Many evenings during the winter there were when the knowledge that she
would be wearied by some man's appeal, if she went out, determined her
to remain at home. The opportunity to out-shine other women failed to
lure her from the fireside, and she sat in her dressing-gown, playing
écarté with her new maid. "It is marvellous what a head for the game
madame has, seeing she is so young!" exclaimed the maid, awestruck.
"I cannot say as much for _you_," snapped her mistress, mourning that
quondam neighbour.
When the summer came and she went to the coast, with a score of
wonderful dresses, she sighed for companionship more drearily yet.
Hitherto, at such places, she had sat among her compeers, amiably
chatting. Now she appeared too young to be congruous to the circle of
the old--was too old to participate in the pastimes of the young. Scant
of breath and stiff in the joints, she viewed morosely the laughing
women trooping to the tennis courts. Shrunken beneath her youthful
frocks, she dared not don a bathing costume and reveal her wasted form
among the sirens lolling by the tents. Queer as the fact seemed, her
years irked her more this summer than they had done while she looked
her age.
The anniversary of the miracle found her in low spirits, and suffering
from lumbago.
There was a lad, attractive, promising, on the threshold of a
career--such a lad as, thirty-eight years earlier, she had pictured
her baby growing up to be. She had made his acquaintance at a "feeve
o'clock," where, being so young, he felt shy, and where to find himself
speaking to this enchantress confused him more still. But her tone had
promptly relieved him of his dread that he ought to play the courtier.
When she invited him to call on her, she asked him as she might have
asked a schoolboy. Her interest in Guy Verne's ambitions yielded to her
gradually a healthier outlook. Stranger still, as the months passed,
a real and deep affection stole into the old egoist's nature. She was
less purposeless, less futile for it. Almost, as she entered into his
boyish forecasts, and made fight of his little setbacks, it seemed to
her as if her son had lived.
One day the boy flung his arms round her and begged her to be his wife.
It was horrible. She repulsed him, shuddering.
"Don't, Guy, don't!"
Entreaties poured from him.
"If you understood!" she moaned. "I shall have gone to my grave while
you're a young man."
He thought she meant that she was very ill.
"I'll nurse you back to health. Victorine, I love you with all my soul."
"You don't love me a bit," she said. "There is nothing in me for you to
love--I am as utterly different from you as if there were fifty years
between us; you only imagine you love me because you admire my face.
Good heavens, have I ever said a single word to lead you to think I
cared for you in such a way?"
An English boy might have suffered as much, but would have taken it
more quietly. This boy was French, and he did not hide what he felt.
He answered vehemently that she had led him to think so every time
they talked of his future. "If you didn't care for me, why should
it interest you?" He raved of his broken heart. He loaded her with
reproaches. "You've shammed to me, mocked me, just to amuse yourself!"
"No." She was crying. "I _am_ fond of you--fonder of you than of
anybody in the world. But not like that. I shall never care like that
again for anyone."
"I wish I had never seen you. I wish I were dead."
"You mustn't come here any more," she found the strength to tell
him--and not till then had she realised how very dear he had become to
her.
"I'm so sorry, Guy--so dreadfully sorry."
He fell at her feet, imploring her anew. He broke down, and besought
one kiss before he left her. Her misery was deeper than his as she bent
to him, but the boy didn't know it.
"My God," he sobbed, "I adore you--and you kiss me as if you were my
mother!"
The mirror provided no comfort in her loss. She stared, lonely, at the
alien face reflected--stared at it, by slow degrees, with aversion.
It was not she. The unlovely form and jaded mind were she--the spent
passion, and the infirmities. What benefit was the face of youth
without youth's pulses? The mirror mocked her weary thoughts each day.
Upon her grief a woman, white-lipped and shaken, intruded to upbraid
her.
"You have ruined my son's career," she said. "He neglects his work, he
thinks of nothing but you. I hope and pray you may be punished as you
deserve!"
"At Guy's age a career is not ruined by a foolish attachment," pleaded
madame de Val Fleury piteously.
"And at yours such an answer is abominable," cried the other. "You do
not lessen your guilt by cynicism. If ever a girl encouraged a young
man, you encouraged my son. Foolish as his devotion to you may be,
he _is_ devoted to you. By what right did you tempt him to come here
constantly if you had no tenderness for him? Your treatment of him has
been infamous."
"As a mother, do you know only one kind of tenderness, madame? My
affection for your son was true and great. My interest in his future
was no less deep than yours. I swear to you that what has happened
distresses me so much that I have been able to think of nothing else."
Madame Verne advanced upon her with clenched hands.
"Your hypocrisy is even more revolting than your cynicism. If I know
more than one kind of tenderness? Yes. But not in a girl for a young
man! You swear to me you are distressed. _I_ swear to _you_ something
else. My boy is all I have--and I am frightened for him; I do not know
what he may do in his despair. If I lose him he shall be revenged. Take
care, madame de Beaulieu. If you hear of his death, take care! The very
next day, if possible, or the next month, or the next year--whenever I
can reach you--as Heaven is my witness, I will mark that face of yours
with vitriol."
She rang the bell, and went--and the maid that entered found her
mistress in a swoon upon the floor.
For a week her shattered nerves kept madame de Val Fleury abed. And
for several weeks terror prevented her from setting foot outside the
flat. She had a grille constructed in the door, and a hundred times she
repeated to the servants that it was not to be opened for the merest
instant to madame Verne, or any stranger. Such precautions could not
yield composure, however. The day was rendered ghastly with false
alarms; and when she glanced at the mirror, dread flared upon her now a
face seared and repulsive, a mutilated, sightless thing of horror. The
night brought dreams so fearful that she was, more than once, wakened
by a scream that had burst from her. Thrice the awfulness of the
tension impelled her to falter, through the telephone, sympathetic and
ingratiating inquiries to madame Verne; and when the mother rang off
without vouchsafing a reply, the poor old creature tottered with panic.
At last, towards the close of February, she had the unspeakable relief
of learning that madame Verne and her son had gone to Monaco, and
once again she was able to step into her car with a sense of safety.
Nevertheless, the thought of the unhappiness that she had brought upon
the boy was black in her mind. She tried to thrust the thought aside
by reading, but fiction had lost its power to charm her. Gradually, as
her health improved, she turned, for respite from her sad reflections,
to the theatre. When there remained no more fashionable programmes for
her to see, she would adventure the second-rate. One night, as she was
coming out of a little theatre in the Montmartre quarter, she started
and stopped short, trembling in every limb at a sight that met her
gaze. She could not withdraw her gaze--she was magnetised by the sight;
it thrilled her as if the dead had risen to her view. She was looking
at the face that had been hers--she was looking at Berthe Cheron.
Berthe Cheron, handsomely dressed, had also jerked to a standstill, and
for a few seconds the two fronted each other dumbly--the young girl's
puckered eyes, her furrowed cheeks rancorous with regret. It was she
who was the first to speak.
"Blast you!" she said.
"What do you mean--I treated you fairly, didn't I?" stammered madame de
Val Fleury.
"I wish--I wish----" Resentment choked her.
"I paid all you wanted."
"Paid? It wouldn't have been good enough if you'd paid a million. _You_
knew--_you_ knew who was getting the best of it. Paid? What's the use
of the money without any fun? Do you think fine clothes make up for
that? I want to be danced with, I want to be kissed. To hell with your
money--I want love!"
"Don't talk so loudly, don't! That man's looking at us."
"He's not looking at _me_. No man ever looks at me. Paid? If we were
both as we were, you could pay some other fool--it wouldn't be me you'd
get!"
"If we were both as we were, I'd pay no one," groaned madame de Val
Fleury.
"What?"
"It's true. Quite, quite true."
For a moment they were silent again, studying each other. Then madame
de Val Fleury said breathlessly:
"I want to ask you something. Come home with me--get into my car. Don't
abuse me any more, don't rail at me--I'm an old woman and I can't bear
it."
As the car bore them away, she explained herself, weeping.
"I know it seems strange to you, my not being satisfied--I know I've
got the things you want so much. But _you_ retain the capacity to enjoy
those things, and _I don't_. If I could have had your youth as well, it
would have been different. The old are happiest in their old ways, with
their old friends. We both made an error. If--do you think, if we were
to go there again----?" Berthe Cheron turned to her wildly. "If we were
to go there again?" she gasped.
"If we were to go there again--in humbleness of spirit this time, in
contrition, beseeching pardon for our error--do you think it might be
undone?"
"Oh, let us try, let us try!" cried the girl, seizing her hand. And
she, too, wept. "But I could not refund more than about half the
money," she faltered, dismayed.
"I would not ask you to refund a son of it," said madame de Val Fleury.
"You should keep it as a marriage portion."
In the flat they talked till late, mingling their tears and comforting
each other.
Nearly four months had to pass before the coming of the date they
craved, but on the evening of the 6th of September the two victims of
their own folly reached St. Pierre des Champs once more. And in the
eerie market-place, the lanterns swayed amid the flitting figures, and
again they heard the shrill clamour of the crone, shuffling among the
naked stalls. "Fine faces cheap!" And the long, long night grew cold,
and the penitents' teeth chattered; and as the elder knelt and prayed,
as never had she prayed before, the pebbles bit into her knees.
* * * * *
A few days afterwards, monsieur Septfous, in the private office of the
bank, saw the door open to admit a caller that surprised him.
"My dear madame de Val Fleury," he exclaimed, "how delighted I am to
greet you! Dare I hope you have returned to Paris for good?"
"For good, my friend--the country got on my nerves. At my time of life
not every change is desirable," replied the old lady, beaming.
And subsequently one man said to another:
"Funny thing; at Bullier last night I saw a girl just like madame de
Beaulieu, who vanished to New York or somewhere--excepting that she had
her arms round a chap's neck and looked so happy."
"Lucky chap, by Jove! Know him?"
"A fellow called Guy Verne."