SHALL IT BE ‘YES’ OR ‘NO’?
‘This looks as if he were serious, doesn’t it?’ asked La Chicot.
The question was addressed to Mr. Desrolles. The two were standing side
by side in the wintry dusk, in front of one of the windows that looked
into Cibber Street, contemplating the contents of a jewel-case, which
La Chicot held open.
Embedded in the white velvet lining there lay a collet necklace
of diamonds, each stone as big as a prize pea; such a necklace as
Desrolles could not remember to have seen, even in the jewellers’
windows, before which he had sometimes paused out of sheer idleness, to
contemplate such finery.
‘Serious!’ he echoed. ‘I told you from the first that Joseph Lemuel was
a prince.’
‘You don’t suppose I am going to keep it?’ said La Chicot.
‘I don’t suppose you, or any other woman, would send it back, if it
were a free gift,’ answered Desrolles.
‘It is not a free gift. It is to be mine if I consent to run away from
my husband and live in Paris as Mr. Lemuel’s mistress. I am to have a
villa at Passy, and fifteen hundred a year.’
‘Princely!’ exclaimed Desrolles.
‘And I am to leave Jack free to live his own life. Don’t you think he
would be glad?’
There was something almost tigerish in the look which emphasised this
question.
‘I think that it would not matter one jot to you whether he were glad
or sorry. He would make a row, I suppose, but you would be safe on the
other side of the Channel.’
‘He would get a divorce,’ said La Chicot. ‘Your English law breaks a
marriage as easily as it makes one. And then he would marry that other
woman.’
‘What other woman?’
‘I don’t know--but there is another. He owned as much the last time we
quarrelled.’
‘A divorce would make you a great lady. Joseph Lemuel would marry you.
The man is your slave; you could twist him round your little finger.
And then, instead of your little box at Passy, you might have a mansion
in the Champs Elysées, among the ambassadors. You would go to the races
in a four-in-hand. You might be the most fashionable woman in Paris.’
‘And I began life washing dirty linen in the river at Auray, among a
lot of termagants who hated me because I was young and handsome. I had
not much pleasure in those days, my friend.’
‘Your Parisian life would be a change. You must be very tired of
London.’
‘Tired! But I detest it prettily, your city of narrow streets and
dismal Sundays.’
‘And you must have had enough dancing.’
‘I begin to be tired of it. Since my accident I have not the old
spirit.’
She had the jewel-case in her hand still, and was turning it about,
admiring the brightness of the stones, which sparkled in the dim light.
Presently she went back to her low chair by the fire, and let the case
lie open in her lap, with the fire-glow shining on the gems, until the
pure white stones took all the colours of the rainbow.
‘I can fancy myself in a box at the opera, in a tight-fitting ruby
velvet dress, with no ornaments but this necklace and single diamonds
for eardrops,’ mused La Chicot. ‘I do not think there are many women in
Paris who would surpass me.’
‘Not one.’
‘And I should look on while other women danced for my amusement,’
she pursued. ‘After all, the life of a stage dancer is a poor thing
at best. There are only so many rungs of the ladder between me and a
dancing girl at a fair. I am getting tired of it.’
‘You will be a good deal more tired when you are a few years older,’
said Desrolles.
‘At six-and-twenty one need not think of age.’
‘No; but at six-and-thirty age will think of you.’
‘I have asked for a week to consider his offer,’ said La Chicot. ‘This
day week I am to give him an answer, yes or no. If I keep the diamonds,
it will mean yes. If I send them back to him, it will mean no.’
‘I can’t imagine any woman saying no to such a necklace as that,’ said
Desrolles.
‘What is it worth, after all? Fifteen years ago a string of glass beads
bought in the market at Auray would have made me happier than those
diamonds can make me now.’
‘If you are going to moralise, I can’t follow you. I should say, at a
rough guess, those diamonds must be worth three thousand pounds.’
‘They are to be taken or left,’ said La Chicot, in French, with her
careless shrug.
‘Where do you mean to keep them!’ inquired Desrolles. ‘If your husband
were to see them, there would be a row. You must not leave them in his
way.’
‘_Pas si bête_,’ replied La Chicot. ‘See here.’
She flung back the loose collar of her cashmere morning gown, and
clasped the necklace round her throat. Then she drew the collar
together again, and the diamonds were hidden.
‘I shall wear the necklace night and day till I make up my mind whether
to keep it or not,’ she said. ‘Where I go the diamonds will go--nobody
will see them--nobody will rob me of them while I am alive. What is
the matter?’ she asked suddenly, startled by a passing distortion of
Desrolles’ face.
‘Nothing. Only a spasm.’
‘I thought you were going to have a fit.’
‘I did feel queer for the moment. My old complaint.’
‘Ah, I thought as much. Have some brandy.’
Though La Chicot made light of Mr. Lemuel’s offering in her talk with
Desrolles, she was not the less impressed by it. After she had come
from the theatre that night she sat on the floor in her dingy bedroom
with a looking-glass in her hand, gloating over her reflection with
that string of jewels round her neck, turning her swan-like throat
every way to catch the rays of the candle, thinking how glorious she
would look with those shining stars upon her ivory neck, thinking what
a new and delightful life Joseph Lemuel’s wealth could give her; a life
of riot and dissipation, fine clothes, epicurean dinners, late hours,
and perfect idleness. She even thought of all the famous restaurants
in Paris where she would like to dine; fairy palaces on the Boulevard,
all lights, and gilding, and crimson velvet, which she knew only from
the outside; houses where vice was more at home than virtue, and where
a single cutlet in its paper frill cost more than a poor man’s family
dinner. She looked round the shabby room, with its blackened ceiling
and discoloured paper, on which the damp had made ugly blotches; the
tawdry curtains, the rickety deal dressing-table disguised in dirty
muslin and ragged Nottingham lace--and the threadbare carpet. How
miserable it all was! She and her husband had once gone with the crowd
to see the house of a Parisian courtesan, who had died in the zenith
of her days. She remembered with what almost reverential feeling the
mob had gazed at the delicate satin draperies of boudoir and salon, the
porcelain, the tapestries, the antique lace, the tiny cabinet pictures
which shone like jewels on the satin walls. Vice so exalted was almost
virtue.
In the dining-room, paramount over all other objects, was enshrined the
portrait of the departed goddess, a medallion in a frame of velvet and
gold. La Chicot well remembered wondering to see so little beauty in
that celebrated face--a small oval face, grey eyes, a nondescript nose,
a wide mouth. Intelligence and a winning smile were the only charms of
that renowned beauty. Cosmetiques and Wörth had done all the rest. But
then the dead and gone courtesan had been one of the cleverest women in
France. La Chicot made no allowance for that.
‘I am ten times handsomer,’ she told herself, ‘and yet I shall never
keep my own carriage.’
She had often brooded over the difference between her fate and that of
the woman whose house, and horses, and carriages, and lap dogs, and
jewels she had seen, the sale of which had made a nine days’ wonder
in Paris. She thought of that dead woman to-night as she sat with
the mirror in her hand admiring the diamonds and her beauty, while
Jack Chicot was doing his best to forget her in his Bohemian club
near the Strand. She remembered all the stories she had heard of that
extinguished luminary--her arrogance, her extravagance, the abject
slavery of her adorers, her triumphal progress through life, scornful
and admired.
It was not the virtuous who despised her, but she who despised the
virtuous. Honest women were the chosen mark for her ridicule. People in
Paris knew all the details of her brazen, infamous life. Very few knew
the history of her death-bed. But the priest who shrived her and the
nursing sister who watched her last hours could have told a story to
make even Frivolity’s hair stand on end.
‘It was a short life, but a merry one,’ thought La Chicot. ‘How well
I remember her the winter the lake in the Bois was frozen, and there
was skating by torchlight! She used to drive a sledge covered all over
with silver bells, and she used to skate dressed in dark red velvet and
sable. The crowd stood on one side to let her pass, as if she had been
an empress.’
Then her thoughts took another turn.
‘If I left him, he would divorce me and marry that other woman,’ she
said to herself. ‘Who is she, I wonder? Where did he see her? Not at
the theatre. He cares for no one there. I have watched him too closely
to be deceived in that.’
Then she half-filled a tumbler with brandy, and flavoured it
with water, in order to delude herself with the idea that she
was drinking brandy and water; and then, lapsing into a state of
semi-intoxication--a dreamy, half-consciousness, in which life, seen
hazily, took a brighter hue--she flung aside her mirror, and threw
herself half-dressed upon the bed.
Jack Chicot, who had taken to coming home long after midnight, slept on
the sofa in a little third room, where he worked. There was not much
chance of his seeing the jewels. He and his wife were as nearly parted
as two people could be, living in the same house.
La Chicot contemplated the diamonds, and abandoned herself to much the
same train of thought, for several nights; and now came the last night
of the week which Mr. Lemuel had allowed for reflection. To-morrow she
was to give him his answer.
He was waiting for her at the stage-door when she came out. Desrolles,
her usual escort, was not in attendance.
‘Zaïre, I have been thinking of you every hour since last we spoke
together,’ Joseph Lemuel began, delighted at finding her alone. ‘You
are as difficult to approach as a princess of the blood royal.’
‘Why should I hold myself cheaper than a princess?’ she asked,
insolently. ‘I am an honest woman.’
‘You are handsomer than any princess in Europe,’ he said. ‘But
you ought to compassionate an adorer who has waited so long and
so patiently. When am I to have your answer? Is it to be yes? You
cannot be so cruel as to say no. My lawyer has drawn up the deed of
settlement. I only wait your word to execute it.’
‘You are very generous,’ said La Chicot, scornfully, ‘or very
obstinate. If I run away with you and my husband gets a divorce, will
you marry me?’
‘Be faithful to me, and I will refuse you nothing.’ He went with her
to the door of her lodgings for the first time, pleading his cause all
the way, with such eloquence as he could command, which was not much.
He was a man who had found money all powerful to obtain everything he
wanted, and had seldom felt the need of words.
‘Send me a messenger you can trust at twelve o’clock to-morrow, and if
I do not send you back your diamonds----’
‘I shall know that your answer is yes. In that case you will find my
brougham waiting at a quarter-past seven o’clock to-morrow evening,
at the corner of this street, and I shall be in the brougham. We will
drive straight to Charing Cross, and start for Paris by the mail. It
will be too dark for any one to notice the carriage. What time do you
generally go to the theatre?’
‘At half-past seven.’
‘Then you will not be missed till you are well out of the way. There
will be no fuss, no scandal.’
‘There will be a tremendous fuss at the theatre,’ said La Chicot. ‘Who
is to take my place in the burlesque?’
‘Any one. What need you care? You will have done with burlesque and the
stage for ever.’
‘True,’ said La Chicot.
And then she remembered the Student’s Theatre in Paris, and how her
popularity had waned there. The same thing might happen here in London,
perhaps, after a year or two. Her audience would grow tired of her.
Already people in the theatre had begun to make disagreeable remarks
about the empty champagne bottles which came out of her dressing-room.
By-and-by, perhaps, they would be impudent enough to call her a
drunkard. She would be glad to have done with them.
Yet, degraded as she was, there were depths of vice from which her
better instincts plucked her back; as if it were her good angel
clutching her garments to drag her from the edge of an abyss. She
had once loved her husband; nay, after her own manner, she loved him
still, and could not calmly contemplate leaving him. Her brain, muddled
by champagne and brandy, shaped all thoughts confusedly; yet at her
worst the idea of selling herself to this Jewish profligate shocked
and disgusted her. Her soul was swayed to and fro, to this side and
to that. She had no inclination to vice, but she would have liked the
wages of sin; for in this lower world the wages of sin meant a villa at
Passy, and a couple of carriages.
‘Good night,’ she said abruptly to her lover. ‘I must not be seen
talking to you. My husband may come home at any minute.’
‘I hear that he generally comes home in the middle of the night,’ said
Mr. Lemuel.
‘What business is it of yours if he does?’ asked La Chicot, angrily.
‘Everything that concerns you is my business. When I, who love the
ground you walk upon, hear how you are neglected by your husband, do
you suppose the knowledge does not make me so much the more determined
to win you?’
‘Send your messenger for my answer to-morrow,’ said La Chicot, and then
she shut the door in his face.
‘I hate him,’ she muttered, when she was alone in the passage, stamping
her foot as if she had trodden upon a venomous insect.
She went upstairs, and again sat down, half undressed, upon the floor,
to look at the diamond necklace. She had a childish love of the gems--a
delight in looking at them--which differed very little from her
feelings when she was fifteen years younger, and longed for a blue bead
necklace exposed for sale in the quaint old market-place at Auray.
‘I shall send them back to him to-morrow,’ she said to herself. ‘The
diamonds are beautiful--and I am getting tired of my life here, and I
know that Jack hates me--but that man is too horrible--and--I am an
honest woman.’
She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, in the attitude of
prayer, but not to pray. She had lost the habit of prayer soon after
she left her native province. She was sobbing passionately for the loss
of her husband’s love, with a dim consciousness that it was by her own
degradation she had forfeited his regard.
‘I’ve been a good wife to him,’ she murmured in broken syllables,
‘better than ever I was----’
And then speech lost itself in convulsive sobs, and she cried herself
to sleep.