for her, without a parting word. The lover’s desertion was followed by
the desertion of the friend. It was horrible!
At her father’s first words, she felt as if she were hurled into a deep,
ice-cold abyss, filled with darkness, into which she plunged swiftly,
helplessly, well knowing that she would never return to the light. She
was suffocating. She would have liked to resist, to struggle, to call
for help.
Who was there who had the power to sustain her in that great disaster?
God? The thing that is called Heaven?
She did not even think of that. In Paris, especially in the quarters
where the working class live, the houses are too high, the streets too
narrow, the air too murky for heaven to be seen.
It was Death alone at which the little cripple was gazing so earnestly.
Her course was determined upon at once: she must die. But how?
Sitting motionless in her easy-chair, she considered what manner of
death she should choose. As she was almost never alone, she could not
think of the brazier of charcoal, to be lighted after closing the doors
and windows. As she never went out she could not think either of poison
to be purchased at the druggist’s, a little package of white powder
to be buried in the depths of the pocket, with the needle-case and the
thimble. There was the phosphorus on the matches, too, the verdigris on
old sous, the open window with the paved street below; but the thought
of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted
death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid
a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject
that method.
She still had the river. At all events, the water carries you away
somewhere, so that nobody finds you and your death is shrouded in
mystery.
The river! She shuddered at the mere thought. But it was not the vision
of the deep, black water that terrified her. The girls of Paris laugh
at that. You throw your apron over your head so that you can’t see, and
pouf! But she must go downstairs, into the street, all alone, and the
street frightened her.
Yes, it was a terrible thing to go out into the street alone. She must
wait until the gas was out, steal softly downstairs when her mother had
gone to bed, pull the cord of the gate, and make her way across Paris,
where you meet men who stare impertinently into your face, and pass
brilliantly lighted cafes. The river was a long distance away. She would
be very tired. However, there was no other way than that.
“I am going to bed, my child; are you going to sit up any longer?”
With her eyes on her work, “my child” replied that she was. She wished
to finish her dozen.
“Good-night, then,” said Mamma Delobelle, her enfeebled sight being
unable to endure the light longer. “I have put father’s supper by the
fire. Just look at it before you go to bed.”
Desire did not lie. She really intended to finish her dozen, so that her
father could take them to the shop in the morning; and really, to see
that tranquil little head bending forward in the white light of the
lamp, one would never have imagined all the sinister thoughts with which
it was thronged.
At last she takes up the last bird of the dozen, a marvellously lovely
little bird whose wings seem to have been dipped in sea-water, all green
as they are with a tinge of sapphire.
Carefully, daintily, Desiree suspends it on a piece of brass wire, in
the charming attitude of a frightened creature about to fly away.
Ah! how true it is that the little blue bird is about to fly away! What
a desperate flight into space! How certain one feels that this time it
is the great journey, the everlasting journey from which there is no
return!
By and by, very softly, Desiree opens the wardrobe and takes a thin
shawl which she throws over her shoulders; then she goes. What? Not a
glance at her mother, not a silent farewell, not a tear? No, nothing!
With the terrible clearness of vision of those who are about to die, she
suddenly realizes that her childhood and youth have been sacrificed to
a vast self-love. She feels very sure that a word from their great man
will comfort that sleeping mother, with whom she is almost angry for not
waking, for allowing her to go without a quiver of her closed eyelids.
When one dies young, even by one’s own act, it is never without a
rebellious feeling, and poor Desiree bids adieu to life, indignant with
destiny.
Now she is in the street. Where is she going? Everything seems deserted
already. Desiree walks rapidly, wrapped in her little shawl, head erect,
dry-eyed. Not knowing the way, she walks straight ahead.
The dark, narrow streets of the Marais, where gas-jets twinkle at long
intervals, cross and recross and wind about, and again and again in her
feverish course she goes over the same ground. There is always something
between her and the river. And to think that, at that very hour, almost
in the same quarter, some one else is wandering through the streets,
waiting, watching, desperate! Ah! if they could but meet. Suppose she
should accost that feverish watcher, should ask him to direct her:
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur. How can I get to the Seine?”
He would recognize her at once.
“What! Can it be you, Mam’zelle Zizi? What are you doing out-of-doors at
this time of night?”
“I am going to die, Frantz. You have taken away all my pleasure in
living.”
Thereupon he, deeply moved, would seize her, press her to his heart and
carry her away in his arms, saying:
“Oh! no, do not die. I need you to comfort me, to cure all the wounds
the other has inflicted on me.”
But that is a mere poet’s dream, one of the meetings that life can not
bring about.
Streets, more streets, then a square and a bridge whose lanterns make
another luminous bridge in the black water. Here is the river at last.
The mist of that damp, soft autumn evening causes all of this huge
Paris, entirely strange to her as it is, to appear to her like an
enormous confused mass, which her ignorance of the landmarks magnifies
still more. This is the place where she must die.
Poor little Desiree!
She recalls the country excursion which Frantz had organized for her.
That breath of nature, which she breathed that day for the first time,
falls to her lot again at the moment of her death. “Remember,” it seems
to say to her; and she replies mentally, “Oh! yes, I remember.”
She remembers only too well. When it arrives at the end of the quay,
which was bedecked as for a holiday, the furtive little shadow pauses at
the steps leading down to the bank.
Almost immediately there are shouts and excitement all along the quay:
“Quick--a boat--grappling-irons!” Boatmen and policemen come running
from all sides. A boat puts off from the shore with a lantern in the
bow.
The flower-women awake, and, when one of them asks with a yawn what is
happening, the woman who keeps the cafe that crouches at the corner of
the bridge answers coolly:
“A woman just jumped into the river.”
But no. The river has refused to take that child. It has been moved
to pity by so great gentleness and charm. In the light of the lanterns
swinging to and fro on the shore, a black group forms and moves away.
She is saved! It was a sand-hauler who fished her out. Policemen are
carrying her, surrounded by boatmen and lightermen, and in the darkness
a hoarse voice is heard saying with a sneer: “That water-hen gave me a
lot of trouble. You ought to see how she slipped through my fingers!
I believe she wanted to make me lose my reward.” Gradually the tumult
subsides, the bystanders disperse, and the black group moves away toward
a police-station.
Ah! poor girl, you thought that it was an easy matter to have done with
life, to disappear abruptly. You did not know that, instead of bearing
you away swiftly to the oblivion you sought, the river would drive you
back to all the shame, to all the ignominy of unsuccessful suicide.
First of all, the station, the hideous station, with its filthy benches,
its floor where the sodden dust seems like mud from the street. There
Desiree was doomed to pass the rest of the night.
At last day broke with the shuddering glare so distressing to invalids.
Suddenly aroused from her torpor, Desiree sat up in her bed, threw off
the blanket in which they had wrapped her, and despite fatigue and fever
tried to stand, in order to regain full possession of her faculties and
her will. She had but one thought--to escape from all those eyes that
were opening on all sides, to leave that frightful place where the
breath of sleep was so heavy and its attitudes so distorted.
“I implore you, messieurs,” she said, trembling from head to foot, “let
me return to mamma.”
Hardened as they were to Parisian dramas, even those good people
realized that they were face to face with something more worthy of
attention, more affecting than usual. But they could not take her back
to her mother as yet. She must go before the commissioner first. That
was absolutely necessary. They called a cab from compassion for her; but
she must go from the station to the cab, and there was a crowd at the
door to stare at the little lame girl with the damp hair glued to
her temples, and her policeman’s blanket which did not prevent her
shivering. At headquarters she was conducted up a dark, damp stairway
where sinister figures were passing to and fro.
When Desiree entered the room, a man rose from the shadow and came to
meet her, holding out his hand.
It was the man of the reward, her hideous rescuer at twenty-five francs.
“Well, little-mother,” he said, with his cynical laugh, and in a voice
that made one think of foggy nights on the water, “how are we since our
dive?”
The unhappy girl was burning red with fever and shame; so bewildered
that it seemed to her as if the river had left a veil over her eyes, a
buzzing in her ears. At last she was ushered into a smaller room, into
the presence of a pompous individual, wearing the insignia of the Legion
of Honor, Monsieur le Commissaire in person, who was sipping his ‘cafe
au lait’ and reading the ‘Gazette des Tribunaux.’
“Ah! it’s you, is it?” he said in a surly tone and without raising his
eyes from his paper, as he dipped a piece of bread in his cup; and the
officer who had brought Desiree began at once to read his report:
“At quarter to twelve, on Quai de la Megisserie, in front of No. 17, the
woman Delobelle, twenty-four years old, flower-maker, living with her
parents on Rue de Braque, tried to commit suicide by throwing herself
into the Seine, and was taken out safe and sound by Sieur Parcheminet,
sand-hauler of Rue de la Butte-Chaumont.”
Monsieur le Commissaire listened as he ate, with the listless, bored
expression of a man whom nothing can surprise; at the end he gazed
sternly and with a pompous affectation of virtue at the woman Delobelle,
and lectured her in the most approved fashion. It was very wicked, it
was cowardly, this thing that she had done. What could have driven her
to such an evil act? Why did she seek to destroy herself? Come, woman
Delobelle, answer, why was it?
But the woman Delobelle obstinately declined to answer. It seemed to her
that it would put a stigma upon her love to avow it in such a place. “I
don’t know--I don’t know,” she whispered, shivering.
Testy and impatient, the commissioner decided that she should be taken
back to her parents, but only on one condition: she must promise never
to try it again.
“Come, do you promise?”
“Oh! yes, Monsieur.”
“You will never try again?”
“Oh! no, indeed I will not, never--never!”
Notwithstanding her protestations, Monsieur le Commissaire de Police
shook his head, as if he did not trust her oath.
Now she is outside once more, on the way to her home, to a place of
refuge; but her martyrdom was not yet at an end.
In the carriage, the officer who accompanied her was too polite, too
affable. She seemed not to understand, shrank from him, withdrew her
hand. What torture! But the most terrible moment of all was the arrival
in Rue de Braque, where the whole house was in a state of commotion, and
the inquisitive curiosity of the neighbors must be endured. Early in the
morning the whole quarter had been informed of her disappearance. It
was rumored that she had gone away with Frantz Risler. The illustrious
Delobelle had gone forth very early, intensely agitated, with his
hat awry and rumpled wristbands, a sure indication of extraordinary
preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found
the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for
a note from the child, for any clew, however unimportant, that would
enable her at least to form some conjecture.
Suddenly a carriage stopped in front of the door. Voices and footsteps
echoed through the hall.
“M’ame Delobelle, here she is! Your daughter’s been found.”
It was really Desiree who came toiling up the stairs on the arm of a
stranger, pale and fainting, without hat or shawl, and wrapped in a
great brown cape. When she saw her mother she smiled at her with an
almost foolish expression.
“Do not be alarmed, it is nothing,” she tried to say, then sank to the
floor. Mamma Delobelle would never have believed that she was so strong.
To lift her daughter, take her into the room, and put her to bed was a
matter of a moment; and she talked to her and kissed her.
“Here you are at last. Where have you come from, you bad child? Tell
me, is it true that you tried to kill yourself? Were you suffering so
terribly? Why did you conceal it from me?”
When she saw her mother in that condition, with tear-stained face, aged
in a few short hours, Desiree felt a terrible burden of remorse. She
remembered that she had gone away without saying good-by to her, and
that in the depths of her heart she had accused her of not loving her.
Not loving her!
“Why, it would kill me if you should die,” said the poor mother. “Oh!
when I got up this morning and saw that your bed hadn’t been slept in
and that you weren’t in the workroom either!--I just turned round and
fell flat. Are you warm now? Do you feel well? You won’t do it again,
will you--try to kill yourself?”
And she tucked in the bed-clothes, rubbed her feet, and rocked her upon
her breast.
As she lay in bed with her eyes closed, Desiree saw anew all the
incidents of her suicide, all the hideous scenes through which she had
passed in returning from death to life. In the fever, which rapidly
increased, in the intense drowsiness which began to overpower her, her
mad journey across Paris continued to excite and torment her. Myriads
of dark streets stretched away before her, with the Seine at the end of
each.
That ghastly river, which she could not find in the night, haunted her
now.
She felt that she was besmirched with its slime, its mud; and in the
nightmare that oppressed her, the poor child, powerless to escape the
obsession of her recollections, whispered to her mother: “Hide me--hide
me--I am ashamed!”
CHAPTER XVIII. SHE PROMISED NOT TO TRY AGAIN
Oh! no, she will not try it again. Monsieur le Commissaire need have no
fear. In the first place how could she go as far as the river, now that
she can not stir from her bed? If Monsieur le Commissaire could see her
now, he would not doubt her word. Doubtless the wish, the longing for
death, so unmistakably written on her pale face the other morning,
are still visible there; but they are softened, resigned. The woman
Delobelle knows that by waiting a little, yes, a very little time, she
will have nothing more to wish for.
The doctors declare that she is dying of pneumonia; she must have
contracted it in her wet clothes. The doctors are mistaken; it is not
pneumonia. Is it her love, then, that is killing her? No. Since that
terrible night she no longer thinks of Frantz, she no longer feels that
she is worthy to love or to be loved. Thenceforth there is a stain upon
her spotless life, and it is of the shame of that and of nothing else
that she is dying.
Mamma Delobelle sits by Desiree’s bed, working by the light from the
window, and nursing her daughter. From time to time she raises her eyes
to contemplate that mute despair, that mysterious disease, then hastily
resumes her work; for it is one of the hardest trials of the poor that
they can not suffer at their ease.
Mamma Delobelle had to work alone now, and her fingers had not the
marvellous dexterity of Desiree’s little hands; medicines were dear, and
she would not for anything in the world have interfered with one of “the
father’s” cherished habits. And so, at whatever hour the invalid opened
her eyes, she would see her mother, in the pale light of early morning,
or under her night lamp, working, working without rest.
Between two stitches the mother would look up at her child, whose face
grew paler and paler:
“How do you feel?”
“Very well,” the sick girl would reply, with a faint, heartbroken smile,
which illumined her sorrowful face and showed all the ravages that had
been wrought upon it, as a sunbeam, stealing into a poor man’s lodging,
instead of brightening it, brings out more clearly its cheerlessness and
nudity.
The illustrious Delobelle was never there. He had not changed in any
respect the habits of a strolling player out of an engagement. And
yet he knew that his daughter was dying: the doctor had told him so.
Moreover, it had been a terrible blow to him, for, at heart, he loved
his child dearly; but in that singular nature the most sincere and the
most genuine feelings adopted a false and unnatural mode of expression,
by the same law which ordains that, when a shelf is placed awry, nothing
that you place upon it seems to stand straight.
Delobelle’s natural tendency was, before everything, to air his grief,
to spread it abroad. He played the role of the unhappy father from one
end of the boulevard to the other. He was always to be found in the
neighborhood of the theatres or at the actors’ restaurant, with red eyes
and pale cheeks. He loved to invite the question, “Well, my poor old
fellow, how are things going at home?” Thereupon he would shake his
head with a nervous gesture; his grimace held tears in check, his mouth
imprecations, and he would stab heaven with a silent glance, overflowing
with wrath, as when he played the ‘Medecin des Enfants;’ all of which
did not prevent him, however, from bestowing the most delicate and
thoughtful attentions upon his daughter.
He also maintained an unalterable confidence in himself, no matter what
happened. And yet his eyes came very near being opened to the truth at
last. A hot little hand laid upon that pompous, illusion-ridden head
came very near expelling the bee that had been buzzing there so long.
This is how it came to pass.
One night Desiree awoke with a start, in a very strange state. It
should be said that the doctor, when he came to see her on the preceding
evening, had been greatly surprised to find her suddenly brighter and
calmer, and entirely free from fever. Without attempting to explain this
unhoped-for resurrection, he had gone away, saying, “Let us wait and
see”; he relied upon the power of youth to throw off disease, upon the
resistless force of the life-giving sap, which often engrafts a new
life upon the very symptoms of death. If he had looked under Desiree’s
pillow, he would have found there a letter postmarked Cairo, wherein lay
the secret of that happy change. Four pages signed by Frantz, his whole
conduct confessed and explained to his dear little Zizi.
It was the very letter of which the sick girl had dreamed. If she had
dictated it herself, all the phrases likely to touch her heart, all the
delicately worded excuses likely to pour balm into her wounds, would
have been less satisfactorily expressed. Frantz repented, asked
forgiveness, and without making any promises, above all without asking
anything from her, described to his faithful friend his struggles, his
remorse, his sufferings.
What a misfortune that that letter had not arrived a few days earlier.
Now, all those kind words were to Desiree like the dainty dishes that
are brought too late to a man dying of hunger.
Suddenly she awoke, and, as we said a moment since, in an extraordinary
state.
In her head, which seemed to her lighter than usual, there suddenly
began a grand procession of thoughts and memories. The most distant
periods of her past seemed to approach her. The most trivial incidents
of her childhood, scenes that she had not then understood, words heard
as in a dream, recurred to her mind.
From her bed she could see her father and mother, one by her side,
the other in the workroom, the door of which had been left open. Mamma
Delobelle was lying back in her chair in the careless attitude of
long-continued fatigue, heeded at last; and all the scars, the ugly
sabre cuts with which age and suffering brand the faces of the
old, manifested themselves, ineffaceable and pitiful to see, in the
relaxation of slumber. Desiree would have liked to be strong enough to
rise and kiss that lovely, placid brow, furrowed by wrinkles which did
not mar its beauty.
In striking contrast to that picture, the illustrious Delobelle appeared
to his daughter through the open door in one of his favorite attitudes.
Seated before the little white cloth that bore his supper, with his body
at an angle of sixty-seven and a half degrees, he was eating and at the
same time running through a pamphlet which rested against the carafe in
front of him.
For the first time in her life Desiree noticed the striking lack of
harmony between her emaciated mother, scantily clad in little black
dresses which made her look even thinner and more haggard than she
really was, and her happy, well-fed, idle, placid, thoughtless father.
At a glance she realized the difference between the two lives. What
would become of them when she was no longer there? Either her mother
would work too hard and would kill herself; or else the poor woman
would be obliged to cease working altogether, and that selfish husband,
forever engrossed by his theatrical ambition, would allow them both to
drift gradually into abject poverty, that black hole which widens and
deepens as one goes down into it.
Suppose that, before going away--something told her that she would go
very soon--before going away, she should tear away the thick bandage
that the poor man kept over his eyes wilfully and by force?
Only a hand as light and loving as hers could attempt that operation.
Only she had the right to say to her father:
“Earn your living. Give up the stage.”
Thereupon, as time was flying, Desire Delobelle summoned all her courage
and called softly:
“Papa-papa”
At his daughter’s first summons the great man hurried to her side. He
entered Desiree’s bedroom, radiant and superb, very erect, his lamp in
his hand and a camellia in his buttonhole.
“Good evening, Zizi. Aren’t you asleep?”
His voice had a joyous intonation that produced a strange effect amid
the prevailing gloom. Desiree motioned to him not to speak, pointing to
her sleeping mother.
“Put down your lamp--I have something to say to you.”
Her voice, broken by emotion, impressed him; and so did her eyes, for
they seemed larger than usual, and were lighted by a piercing glance
that he had never seen in them.
He approached with something like awe.
“Why, what’s the matter, Bichette? Do you feel any worse?”
Desiree replied with a movement of her little pale face that she felt
very ill and that she wanted to speak to him very close, very close.
When the great man stood by her pillow, she laid her burning hand on the
great man’s arm and whispered in his ear. She was very ill, hopelessly
ill. She realized fully that she had not long to live.
“Then, father, you will be left alone with mamma. Don’t tremble like
that. You knew that this thing must come, yes, that it was very near.
But I want to tell you this. When I am gone, I am terribly afraid mamma
won’t be strong enough to support the family just see how pale and
exhausted she is.”
The actor looked at his “sainted wife,” and seemed greatly surprised to
find that she did really look so badly. Then he consoled himself with
the selfish remark:
“She never was very strong.”
That remark and the tone in which it was made angered Desiree and
strengthened her determination. She continued, without pity for the
actor’s illusions:
“What will become of you two when I am no longer here? Oh! I know
that you have great hopes, but it takes them a long while to come to
anything. The results you have waited for so long may not arrive for
a long time to come; and until then what will you do? Listen! my dear
father, I would not willingly hurt you; but it seems to me that at your
age, as intelligent as you are, it would be easy for you--I am sure
Monsieur Risler Aine would ask nothing better.”
She spoke slowly, with an effort, carefully choosing her words, leaving
long pauses between every two sentences, hoping always that they might
be filled by a movement, an exclamation from her father. But the actor
did not understand.
“I think that you would do well,” pursued Desiree, timidly, “I think
that you would do well to give up--”
“Eh?--what?--what’s that?”
She paused when she saw the effect of her words. The old actor’s mobile
features were suddenly contracted under the lash of violent despair; and
tears, genuine tears which he did not even think of concealing behind
his hand as they do on the stage, filled his eyes but did not flow, so
tightly did his agony clutch him by the throat. The poor devil began to
understand.
She murmured twice or thrice:
“To give up--to give up--”
Then her little head fell back upon the pillow, and she died without
having dared to tell him what he would do well to give up.
CHAPTER XIX. APPROACHING CLOUDS
One night, near the end of January, old Sigismond Planus, cashier of the
house of Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine, was awakened with a start in his
little house at Montrouge by the same teasing voice, the same rattling
of chains, followed by that fatal cry:
“The notes!”
“That is true,” thought the worthy man, sitting up in bed; “day after
to-morrow will be the last day of the month. And I have the courage to
sleep!”
In truth, a considerable sum of money must be raised: a hundred thousand
francs to be paid on two obligations, and at a moment when, for the
first time in thirty years, the strong-box of the house of Fromont was
absolutely empty. What was to be done? Sigismond had tried several
times to speak to Fromont Jeune, but he seemed to shun the burdensome
responsibility of business, and when he walked through the offices was
always in a hurry, feverishly excited, and seemed neither to see
nor hear anything about him. He answered the old cashier’s anxious
questions, gnawing his moustache:
“All right, all right, my old Planus. Don’t disturb yourself; I will
look into it.” And as he said it, he seemed to be thinking of something
else, to be a thousand leagues away from his surroundings. It was
rumored in the factory, where his liaison with Madame Risler was no
longer a secret to anybody, that Sidonie deceived him, made him very
unhappy; and, indeed, his mistress’s whims worried him much more than
his cashier’s anxiety. As for Risler, no one ever saw him; he passed
his days shut up in a room under the roof, overseeing the mysterious,
interminable manufacture of his machines.
This indifference on the part of the employers to the affairs of the
factory, this absolute lack of oversight, had led by slow degrees
to general demoralization. Some business was still done, because an
established house will go on alone for years by force of the first
impetus; but what ruin, what chaos beneath that apparent prosperity?
Sigismond knew it better than any one, and as if to see his way more
clearly amid the multitude of painful thoughts which whirled madly
through his brain, the cashier lighted his candle, sat down on his bed,
and thought, “Where were they to find that hundred thousand francs?”
“Take the notes back. I have no funds to meet them.”
No, no! That was not possible. Any sort of humiliation was preferable to
that.
“Well, it’s decided. I will go to-morrow,” sighed the poor cashier.
And he tossed about in torture, unable to close an eye until morning.
Notwithstanding the late hour, Georges Fromont had not yet retired. He
was sitting by the fire, with his head in his hands, in the blind and
dumb concentration due to irreparable misfortune, thinking of Sidonie,
of that terrible Sidonie who was asleep at that moment on the floor
above. She was positively driving him mad. She was false to him, he
was sure of it,--she was false to him with the Toulousan tenor, that
Cazabon, alias Cazaboni, whom Madame Dobson had brought to the house.
For a long time he had implored her not to receive that man; but Sidonie
would not listen to him, and on that very day, speaking of a grand ball
she was about to give, she had declared explicitly that nothing should
prevent her inviting her tenor.
“Then he’s your lover!” Georges had exclaimed angrily, his eyes gazing
into hers.
She had not denied it; she had not even turned her eyes away.
And to think that he had sacrificed everything to that woman--his
fortune, his honor, even his lovely Claire, who lay sleeping with her
child in the adjoining room--a whole lifetime of happiness within reach
of his hand, which he had spurned for that vile creature! Now she had
admitted that she did not love him, that she loved another. And he,
the coward, still longed for her. In heaven’s name, what potion had she
given him?
Carried away by indignation that made the blood boil in his veins,
Georges Fromont started from his armchair and strode feverishly up and
down the room, his footsteps echoing in the silence of the sleeping
house like living insomnia. The other was asleep upstairs. She could
sleep by favor of her heedless, remorseless nature. Perhaps, too, she
was thinking of her Cazaboni.
When that thought passed through his mind, Georges had a mad longing to
go up, to wake Risler, to tell him everything and destroy himself with
her. Really that deluded husband was too idiotic! Why did he not watch
her more closely? She was pretty enough, yes, and vicious enough, too,
for every precaution to be taken with her.
And it was while he was struggling amid such cruel and unfruitful
reflections as these that the devil of anxiety whispered in his ear:
“The notes! the notes!”
The miserable wretch! In his wrath he had entirely forgotten them.
And yet he had long watched the approach of that terrible last day of
January. How many times, between two assignations, when his mind, free
for a moment from thoughts of Sidonie, recurred to his business, to the
realities of life-how many times had he said to himself, “That day
will be the end of everything!” But, as with all those who live in the
delirium of intoxication, his cowardice convinced him that it was too
late to mend matters, and he returned more quickly and more determinedly
to his evil courses, in order to forget, to divert his thoughts.
But that was no longer possible. He saw the impending disaster clearly,
in its full meaning; and Sigismond Planus’s wrinkled, solemn face rose
before him with its sharply cut features, whose absence of expression
softened their harshness, and his light German-Swiss eyes, which had
haunted him for many weeks with their impassive stare.
Well, no, he had not the hundred thousand francs, nor did he know where
to get them.
The crisis which, a few hours before, seemed to him a chaos, an eddying
whirl in which he could see nothing distinctly and whose very confusion
was a source of hope, appeared to him at that moment with appalling
distinctness. An empty cash-box, closed doors, notes protested, ruin,
are the phantoms he saw whichever way he turned. And when, on top of
all the rest, came the thought of Sidonie’s treachery, the wretched,
desperate man, finding nothing to cling to in that shipwreck, suddenly
uttered a sob, a cry of agony, as if appealing for help to some higher
power.
“Georges, Georges, it is I. What is the matter?”
His wife stood before him, his wife who now waited for him every night,
watching anxiously for his return from the club, for she still believed
that he passed his evenings there. That night she had heard him walking
very late in his room. At last her child fell asleep, and Claire,
hearing the father sob, ran to him.
Oh! what boundless, though tardy remorse overwhelmed him when he saw her
before him, so deeply moved, so lovely and so loving! Yes, she was in
very truth the true companion, the faithful friend. How could he have
deserted her? For a long, long time he wept upon her shoulder, unable
to speak. And it was fortunate that he did not speak, for he would have
told her all, all. The unhappy man felt the need of pouring out his
heart--an irresistible longing to accuse himself, to ask forgiveness, to
lessen the weight of the remorse that was crushing him.
She spared him the pain of uttering a word:
“You have been gambling, have you not? You have lost--lost heavily?”
He moved his head affirmatively; then, when he was able to speak, he
confessed that he must have a hundred thousand francs for the day after
the morrow, and that he did not know how to obtain them.
She did not reproach him. She was one of those women who, when face
to face with disaster, think only of repairing it, without a word of
recrimination. Indeed, in the bottom of her heart she blessed this
misfortune which brought him nearer to her and became a bond between
their two lives, which had long lain so far apart. She reflected a
moment. Then, with an effort indicating a resolution which had cost a
bitter struggle, she said:
“Not all is lost as yet. I will go to Savigny tomorrow and ask my
grandfather for the money.”
He would never have dared to suggest that to her. Indeed, it would never
have occurred to him. She was so proud and old Gardinois so hard! Surely
that was a great sacrifice for her to make for him, and a striking proof
of her love.
“Claire, Claire--how good your are!” he said.
Without replying, she led him to their child’s cradle.
“Kiss her,” she said softly; and as they stood there side by side, their
heads leaning over the child, Georges was afraid of waking her, and he
embraced the mother passionately.
CHAPTER XX. REVELATIONS
“Ah! here’s Sigismond. How goes the world, Pere Sigismond? How is
business? Is it good with you?”
The old cashier smiled affably, shook hands with the master, his wife,
and his brother, and, as they talked, looked curiously about. They
were in a manufactory of wallpapers on Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the
establishment of the little Prochassons, who were beginning to be
formidable rivals. Those former employees of the house of Fromont had
set up on their own account, beginning in a very, small way, and had
gradually succeeded in making for themselves a place on ‘Change. Fromont
the uncle had assisted them for a long while with his credit and his
money; the result being most friendly relations between the two firms,
and a balance--between ten or fifteen thousand francs--which had never
been definitely adjusted, because they knew that money was in good hands
when the Prochassons had it.
Indeed, the appearance of the factory was most reassuring. The chimneys
proudly shook their plumes of smoke. The dull roar of constant toil
indicated that the workshops were full of workmen and activity. The
buildings were in good repair, the windows clean; everything had an
aspect of enthusiasm, of good-humor, of discipline; and behind the
grating in the counting-room sat the wife of one of the brothers, simply
dressed, with her hair neatly arranged, and an air of authority on her
youthful face, deeply intent upon a long column of figures.
Old Sigismond thought bitterly of the difference between the house
of Fromont, once so wealthy, now living entirely upon its former
reputation, and the ever-increasing prosperity of the establishment
before his eyes. His stealthy glance penetrated to the darkest corners,
seeking some defect, something to criticise; and his failure to find
anything made his heart heavy and his smile forced and anxious.
What embarrassed him most of all was the question how he should approach
the subject of the money due his employers without betraying the
emptiness of the strongbox. The poor man assumed a jaunty, unconcerned
air which was truly pitiful to see. Business was good--very good. He
happened to be passing through the quarter and thought he would come in
a moment--that was natural, was it not? One likes to see old friends.
But these preambles, these constantly expanding circumlocutions, did not
bring him to the point he wished to reach; on the contrary, they led him
away from his goal, and imagining that he detected surprise in the eyes
of his auditors, he went completely astray, stammered, lost his head,
and, as a last resort, took his hat and pretended to go. At the door he
suddenly bethought himself:
“Ah! by the way, so long as I am here--”
He gave a little wink which he thought sly, but which was in reality
heartrending.
“So long as I am here, suppose we settle that old account.”
The two brothers and the young woman in the counting-room gazed at one
another a second, unable to understand.
“Account? What account, pray?”
Then all three began to laugh at the same moment, and heartily too, as
if at a joke, a rather broad joke, on the part of the old cashier. “Go
along with you, you sly old Pere Planus!” The old man laughed with them!
He laughed without any desire to laugh, simply to do as the others did.
At last they explained. Fromont Jeune had come in person, six months
before, to collect the balance in their hands.
Sigismond felt that his strength was going. But he summoned courage to
say:
“Ah! yes; true. I had forgotten. Sigismond Planus is growing old, that
is plain. I am failing, my children, I am failing.”
And the old man went away wiping his eyes, in which still glistened
great tears caused by the hearty laugh he had just enjoyed. The
young people behind him exchanged glances and shook their heads. They
understood.
The blow he had received was so crushing that the cashier, as soon as
he was out-of-doors, was obliged to sit down on a bench. So that was the
reason why Georges did not come to the counting-room for money. He made
his collections in person. What had taken place at the Prochassons’ had
probably been repeated everywhere else. It was quite useless, therefore,
for him to subject himself to further humiliation. Yes, but the notes,
the notes!--that thought renewed his strength. He wiped the perspiration
from his forehead and started once more to try his luck with a customer
in the faubourg. But this time he took his precautions and called to the
cashier from the doorway, without entering:
“Good-morning, Pere So-and-So. I want to ask you a question.”
He held the door half open, his hand upon the knob.
“When did we settle our last bill? I forgot to enter it.”
Oh! it was a long while ago, a very long while, that their last bill
was settled. Fromont Jeune’s receipt was dated in September. It was five
months ago.
The door was hastily closed. Another! Evidently it would be the same
thing everywhere.
“Ah! Monsieur Chorche, Monsieur Chorche,” muttered poor Sigismond; and
while he pursued his journey, with bowed head and trembling legs, Madame
Fromont Jeune’s carriage passed him close, on its way to the Orleans
station; but Claire did not see old Planus, any more than she had seen,
when she left her house a few moments earlier, Monsieur Chebe in his
long frock-coat and the illustrious Delobelle in his stovepipe hat,
turning into the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes at opposite ends, each
with the factory and Risler’s wallet for his objective point. The young
woman was much too deeply engrossed by what she had before her to look
into the street.
Think of it! It was horrible. To go and ask M. Gardinois for a hundred
thousand francs--M. Gardinois, a man who boasted that he had never
borrowed or loaned a sou in his life, who never lost an opportunity
to tell how, on one occasion, being driven to ask his father for forty
francs to buy a pair of trousers, he had repaid the loan in small
amounts. In his dealings with everybody, even with his children, M.
Gardinois followed those traditions of avarice which the earth, the
cruel earth, often ungrateful to those who till it, seems to inculcate
in all peasants. The old man did not intend that any part of his
colossal fortune should go to his children during his lifetime.
“They’ll find my property when I am dead,” he often said.
Acting upon that principle, he had married off his daughter, the elder
Madame Fromont, without one sou of dowry, and he never forgave his
son-in-law for having made a fortune without assistance from him. For
it was one of the peculiarities of that nature, made up of vanity and
selfishness in equal parts, to wish that every one he knew should need
his help, should bow before his wealth. When the Fromonts expressed in
his presence their satisfaction at the prosperous turn their business
was beginning to take, his sharp, cunning, little blue eye would smile
ironically, and he would growl, “We shall see what it all comes to in
the end,” in a tone that made them tremble. Sometimes, too, at Savigny,
in the evening, when the park, the avenues, the blue slates of the
chateau, the red brick of the stables, the ponds and brooks shone
resplendent, bathed in the golden glory of a lovely sunset, this
eccentric parvenu would say aloud before his children, after looking
about him:
“The one thing that consoles me for dying some day is that no one in
the family will ever be rich enough to keep a chateau that costs fifty
thousand francs a year to maintain.”
And yet, with that latter-day tenderness which even the sternest
grandfathers find in the depths of their hearts, old Gardinois would
gladly have made a pet of his granddaughter. But Claire, even as a
child, had felt an invincible repugnance for the former peasant’s
hardness of heart and vainglorious selfishness. And when affection forms
no bonds between those who are separated by difference in education,
such repugnance is increased by innumerable trifles. When Claire married
Georges, the grandfather said to Madame Fromont:
“If your daughter wishes, I will give her a royal present; but she must
ask for it.”
But Claire received nothing, because she would not ask for anything.
What a bitter humiliation to come, three years later, to beg a hundred
thousand francs from the generosity she had formerly spurned, to humble
herself, to face the endless sermons, the sneering raillery, the whole
seasoned with Berrichon jests, with phrases smacking of the soil, with
the taunts, often well-deserved, which narrow, but logical, minds can
utter on occasion, and which sting with their vulgar patois like an
insult from an inferior!
Poor Claire! Her husband and her father were about to be humiliated in
her person. She must necessarily confess the failure of the one, the
downfall of the house which the other had founded and of which he had
been so proud while he lived. The thought that she would be called upon
to defend all that she loved best in the world made her strong and weak
at the same time.
It was eleven o’clock when she reached Savigny. As she had given no
warning of her visit, the carriage from the chateau was not at the
station, and she had no choice but to walk.
It was a cold morning and the roads were dry and hard. The north wind
blew freely across the arid fields and the river, and swept unopposed
through the leafless trees and bushes. The chateau appeared under
the low-hanging clouds, with its long line of low walls and hedges
separating it from the surrounding fields. The slates on the roof
were as dark as the sky they reflected; and that magnificent summer
residence, completely transformed by the bitter, silent winter, without
a leaf on its trees or a pigeon on its roofs, showed no life save in
its rippling brooks and the murmuring of the tall poplars as they bowed
majestically to one another, shaking the magpies’ nests hidden among
their highest branches.
At a distance Claire fancied that the home of her youth wore a surly,
depressed air. It seemed to het that Savigny watched her approach with
the cold, aristocratic expression which it assumed for passengers on the
highroad, who stopped at the iron bars of its gateways.
Oh! the cruel aspect of everything!
And yet not so cruel after all. For, with its tightly closed exterior,
Savigny seemed to say to her, “Begone--do not come in!” And if she
had chosen to listen, Claire, renouncing her plan of speaking to her
grandfather, would have returned at once to Paris to maintain the repose
of her life. But she did not understand, poor child! and already the
great Newfoundland dog, who had recognized her, came leaping through the
dead leaves and sniffed at the gate.
“Good-morning, Francoise. Where is grandpapa?” the young woman asked
the gardener’s wife, who came to open the gate, fawning and false and
trembling, like all the servants at the chateau when they felt that the
master’s eye was upon them.
Grandpapa was in his office, a little building independent of the main
house, where he passed his days fumbling among boxes and pigeonholes and
great books with green backs, with the rage for bureaucracy due to his
early ignorance and the strong impression made upon him long before by
the office of the notary in his village.
At that moment he was closeted there with his keeper, a sort of country
spy, a paid informer who apprised him as to all that was said and done
in the neighborhood.
He was the master’s favorite. His name was Fouinat (polecat), and he had
the flat, crafty, blood-thirsty face appropriate to his name.
When Claire entered, pale and trembling under her furs, the old man
understood that something serious and unusual had happened, and he made
a sign to Fouinat, who disappeared, gliding through the half-open door
as if he were entering the very wall.
“What’s the matter, little one? Why, you’re all ‘perlute’,” said the
grandfather, seated behind his huge desk.
Perlute, in the Berrichon dictionary, signifies troubled, excited,
upset, and applied perfectly to Claire’s condition. Her rapid walk in
the cold country air, the effort she had made in order to do what she
was doing, imparted an unwonted expression to her face, which was much
less reserved than usual. Without the slightest encouragement on his
part, she kissed him and seated herself in front of the fire, where old
stumps, surrounded by dry moss and pine needles picked up in the paths,
were smouldering with occasional outbursts of life and the hissing of
sap. She did not even take time to shake off the frost that stood
in beads on her veil, but began to speak at once, faithful to her
resolution to state the object of her visit immediately upon entering
the room, before she allowed herself to be intimidated by the atmosphere
of fear and respect which encompassed the grandfather and made of him a
sort of awe-inspiring deity.
She required all her courage not to become confused, not to interrupt
her narrative before that piercing gaze which transfixed her, enlivened
from her first words by a malicious joy, before that savage mouth whose
corners seemed tightly closed by premeditated reticence, obstinacy, a
denial of any sort of sensibility. She went on to the end in one speech,
respectful without humility, concealing her emotion, steadying her voice
by the consciousness of the truth of her story. Really, seeing them thus
face to face, he cold and calm, stretched out in his armchair, with
his hands in the pockets of his gray swansdown waistcoat, she carefully
choosing her words, as if each of them might condemn or absolve her, you
would never have said that it was a child before her grandfather, but an
accused person before an examining magistrate.
His thoughts were entirely engrossed by the joy, the pride of his
triumph. So they were conquered at last, those proud upstarts of
Fromonts! So they needed old Gardinois at last, did they? Vanity, his
dominating passion, overflowed in his whole manner, do what he would.
When she had finished, he took the floor in his turn, began naturally
enough with “I was sure of it--I always said so--I knew we should see
what it would all come to”--and continued in the same vulgar, insulting
tone, ending with the declaration that, in view of his principles, which
were well known in the family, he would not lend a sou.
Then Claire spoke of her child, of her husband’s name, which was also
her father’s, and which would be dishonored by the failure. The old
man was as cold, as implacable as ever, and took advantage of her
humiliation to humiliate her still more; for he belonged to the race of
worthy rustics who, when their enemy is down, never leave him without
leaving on his face the marks of the nails in their sabots.
“All I can say to you, little one, is that Savigny is open to you. Let
your husband come here. I happen to need a secretary. Very well, Georges
can do my writing for twelve hundred francs a year and board for the
whole family. Offer him that from me, and come.”
She rose indignantly. She had come as his child and he had received her
as a beggar. They had not reached that point yet, thank God!
“Do you think so?” queried M. Gardinois, with a savage light in his eye.
Claire shuddered and walked toward the door without replying. The old
man detained her with a gesture.
“Take care! you don’t know what you’re refusing. It is in your interest,
you understand, that I suggest bringing your husband here. You don’t
know the life he is leading up yonder. Of course you don’t know it, or
you’d never come and ask me for money to go where yours has gone. Ah! I
know all about your man’s affairs. I have my police at Paris, yes, and
at Asnieres, as well as at Savigny. I know what the fellow does with his
days and his nights; and I don’t choose that my crowns shall go to
the places where he goes. They’re not clean enough for money honestly
earned.”
Claire’s eyes opened wide in amazement and horror, for she felt that a
terrible drama had entered her life at that moment through the little
low door of denunciation. The old man continued with a sneer:
“That little Sidonie has fine, sharp teeth.”
“Sidonie!”
“Faith, yes, to be sure. I have told you the name. At all events, you’d
have found it out some day or other. In fact, it’s an astonishing thing
that, since the time--But you women are so vain! The idea that a man
can deceive you is the last idea to come into your head. Well, yes,
Sidonie’s the one who has got it all out of him--with her husband’s
consent, by the way.”
He went on pitilessly to tell the young wife the source of the money
for the house at Asnieres, the horses, the carriages, and how the pretty
little nest in the Avenue Gabriel had been furnished. He explained
everything in detail. It was clear that, having found a new opportunity
to exercise his mania for espionage, he had availed himself of it to
the utmost; perhaps, too, there was at the bottom of it all a vague,
carefully concealed rage against his little Chebe, the anger of a senile
passion never declared.
Claire listened to him without speaking, with a smile of incredulity.
That smile irritated the old man, spurred on his malice. “Ah! you don’t
believe me. Ah! you want proofs, do you?” And he gave her proofs, heaped
them upon her, overpowered her with knife-thrusts in the heart. She had
only to go to Darches, the jeweller in the Rue de la Paix. A fortnight
before, Georges had bought a diamond necklace there for thirty thousand
francs. It was his New Year’s gift to Sidonie. Thirty thousand francs
for diamonds at the moment of becoming bankrupt!
He might have talked the entire day and Claire would not have
interrupted him. She felt that the slightest effort would cause the
tears that filled her eyes to overflow, and she was determined to
smile to the end, the sweet, brave woman. From time to time she cast
a sidelong glance at the road. She was in haste to go, to fly from the
sound of that spiteful voice, which pursued her pitilessly.
At last he ceased; he had told the whole story. She bowed and walked
toward the door.
“Are you going? What a hurry you’re in!” said the grandfather, following
her outside.
At heart he was a little ashamed of his savagery.
“Won’t you breakfast with me?”
She shook her head, not having strength to speak.
“At least wait till the carriage is ready--some one will drive you to
the station.”
No, still no.
And she walked on, with the old man close behind her. Proudly, and with
head erect, she crossed the courtyard, filled with souvenirs of her
childhood, without once looking behind. And yet what echoes of hearty
laughter, what sunbeams of her younger days were imprinted in the
tiniest grain of gravel in that courtyard!
Her favorite tree, her favorite bench, were still in the same place. She
had not a glance for them, nor for the pheasants in the aviary, nor even
for the great dog Kiss, who followed her docilely, awaiting the caress
which she did not give him. She had come as a child of the house, she
went away as a stranger, her mind filled with horrible thoughts which
the slightest reminder of her peaceful and happy past could not have
failed to aggravate.
“Good-by, grandfather.”
“Good-by, then.”
And the gate closed upon her harshly. As soon as she was alone, she
began to walk swiftly, swiftly, almost to run. She was not merely going
away, she was escaping. Suddenly, when she reached the end of the wall
of the estate, she found herself in front of the little green gate,
surrounded by nasturtiums and honeysuckle, where the chateau mail-box
was. She stopped instinctively, struck by one of those sudden awakenings
of the memory which take place within us at critical moments and place
before our eyes with wonderful clearness of outline the most trivial
acts of our lives bearing any relation to present disasters or joys. Was
it the red sun that suddenly broke forth from the clouds, flooding the
level expanse with its oblique rays in that winter afternoon as at the
sunset hour in August? Was it the silence that surrounded her, broken
only by the harmonious sounds of nature, which are almost alike at all
seasons?
Whatever the cause she saw herself once more as she was, at that same
spot, three years before, on a certain day when she placed in the post
a letter inviting Sidonie to come and pass a month with her in the
country. Something told her that all her misfortunes dated from that
moment. “Ah! had I known--had I only known!” And she fancied that she
could still feel between her fingers the smooth envelope, ready to drop
into the box.
Thereupon, as she reflected what an innocent, hopeful, happy child she
was at that moment, she cried out indignantly, gentle creature that she
was, against the injustice of life. She asked herself: “Why is it? What
have I done?”
Then she suddenly exclaimed: “No! it isn’t true. It can not be possible.
Grandfather lied to me.” And as she went on toward the station, the
unhappy girl tried to convince herself, to make herself believe what she
said. But she did not succeed.
The truth dimly seen is like the veiled sun, which tires the eyes far
more than its most brilliant rays. In the semi-obscurity which still
enveloped her misfortune, the poor woman’s sight was keener than she
could have wished. Now she understood and accounted for certain
peculiar circumstances in her husband’s life, his frequent absences, his
restlessness, his embarrassed behavior on certain days, and the abundant
details which he sometimes volunteered, upon returning home, concerning
his movements, mentioning names as proofs which she did not ask. From
all these conjectures the evidence of his sin was made up. And still she
refused to believe it, and looked forward to her arrival in Paris to set
her doubts at rest.
No one was at the station, a lonely, cheerless little place, where no
traveller ever showed his face in winter. As Claire sat there awaiting
the train, gazing vaguely at the station-master’s melancholy little
garden, and the debris of climbing plants running along the fences by
the track, she felt a moist, warm breath on her glove. It was her friend
Kiss, who had followed her and was reminding her of their happy romps
together in the old days, with little shakes of the head, short leaps,
capers of joy tempered by humility, concluding by stretching his
beautiful white coat at full length at his mistress’s feet, on the cold
floor of the waiting-room. Those humble caresses which sought her out,
like a hesitating offer of devotion and sympathy, caused the sobs she
had so long restrained to break forth as last. But suddenly she felt
ashamed of her weakness. She rose and sent the dog away, sent him
away pitilessly with voice and gesture, pointing to the house in the
distance, with a stern face which poor Kiss had never seen. Then she
hastily wiped her eyes and her moist hands; for the train for Paris
was approaching and she knew that in a moment she should need all her
courage.
Claire’s first thought on leaving the train was to take a cab and drive
to the jeweller in the Rue de la Paix, who had, as her grandfather
alleged, supplied Georges with a diamond necklace. If that should prove
to be true, then all the rest was true. Her dread of learning the truth
was so great that, when she reached her destination and alighted in
front of that magnificent establishment, she stopped, afraid to enter.
To give herself countenance, she pretended to be deeply interested in
the jewels displayed in velvet cases; and one who had seen her, quietly
but fashionably dressed, leaning forward to look at that gleaming and
attractive display, would have taken her for a happy wife engaged in
selecting a bracelet, rather than an anxious, sorrow-stricken soul who
had come thither to discover the secret of her life.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. At that time of day, in winter,
the Rue de la Paix presents a truly dazzling aspect. In that luxurious
neighborhood, life moves quickly between the short morning and the
early evening. There are carriages moving swiftly in all directions, a
ceaseless rumbling, and on the sidewalks a coquettish haste, a rustling
of silks and furs. Winter is the real Parisian season. To see that
devil’s own Paris in all its beauty and wealth and happiness one must
watch the current of its life beneath a lowering sky, heavy with snow.
Nature is absent from the picture, so to speak. No wind, no sunlight.
Just enough light for the dullest colors, the faintest reflections to
produce an admirable effect, from the reddish-gray tone of the monuments
to the gleams of jet which bespangle a woman’s dress. Theatre and
concert posters shine resplendent, as if illumined by the effulgence of
the footlights. The shops are crowded. It seems that all those people
must be preparing for perpetual festivities. And at such times, if
any sorrow is mingled with that bustle and tumult, it seems the more
terrible for that reason. For five minutes Claire suffered martyrdom
worse than death. Yonder, on the road to Savigny, in the vast expanse of
the deserted fields, her despair spread out as it were in the sharp air
and seemed to enfold her less closely. Here she was stifling. The voices
beside her, the footsteps, the heedless jostling of people who passed,
all added to her torture.
At last she entered the shop.
“Ah! yes, Madame, certainly--Monsieur Fromont. A necklace of diamonds
and roses. We could make you one like it for twenty-five thousand
francs.”
That was five thousand less than for him.
“Thanks, Monsieur,” said Claire, “I will think it over.”
A mirror in front of her, in which she saw her dark-ringed eyes and her
deathly pallor, frightened her. She went out quickly, walking stiffly in
order not to fall.
She had but one idea, to escape from the street, from the noise; to be
alone, quite alone, so that she might plunge headlong into that abyss
of heartrending thoughts, of black things dancing madly in the depths of
her mind. Oh! the coward, the infamous villain! And to think that only
last night she was speaking comforting words to him, with her arms about
him!
Suddenly, with no knowledge of how it happened, she found herself in
the courtyard of the factory. Through what streets had she come? Had
she come in a carriage or on foot? She had no remembrance. She had
acted unconsciously, as in a dream. The sentiment of reality returned,
pitiless and poignant, when she reached the steps of her little house.
Risler was there, superintending several men who were carrying potted
plants up to his wife’s apartments, in preparation for the magnificent
party she was to give that very evening. With his usual tranquillity he
directed the work, protected the tall branches which the workmen might
have broken: “Not like that. Bend it over. Take care of the carpet.”
The atmosphere of pleasure and merry-making which had so revolted her a
moment before pursued her to her own house. It was too much, after all
the rest! She rebelled; and as Risler saluted her, affectionately and
with deep respect as always, her face assumed an expression of intense
disgust, and she passed without speaking to him, without seeing the
amazement that opened his great, honest eyes.
From that moment her course was determined. Wrath, a wrath born of
uprightness and sense of justice, guided her actions. She barely took
time to kiss her child’s rosy cheeks before running to her mother’s
room.
“Come, mamma, dress yourself quickly. We are going away. We are going
away.”
The old lady rose slowly from the armchair in which she was sitting,
busily engaged in cleaning her watch-chain by inserting a pin between
every two links with infinite care.
“Come, come, hurry. Get your things ready.”
Her voice trembled, and the poor monomaniac’s room seemed a horrible
place to her, all glistening as it was with the cleanliness that had
gradually become a mania. She had reached one of those fateful moments
when the loss of one illusion causes you to lose them all, enables
you to look to the very depths of human misery. The realization of her
complete isolation, between her half-mad mother, her faithless husband,
her too young child, came upon her for the first time; but it served
only to strengthen her in her resolution.
In a moment the whole household was busily engaged in making
preparations for this abrupt, unexpected departure. Claire hurried the
bewildered servants, and dressed her mother and the child, who laughed
merrily amid all the excitement. She was in haste to go before Georges’
return, so that he might find the cradle empty and the house deserted.
Where should she go? She did not know as yet. Perhaps to her aunt at
Orleans, perhaps to Savigny, no matter where. What she must do first of
all was-go, fly from that atmosphere of treachery and falsehood.
At that moment she was in her bedroom, packing a trunk, making a pile
of her effects--a heartrending occupation. Every object that she touched
set in motion whole worlds of thoughts, of memories. There is so much
of ourselves in anything that we use. At times the odor of a sachet-bag,
the pattern of a bit of lace, were enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Suddenly she heard a heavy footstep in the salon, the door of which was
partly open; then there was a slight cough, as if to let her know that
some one was there. She supposed that it was Risler: for no one else had
the right to enter her apartments so unceremoniously. The idea of having
to endure the presence of that hypocritical face, that false smile, was
so distasteful to her that she rushed to close the door.
“I am not at home to any one.”
The door resisted her efforts, and Sigismond’s square head appeared in
the opening.
“It is I, Madame,” he said in an undertone. “I have come to get the
money.”
“What money?” demanded Claire, for she no longer remembered why she had
gone to Savigny.
“Hush! The funds to meet my note to-morrow. Monsieur Georges, when he
went out, told me that you would hand it to me very soon.”
“Ah! yes--true. The hundred thousand francs.”
“I haven’t them, Monsieur Planus; I haven’t anything.”
“Then,” said the cashier, in a strange voice, as if he were speaking to
himself, “then it means failure.”
And he turned slowly away.
Failure! She sank on a chair, appalled, crushed. For the last few hours
the downfall of her happiness had caused her to forget the downfall of
the house; but she remembered now.
So her husband was ruined! In a little while, when he returned home, he
would learn of the disaster, and he would learn at the same time that
his wife and child had gone; that he was left alone in the midst of the
wreck.
Alone--that weak, easily influenced creature, who could only weep and
complain and shake his fist at life like a child! What would become of
the miserable man?
She pitied him, notwithstanding his great sin.
Then the thought came to her that she would perhaps seem to have fled at
the approach of bankruptcy, of poverty.
Georges might say to himself:
“Had I been rich, she would have forgiven me!”
Ought she to allow him to entertain that doubt?
To a generous, noble heart like Claire’s nothing more than that was
necessary to change her plans. Instantly she was conscious that her
feeling of repugnance, of revolt, began to grow less bitter, and a
sudden ray of light seemed to make her duty clearer to her. When they
came to tell her that the child was dressed and the trunks ready, her
mind was made up anew.
“Never mind,” she replied gently. “We are not going away.”
BOOK 4.
CHAPTER XXI. THE DAY OF RECKONING
The great clock of Saint-Gervais struck one in the morning. It was so
cold that the fine snow, flying through the air, hardened as it fell,
covering the pavements with a slippery, white blanket.
Risler, wrapped in his cloak, was hastening home from the brewery
through the deserted streets of the Marais. He had been celebrating, in
company with his two faithful borrowers, Chebe and Delobelle, his first
moment of leisure, the end of that almost endless period of seclusion
during which he had been superintending the manufacture of his press,
with all the searchings, the joys, and the disappointments of the
inventor. It had been long, very long. At the last moment he had
discovered a defect. The crane did not work well; and he had had to
revise his plans and drawings. At last, on that very day, the new
machine had been tried. Everything had succeeded to his heart’s desire.
The worthy man was triumphant. It seemed to him that he had paid a debt,
by giving the house of Fromont the benefit of a new machine, which would
lessen the labor, shorten the hours of the workmen, and at the same time
double the profits and the reputation of the factory. He indulged in
beautiful dreams as he plodded along. His footsteps rang out proudly,
emphasized by the resolute and happy trend of his thoughts.
Quickening his pace, he reached the corner of Rue des
Vieilles-Haudriettes. A long line of carriages was standing in front of
the factory, and the light of their lanterns in the street, the shadows
of the drivers seeking shelter from the snow in the corners and angles
that those old buildings have retained despite the straightening of the
sidewalks, gave an animated aspect to that deserted, silent quarter.
“Yes, yes! to be sure,” thought the honest fellow, “we have a ball at
our house.” He remembered that Sidonie was giving a grand musical and
dancing party, which she had excused him from attending, by the way,
knowing that he was very busy.
Shadows passed and repassed behind the fluttering veil of the curtains;
the orchestra seemed to follow the movements of those stealthy
apparitions with the rising and falling of its muffled notes. The
guests were dancing. Risler let his eyes rest for a moment on that
phantasmagoria of the ball, and fancied that he recognized Sidonie’s
shadow in a small room adjoining the salon.
She was standing erect in her magnificent costume, in the attitude of
a pretty woman before her mirror. A shorter shadow behind her, Madame
Dobson doubtless, was repairing some accident to the costume, re-tieing
the knot of a ribbon tied about her neck, its long ends floating down to
the flounces of the train. It was all very indistinct, but the woman’s
graceful figure was recognizable in those faintly traced outlines, and
Risler tarried long admiring her.
The contrast on the first floor was most striking. There was no light
visible, with the exception of a little lamp shining through the lilac
hangings of the bedroom. Risler noticed that circumstance, and as the
little girl had been ailing a few days before, he felt anxious about
her, remembering Madame Georges’s strange agitation when she passed him
so hurriedly in the afternoon; and he retraced his steps as far as Pere
Achille’s lodge to inquire.
The lodge was full. Coachmen were warming themselves around the stove,
chatting and laughing amid the smoke from their pipes. When Risler
appeared there was profound silence, a cunning, inquisitive, significant
silence. They had evidently been speaking of him.
“Is the Fromont child still sick?” he asked.
“No, not the child, Monsieur.”
“Monsieur Georges sick?”
“Yes, he was taken when he came home to-night. I went right off to
get the doctor. He said that it wouldn’t amount to anything--that all
Monsieur needed was rest.”
As Risler closed the door Pere Achille added, under his breath, with the
half-fearful, half-audacious insolence of an inferior, who would like to
be listened to and yet not distinctly heard:
“Ah! ‘dame’, they’re not making such a show on the first floor as they
are on the second.”
This is what had happened.
Fromont jeune, on returning home during the evening, had found his
wife with such a changed, heartbroken face, that he at once divined a
catastrophe. But he had become so accustomed in the past two years to
sin with impunity that it did not for one moment occur to him that his
wife could have been informed of his conduct. Claire, for her part, to
avoid humiliating him, was generous enough to speak only of Savigny.
“Grandpapa refused,” she said.
The miserable man turned frightfully pale.
“I am lost--I am lost!” he muttered two or three times in the wild
accents of fever; and his sleepless nights, a last terrible scene which
he had had with Sidonie, trying to induce her not to give this party
on the eve of his downfall, M. Gardinois’ refusal, all these maddening
things which followed so closely on one another’s heels and had agitated
him terribly, culminated in a genuine nervous attack. Claire took pity
on him, put him to bed, and established herself by his side; but her
voice had lost that affectionate intonation which soothes and persuades.
There was in her gestures, in the way in which she arranged the pillow
under the patient’s head and prepared a quieting draught, a strange
indifference, listlessness.
“But I have ruined you!” Georges said from time to time, as if to rouse
her from that apathy which made him uncomfortable. She replied with a
proud, disdainful gesture. Ah! if he had done only that to her!
At last, however, his nerves became calmer, the fever subsided, and he
fell asleep.
She remained to attend to his wants.
“It is my duty,” she said to herself.
Her duty. She had reached that point with the man whom she had adored so
blindly, with the hope of a long and happy life together.
At that moment the ball in Sidonie’s apartments began to become very
animated. The ceiling trembled rhythmically, for Madame had had all the
carpets removed from her salons for the greater comfort of the dancers.
Sometimes, too, the sound of voices reached Claire’s ears in waves,
and frequent tumultuous applause, from which one could divine the great
number of the guests, the crowded condition of the rooms.
Claire was lost in thought. She did not waste time in regrets, in
fruitless lamentations. She knew that life was inflexible and that
all the arguments in the world will not arrest the cruel logic of its
inevitable progress. She did not ask herself how that man had succeeded
in deceiving her so long--how he could have sacrificed the honor and
happiness of his family for a mere caprice. That was the fact, and all
her reflections could not wipe it out, could not repair the irreparable.
The subject that engrossed her thoughts was the future. A new existence
was unfolding before her eyes, dark, cruel, full of privation and toil;
and, strangely enough, the prospect of ruin, instead of terrifying her,
restored all her courage. The idea of the change of abode made
necessary by the economy they would be obliged to practise, of work made
compulsory for Georges and perhaps for herself, infused an indefinable
energy into the distressing calmness of her despair. What a heavy burden
of souls she would have with her three children: her mother, her child,
and her husband! The feeling of responsibility prevented her giving way
too much to her misfortune, to the wreck of her love; and in proportion
as she forgot herself in the thought of the weak creatures she had to
protect she realized more fully the meaning of the word “sacrifice,” so
vague on careless lips, so serious when it becomes a rule of life.
Such were the poor woman’s thoughts during that sad vigil, a vigil of
arms and tears, while she was preparing her forces for the great battle.
Such was the scene lighted by the modest little lamp which Risler had
seen from below, like a star fallen from the radiant chandeliers of the
ballroom.
Reassured by Pere Achille’s reply, the honest fellow thought of going
up to his bedroom, avoiding the festivities and the guests, for whom he
cared little.
On such occasions he used a small servants’ staircase communicating with
the counting-room. So he walked through the many-windowed workshops,
which the moon, reflected by the snow, made as light as at noonday. He
breathed the atmosphere of the day of toil, a hot, stifling atmosphere,
heavy with the odor of boiled talc and varnish. The papers spread out
on the dryers formed long, rustling paths. On all sides tools were lying
about, and blouses hanging here and there ready for the morrow. Risler
never walked through the shops without a feeling of pleasure.
Suddenly he spied a light in Planus’s office, at the end of that long
line of deserted rooms. The old cashier was still at work, at one
o’clock in the morning! That was really most extraordinary.
Risler’s first impulse was to retrace his steps. In fact, since his
unaccountable falling-out with Sigismond, since the cashier had adopted
that attitude of cold silence toward him, he had avoided meeting him.
His wounded friendship had always led him to shun an explanation; he had
a sort of pride in not asking Planus why he bore him ill-will. But, on
that evening, Risler felt so strongly the need of cordial sympathy, of
pouring out his heart to some one, and then it was such an excellent
opportunity for a tete-a-tete with his former friend, that he did not
try to avoid him but boldly entered the counting-room.
The cashier was sitting there, motionless, among heaps of papers and
great books, which he had been turning over, some of which had fallen to
the floor. At the sound of his employer’s footsteps he did not even lift
his eyes. He had recognized Risler’s step. The latter, somewhat abashed,
hesitated a moment; then, impelled by one of those secret springs which
we have within us and which guide us, despite ourselves, in the path of
our destiny, he walked straight to the cashier’s grating.
“Sigismond,” he said in a grave voice.
The old man raised his head and displayed a shrunken face down which two
great tears were rolling, the first perhaps that that animate column of
figures had ever shed in his life.
“You are weeping, old man? What troubles you?”
And honest Risler, deeply touched, held out his hand to his friend, who
hastily withdrew his. That movement of repulsion was so instinctive, so
brutal, that all Risler’s emotion changed to indignation.
He drew himself up with stern dignity.
“I offer you my hand, Sigismond Planus!” he said.
“And I refuse to take it,” said Planus, rising.
There was a terrible pause, during which they heard the muffled music
of the orchestra upstairs and the noise of the ball, the dull, wearing
noise of floors shaken by the rhythmic movement of the dance.
“Why do you refuse to take my hand?” demanded Risler simply, while the
grating upon which he leaned trembled with a metallic quiver.
Sigismond was facing him, with both hands on his desk, as if to
emphasize and drive home what he was about to say in reply.
“Why? Because you have ruined the house; because in a few hours a
messenger from the Bank will come and stand where you are, to collect a
hundred thousand francs; and because, thanks to you, I haven’t a sou in
the cash-box--that’s the reason why!”
Risler was stupefied.
“I have ruined the house--I?”
“Worse than that, Monsieur. You have allowed it to be ruined by your
wife, and you have arranged with her to benefit by our ruin and your
dishonor. Oh! I can see your game well enough. The money your wife has
wormed out of the wretched Fromont, the house at Asnieres, the diamonds
and all the rest is invested in her name, of course, out of reach of
disaster; and of course you can retire from business now.”
“Oh--oh!” exclaimed Risler in a faint voice, a restrained voice rather,
that was insufficient for the multitude of thoughts it strove to
express; and as he stammered helplessly he drew the grating toward him
with such force that he broke off a piece of it. Then he staggered, fell
to the floor, and lay there motionless, speechless, retaining only, in
what little life was still left in him, the firm determination not to
die until he had justified himself. That determination must have been
very powerful; for while his temples throbbed madly, hammered by the
blood that turned his face purple, while his ears were ringing and
his glazed eyes seemed already turned toward the terrible unknown, the
unhappy man muttered to himself in a thick voice, like the voice of a
shipwrecked man speaking with his mouth full of water in a howling gale:
“I must live! I must live!”
When he recovered consciousness, he was sitting on the cushioned bench
on which the workmen sat huddled together on pay-day, his cloak on the
floor, his cravat untied, his shirt open at the neck, cut by Sigismond’s
knife. Luckily for him, he had cut his hands when he tore the grating
apart; the blood had flowed freely, and that accident was enough to
avert an attack of apoplexy. On opening his eyes, he saw on either side
old Sigismond and Madame Georges, whom the cashier had summoned in his
distress. As soon as Risler could speak, he said to her in a choking
voice:
“Is this true, Madame Chorche--is this true that he just told me?”
She had not the courage to deceive him, so she turned her eyes away.
“So,” continued the poor fellow, “so the house is ruined, and I--”
“No, Risler, my friend. No, not you.”
“My wife, was it not? Oh! it is horrible! This is how I have paid my
debt of gratitude to you. But you, Madame Chorche, you could not have
believed that I was a party to this infamy?”
“No, my friend, no; be calm. I know that you are the most honorable man
on earth.”
He looked at her a moment, with trembling lips and clasped hands, for
there was something child-like in all the manifestations of that artless
nature.
“Oh! Madame Chorche, Madame Chorche,” he murmured. “When I think that I
am the one who has ruined you.”
In the terrible blow which overwhelmed him, and by which his heart,
overflowing with love for Sidonie, was most deeply wounded, he refused
to see anything but the financial disaster to the house of Fromont,
caused by his blind devotion to his wife. Suddenly he stood erect.
“Come,” he said, “let us not give way to emotion. We must see about
settling our accounts.”
Madame Fromont was frightened.
“Risler, Risler--where are you going?”
She thought that he was going up to Georges’ room.
Risler understood her and smiled in superb disdain.
“Never fear, Madame. Monsieur Georges can sleep in peace. I have
something more urgent to do than avenge my honor as a husband. Wait for
me here. I will come back.”
He darted toward the narrow staircase; and Claire, relying upon his
word, remained with Planus during one of those supreme moments of
uncertainty which seem interminable because of all the conjectures with
which they are thronged.
A few moments later the sound of hurried steps, the rustling of silk
filled the dark and narrow staircase. Sidonie appeared first, in ball
costume, gorgeously arrayed and so pale that the jewels that glistened
everywhere on her dead-white flesh seemed more alive than she, as if
they were scattered over the cold marble of a statue. The breathlessness
due to dancing, the trembling of intense excitement and her rapid
descent, caused her to shake from head to foot, and her floating
ribbons, her ruffles, her flowers, her rich and fashionable attire
drooped tragically about her. Risler followed her, laden with
jewel-cases, caskets, and papers. Upon reaching his apartments he
had pounced upon his wife’s desk, seized everything valuable that it
contained, jewels, certificates, title-deeds of the house at Asnieres;
then, standing in the doorway, he had shouted into the ballroom:
“Madame Risler!”
She had run quickly to him, and that brief scene had in no wise
disturbed the guests, then at the height of the evening’s enjoyment.
When she saw her husband standing in front of the desk, the drawers
broken open and overturned on the carpet with the multitude of trifles
they contained, she realized that something terrible was taking place.
“Come at once,” said Risler; “I know all.”
She tried to assume an innocent, dignified attitude; but he seized her
by the arm with such force that Frantz’s words came to her mind: “It
will kill him perhaps, but he will kill you first.” As she was afraid
of death, she allowed herself to be led away without resistance, and had
not even the strength to lie.
“Where are we going?” she asked, in a low voice.
Risler did not answer. She had only time to throw over her shoulders,
with the care for herself that never failed her, a light tulle veil,
and he dragged her, pushed her, rather, down the stairs leading to the
counting-room, which he descended at the same time, his steps close upon
hers, fearing that his prey would escape.
“There!” he said, as he entered the room. “We have stolen, we make
restitution. Look, Planus, you can raise money with all this stuff.” And
he placed on the cashier’s desk all the fashionable plunder with which
his arms were filled--feminine trinkets, trivial aids to coquetry,
stamped papers.
Then he turned to his wife:
“Take off your jewels! Come, be quick.”
She complied slowly, opened reluctantly the clasps of bracelets and
buckles, and above all the superb fastening of her diamond necklace on
which the initial of her name-a gleaming S-resembled a sleeping serpent,
imprisoned in a circle of gold. Risler, thinking that she was too slow,
ruthlessly broke, the fragile fastenings. Luxury shrieked beneath his
fingers, as if it were being whipped.
“Now it is my turn,” he said; “I too must give up everything. Here is my
portfolio. What else have I? What else have I?”
He searched his pockets feverishly.
“Ah! my watch. With the chain it will bring four-thousand francs. My
rings, my wedding-ring. Everything goes into the cash-box, everything.
We have a hundred thousand francs to pay this morning. As soon as it is
daylight we must go to work, sell out and pay our debts. I know some one
who wants the house at Asnieres. That can be settled at once.”
He alone spoke and acted. Sigismond and Madame Georges watched him
without speaking. As for Sidonie, she seemed unconscious, lifeless.
The cold air blowing from the garden through the little door, which
was opened at the time of Risler’s swoon, made her shiver, and she
mechanically drew the folds of her scarf around her shoulders, her eyes
fixed on vacancy, her thoughts wandering. Did she not hear the violins
of her ball, which reached their ears in the intervals of silence, like
bursts of savage irony, with the heavy thud of the dancers shaking the
floors? An iron hand, falling upon her, aroused her abruptly from her
torpor. Risler had taken her by the arm, and, leading her before his
partner’s wife, he said:
“Down on your knees!”
Madame Fromont drew back, remonstrating:
“No, no, Risler, not that.”
“It must be,” said the implacable Risler. “Restitution, reparation!
Down on your knees then, wretched woman!” And with irresistible force he
threw Sidonie at Claire’s feet; then, still holding her arm;
“You will repeat after me, word for word, what I say: Madame--”
Sidonie, half dead with fear, repeated faintly: “Madame--”
“A whole lifetime of humility and submission--”
“A whole lifetime of humil--No, I can not!” she exclaimed, springing to
her feet with the agility of a deer; and, wresting herself from Risler’s
grasp, through that open door which had tempted her from the beginning
of this horrible scene, luring her out into the darkness of the night to
the liberty obtainable by flight, she rushed from the house, braving the
falling snow and the wind that stung her bare shoulders.
“Stop her, stop her!--Risler, Planus, I implore you! In pity’s name do
not let her go in this way,” cried Claire.