stood impassive like a
tragedy queen, and seemed only anxious that he should speedily take his
departure, now that his errand was done.
The heart of the poet was filled with joy when he heard from his friend
that at last Valdorême had come to regard his union with Tenise in the
light of reason. Caspilier, as he embraced Lacour, admitted that
perhaps there was something to be said for his wife after all.
The poet dressed himself with more than usual care on the day of the
feast, and Tenise, who accompanied him, put on some of the finery that
had been bought with Valdorême's donation. She confessed that she
thought Eugène's wife had acted with consideration towards them, but
maintained that she did not wish to meet her, for, judging from
Caspilier's account, his wife must be a somewhat formidable and
terrifying person; still she went with him, she said, solely through
good nature, and a desire to heal family differences. Tenise would do
anything in the cause of domestic peace.
The shop assistant told the pair, when they had dismissed the cab, that
madame was waiting for them upstairs. In the drawing-room Valdorême was
standing with her back to the window like a low-browed goddess, her
tawny hair loose over her shoulders, and the pallor of her face made
more conspicuous by her costume of unrelieved black. Caspilier, with
the grace characteristic of him, swept off his hat, and made a low,
deferential bow; but when he straightened himself up, and began to say
the complimentary things and poetical phrases he had put together for
the occasion at the café the night before, the lurid look of the
Russian made his tongue falter; and Tenise, who had never seen a woman
of this sort before, laughed a nervous, half-frightened little laugh,
and clung closer to her lover than before. The wife was even more
forbidding than she had imagined. Valdorême shuddered slightly when she
saw this intimate movement on the part of her rival, and her hand
clenched and unclenched convulsively.
"Come," she said, cutting short her husband's halting harangue, and
sweeping past them, drawing her skirts aside on nearing Tenise, she led
the way up to the dining-room a floor higher.
"I'm afraid of her," whimpered Tenise, holding back. "She will poison
us."
"Nonsense," said Caspilier, in a whisper. "Come along. She is too fond
of me to attempt anything of that kind, and you are safe when I am
here."
Valdorême sat at the head of the table, with her husband at her right
hand and Tenise on her left. The breakfast was the best either of them
had ever tasted. The hostess sat silent, but no second talker was
needed when the poet was present. Tenise laughed merrily now and then
at his bright sayings, for the excellence of the meal had banished her
fears of poison.
"What penetrating smell is this that fills the room? Better open the
window," said Caspilier.
"It is nothing," replied Valdorême, speaking for the first time since
they had sat down. "It is only naphtha. I have had this room cleaned
with it. The window won't open, and if it would, we could not hear you
talk with the noise from the street."
The poet would suffer anything rather than have his eloquence
interfered with, so he said no more about the fumes of naphtha. When
the coffee was brought in, Valdorême dismissed the trim little maid who
had waited on them.
"I have some of your favourite cigarettes here. I will get them."
She arose, and, as she went to the table on which the boxes lay, she
quietly and deftly locked the door, and, pulling out the key, slipped
it into her pocket.
"Do you smoke, mademoiselle?" she asked, speaking to Tenise. She had
not recognised her presence before.
"Sometimes, madame," answered the girl, with a titter.
"You will find these cigarettes excellent. My husband's taste in
cigarettes is better than in many things. He prefers the Russian to the
French."
Caspilier laughed loudly.
"That's a slap at you, Tenise," he said.
"At me? Not so; she speaks of cigarettes, and I myself prefer the
Russian, only they are so expensive."
A look of strange eagerness came into Valdorême's expressive face,
softened by a touch of supplication. Her eyes were on her husband, but
she said rapidly to the girl----"
"Stop a moment, mademoiselle. Do not light your cigarette until I give
the word."
Then to her husband she spoke beseechingly in Russian, a language she
had taught him in the early months of their marriage.
"Eugenio, Eugenio! Don't you see the girl's a fool? How can you care
for her? She would be as happy with the first man she met in the
street. I--I think only of you. Come back to me, Eugenio."
She leaned over the table towards him, and in her vehemence clasped his
wrist. The girl watched them both with a smile. It reminded her of a
scene in an opera she had heard once in a strange language. The prima
donna had looked and pleaded like Valdorême.
Caspilier shrugged his shoulders, but did not withdraw his wrist from
her firm grasp.
"Why go over the whole weary ground again?" he said. "If it were not
Tenise, it would be somebody else. I was never meant for a constant
husband, Val. I understood from Lacour that we were to have no more of
this nonsense."
She slowly relaxed her hold on his unresisting wrist. The old, hard,
tragic look came into her face as she drew a deep breath. The fire in
the depths of her amber eyes rekindled, as the softness went out of
them.
"You may light your cigarette now, mademoiselle," she said almost in a
whisper to Tenise.
"I swear I could light mine in your eyes, Val.," cried her husband.
"You would make a name for yourself on the stage. I will write a
tragedy for you, and we will----"
Tenise struck the match. A simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of
thunder filled the room. The glass in the window fell clattering into
the street. Valdorême was standing with her back against the door.
Tenise, fluttering her helpless little hands before her, tottered
shrieking to the broken window. Caspilier, staggering panting to his
feet, gasped--
"You Russian devil! The key, the key!"
He tried to clutch her throat, but she pushed him back.
"Go to your Frenchwoman. She's calling for help."
Tenise sank by the window, one burning arm over the sill, and was
silent. Caspilier, mechanically beating back the fire from his shaking
head, whimpering and sobbing, fell against the table, and then went
headlong on the floor.
Valdorême, a pillar, of fire, swaying gently to and fro before the
door, whispered in a voice of agony--
"Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" and flung herself like a flaming angel--or fiend
--on the prostrate form of the man.