It was that past, that terrible past, which Michel Menko had dared to
come and speak of to the Tzigana. At first, she had grown crimson with
anger, as if at an insult; now, by a sudden opposite sentiment, as she
listened to him recalling those days, she felt an impression of deadly
pain as if an old wound had been reopened. Was it true that all this had
ever existed? Was it possible, even?
The man who had been her lover was speaking to her; he was speaking to
her of his love; and, if the terrible agony of memory had not burned
in her heart, she would have wondered whether this man before her, this
sort of stranger, had ever even touched her hand.
She waited, with the idle curiosity of a spectator who had no share in
the drama, for the end of Menko’s odious argument: “I lied because I
loved you!”
He returned again and again, in the belief that women easily forgive the
ill-doing of which they are the cause, to that specious plea, and Marsa
asked herself, in amazement, what aberration had possession of this man
that he should even pretend to excuse his infamy thus.
“And is that,” she said at last, “all that you have to say to me?
According to you, the thief has only to cry ‘What could I do? I loved
that money, and so I stole it.’ Ah,” rising abruptly, “this interview
has lasted too long! Good-evening!”
She walked steadily toward the door; but Michel, hastening round the
other side of the table, barred her exit, speaking in a suppliant tone,
in which, however, there was a hidden threat:
“Marsa! Marsa, I implore you, do not marry Prince Andras! Do not marry
him if you do not wish some horrible tragedy to happen to you and me!”
“Really?” she retorted. “Do I understand that it is you who now threaten
to kill me?”
“I do not threaten; I entreat, Marsa. But you know all that there is in
me at times of madness and folly. I am almost insane: you know it well.
Have pity upon me! I love you as no woman was ever loved before; I live
only in you; and, if you should give yourself to another--”
“Ah!” she said, interrupting him with a haughty gesture, “you speak
to me as if you had a right to dictate my actions. I have given you my
forgetfulness after giving you my love. That is enough, I think. Leave
me!”
“Marsa!”
“I have hoped for a long time that I was forever delivered from your
presence. I commanded you to disappear. Why have you returned?”
“Because, after I saw you one evening at Baroness Dinati’s (do you
remember? you spoke to the Prince for the first time that evening), I
learned, in London, of this marriage. If I have consented to live away
from you previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine,
you at least were no one else’s; but I will not--pardon me, I can
not--endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another’s.
Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living
in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me
from your presence; it was by chance that I met you at the Baroness’s;
but now--”
“It is another woman you have before you. A woman who ignores that she
has listened to your supplications, yielded to your prayers. It is a
woman who has forgotten you, who does not even know that a wretch has
abused her ignorance and her confidence, and who loves--who loves as one
loves for the first time, with a pure and holy devotion, the man whose
name she is to bear.”
“That man I respect as honor itself. Had it been another, I should
already have struck him in the face. But you who accuse me of having
lied, are you going to lie to him, to him?”
Marsa became livid, and her eyes, hollow as those of a person sick to
death, flamed in the black circles which surrounded them.
“I have no answer to make to one who has no right to question me,”
she said. “But, should I have to pay with my life for the moment of
happiness I should feel in placing my hand in the hand of a hero, I
would grasp that moment!”
“Then,” cried Menko, “you wish to push me to extremities! And yet I
have told you there are certain hours of feverish insanity in which I am
capable of committing a crime.”
“I do not doubt it,” replied the young girl, coldly. “But, in fact, you
have already done that. There is no crime lower than that of treachery.”
“There is one more terrible,” retorted Michel Menko. “I have told you
that I loved you. I love you a hundred times more now than ever before.
Jealousy, anger, whatever sentiment you choose to call it, makes my
blood like fire in my veins! I see you again as you were. I feel your
kisses on my lips. I love you madly, passionately! Do you understand,
Marsa? Do you understand?” and he approached with outstretched hands
the Tzigana, whose frame was shaken with indignant anger. “Do you
understand? I love you still. I was your lover, and I will, I will be so
again.”
“Ah, miserable coward!” cried the Tzigana, with a rapid glance toward
the daggers, before which stood Menko, preventing her from advancing,
and regarding her with eyes which burned with reckless passion, wounded
self-love, and torturing jealousy. “Yes, coward!” she repeated, “coward,
coward to dare to taunt me with an infamous past and speak of a still
more infamous future!”
“I love you!” exclaimed Menko again.
“Go!” she cried, crushing him with look and gesture. “Go! I order you
out of my presence, lackey! Go!”
All the spirit of the daughters of the puszta, the violent pride of her
Hungarian blood, flashed from her eyes; and Menko, fascinated, gazed at
her as if turned to stone, as she stood there magnificent in her anger,
superb in her contempt.
“Yes, I will go to-day,” he said at last, “but tomorrow night I shall
come again, Marsa. As my dearest treasure, I have preserved the key
of that gate I opened once to meet you who were waiting for me in the
shadow of the trees. Have you forgotten that, also? You say you have
forgotten all.”
And as he spoke, she saw again the long alley behind the villa, ending
in a small gate which, one evening after the return from Pau, Michel
opened, and came, as he said, to meet her waiting for him. It was true.
Yes, it was true. Menko did not lie this time! She had waited for him
there, two years before, unhappy girl that she was! All that hideous
love she had believed lay buried in Pau as in a tomb.
“Listen, Marsa,” continued Menko, suddenly recovering, by a strong
effort of the will, his coolness, “I must see you once again, have one
more opportunity to plead my cause. The letters you wrote to me, those
dear letters which I have covered with my kisses and blistered with my
tears, those letters which I have kept despite your prayers and your
commands, those letters which have been my only consolation--I will
bring them to you to-morrow night. Do you understand me?”
Her great eyes fixed, and her lips trembling horribly, Marsa made no
reply.
“Do you understand me, Marsa?” he repeated, imploring and threatening at
once.
“Yes,” she murmured at last.
She paused a moment; then a broken, feverish laugh burst from her lips,
and she continued, with stinging irony:
“Either my letters or myself! It is a bargain pure and simple! Such a
proposition has been made once before--it is historical--you probably
remember it. In that case, the woman killed herself. I shall act
otherwise, believe me!”
There was in her icy tones a threat, which gave pleasure to Michel
Menko. He vaguely divined a danger. “You mean?” he asked.
“I mean, you must never again appear before me. You must go to London,
to America; I don’t care where. You must be dead to the one you have
cowardly betrayed. You must burn or keep those letters, it little
matters to me which; but you must still be honorable enough not to use
them as a weapon against me. This interview, which wearies more than it
angers me, must be the last. You must leave me to my sorrows or my joys,
without imagining that you could ever have anything in common with a
woman who despises you. You have crossed the threshold of this house for
the last time. Or, if not--Ah! if not--I swear to you that I have energy
enough and resolution enough to defend myself alone, and alone to punish
you! In your turn, you understand me, I imagine?”
“Certainly,” said Michel. “But you are too imprudent, Marsa. I am not a
man to make recoil by speaking of danger. Through the gate, or over the
wall if the gate is barricaded, I shall come to you again, and you will
have to listen to me.”
The lip of the Tzigana curled disdainfully.
“I shall not even change the lock of that gate, and besides, the large
gate of the garden remains open these summer nights. You see that you
have only to come. But I warn you neither to unlock the one nor to pass
through the other. It is not I whom you will find at the rendezvous.”
“Still, I am sure that it would be you, blarsa, if I should tell you
that to-morrow evening I shall be under the window of the pavilion at
the end of the garden, and that you must meet me there to receive from
my hand your letters, all your letters, which I shall bring you.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am certain of it.”
“Certain? Why?”
“Because you will reflect.”
“I have had time to reflect. Give me another reason.”
“Another reason is that you can not afford to leave such proofs in my
hands. I assure you that it would be folly to make of a man like me, who
would willingly die for you, an open and implacable enemy.”
“I understand. A man like you would die willingly for a woman, but he
insults and threatens her, like the vilest of men, with a punishment
more cruel than death itself. Well! it matters little to me. I shall not
be in the pavilion where you have spoken to me of your love, and I will
have it torn down and the debris of it burned within three days. I shall
not await you. I shall never see you again. I do not fear you. And I
leave you the right of doing with those letters what you please!”
Then, surveying him from head to foot, as if to measure the degree of
audacity to which he could attain, “Adieu!” she said.
“Au revoir!” he rejoined coldly, giving to the salutation an emphasis
full of hidden meaning.
The Tzigana stretched out her hand, and pulled a silken bellcord.
A servant appeared.
“Show this gentleman out,” she said, very quietly.