Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance
at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room
and smiled.
He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall,
slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of
doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility,
a “chic,” in short, that indescribable something which establishes a
greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He
murmured:
“Lormerin is still alive!”
And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.
On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the
gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three
newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out
all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he
scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the
envelopes.
It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did
they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them,
making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them.
Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on,
strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did
they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full
of thoughts, promises, or threats?
This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple,
nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at it
uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: “From whom can
it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it.”
He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two
fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without making up his
mind to open it.
Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying
glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He
suddenly felt unnerved. “Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me,
very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often.
But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be
from? Pooh! it's only somebody asking for money.”
And he tore open the letter. Then he read:
MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now
twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old.
When I bade you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the
provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call “my
hospital.” Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now I
am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen.
I informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much
attention to so trifling an event.
You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if
you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come
and dine with her this evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance
your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, although happy,
reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no
longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
LISE DE VANCE.
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with
the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a
poignant emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise,
Lise de Vance, whom he called “Ashflower,” on account of the strange
color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a dainty,
pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that
gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces,
shut her up, kept her in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the
handsome Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly
loved. She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would
pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.
A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and
melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way home from a
ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening
dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was
beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the
odor of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a
divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across
the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he
asked her why.
“I don't know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see
poetic things I have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry.”
He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming
--the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every sensation
overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
“My little Lise, you are exquisite.”
What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and
over all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old
brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and never let any one
see her afterward.
Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One
woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor!
No matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he had
loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.
He rose, and said aloud: “Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
evening!”
And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from
head to foot. He reflected: “She must look very old, older than I look.”
And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still
handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with
emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!
He turned his attention to the other letters. They were of no
importance.
The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other days. What was
she like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after twenty-five
years! But would he recognize her?
He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the
hairdresser to give him a finishing touch With the curling iron, for
he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his
eagerness to see her.
The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished
was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when
he was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.
He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended
both hands toward him.
He seized them, kissed them one after the other several times; then,
lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who,
while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
He could not abstain from murmuring:
“Is it you, Lise?”
She replied:
“Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, would you?
I have had so much sorrow--so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my life.
Look at me now--or, rather, don't look at me! But how handsome you have
kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the street I would have
exclaimed: 'Jaquelet!'. Now, sit down and let us, first of all, have a
chat. And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll
see how she resembles me--or, rather, how I resembled her--no, it is not
quite that; she is just like the 'me' of former days--you shall see! But
I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would be some
emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past.
Pray be seated, my friend.”
He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
say; he did not know this woman--it seemed to him that he had never seen
her before. Why had he come to this house? What could he talk about? Of
the long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no
longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He could
no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter,
that had come to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of
little Lise, of the dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her,
the former one, the one he had loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the
blonde with gray eyes, the young girl who used to call him “Jaquelet” so
prettily?
They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
profoundly ill at ease.
As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and spasmodically and
slowly, she rose and pressed the button of the bell.
“I am going to call Renee,” she said.
There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; then a young
voice exclaimed:
“Here I am, mamma!”
Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an apparition.
He stammered:
“Good-day, mademoiselle.”
Then, turning toward the mother:
“Oh! it is you!”
In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise
who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won
twenty-five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more
childlike.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again,
murmuring in her ear:
“Good-morning, Lison!”
A man-servant announced:
“Dinner is ready, madame.”
And they proceeded toward the dining-room.
What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he
say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams
which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in
his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
“Which is the real one?”
The mother smiled again repeating over and over:
“Do you remember?” And it was in the bright eyes of the young girl that
he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened
his mouth to say to her: “Do you remember, Lison?” forgetting this
white-haired lady who was looking at him tenderly.
And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt sure, when he lost
his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the
woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in
her glances, in her entire being, something which he did not find again.
And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize
again what had escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not
possess.
The baronne said:
“You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend.”
He murmured:
“There are many other things that I have lost!”
But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing
to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar
intonation, some expression of her mother's, a certain style of speaking
and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire
by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things
penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of
this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed
his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one,
the old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as he had loved
her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval
of twenty-five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think
what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass,
the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself
before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man;
and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days
of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been
when he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself
more closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass,
tracing the wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had
not perceived till now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
lamentable image, murmuring:
“All over, Lormerin!”