A LITTLE RELATIVE OF IAGO
The remorse which Montfanon expressed so naively, once acknowledged to
himself, increased rapidly in the honest man's heart. He had reason to
say from the beginning that the affair looked bad. A quarrel, together
with assault, or an attempt at assault, would not be easily set right.
It required a diplomatic miracle. The slightest lack of self-possession
on the part of the seconds is equivalent to a catastrophe. As happens in
such circumstances, events are hurried, and the pessimistic anticipations
of the irritable Marquis were verified almost as soon as he uttered them.
Dorsenne and he had barely left the Palais Savorelli when Gorka arrived.
The energy with which he repulsed the proposition of an arrangement which
would admit of excuses on his part, served prudent Hafner, and the not
less prudent Ardea, as a signal for withdrawal. It was too evident to
the two men that no reconciliation would result from a collision of such
a madman with a personage so difficult as the most authorized of
Florent's proxies had shown himself to be. They then asked Gorka to
relieve them from their duty. They had too plausible an excuse in
Fanny's betrothal for Boleslas to refuse to release them. That
retirement was a second catastrophe. In his impatience to find other
seconds who would be firm, Gorka hastened to the Cercle de la Chasse.
Chance willed that he should meet with two of his comrades--a Marquis
Cibo, Roman, and a Prince Pietrapertoso, Neapolitan, who were assuredly
the best he could have chosen to hasten the simplest affair to its worst
consequences.
Those two young men of the best Italian families, both very intelligent,
very loyal and very good, belonged to that particular class which is to
be met with in Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, as in Milan and in Rome,
of foreign club-men hypnotized by Paris. And what a Paris! That of
showy and noisy fetes, that which passes the morning in practising the
sports in fashion, the afternoons in racing, in frequenting fencing-
schools, the evening at the theatre and the night at the gaming-table!
That Paris which emigrates by turns, according to the season, to Monte
Carlo for the 'Tir aux Pigeons', to Deauville for the race week, to Aix-
les-Bains for the baccarat season; that Paris which has its own customs,
its own language, its own history, even its own cosmopolitanism, for it
exercises over certain minds, throughout Europe, so despotic a rule that
Cibo, for example, and his friend Pietrapertoso never opened a French
journal that was not Parisian.
They sought the short paragraphs in which were related, in detail, the
doings of the demi-monde, the last supper given by some well-known
viveur, the details of some large party in such and such a fashionable
club, the result of a shooting match, or of a fencing match between
celebrated fencers! There were between them subjects of conversation of
which they never wearied; to know if spirituelle Gladys Harvey was more
elegant than Leona d'Astri, if Machault made "counters" as rapid as those
of General Garnier, if little Lautrec would adhere or would not adhere to
the game he was playing. Imprisoned in Rome by the scantiness of their
means, and also by the wishes, the one of his uncle, the other of his
grandfather, whose heirs they were, their entire year was summed up in
the months which they spent at Nice in the winter, and in the trip they
took to Paris at the time of the Grand Prix for six weeks. Jealous one
of the other, with the most comical rivalry, of the least occurrence at
the 'Cercle des Champs-Elysees' or of the Rue Royale in the Eternal City,
they affected, in the presence of their colleagues of la chasse, the
impassive manner of augurs when the telegraph brought them the news of
some Parisian scandal. That inoffensive mania which had made of stout,
ruddy Cibo, and of thin, pale Pietrapertoso two delightful studies for
Dorsenne during his Roman winter, made of them terrible proxies in the
service of Gorka's vengeance.
With what joy and what gravity they accepted that mission all those who
have studied swordsmen will understand after this simple sketch, and with
what promptness they presented themselves to confer at nine o'clock in
the morning with their client's adversary! In short, at half-past twelve
the duel was arranged in its slightest detail. The energy employed by
Montfanon had only ended in somewhat tempering the conditions--four balls
to be exchanged at twenty-five paces at the word of command. The duel
was fixed for the following morning, in the inclosure which Cibo owned,
with an inn adjoining, not very far distant from the classical tomb of
Cecilia Metella. To obtain that distance and the use of new weapons it
required the prestige with which the Marquis suddenly clothed himself in
the eyes of Gorka's seconds by pronouncing the name, still legendary in
the provinces and to the foreigner, of Gramont-Caderousse--'Sic transit
gloria mundi'! On leaving that rendezvous the excellent man really had
tears in his eyes.
"It is my fault," he moaned, "it is my fault. With that Hafner we
should have obtained such a fine official plan by mixing in a little of
ours. He offered it to us himself.... Brave Chapron! It is I who have
brought him into this dilemma!.... I owe it to him not to abandon him,
but to follow him to the end.... Here I shall be assisting at a duel, at
my age!.... Did you see how those young snobs lowered their voices when
I mentioned my encounter with poor Caderousse?.... Fifty-two years and a
month, and not to know yet how to conduct one's self! Let us go to the
Rue Leopardi. I wish to ask pardon of our client, and to give him some
advice. We will take him to one of my old friends who has a garden near
the Villa Pamphili, very secluded. We will spend the rest of the
afternoon practising.... Ah! Accursed choler! Yes, it would have been
so simple to accept the other's plan yesterday. By the exchange of two
or three words, I am sure it could have been arranged."
"Console yourself, Marquis," replied Florent, when the unhappy nobleman
had described to him the deplorable result of his negotiations. "I like
that better. Monsieur Gorka needs correction. I have only one regret,
that of not having given it to him more thoroughly.... Since I shall
have to fight a duel, I would at least have had my money's worth!"
"And you have never used a pistol?" asked Montfanon.
"Bah! I have hunted a great deal and I believe I can shoot."
"That is like night and day," interrupted the Marquis. "Hold yourself in
readiness. At three o'clock come for me and I will give you a lesson.
And remember there is a merciful God for the brave!"
Although Florent deserved praise for the cheerfulness of which his reply
was proof, the first moments which he spent alone after the departure of
his two witnesses were very painful.
That which Chapron experienced during those few moments was simply very
natural anxiety, the enervation caused by looking at the clock, and
saying:
"In twenty-four hours the hand will be on this point of the dial. And
shall I still be living?".... He was, however, manly, and knew how to
control himself. He struggled against the feeling of weakness, and,
while awaiting the time to rejoin his friends, he resolved to write his
last wishes. For years his intention had been to leave his entire
fortune to his brother-in-law. He, therefore, made a rough draft of his
will in that sense, with a pen at first rather unsteady, then quite firm.
His will completed, he had courage enough to write two letters, addressed
the one to that brother-in-law, the other to his sister. When he had
finished his work the hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes of three.
"Still seventeen hours and a half to wait," said he, "but I think I have
conquered my nerves. A short walk, too, will benefit me."
So he decided to go on foot to the rendezvous named by Montfanon. He
carefully locked the three envelopes in the drawer of his desk. He saw,
on passing, that Lincoln was not in his studio. He asked the footman if
Madame Maitland was at home. The reply received was that she was
dressing, and that she had ordered her carriage for three o'clock.
"Good," said he, "neither of them will have the slightest suspicion; I am
saved."
How astonished he would have been could he, while walking leisurely
toward his destination, have returned in thought to the smoking-room he
had just left! He would have seen a woman glide noiselessly through the
open door, with the precaution of a malefactor! He would have seen her
examine, without disarranging, all the papers on the table. She frowned
on seeing Dorsenne's and the Marquis's cards. She took from the
blotting-case some loose leaves and held them in front of the glass,
trying to read there the imprint left upon them. He would have seen
finally the woman draw from her pocket a bunch of keys. She inserted one
of them in the lock of the drawer which Florent had so carefully turned,
and took from that drawer the three unsealed envelopes he had placed
within it. And the woman who thus read, with a face contracted by
anguish, the papers discovered in such a manner, thanks to a ruse the
abominable indelicacy of which gave proof of shameful habits of
espionage, was his own sister, the Lydia whom he believed so gentle and
so simple, to whom he had penned an adieu so tender in case he should be
killed--the Lydia who would have terrified him had he seen her thus, with
passion distorting the face which was considered insignificant! She
herself, the audacious spy, trembled as if she would fall, her eyes
dilated, her bosom heaved, her teeth chattered, so greatly was she
unnerved by what she had discovered, by the terrible consequences which
she had brought about.
Had she not written the anonymous letters to Gorka, denouncing to him
the intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno? Was it not she who had
chosen, the better to poison those terrible letters, phrases the most
likely to strike the betrayed lover in the most sensitive part of his
'amour propre'? Was it not she who had hastened the return of the
jealous man with the certain hope of drawing thus a tragical vengeance
upon the hated heads of her husband and the Venetian? That vengeance,
indeed, had broken. But upon whom? Upon the only person Lydia loved in
the world, upon the brother whom she saw endangered through her fault;
and that thought was to her so overwhelming that she sank into the
armchair in which Florent had been seated fifteen minutes before,
repeating, with an accent of despair: "He is going to fight a duel. He
is going to fight instead of the other!"
All the moral history of that obscure and violent soul was summed up in
the cry in which passionate anxiety for her brother was coupled with a
fierce hatred of her husband. That hatred was the result of a youth and
a childhood without the story of which a duplicity so criminal in a being
so young would be unintelligible. That youth and that childhood had
presaged what Lydia would one day be. But who was there to train the
nature in which the heredity of an oppressed race manifested itself, as
has been already remarked, by the two most detestable characteristics--
hypocrisy and perfidy? Who, moreover, observes in children the truth, as
much neglected in practise as it is common in theory, that the defects of
the tenth year become vices in the thirtieth? When quite a child Lydia
invented falsehoods as naturally as her brother spoke the truth....
Whosoever observed her would have perceived that those lies were all told
to paint herself in a favorable light. The germ, too, of another defect
was springing up within her--a jealousy instinctive, irrational, almost
wicked. She could not see a new plaything in Florent's hands without
sulking immediately. She could not bear to see her brother embrace her
father without casting herself between them, nor could she see him amuse
himself with other comrades.
Had Napoleon Chapron been interested in the study of character as deeply
as he was in his cotton and his sugarcane, he would have perceived, with
affright, the early traces of a sinful nature. But, on that point, like
his son, he was one of those trustful men who did not judge when they
loved. Moreover, Lydia and Florent, to his wounded sensibility of a
demi-pariah, formed the only pleasant corner in his life--were the fresh
and youthful comforters of his widowerhood and of his misanthropy. He
cherished them with the idolatry which all great workers entertain for
their children, which is one of the most dangerous forms of paternal
tenderness; Lydia's incipient vices were to the planter delightful
fancies! Did she lie? The excellent man exclaimed: What an imagination
she has! Was she jealous? He would sigh, pressing to his broad breast
the tiny form: How sensitive she is!.... The result of that selfish
blindness--for to love children thus is to love them for one's self and
not for them--was that the girl, at the time of her entrance at
Roehampton, was spoiled in the essential traits of her character. But
she was so pretty, she owed to the singular mixture of three races an
originality of grace so seductive that only the keen glance of a
governess of genius could have discerned, beneath that exquisite
exterior, the already marked lines of her character. Such governesses
are rare, still more so at convents than elsewhere. There was none at
Roehampton when Lydia entered that pious haven which was to prove fatal
to her, for a reason precisely contrary to that which transformed for
Florent the lawns of peaceful Beaumont into a radiant paradise of
friendship.
Among the pupils with whom Lydia was to be educated were four young girls
from Philadelphia, older than the newcomer by two years, and who, also,
had left America for the first time. They brought with them the
unconquerable aversion to negro blood and that wonderful keenness in
discovering it, even in the most infinitesimal degree, which
distinguishes real Yankees. Little Lydia Chapron, having been entered as
French, they at first hesitated in the face of a suspicion speedily
converted into a certainty and that certainty into an aversion, which
they could not conceal. They would not have been children had they not
been unfeeling. They, therefore, began to offer poor Lydia petty
affronts. Convents and colleges resemble other society. There, too,
unjust contempt is like that "ferret of the woods," which runs from hand
to hand and which always returns to its point of setting out. All the
scornful are themselves scorned by some one--a merited punishment, which
does not correct our pride any more than the other punishments which
abound in life cure our other faults. Lydia's persecutors were
themselves the objects of outrages practised by their comrades born in
England, on account of certain peculiarities in their language and for
the nasal quality of their voices. The drama was limited, as we can
imagine, to a series of insignificant episodes and of which the
superintendents only surprised a demi-echo.
Children nurse passions as strong as ours, but so much interrupted by
playfulness that it is impossible to measure their exact strength.
Lydia's 'amour propre' was wounded in an incurable manner by that
revelation of her own peculiarity. Certain incidents of her American
life recurred to her, which she comprehended more clearly. She recalled
the portrait of her grandmother, the complexion, the hands, the hair of
her father, and she experienced that shame of her birth and of her family
much more common with children than our optimism imagines. Parents of
humble origin give their sons a liberal education, expose them to the
demoralization which it brings with it in their positions, and what
social hatreds date from the moment when the boy of twelve blushes in
secret at the condition of his relatives! With Lydia, so instinctively
jealous and untruthful, those first wounds induced falsehood and
jealousy. The slightest superiority even, noticed in one of her
companions, became to her a cause for suffering, and she undertook to
compensate by personal triumphs the difference of blood, which, once
discovered, wounds a vain nature. In order to assure herself those
triumphs she tried to win all the persons who approached her, mistresses
and comrades, and she began to practise that continued comedy of attitude
and of sentiment to which the fatal desire to please, so quickly leads-
that charming and dangerous tendency which borders much less on goodness
than falseness. At eighteen, submitted to a sort of continual
cabotinage, Lydia was, beneath the most attractive exterior, a being
profoundly, though unconsciously, wicked, capable of very little
affection--she loved no one truly but her brother--open to the invasion
of the passions of hatred which are the natural products of proud and
false minds. It was one of these passions, the most fatal of all, which
marriage was to develop within her--envy.
That hideous vice, one of those which govern the world, has been so
little studied by moralists, as all too dishonorable for the heart of
man, no doubt, that this statement may appear improbable. Madame
Maitland, for years, had been envious of her husband, but envious as one
of the rivals of an artist would be, envious as one pretty woman is of
another, as one banker is of his opponent, as a politician of his
adversary, with the fierce, implacable envy which writhes with physical
pain in the face of success, which is transported with a sensual joy in
the face of disaster. It is a great mistake to limit the ravages of that
guilty passion to the domain of professional emulation. When it is deep,
it does not alone attack the qualities of the person, but the person
himself, and it was thus that Lydia envied Lincoln. Perhaps the analysis
of this sentiment, very subtle in its ugliness, will explain to some a
few of the antipathies against which they have struck in their relatives.
For it is not only between husband and wife that these unavowed envies
are met, it is between lover and mistress, friend and friend, brother and
brother, sometimes, alas, father and son, mother and daughter! Lydia had
married Lincoln Maitland partly out of obedience to her brother's wishes,
partly from vanity, because the young man was an American, and because it
was a sort of victory over the prejudices of race, of which she thought
constantly, but of which she never spoke.
It required only three months of married life to perceive that Maitland
could not forgive himself for that marriage. Although he affected to
scorn his compatriots, and although at heart he did not share any of the
views of the country in which he had not set foot since his fifth year,
he could not hear remarks made in New York upon that marriage without a
pang. He disliked Lydia for the humiliation, and she felt it. The birth
of a child would no doubt have modified that feeling, and, if it would
not have removed it, would at least have softened the embittered heart of
the young wife. But no child was born to them. They had not returned
from their wedding tour, upon which Florent accompanied them, before
their lives rolled along in that silence which forms the base of all
those households in which husband and wife, according to a simple and
grand expression of the people, do not live heart against heart.
After the journey through Spain, which should have been one continued
enchantment, the wife became jealous of the evident preference which
Florent showed for Maitland. For the first time she perceived the hold
which that impassioned friendship had taken upon her brother's heart.
He loved her, too, but with a secondary love. The comparison annoyed her
daily, hourly, and it did not fail to become a real wound. Returned to
Paris, where they spent almost three years, that wound was increased by
the sole fact that the puissant individuality of the painter speedily
relegated to the shade the individuality of his wife, simply, almost
mechanically, like a large tree which pushes a smaller one into the
background. The composite society of artists, amateurs, and writers who
visited Lincoln came there only for him. The house they had rented was
rented only for him. The journeys they made were for him. In short,
Lydia was borne away, like Florent, in the orbit of the most despotic
force in the world--that of a celebrated talent. An entire book would be
required to paint in their daily truth the continued humiliations which
brought the young wife to detest that talent and that celebrity with as
much ardor as Florent worshipped them. She remained, however, an honest
woman, in the sense in which the word is construed by the world, which
sums up woman's entire dishonor in errors of love.
But within Lydia's breast grew a rooted aversion toward Lincoln. She
detested him for the pure blood which made of that large, fair, and
robust man so admirable a type of Anglo-Saxon beauty, by the side of her,
so thin, so insignificant indeed, in spite of the grace of her pretty,
dark face. She detested him for his taste, for the original elegance
with which he understood how to adorn the places in which he lived,
while she maintained within her a barbarous lack of taste for the least
arrangement of materials and of colors. When she was forced to
acknowledge progress in the painter, bitter hatred entered her heart.
When he lamented over his work, and when she saw him a prey to the
dolorous anxiety of an artist who doubts himself, she experienced a
profound joy, marred only by the evident sadness into which Lincoln's
struggles plunged Florent. Never had she met the eyes of Chapron fixed
upon Maitland with that look of a faithful dog which rejoices in the joy
of its master, or which suffers in his sadness, without enduring, like
Alba Steno, the sensation of a "needle in the heart."
The idolatrous worship of her brother for the painter caused her to
suffer still more as she comprehended, with the infallible perspicacity
of antipathy, the immense dupery. She read the very depths of the souls
of the two old comrades of Beaumont. She knew that in that friendship,
as is almost always the case, one alone gave all to receive in exchange
only the most brutal recognition, that with which a huntsman or a master
gratifies a faithful dog! As for enlightening Florent with regard to
Lincoln's character, she had vainly tried to do so by those fine and
perfidious insinuations in which women excel. She only recognized her
impotence, and myriads of hateful impressions were thus accumulated in
her heart, to be summed up in one of those frenzies of taciturn rancor
which bursts on the first opportunity with terrifying energy. Crime
itself has its laws of development. Between the pretty little girl who
wept on seeing a new toy in her brother's hand and the Lydia Maitland,
forcer of locks, author of anonymous letters, driven by the thirst for
vengeance, even to villainy, no dramatic revolution of character had
taken place. The logical succession of days had sufficed.
The occasion to gratify that deep and mortal longing to touch Lincoln on
some point truly sensitive, how often Lydia had sought it in vain, before
Madame Steno obtained an ascendancy over the painter. She had been
reduced by it to those meannesses of feminine animosity to manage, as if
accidentally, that her husband might read all the disagreeable articles
written about his paintings, innocently to praise before him the rivals
who had given him offense, to repeat to him with an air of embarrassment
the slightest criticisms pronounced on one of his exhibits--all the
unpleasantnesses which had the result of irritating Florent, above all,
for Maitland was one of those artists too well satisfied with the results
of his own work for the opinion of others to annoy him very much. On the
other hand, before the passion for the dogaresse had possessed him, he
had never loved. Many painters are thus, satisfying with magnificent
models an impetuosity of temperament which does not mount from the senses
to the heart. Accustomed to regard the human form from a certain point,
they find in beauty, which would appear to us simply animal, principles
of plastic emotion which at times suffice for their amorous requirements.
They are only more deeply touched by it, when to that rather coarse
intoxication is joined, in the woman who inspires them, the refined
graces of mind, the delicacy of elegance and the subtleties of sentiment.
Such was Madame Steno, who at once inspired the painter with a passion as
complete as a first love. It was really such. The Countess, who was
possessed of the penetration of voluptuousness, was not mistaken there.
Lydia, who was possessed of the penetration of hatred, was not mistaken
either. She knew from the first day how matters stood in the beginning,
because she was as observing as she was dissimulating; then, thanks to
means less hypothetic, she had always had the habit of making those
abominable inquiries which are natural, we venture to avow, to nine women
out of ten! And how many men are women, too, on this point, as said the
fabulist. At school Lydia was one of those who ascended to the
dormitory, or who reentered the study to rummage in the cupboards and
open trunks of her companions. When mature, never had a sealed letter
passed through her hands without her having ingeniously managed to read
through the envelope, or at least to guess from the postmark, the seal,
the handwriting of the address, who was the author of it. The instinct
of curiosity was so strong that she could not refrain, at a telegraph
office, from glancing over the shoulders of the persons before her, to
learn the contents of their despatches. She never had her hair dressed
or made her toilette without minutely questioning her maid as to the
goings-on in the pantry and the antechamber. It was through a story of
that kind that she learned the altercation between Florent and Gorka in
the vestibule, which proves, between parentheses, that these espionages
by the aid of servants are often efficacious. But they reveal a native
baseness, which will not recoil before any piece of villainy.
When Madame Maitland suspected the liaison of Madame Steno and her
husband, she no more hesitated to open the latter's secretary than she
later hesitated to open the desk of her brother. The correspondence
which she read in that way was of a nature which exasperated her desire
for vengeance almost to frenzy. For not only did she acquire the
evidence of a happiness shared by them which humiliated in her the woman
barren in all senses of the word, a stranger to voluptuousness as well as
to maternity, but she gathered from it numerous proofs that the Countess
cherished, with regard to her, a scorn of race as absolute as if Venice
had been a city of the United States.... That part of the Adriatic
abounds in prejudices of blood, as do all countries which serve as
confluents for every nation. It is sufficient to convince one's self of
it, to have heard a Venetian treat of the Slavs as 'Cziavoni', and the
Levantines as 'Gregugni'.
Madame Steno, in those letters she had written with all the familiarity
and all the liberty of passion, never called Lydia anything but La
Morettina, and by a very strange illogicalness never was the name of the
brother of La Morettina mentioned without a formula of friendship. As
the mistress treated Florent in that manner, it must be that she
apprehended no hostility on the part of her lover's brother-in-law.
Lydia understood it only too well, as well as the fresh proof of
Florent's sentiments for Lincoln. Once more he gave precedence to the
friend over the sister, and on what an occasion! The most secret wounds
in her inmost being bled as she read. The success of Alba's portrait,
which promised to be a masterpiece, ended by precipitating her into a
fierce and abominable action. She resolved to denounce Madame Steno's
new love to the betrayed lover, and she wrote the twelve letters, wisely
calculated and graduated, which had indeed determined Gorka's return.
His return had even been delayed too long to suit the relative of Iago,
who had decided to aim at Madame Steno through Alba by a still more
criminal denunciation. Lydia was in that state of exasperation in which
the vilest weapons seem the best, and she included innocent Alba in her
hatred for Maitland, on account of the portrait, a turn of sentiment
which will show that it was envy by which that soul was poisoned above
all. Ah, what bitter delight the simultaneous success of that double
infamy had procured for her! What savage joy, mingled with bitterness
and ecstacy, had been hers the day before, on witnessing the nervousness
of poor Alba and the suppressed fury of Boleslas!
In her mind she had seen Maitland provoked by the rival whom she knew to
be as adroit with the sword as with the pistol. She would not have been
the great-grandchild of a slave of Louisiana, if she had not combined
with the natural energy of her hatreds a considerable amount of
superstition. A fortune-teller had once foretold, from the lines in her
palm, that she would cause the violent death of some person. "It will be
he," she had thought, glancing at her husband with a horrible tremor of
hope.... And now she had the proof, the indisputable proof, that her
plot for vengeance was to terminate in the danger of another. Of what
other?
The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her the threat of a
fatal duel suspended over the head which was the dearest to her. So she
had driven to a tragical encounter the only being whom she loved.... The
disappointment of the heart in which palpitated the wild energies of a
bestial atavism was so sudden, so acute, so dolorous, that she uttered an
inarticulate cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face of
those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, she repeated:
"He is going to fight a duel! He!.... And I am the cause!".... Then,
returning the letters and the will to the drawer, she closed it and rose,
saying aloud:
"No. It shall not be. I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself
between them. I do not wish it! I do not wish it!"
It was easy to utter such words. But the execution of them was less
easy. Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she
wrung her hands in despair--those weak hands which Madame Steno compared
in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so supple
and so long--and she uttered this despairing cry: "But how?".... which so
many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and fatal to
them, of their shrewdest calculations. The poet has sung it in the words
which relate the story of all our faults, great and small:
"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."
It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible
judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a
sinister apprehension when they have to brave the chance of a misfortune
absolutely merited. The remembrance of the soothsayer's prediction
suddenly occurred to Lydia. She uttered another cry, rubbing her hands
like a somnambulist. She saw her brother's blood flowing.... No, the
duel should not take place! But how to prevent it? How-how? she
repeated. Florent was not at home. She could, therefore, not implore
him. If he should return, would there still be time? Lincoln was not at
home. Where was he? Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno.
The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in the painter's arms,
plunged in the abyss of intoxication which her ardent letters described,
was presented to the mind of the jealous wife. What irony to perceive
thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to strike, with the ecstacy of
bliss in their eyes! Lydia would have liked to tear out their eyes, his
as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel. A fresh flood of
hatred filled her heart. God! how she hated them, and with what a
powerless hatred! But her time would come; another need pressed sorely
--to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother. To
whom should she turn, however? To Dorsenne? To Montfanon? To Baron
Hafner? To Peppino Ardea? She thought by turns of the four personages
whose almost simultaneous visits had caused her to believe that they were
the seconds of the two champions. She rejected them, one after the
other, comprehending that none of them possessed enough authority to
arrange the affair. Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's
adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had
always found so courteous. What if she should ask him to spare her
brother? It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a
grudge. Would he not be touched by her tears? Would he not tell her
what had led to the quarrel and what she should ask of her brother that
the quarrel might be conciliated? Could she not obtain from him the
promise to discharge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols,
or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his enemy?
Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she believed in infallible
fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas
profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another
in the matter of an insult. But how can women admit that inflexible
rigor in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations,
when they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their arguments
with men, nor in their discussions among themselves? Accustomed always
to appeal from convention to instinct and from reason to sentiment, they
are, in the face of certain laws, be they those of justice or of honor,
in a state of incomprehension worse than ignorance. A duel, for example,
appears to them like an arbitrary drama, which the wish of one of those
concerned can change at his fancy. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred
would think like Lydia Maitland of hastening to the adversary of the man
they love, to demand, to beg for his life. Let us add, however, that the
majority would not carry out that thought. They would confine themselves
to sewing in the vest of their beloved some blessed medal, in
recommending him to the Providence, which, for them, is still the
favoritism of heaven. Lydia felt that if ever Florent should learn of
her step with regard to Gorka, he would be very indignant. But who would
tell him? She was agitated by one of those fevers of fear and of remorse
which are too acute not to act, cost what it might. Her carriage was
announced, and she entered it, giving the address of the Palazzetto
Doria. In what terms should she approach the man to whom she was about
to pay that audacious and absurd visit? Ah, what mattered it? The
circumstances would inspire her. Her desire to cut short the duel was so
strong that she did not doubt of success.
She was greatly disappointed when the footman at the palace told her that
the Count had gone out, while at the same moment a voice interrupted him
with a gay laugh. It was Countess Maud Gorka, who, returning from her
walk with her little boy, recognized Lydia's coup, and who said to her:
"What a lucky idea I had of returning a little sooner. I see you were
afraid of a storm, as you drove out in a closed carriage. Will you come
upstairs a moment?" And, perceiving that the young woman, whose hand she
had taken, was trembling: "What ails you? I should think you were ill!
You do not feel well? My God, what ails her! She is ill, Luc," she
added, turning to her son; "run to my room and bring me the large bottle
of English salts; Rose knows which one. Go, go quickly."
"It is nothing," replied Lydia, who had indeed closed her eyes as if on
the point of swooning. "See, I am better already. I think I will return
home; it will be wiser."
"I shall not leave you," said Maud, seating herself, too, in the
carriage; and, as they handed her the bottle of salts, she made Madame
Maitland inhale it, talking to her the while as to a sick child: "Poor
little thing!"
"How her cheeks burn! And you pay visits in this state. It is very
venturesome! Rue Leopardi," she called to the coachman, "quickly."
The carriage rolled away, and Madame Gorka continued to press the tiny
hands of Lydia, to whom she gave the tender name, so ironical under the
circumstances, of "Poor little one!" Maud was one of those women like
whom England produces many, for the honor of that healthy and robust
British civilization, who are at once all energy and all goodness. As
large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to
her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled
state in which she had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her
compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to
question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when
with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from
the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs. Lydia had a
nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of
Boleslas's absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with
which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white
teeth, she moaned:
"No, I am not ill. But it is that thought which I can not bear. No, I
can not. Ah, it is maddening!" And turning toward her companion, she in
her turn pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing! You suspect
nothing! It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm,
happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as
well as to me. For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and
you love him. You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have
pardoned him."
She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme
nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling, her
very deepest thought. She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka any
information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas with
Madame Steno. She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of
her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of those
heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies. How many women have
immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which
the father shall at least not desert officially! All Rome was mistaken,
and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof. Not a suspicion that
such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother of her best
friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife. But to account
for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and to comprehend the depth
of innocence of which, notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the
beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so frank, was
possessed.
She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of
men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised care. She might
have seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being disillusioned. She
had only a liking for acquaintances and positive conversation. She was
very intellectual, but without any desire to study character.
Dorsenne said of her, with more justness than he thought: "Madame
Boleslas Gorka is married to a man who has never been presented to her,"
meaning by that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's
character, and then of the treason of which she was the victim. However,
the novelist was not altogether right. Boleslas's infidelity was of too
long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his
wife, not to have suffered by it. But there was an abyss between such
sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which
Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's
thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at
the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent
still than her words.
"Your brother? My husband?" she said. "I do not understand you."
"Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid
all from me. Well! They are going to fight a duel, and to-morrow
morning.... Do not tremble, in your turn," she continued, twining her
arms around Maud Gorka. "We shall be two to prevent the terrible affair,
and we shall prevent it."
"A duel? To-morrow morning?" repeated Maud, in affright. "Boleslas
fights to-morrow with your brother? No, it is impossible. Who told you
so? How do you know it?"
"I read the proof of it with my eyes," replied Lydia. "I read Florent's
will. I read the letter which he prepared for Maitland and for me in
case of accident...."
"Should I be in the state in which you see me if it were not true?"
"Oh, I believe you!" cried Maud, pressing her hands to her eyelids, as
if to shut out a horrible sight. "But where can they be seen? Boleslas
has been here scarcely any of the time for two days. What is there
between them? What have they said to one another? One does not risk
one's life for nothing when he has, like Boleslas, a wife and a son.
Answer me, I conjure you. Tell me all. I desire to know all. What is
there at the bottom of this duel?"
"What could there be but a woman?" interrupted Lydia, who put into the
two last words more savage scorn than if she had publicly spit in
Caterina Steno's face. But that fresh access of anger fell before the
surprise caused her by Madame Gorka's reply.
"What woman? I understand you still less than I did just now."
"When we are at home I will speak,".... replied Lydia, after having
looked at Maud with a surprised glance, which was in itself the most
terrible reply. The two women were silent. It was Maud who now required
the sympathy of friendship, so greatly had the words uttered by Lydia
startled her. The companion whose arm rested upon hers in that carriage,
and who had inspired her with such pity fifteen minutes before, now
rendered her fearful. She seemed to be seated by the side of another
person. In the creature whose thin nostrils were dilated with passion,
whose mouth was distorted with bitterness, whose eyes sparkled with
anger, she no longer recognized little Madame Maitland, so taciturn, so
reserved that she was looked upon as insignificant. What had that voice,
usually so musical, told her; that voice so suddenly become harsh, and
which had already revealed to her the great danger suspended over
Boleslas? To what woman had that voice alluded, and what meant that
sudden reticence?
Lydia was fully aware of the grief into which she would plunge Maud
without the slightest premeditation. For a moment she thought it almost
a crime to say more to a woman thus deluded. But at the same time she
saw in the revelation two certain results. In undeceiving Madame Gorka
she made a mortal enemy for Madame Steno, and, on the other hand, never
would the woman so deeply in love with her husband allow him to fight for
a former mistress. So, when they both entered the small salon of the
Moorish mansion, Lydia's resolution was taken. She was determined to
conceal nothing of what she knew from unhappy Maud, who asked her, with a
beating heart, and in a voice choked by emotion:
"Now, will you explain to me what you want to say?"
"Question me," replied the other; "I will answer you. I have gone too
far to draw back."
"You claimed that a woman was the cause of the duel between your brother
and my husband?"
"I am sure of it," replied Lydia.
"What is that woman's name?"
"Madame Steno."
"Madame Steno?" repeated Maud. "Catherine Steno is the cause of that
duel? How?"
"Because she is my husband's mistress," replied Lydia, brutally; "because
she has been your husband's, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy,
to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, who prevented him from
entering.... They quarrelled, I know not in what manner. But I know the
cause of the duel.... Am I right, yes or no, in telling you they are to
fight about that woman?"
"My husband's mistress?" cried Maud. "You say Madame Steno has been my
husband's mistress? It is not true. You lie! You lie! You lie! I do
not believe it."
"You do not believe me?" said Lydia, shrugging her shoulders. "As if I
had the least interest in deceiving you; as if one would lie when the
life of the only being one loves in the world is in the balance! For I
have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall no longer have
him.... But you shall believe me. I desire that we both hate that
woman, that we both be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel
to take place--the duel of which, I repeat, she is the cause, the sole
cause.... You do not believe me? Do you know what caused your husband
to return? You did not expect him; confess! It was I--I, do you hear--
who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln were doing; day after day I wrote
about their love, their meetings, their bliss. Ah, I was sure it would
not be in vain, and he returned. Is that a proof?"
"You did not do that?" cried Madame Gorka, recoiling with horror. "It
was infamous."
"Yes, I did it," replied Lydia, with savage pride, "and why not? It was
my right when she took my husband from me. You have only to return and
to look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters. You will certainly
find those I wrote, and others, I assure you, from that woman. For she
has a mania for letter-writing.... Do you believe me now, or will you
repeat that I have lied?"
"Never," returned Maud, with sorrowful indignation upon her lovely, loyal
face, "no, never will I descend to such baseness."
"Well, I will descend for you," said Lydia. "What you do not dare to do,
I will dare, and you will ask me to aid you in being avenged. Come,"
and, seizing the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into
Lincoln's studio, at that moment unoccupied. She approached one of those
Spanish desks, called baygenos, and she touched two small panels, which
disclosed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a package of
letters, which she seized. Maud Gorka watched her with the same
terrified horror with which she would have seen some one killed and
robbed. That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her mere
presence made of her an accomplice. But at the same time she was a prey,
as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite
to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical
need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's
sister, who continued:
"Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own
hand? Yes," she continued, with cruel irony, "she loves correspondence,
our fortunate rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may make no
more avowals. She writes as she feels. It seems that the successor was
jealous of his predecessor.... See, is this a proof this time?".... And,
after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them,
she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert
her eyes. What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of
anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much
mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was
ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka.
Countess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a
heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the
usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a
new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to
women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. She had not
essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him,
and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly,
that Madame Gorka's eyes fell:
"You will be pleased with me," she wrote, "and I shall no longer see in
your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust
which troubles me. I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka. If you
require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you
know of and which will render it difficult for me. But how can you be
jealous yet?.... Is not my frankness with regard to that liaison the
surest guarantee that it is ended? Come, do not be jealous. Listen to
what I know so well, that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on
the day when you took me in your arms. The woman you have awakened in
me, no one has known--"
"She writes well, does she not?" said Lydia, with a gleam of savage
triumph in her eyes. "Do you believe me, now?.... Do you see that we
have the same interest to-day, a common affront to avenge? And we will
avenge it.... Do you understand that you can not allow your husband to
fight a duel with my brother? You owe that to me who have given you this
weapon by which you hold him.... Threaten him with a divorce. Fortune
is with you. The law will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him
firmly. You will prevent the duel, will you not?"
"Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?" said
Maud. "From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not
approach me," she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder
of repulsion shook her entire frame.... "Do not speak to me.... I have
as much horror of you as of him.... Let me go, let me leave here....
Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror....
Ah, what disgrace!"
She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the
other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride
of defiance. She went out repeating: "Ah, what disgrace!" without Lydia
having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result of
all her attempts paralyzed her. But the formidable creature lost no time
in regret and repentance. She paused a few moments to think. Then,
crushing in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk
of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:
"Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She loves. She will pardon. Will
there, then, be no one to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent
happiness." After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted, she
placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half an hour
later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a letter, with
the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was addressed to the
inspector of police of the district. She informed him of the intended
duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of the four
seconds. If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would even that
time have signed her name.
"I should have gone to work that way at first," said she to herself, when
the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom she had
given her order personally. "The police know how to prevent them from
fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent.... As for him?"....
and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at which she had
just been writing. "Were I to tell him what is taking place.... No, I
will ask nothing of him.... I hate him too much.".... And she concluded
with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her
mouth:
"It is all the same. It is necessary that Maud Gorka work with me
against her. There is some one whom she will not pardon, and that is....
Madame Steno." And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman
trembled with delight at the thought of her work.