A JAR
It was the day before the meeting. Early next morning the Chevalier de
Méré was to call for her in his coach and drive her out to Conrart’s
house. He was also taking that tiresome little Mademoiselle Boquet. That
was a pity, but she was particularly pleased that the Chevalier himself
was to be there, he always brought out her most brilliant qualities.
_She was absolutely certain of success_ ... the real world seemed to
have become the dream world ... she felt as if she had been turned into
a creature of some light, unsubstantial substance living in an airless
crystal ball.
That afternoon, being Thursday and a holiday, she went an excursion with
Jacques to Chaillot, a little village up the Seine. She walked in a happy
trance, and the fifteenth century Church, ornate and frivolous, dotted
with its black Minims—‘_les bons hommes de Chaillot_’—and the coach of
the exiled Queen-Mother of England’s gaily rattling down the cobbled
street, seemed to her—safe inside her crystal ball—pretty and unreal and
far-away, like Berthe’s stories of Lorraine.
Then they wandered into a little copse behind the village and lay there
in the fantastic green shade, and Madeleine stroked and petted Jacques
and laughed away his jealousy about the Chevalier, and promised that next
week she would go with him to the notary and plight her troth.
Then they got up and she took his arm; on her face was a rapt smile, for
she was dreaming particularly pleasant things about herself and Sappho.
Suddenly Jacques’s foot caught in a hidden root ... down he came,
dragging Madeleine after him ... smash went the crystal ball, and once
more she saw the world bright and hard and menacing and felt around her
the rough, shrewd winds.
So Jacques had made her fall—just when she was having such pleasant
dreams of Sappho!
_Hylas, hélas! Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Birds thinking to fly
through have dashed themselves against the wall. ’Tis as though the issue
of his roman were tied in a strange knot with that of yours. I have been
writing a little comedy on life instead of on foolscap. In the smithy
of Vulcan are being forged weapons which will not tarry to smash your
fragile world into a thousand fragments_ ... weapons? Perhaps one of them
was ‘the scimitar of the Comic Muse’ (or was it the ‘symmetry’? It did
not really matter which.)
Who was the mercer at the Fair? He had the same eyes as the nun at the
Carmelites.... Her father, too, had a _petite-oie_ ... he had put his
faith in bravery. Perhaps Venus-Magdalen and the Comic Muse were one ...
and their servant was Hylas the mocking shepherd. _The wooden cubes on
which God’s finger had cut a design ... generals and particulars. Have
a care lest that scoundrel Jacques stick a disgrace upon you, as he has
done to me! A comedy written upon life instead of upon foolscap._
In morbid moments she had often heard a whisper to which she had never
permitted herself to listen. She heard the whisper now, louder and more
insistent than ever before. To-day she could not choose but listen to it.
_Her ‘roman’ had to follow the pattern of her father’s. Her father’s
‘roman,’ as slowly it unfolded, was nothing but a magical pre-doing of
her own future, more potent than her dances. And God had deputed the
making of it to—Jacques. He was the playwright, or the engraver, or the
moulder of wax—it mattered little in what medium he wrought his sinister
art._
There was still time to act. ‘She would _do_, she would _do_, she would
_do_.’ Action is the only relief for a hag-ridden brain. An action that
was ruthless and final—that would break his power and rid her of him for
ever. That action should be consummated.
All the while that this train of fears and memories had been coursing
through her brain, she had chattered to Jacques with hectic gaiety.
When they got home she ran to the kitchen to find Berthe.
‘Berthe, were you ever of opinion I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’
Berthe leered and winked. ‘Well, Mademoiselle,’ she said, ‘Love is one
thing—marriage is another. Monsieur Jacques could not give Mademoiselle
a coach and a fine _hôtel_ in the Rue de Richelieu. I understand
Mademoiselle exceeding well, in that we are not unlike in some matters,’
and she gave her grotesque grin. ‘As for me, I would never wed with a
man except he could raise me to a better condition than mine own—else
what would it profit one? But if some plump little tradesman were to come
along——’
‘But did you hold that I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’ Madeleine
persisted.
‘Well, if Mademoiselle _did_ wed with him, she would doubtless be setting
too low a price on herself, though he is a fine young gentleman and
_malin comme un singe_; he is like Albert, nothing escapes him.’
‘Do you think the Saints like us to use each other unkindly?’
Berthe laughed enigmatically, ‘I think ’tis a matter of indifference to
them, so long as they get the _sous_.’
‘But don’t you think it might accord well with their humour if they are
as wicked as you say they are?’
Part of the truth suddenly flashed on Berthe, and she winked and chuckled
violently. ‘Oh, Mademoiselle is sly!’ she cried admiringly. ‘I think it
would please them not a little were Mademoiselle to jilt a poor man that
she might wed with a rich one, for then there would be gold for them
instead of copper!’
And Madeleine, having forced her oracle into giving her a more or less
satisfactory answer, fled from the room in dread of Berthe mentioning the
name of the Chevalier de Méré and thereby spoiling the oracular answer.
She called Jacques to her room at once, and found herself—she who had
such a horror of hurting the feelings of her neighbours that she would
let a thief cut her purse-strings rather than that he should know that
she knew he was a thief—telling him without a tremor that his personality
was obnoxious to her, his addresses still more so, and that she wanted
to end their relationship once and for all. Jacques listened in perfect
silence. At her first words he had gone white and then flushed the angry
red of wounded vanity, and then once more had turned white. When she had
finished, he said in a voice of icy coldness,—
‘Mademoiselle, you have an admirable clearness of exposition; rest
assured I shall not again annoy you with my addresses—or my presence,’
and with his head very high he left the room.