FACE TO FACE WITH FACTS
She awoke next morning to the sense that she must make up her account.
How exactly did things stand? She certainly had been neither _gauche_ nor
silent the day before. Saint Magdalene had done all she had asked of her,
but by so doing had she played her some hideous trick?
She had had absolute faith in Descartes’ doctrine that love proceeds
from admiration, and that admiration is caused by anything rare and
extraordinary. She _was_ rare, she _was_ extraordinary, but had she
aroused admiration? And even if she had, could it not be the forerunner
of hate as well as of love?
Alas! how much easier would be self-knowledge, and hence, if the Greeks
were right, how much easier too would be virtue, if the actions of our
passions were as consistent, the laws that govern them as mechanical,
as they appear in Descartes’ Treatise. Moreover, how much easier would
be happiness if, docile and catholic like birds and flowers, we were
never visited by these swift, exclusive passions, which are so rarely
reciprocal.
No, if Mademoiselle de Scudéry did not feel for her _d’un aveugle
penchant le charme imperceptible_, the Cestus of Venus itself would be
of no avail. Even if she had not cut herself off from the relief of her
dances by bringing them to a climax beyond which their virtue could not
function, this had been, even for their opiate, too stern and dolorous a
fact.
Circumstances had forced her bang up against reality this time. She must
find out, once and for all, how matters stood, that is to say, if she
had aroused the emotion of admiration. She must have her own suspicions
allayed—or confirmed. The only way this could be done, was to go to the
Chevalier’s house and ask him. The spoken word carried for her always a
strange finality. Suspense would be unbearable; she must go _now_.
She dressed hurriedly, slipped on her mask and cloak, and stole into the
street. The strange antiphony of the hawkers rang through the morning,
and there echoed after her as she ran the well-known cry: _Vous désirez
quelque ch-o-o-se?_ This cry in the morning, and in the evening that of
the _Oublieux_.—_La joie! la joie! Voilà des oublies!_ ... Did one answer
the other in some strange way, these morning and evening cries? It could
be turned into a dialogue between Fate and a mortal, thus:—
_Fate_: Vous désirez quelque cho-o-o-se?
_Mortal_: La joie! la joie!
_Fate_: Voilà—_l’oubli_.
On she ran, careless of the surprise of the passers-by, over the
Pont-Neuf, already busy, and driving its motley trade, then along the
Quais on the other side, past the Louvre, and up the Rue de Richelieu,
where the Chevalier lived. She had naturally never been to his rooms, but
she knew where they were. She slipped in at the main doorway and up the
long stairs, her heart beating somewhere up in her throat. She knew he
lived on the second landing. She knocked many times before the door was
opened by a lackey in a night-cap. He gaped when he first saw her, and
then grinned broadly.
‘Mademoiselle must see Monsieur? Monsieur is abed, but Mademoiselle
doubtless will not mind that!’
‘Tell Monsieur that Mademoiselle Troqueville _must_ see him on urgent
business,’ Madeleine said severely.
The lackey grinned again, and led her through a great bare room,
surrounded by carved wooden chests, in which, doubtless, the Chevalier
kept his innumerable suits of clothes. They served also as beds, chairs,
and tables to the Chevalier’s army of lackeys and pages, for some were
lying full length on them snoring lustily, and others, more matinal, were
sitting on them cross-legged, and, wrapped in rugs, were playing at that
solace of the vulgar—Lasquinet. Madeleine felt a sudden longing to be one
of them, happy, lewd, soulless creatures!
She was shown into an elegant little waiting-room, full of small inlaid
tables and exquisite porcelain. The walls were hung with crayon sketches,
and large canvasses of well-known ladies by Mignard and Beaubrun. Some
of them were in allegorical postures—there was the celebrated Précieuse,
Madame de Buisson, holding a lyre and standing before a table covered
with books and astronomical instruments ... she was probably meant to
represent a Muse ... she was leering horribly ... was it the Comic Muse?
It must have been for about a quarter of an hour that Madeleine waited,
sitting rigid and expressionless.
At last the Chevalier arrived, fresh from his valet’s hands, in a
gorgeous Chinese dressing-gown, scented and combed. He held out both
his hands to her and his eyes were sparkling, to Madeleine it seemed
with a sinister light, and she found herself wondering, as she marked
the dressing-gown, if he were Descartes. Anything was possible in this
Goblin-world.
She suddenly realised that she must find the ‘urgent business’ that had
wrenched the Chevalier from his morning sleep. She could not very well
blurt put ‘Did Mademoiselle de Scudéry like me?’ but what _could_ she say?
‘Dear Rhodanthos, I cursed my valet for not being winged when I heard it
was you, and—as you see—my impatience was too great for a jerkin! What
brings you at this hour? That you should turn to me in your trouble, if
trouble it is, is a prettier compliment than all _les fleurettes_ of all
the polite Anthologies. What has metamorphosed the Grecian rose into a
French lily?’
Madeleine blushed, and stammered out that she did not know. Then the
Chevalier took matters into his own hands. This behaviour might smack of
the reign of Louis XIII., but it was very delicious for all that.
He took her in his arms. Madeleine lay there impassive. After all, it
saved her the trouble of finding a reason; for the one thing that was
left in this emotional ruin was the old shrinking from people knowing how
much it mattered. But as to what he might think of her present behaviour,
’twas a matter of no moment whatever. She held him at arm’s length from
her for a minute.
‘Tell me,’ she said archly, ‘did you find yesterday a pleasant
diversion?’ His cheeks were flushed, and there was the dull drunken
look in his eyes which is one of the ways passion expresses itself
in middle-aged men. ‘Come back to me!’ he muttered thickly, without
answering her question.
‘First tell me if you found it diverting!’ she cried gaily, and darted to
the opposite end of the room. He rushed after her.
‘Don’t madden me, child,’ he muttered, and took her in his arms again.
Again Madeleine broke away from him laughing.
‘I won’t come to you till—let me see—till you tell me if I took the fancy
of Mademoiselle de Scudéry.’ She was, when hard-driven, an excellent
actress, and the question tripped out, light and mocking, as if it had
just been an excuse for tormenting him. There she stood with laughing
lips and grave, wind-swept eyes, keeping him at bay with her upraised
hand. ‘In earnest,’ she cooed tormentingly, ‘you must first answer my
question.’ For a moment, the pedagogue broke through the lover.
‘Mademoiselle de Scudéry is an exquisitely correct lady, her sense of
social seemliness amounts to genius. She could hardly approve of a
hamadryad ... Madeleine!’ and he made a dash for her. But she ducked and
turned under his outstretched arms, and was once more at the opposite end
of the room. The flame of her wish to know began to burn up her flimsy
rôle.
‘I—promise you—anything—afterwards, but—pray tell me—_did Mademoiselle de
Scudéry make any mention to you of me_?’ she panted.
‘’Tis no matter and she did, I....’
‘Tell me!’ And somehow Madeleine’s voice compelled obedience.
‘What strange _vision_ is this? Well, then, as you are so desirous of
knowing ... Mademoiselle de Scudéry ... well, she is herself a lady, and
as such cannot be over sensible to the charms of her own sex——’
‘Well?’
‘Well, do not take it ill, but also she always finds it hard to pardon
a ... well ... a ... er ... a certain lack of decorum. I told her she
erred grievously in her judgment of you, but, it seems, you did not
take her fancy, and she maintained’—(The Chevalier was rather glad of
the opportunity of repeating the following words, for not being _in
propria persona_, they escaped incivility and might be beneficial.) ‘She
maintained that your manners were _grossier_, your wit _de province_, and
that even if you lived to be as old as the Sybil, “you would never be an
_honnête femme_”.... Maintenant, ma petite Reine——’
But Madeleine was out of the room—pushing her way through the lackeys
... then down the staircase ... then out into the street ... running,
running, running.
Then she stood still and began to tremble from head to foot with awful,
silent laughter. Fool that she was not to have seen it before! Why, the
Sapphic Ode was but another statement of the Law she had so dreaded—that
the spurner of love must in his turn inevitably be spurned! _Who flees,
she shall pursue; who spurns gifts, she shall offer them; who loves
not, willy-nilly she shall love._ As the words stood, the ‘she’ did not
necessarily refer to the object of Sappho’s desire. Fool, fool, she had
read as a promise what was intended as a warning. _She was being punished
for spurning the love of Jacques._
What a strange irony, that just by her effort to escape this Law she
had brought down on herself the full weight of its action! To avoid its
punishment of her _amour-propre_ she had pretended to be in love with
Jacques, thereby entangling herself in a mass of contradictions, deceit,
and nervous terrors from which the only means of extricating herself was
by breaking the law anew and spurning love. Verily, it was a fine example
of Até—the blindness sent by the gods on those they mean to destroy.
Well, now the end had come, and of the many possibilities and realities
life had held for her, nothing was left but the _adamant of desire which
neither the tools of earth can break, nor the chemistry of Hell resolve_.