She had turned away her eyes in order not to notice his confusion, and
said: "If you like we will be married in the beginning of May. That will
be a very good time."
"I obey you in all things with joy."
"The tenth of May, which is a Saturday, will suit me very nicely, for it
is my birthday."
"Very well, the tenth of May."
"Your parents live near Rouen, do they not? You have told me so, at
least."
"Yes, near Rouen, at Canteleu."
"What are they?"
"They are--they are small annuitants."
"Ah! I should very much like to know them."
He hesitated, greatly perplexed, and said: "But, you see, they are--"
Then making up his mind, like a really clever man, he went on: "My dear,
they are mere country folk, innkeepers, who have pinched themselves to
the utmost to enable me to pursue my studies. For my part, I am not
ashamed of them, but their--simplicity--their rustic manners--might,
perhaps, render you uncomfortable."
She smiled, delightfully, her face lit up with gentle kindness as she
replied: "No. I shall be very fond of them. We will go and see them. I
want to. I will speak of this to you again. I, too, am a daughter of
poor people, but I have lost my parents. I have no longer anyone in the
world." She held out her hand to him as she added: "But you."
He felt softened, moved, overcome, as he had been by no other woman.
"I had thought about one matter," she continued, "but it is rather
difficult to explain."
"What is it?" he asked.
"Well, it is this, my dear boy, I am like all women, I have my
weaknesses, my pettinesses. I love all that glitters, that catches the
ear. I should have so delighted to have borne a noble name. Could you
not, on the occasion of your marriage, ennoble yourself a little?"
She had blushed in her turn, as if she had proposed something
indelicate.
He replied simply enough: "I have often thought about it, but it did not
seem to me so easy."
"Why so?"
He began to laugh, saying: "Because I was afraid of making myself look
ridiculous."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Not at all, not at all Every one does it,
and nobody laughs. Separate your name in two--Du Roy. That looks very
well."
He replied at once like a man who understands the matter in question:
"No, that will not do at all. It is too simple, too common, too
well-known. I had thought of taking the name of my native place, as a
literary pseudonym at first, then of adding it to my own by degrees, and
then, later on, of even cutting my name in two, as you suggest."
"Your native place is Canteleu?" she queried.
"Yes."
She hesitated, saying: "No, I do not like the termination. Come, cannot
we modify this word Canteleu a little?"
She had taken up a pen from the table, and was scribbling names and
studying their physiognomy. All at once she exclaimed: "There, there it
is!" and held out to him a paper, on which read--"Madame Duroy de
Cantel."
He reflected a few moments, and then said gravely: "Yes, that does very
well."
She was delighted, and kept repeating "Duroy de Cantel, Duroy de Cantel,
Madame Duroy de Cantel. It is capital, capital." She went on with an air
of conviction: "And you will see how easy it is to get everyone to
accept it. But one must know how to seize the opportunity, for it will
be too late afterwards. You must from to-morrow sign your descriptive
articles D. de Cantel, and your 'Echoes' simply Duroy. It is done every
day in the press, and no one will be astonished to see you take a
pseudonym. At the moment of our marriage we can modify it yet a little
more, and tell our friends that you had given up the 'Du' out of modesty
on account of your position, or even say nothing about it. What is your
father's Christian name?"
"Alexander."
She murmured: "Alexander, Alexander," two or three times, listening to
the sonorous roll of the syllables, and then wrote on a blank sheet of
paper:
"Monsieur and Madame Alexander Du Roy de Cantel have the honor to inform
you of the marriage of Monsieur George Du Roy de Cantel, their son, to
Madame Madeleine Forestier." She looked at her writing, holding it at a
distance, charmed by the effect, and said: "With a little method we can
manage whatever we wish."
When he found himself once more in the street, firmly resolved to call
himself in future Du Roy, and even Du Roy de Cantel, it seemed to him
that he had acquired fresh importance. He walked with more swagger, his
head higher, his moustache fiercer, as a gentleman should walk. He felt
in himself a species of joyous desire to say to the passers-by: "My name
is Du Roy de Cantel."
But scarcely had he got home than the thought of Madame de Marelle made
him feel uneasy, and he wrote to her at once to ask her to make an
appointment for the next day.
"It will be a tough job," he thought. "I must look out for squalls."
Then he made up his mind for it, with the native carelessness which
caused him to slur over the disagreeable side of life, and began to
write a fancy article on the fresh taxes needed in order to make the
Budget balance. He set down in this the nobiliary "De" at a hundred
francs a year, and titles, from baron to prince, at from five hundred to
five thousand francs. And he signed it "D. de Cantel."
He received a telegram from his mistress next morning saying that she
would call at one o'clock. He waited for her somewhat feverishly, his
mind made up to bring things to a point at once, to say everything right
out, and then, when the first emotion had subsided, to argue cleverly in
order to prove to her that he could not remain a bachelor for ever, and
that as Monsieur de Marelle insisted on living, he had been obliged to
think of another than herself as his legitimate companion. He felt
moved, though, and when he heard her ring his heart began to beat.
She threw herself into his arms, exclaiming: "Good morning, Pretty-boy."
Then, finding his embrace cold, looked at him, and said: "What is the
matter with you?"
"Sit down," he said, "we have to talk seriously."
She sat down without taking her bonnet off, only turning back her veil,
and waited.
He had lowered his eyes, and was preparing the beginning of his speech.
He commenced in a low tone of voice: "My dear one, you see me very
uneasy, very sad, and very much embarrassed at what I have to admit to
you. I love you dearly. I really love you from the bottom of my heart,
so that the fear of causing you pain afflicts me more than even the news
I am going to tell you."
She grew pale, felt herself tremble, and stammered out: "What is the
matter? Tell me at once."
He said in sad but resolute tones, with that feigned dejection which we
make use of to announce fortunate misfortunes: "I am going to be
married."
She gave the sigh of a woman who is about to faint, a painful sigh from
the very depths of her bosom, and then began to choke and gasp without
being able to speak.
Seeing that she did not say anything, he continued: "You cannot imagine
how much I suffered before coming to this resolution. But I have neither
position nor money. I am alone, lost in Paris. I needed beside me
someone who above all would be an adviser, a consoler, and a stay. It is
a partner, an ally, that I have sought, and that I have found."
He was silent, hoping that she would reply, expecting furious rage,
violence, and insults. She had placed one hand on her heart as though to
restrain its throbbings, and continued to draw her breath by painful
efforts, which made her bosom heave spasmodically and her head nod to
and fro. He took her other hand, which was resting on the arm of the
chair, but she snatched it away abruptly. Then she murmured, as though
in a state of stupefaction: "Oh, my God!"
He knelt down before her, without daring to touch her, however, and more
deeply moved by this silence than he would have been by a fit of anger,
stammered out: "Clo! my darling Clo! just consider my situation,
consider what I am. Oh! if I had been able to marry you, what happiness
it would have been. But you are married. What could I do? Come, think of
it, now. I must take a place in society, and I cannot do it so long as I
have not a home. If you only knew. There are days when I have felt a
longing to kill your husband."
He spoke in his soft, subdued, seductive voice, a voice which entered
the ear like music. He saw two tears slowly gather in the fixed and
staring eyes of his mistress and then roll down her cheeks, while two
more were already formed on the eyelids.
He murmured: "Do not cry, Clo; do not cry, I beg of you. You rend my
very heart."
Then she made an effort, a strong effort, to be proud and dignified, and
asked, in the quivering tone of a woman about to burst into sobs: "Who
is it?"
He hesitated a moment, and then understanding that he must, said:
"Madeleine Forestier."
Madame de Marelle shuddered all over, and remained silent, so deep in
thought that she seemed to have forgotten that he was at her feet. And
two transparent drops kept continually forming in her eyes, falling and
forming again.
She rose. Duroy guessed that she was going away without saying a word,
without reproach or forgiveness, and he felt hurt and humiliated to the
bottom of his soul. Wishing to stay her, he threw his arms about the
skirt of her dress, clasping through the stuff her rounded legs, which
he felt stiffen in resistance. He implored her, saying: "I beg of you,
do not go away like that."
Then she looked down on him from above with that moistened and
despairing eye, at once so charming and so sad, which shows all the
grief of a woman's heart, and gasped out: "I--I have nothing to say. I
have nothing to do with it. You--you are right. You--you have chosen
well."
And, freeing herself by a backward movement, she left the room without
his trying to detain her further.
Left to himself, he rose as bewildered as if he had received a blow on
the head. Then, making up his mind, he muttered: "Well, so much the
worse or the better. It is over, and without a scene; I prefer that,"
and relieved from an immense weight, suddenly feeling himself free,
delivered, at ease as to his future life, he began to spar at the wall,
hitting out with his fists in a kind of intoxication of strength and
triumph, as if he had been fighting Fate.
When Madame Forestier asked: "Have you told Madame de Marelle?" he
quietly answered, "Yes."
She scanned him closely with her bright eyes, saying: "And did it not
cause her any emotion?"
"No, not at all. She thought it, on the contrary, a very good idea."
The news was soon known. Some were astonished, others asserted that they
had foreseen it; others, again, smiled, and let it be understood that
they were not surprised.
The young man who now signed his descriptive articles D. de Cantel, his
"Echoes" Duroy, and the political articles which he was beginning to
write from time to time Du Roy, passed half his time with his betrothed,
who treated him with a fraternal familiarity into which, however,
entered a real but hidden love, a species of desire concealed as a
weakness. She had decided that the marriage should be quite private,
only the witnesses being present, and that they should leave the same
evening for Rouen. They would go the next day to see the journalist's
parents, and remain with them some days. Duroy had striven to get her to
renounce this project, but not having been able to do so, had ended by
giving in to it.
So the tenth of May having come, the newly-married couple, having
considered the religious ceremony useless since they had not invited
anyone, returned to finish packing their boxes after a brief visit to
the Town Hall. They took, at the Saint Lazare terminus, the six o'clock
train, which bore them away towards Normandy. They had scarcely
exchanged twenty words up to the time that they found themselves alone
in the railway carriage. As soon as they felt themselves under way, they
looked at one another and began to laugh, to hide a certain feeling of
awkwardness which they did not want to manifest.
The train slowly passed through the long station of Batignolles, and
then crossed the mangy-looking plain extending from the fortifications
to the Seine. Duroy and his wife from time to time made a few idle
remarks, and then turned again towards the windows. When they crossed
the bridge of Asnieres, a feeling of greater liveliness was aroused in
them at the sight of the river covered with boats, fishermen, and
oarsmen. The sun, a bright May sun, shed its slanting rays upon the
craft and upon the smooth stream, which seemed motionless, without
current or eddy, checked, as it were, beneath the heat and brightness of
the declining day. A sailing boat in the middle of the river having
spread two large triangular sails of snowy canvas, wing and wing, to
catch the faintest puffs of wind, looked like an immense bird preparing
to take flight.
Duroy murmured: "I adore the neighborhood of Paris. I have memories of
dinners which I reckon among the pleasantest in my life."
"And the boats," she replied. "How nice it is to glide along at sunset."
Then they became silent, as though afraid to continue their outpourings
as to their past life, and remained so, already enjoying, perhaps, the
poesy of regret.
Duroy, seated face to face with his wife, took her hand and slowly
kissed it. "When we get back again," said he, "we will go and dine
sometimes at Chatou."
She murmured: "We shall have so many things to do," in a tone of voice
that seemed to imply, "The agreeable must be sacrificed to the useful."
He still held her hand, asking himself with some uneasiness by what
transition he should reach the caressing stage. He would not have felt
uneasy in the same way in presence of the ignorance of a young girl, but
the lively and artful intelligence he felt existed in Madeleine,
rendered his attitude an embarrassed one. He was afraid of appearing
stupid to her, too timid or too brutal, too slow or too prompt. He kept
pressing her hand gently, without her making any response to this
appeal. At length he said: "It seems to me very funny for you to be my
wife."