It was not very much, after all: just this. Paris, it appeared, was
suffering, had been suffering for some weeks, from one of those
epidemics of panic which will occasionally seize on an entire
populace--especially if of the excitable and impressionable Latin
race--and we happened to have alighted on it at the psychologic
moment. You will remember, perhaps, that brief plague of
motor-dacoitage which for a time kept the whole city in a state of
nervous ferment, until it came to culminate in a siege and massacre
which were very much a replica of the London Sidney Street affair?
Well, that was the occasion; and, according to Madame Crussol, a
general condition of terror prevailed; good citizens walking
furtively, with looks askance at every petrol-driven vehicle, and bad
searching their consciences for past oppressions in any possible way
provocative of reprisals. No one knew whose turn it would be next with
these murderous miscreants, whom a persistent baffling of the police
and long immunity from arrest had rendered absolutely reckless.
The story had left Fifine and me, I may say, virtually unconcerned.
Fresh from the sun and the south, serenely ensconced in the
impregnable citadel of our love, we felt no tremors but such as arose
from the thought of the social reckoning we should have to pay at
last, and the possible difficulties in the way of an accommodation.
All the trepidations of the outside world were as nothing to us in the
shadow of that problem; I do not think that, after we had entered my
rooms and shut ourselves in, we once again referred to the subject of
the panic, or to Madame Crussol’s excited enlarging on it for our
benefit.
As I turned up the light and closed the door, Fifine stood and looked
around her, with a smile upon her lips. And then she sighed, and
turned to me wistfully.
“What am I to call it, Felix?” she said in a low voice.
“Home, Fifine,” I answered.
She sighed again, like a very happy thing, and went about the room,
renewing her acquaintance with its objects, touching this one
lovingly, that reprovingly for its untidiness; and presently, coming
to her portrait on the wall, she bent and kissed it--“not for your own
sake,” she said severely to the beauty, “but for the sake of the hand
that flattered you.”
It was very touching to me, this sense of sure possession, as
illustrated in her pretty joys and confidences. A dimness always comes
to my eyes in recalling that night--the last we were ever to spend
together. For the cup was nearly drained, and the scroll
written--Fifine’s whole story, as a woman reads such things; and yet
but a paragraph in mine, one brief glowing passage lost in a waste of
platitude. Sometimes I wonder how men, having once known a perfect
confidence in love, can bear to cloud its memory with later fancies.
Gross and imperfect, our souls, I suppose, are not meet for the
sublime; but, having gathered and eaten fruit from heaven, we must be
for taking the taste of its intolerable sweetness out of our mouths
with some coarser earthlier savour. Yet I think I may say that I have
that of myself put away, locked into secrecy, jealously excluded from
knowledge, which no woman but one has ever shared or shall share. It
is hers, and, by so much as it is hers alone, the worthless residue of
me lies to what flattering uses the interested can extract from it.
There was store of potted things in the flat, and we had bought some
rolls and butter by the way, which, with a bottle of good wine from
the cupboard, made us an ample meal. I ate and drank a thought gravely
myself, preoccupied with the consideration of something that was
inevitable to follow; and Fifine, conscious of herself as of my mood,
was little more inclined to talk. She made but a half-hearted meal;
and, when we rose at last, I was struck all at once, seeing the
breathless parting of her lips and her poor cheek’s whiteness, with a
realisation of the strain which that long suspense must have been
putting upon her. However, it had to be gone through with, and the
sooner the more merciful to her.
Without a word I led her into the studio, where, under the light, I
took her face between my hands and turned it up so as to look at me.
“Fifine,” I said.
She closed her eyes; I could see her lips trembling; but she made no
answer.
“Fifine,” I said again, very quietly: “You know what it is I have to
say; what cannot any longer be evaded, now we are returned. In all
this--in this question between us--where does the Marquis de
Beaurepaire come in?”
I felt a quiver go through her; and something like the faintest of
moans swelled like a pulse in her throat. Overcome with love and pity,
I put my lips to hers, and fondled her soft hair, and murmured words
of passionate reassurance into her ear.
“Come,” I said. “This is no judgment, dear love, but a confession and
an absolution. Come and sit with me, and hide your face if you will,
and lose all your fear in something I am going to ask you.”
I sat down, and she slipped to my feet, where she leaned, her right
arm flung over my knees, her cheek resting upon it, so that her face
was turned from me.
“I asked you,” I said, “where, in this question between us, the
Marquis de Beaurepaire came in. Shall I answer, then, for you, Fifine?
He does not come in anywhere, does he? If any one’s formal consent to
our marriage is needed, it is not his, I am sure.”
She raised her head quickly.
“Marriage, Felix!” she whispered, in an amazed voice.
“I have thought it all out,” I said. “What does the ‘guinea stamp’
matter one way or the other. Love, we know, is the only bond, by
whatever name we call it. Throw this sop to the priests, if, by
satisfying them, it secures us our idyll in peace. It makes no
difference to the understanding between us. There is only one thing
that can tie us, or that we should ever wish to tie. Were it to fray
and snap--I think I know you, Fifine--that thread of convention would
count for nothing in our severance. Even our knowledge of its
existence would count for nothing--only the liberty to be ourselves
unchallenged.”
“But, what you once said!” she answered, still in the same amazed
tone.
“You mean in response to your query about men of genius, and their use
for wives?”
“Yes.”
“I am not a man of genius, Fifine. Perhaps that is it.”
“But I say you are.”
“Then, for love of me, you would rather remain my mistress, which is
to say my imagination, than become my wife, at the risk of turning my
imagination out of doors?”
“I should not do that,” she said. “But, whatever I were called, I
should stay if you told me, and go if you told me.”
“And that is just what I say. The ‘stamp’ is immaterial any way; at
its best a sort of social diploma, entitling one to legal protection
in one’s daily practice of the virtues. Will you marry me, Fifine?”
“Yes, if you wish it, Felix.”
“And do not you wish it?”
“It is only that I am frightened to think of ‘the poor Billy tethered
to his stake in the backyard.’”
I smiled, recalling my own words so faithfully remembered.
“I promise you I will never submit to the tethering,” I said. “Rather,
for your sake, I will emulate the golden one, leaping from rock to
rock, and always, though pursued, unattainable.”
“If you would--ah, I could be so happy in following you,” said Fifine,
“though my knees were bleeding all the way, and my nails torn from
their fingers.”
“Poor little fingers! Well, in that case, counting me your assured
ideal, what are your prejudices in favour of--the existing or the
potential?”
“Then--I am only a woman, Felix--I should, I _should_ like my love for
you to be given a name--in case----”
She did not end her sentence; but I stooped and gathered her to my
heart, and whispered:--
“Perhaps that _is_ the ideal, Fifine. O, my sweet, how I am lost in
love of you! But here comes in the question--what is immaterial to the
bond we know, but there is something material to it, Fifine--the
truth.”
She stole her arms about my neck; then leaned her head back, and
looked at me steadily, passionately.
“Yes, Felix. How did you learn?”
“That Brooking girl, as it happened, had once given lessons in drawing
to the Countess Josephine. She did not recognise in you her former
pupil?”
“And you enlightened her?”
“Of course I did not. I finessed in the most admirable way.”
“So you have known it all the time; and ever since you have been
looking upon me as a liar and impostor?”
“No, indeed, my girl. I knew you were bound by a secret not your own;
that you were trying to be loyal to a trust.”
“Felix--it was that, but not only that. I dreaded horribly that the
truth might repel you.”
“You thought me no better than a snob, in fact?”
“O, no, no! I thought only that you would despise one who could so lie
to you! And then--your own origin--I used to cry to myself over your
scorn of the people. Felix----!” her arms tightened, a desperate pain
came into her eyes--“_I_ am a child of the people myself.” She paused
an instant--“Doesn’t it make you hate me?”
“That is foolish, Fifine,” I said gravely; “and very wrong to our
understanding. What have I ever said to justify such an assumption in
you?”
“O, forgive me, Felix, forgive me, forgive me! You don’t know what my
mind has suffered.”
“I do not scorn the people, child; and, if I did, what has love to do
with social differences? And, if there are any such between us here,
the credit for the best is yours. I love every individual part of you;
your wit, your intelligence, and your manners, as well as your pretty
body. Now, what may I ask you and what may I not?”
“Ask, please, Felix.”
“Very well. Your particular confidences with my step-sister shall be
sacred from me. If you reveal them, you shall reveal them in your own
good time.”
“When she lets me--if I may.”
“But, in this matter of our marriage--well, you know your own laws of
fiançailles? If there is a father, his consent must be obtained.
Shall I hazard a guess? The violoncellist----?”
“I was always afraid you might suspect.”
“Why should you be afraid? Has he been a good father to you, Fifine?”
She sighed a little.
“Pauvre petit! He was not born ever to fight a difficult world. But he
is a great musician, Felix.”
“That time he came and went--you had been lending him money, I
suppose?”
“He is always so poor.”
“How did he learn the way to you?”
“He was in the secret, to a certain extent; he had to be. But he
should not have come; it was against the agreement.”
“And your mother, Fifine?”
“She is long dead. She was an actress. She was in the company of the
Comédie Française when they played in that Roman Theatre at Orange
the year I was born. A Provençale by birth, my papa had brought her
south to prepare for the two events, first the domestic and later the
professional. We stayed on in Orange for three years: I don’t know how
we lived or where; and then one day she ran away from Papa and from
me. I think it killed his heart. He could never bear to speak of that
time; and so it is all a shadow to me. But it was so strange sitting
up there in the theatre, and thinking what it meant to me, both first
and last.”
“Not the least poetic of the dramas played in it, I’ll go bail. Now
tell me, Fifine: how is your father called?”
“Fréron, Felix.”
“And your yourself?”
“It is truly my own name--mine as well as hers. I am Josephine
Fréron.”
“So? That is something saved from the wreck--just a plank or a spar as
I was going under. You haven’t another remnant for me to cling to, I
suppose--your age, for instance?”
“I am nineteen.”
“As certified? Good! I am getting quite buoyant. Why, what are the
eyes opening so tragic about? You soft, foolish, sensitive, covetable
goose, when are you going to trust to my passion as something a little
stabler and more enduring than a summer’s day. Come, we are devoted
lovers; it only remains for us to be unreserved friends.”
That night--so beautiful--such a perfect consummation! That pause, our
journey ended, and the radiant serenity of the stars above, and,
beneath, the black unseen gulf, plunging from our feet! I can hardly
bear to dwell upon its loveliness, its poignancy. We sat till late,
quietly talking together. All that was not Marion’s--and of what value
to me in the prized context was that brief parenthesis?--was made
mine--the story of her young innocuous days. She had been good; she
had been chaste, and in circumstances well calculated to trip by the
feet one less scrupulous in her self-respect, less cleanly
intelligent, less precociously worldly, perhaps, since her
self-education had been pursued in sometimes slippery places. For they
had been poor; and indeed I gathered so far that the money
consideration had been an incentive to this part she had consented to
play in an unknown plot. What issue she had conceived of it, as
regarded my inclusion in the conspiracy? Why, she had had no time to
think: it had all been decided in a moment; and at least she knew that
I was of the Marion stock (which I was not, by the way), and, as such,
must pass for morally trustworthy. Besides, she had regarded the
movement as of only a temporary character; and besides, besides, the
actual fun of the adventure had something tickled her young
humour--the prospect of experiencing, for however brief a time, the
joys of social adulation in her feigned part. That was natural and
delicious; but what she could not foresee was the sympathetic nature
of the environments to which she was committing herself. She had her
own fine aspirations, her own ideals: the danger came when they were
allured into interest in a subject who could be coaxed and petted into
giving them practical expression. And so grew in her the subordination
of flesh to soul. She would consent to surrender the lesser to the
greater, to buy our mutual self-realisation at the fullest price I
asked.
And so at last I knew my Fifine wholly; the little story of her loves
and her perplexities lay bared before me. Ah, why had I not accepted
that confidence earlier? When she had hesitated that day on the brink
of revelation, what mad perversity had made me reject her? Likely,
then, the air cleared, we should have long lingered out our return,
until--but that does not bear thinking of.
Presently we took to recalling softly, happily, the golden secrets of
our wanderings together. And, so murmuring, she fell asleep in my
arms.