Madame de Bonmont dismissed her carriage, and, hailing a cab, drove to
the street where, amid the rumble of drays and the whistle of engines,
she carried on her love affair. She would have preferred to see her
Rara in a region adorned with gardens, but love is sometimes shy
under the myrtles or by the murmuring fountains. Madame de Bonmont’s
thoughts were sad as she drove along the streets where the lamps were
just beginning to glimmer through the misty evening light. Guitrel had
indeed been appointed Bishop of Tourcoing, and she rejoiced thereat,
but joy did not possess her soul completely. Rara, with his black
humour and ferocious desires, worried her terribly. Now she went in
fear and trembling to the rendezvous, to which in former times she
had so eagerly looked forward. Confiding and retiring by nature, she
dreaded, on his account as well as her own, anything in the nature of
danger, catastrophe, or scandal. Her lover’s mental attitude, which
had never been satisfactory, had quite suddenly grown worse. Since
the suicide of Colonel Henry he had become dreadful to look upon. The
bitterness in his blood had acted like vitriol upon his countenance,
as it were searing his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, with marks
of fire and brimstone. For the last fortnight mysterious causes had
kept her dear one absent from the flat which he rented opposite the
Moulin-Rouge, and which was his legal domicile. He had his letters
forwarded to him, and received visitors in the little suite which
Madame de Bonmont had taken for quite a different use.
Slowly and sadly she went up the stairs, but even on the very threshold
of the door the hope of finding the delightful Rara of former days
stirred her heart. Alas, her hope was vain, she was greeted with bitter
words:
“What do you come here for? You despise me like all the rest.”
She protested at such cruelty.
She did not despise him--on the contrary, her loving animal nature
led her to admire him. She put her painted, yet youthful, lips to her
lover’s mouth, and kissed him sobbingly; but, pushing her away, he
began to pace furiously up and down the two blue-tapestried rooms.
Noiselessly she untied the little parcel of cakes she had brought with
her, and said in a hopeless, toneless voice:
“Will you have a _baba_? It is kirsch, just as you like them,” and she
handed him the cake between two dainty sugary fingers. But he refused
to see or hear her, and continued his fierce, monotonous promenade.
Then, with tear-dimmed eyes and bosom that heaved with sighs, she
lifted the thick black veil which, mask-like, covered the upper part of
her face, and silently commenced to eat a chocolate _éclair_.
At last, however, not knowing what to do or to say, she took a
jewel-case from her pocket, and, opening it, displayed for Rara the
bishop’s ring which it contained, saying in a timid voice:
“Look at M. Guitrel’s ring. It is a pretty stone, isn’t it? It is an
Hungarian amethyst. Do you think M. Guitrel will like it?”
“I don’t care a damn!”
She put the case down on the toilet table in despair, while he,
resuming the usual current of his thoughts, growled out:
“There’s no mistake about it! I will do for one of them!”
She looked at him doubtfully, for she had noticed that he was always
threatening to kill everybody, and that he killed no one. He divined
her hidden thought. It was dreadful.
“I knew that you despised me too,” he said.
He nearly struck her, and she wept bitterly; eventually he calmed
down, however, and drew her a terrible picture of his financial
embarrassments.
She wept at the picture, but did not promise to give him much, because
it was against her principles to give money to a lover, and, besides,
she feared he might go away altogether if he had the means to do so.
When she left the little blue rooms she was so upset that she quite
forgot the amethyst ring lying on the toilet table.