AN EVENING IN SOCIETY
"En résumé, la fête me paraissait un bal
de fantômes."
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,
_l'Amour suprême_.
Hubert gladly mingled in the conversations, dances, scandals, the many
(rather charming) frivolities which took place from eleven o'clock
in the evening until six o'clock in the morning at the home of the
Countess Aubry.
Flowers, music, vocal screeches and caresses, shoulders, diamonds,
bedizened uniforms, for the countess had connections with foreign
diplomacy.
Sixtine, an augural apparition, appeared through the clinking Japanese
portiere; one of her hands played with her multicolored pearls.
She advanced, Moscowitch behind her, his eyes fixed on her pure
shoulders. His huge stature dominated the young woman by a whole head;
he walked after her and Sixtine, faltering, seemed a very little girl
kept in leading-strings by a giant. Hubert, with a bow of impertinent
familiarity, passed between them and offered Sixtine his arm towards
a chair. The Russian, resigned, joined a group of men and watched the
talkers.
"You looked as though you were under the guardianship of that strong
man, and I wanted to deliver you."
She began to laugh, quite an enigmatical laugh:
"No, he doubtless followed me for pleasure, wanting to have me under
his eyes. Can a woman at a ball do anything better than let herself be
seen?"
"And is it not a keen pleasure," returned Hubert, "to reveal one's
arms, shoulders and neck?..."
"Very keen, no, but really the desires one evokes murmur in the ears
like a flight of vernal butterflies and the rustling of their wings
is sometimes soothing to the skin. You cannot understand, it is too
feminine."
"Yes," murmured Hubert with a tender but undeniable irony. "Woman
is a religion full of mysteries. I wish merely to adore without
understanding, to kneel in the gloom, my eyes unraised towards the
symbolic little red lamp: joyous mysteries and sad mysteries, to
contemplate them alternatively, to know them never, perhaps, in their
secret essence, and to love the dear creature whose emanation they are."
She raised her saddened eyes towards him, then, with a little anger:
"Poet and lying poetry! Tenderness is on your lips and not in your
heart. Do you remember our first meeting, under the drooping branches
of the old sacred firs, down there, in the gloomy avenue? You declared
that nothing exists except through an evoking will. I remember it, and
since then your words, often meditated, have acquired a terrible and
clear meaning. You love a dream creature which you have incarnated
under a semblance which is mine; you do not love me as I am, but as
you have made me. You do not love a woman, but a heroine of a romance,
and everything for you is but a romance.... I will tell you about this
at greater length some other time, if I have leisure. Ah! my friend,
there often is much charm in you, ah! if you wished and if you knew!...
Do something to make me love you sufficiently to resign myself to be
loved as the moving shadow of a dream. Do this ... but what do I know?
To-morrow, I shall perhaps give you merely a brief no. Perhaps it
will be too late to-morrow. Trust no woman, even the sincerest. Their
flight is as capricious as the flight of a swallow; this one flies,
that one.... They go whither their caprice takes them and then ... and
then they follow the sun and kisses are fascinating beams.... Do you
find that I seem to be giving you a course in seduction, according to
my practice. Ah! perhaps it would be better were you contented with
the dream. You could shape it according to your desire, while I, for
example, will I not be malleable in vain, if I revolt against your
candor? Good-by, the countess has beckoned to me and you know that I am
her right hand on all grand occasions.... Good-by, Hubert, oh! we shall
doubtless meet once or twice in the course of the evening.... Why not?
We have so many things to say to each other.... Give me your arm."
"Strange creature, yet you belong to me! Inextricable problem, I shall
decipher you by force of love, for love is the golden key which opens
all women's hearts. You have the evangelical good will, you wish to
love, you will love, and whom could you love except me? I shall have
the curiosity to admit all your phantasies, even those which make me
suffer; I do not dislike torture: this helps one to reflect on the
inconveniences of being a man."
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
It was Calixte, satisfied to exhale his ennui with this simple
interrogation.
"I am not bored, first, for secret reasons, then, there are some
pretty dresses. It would be pleasant perhaps to imagine the nude; it
is quite another matter to contemplate it: not one woman in ten gives
the slighest desire to see more of her. One can be diverted for an
hour or two in phonographing some fragments of the conversations in
one's memory. But it is too early; this becomes somewhat eccentric only
around two o'clock in the morning.
"And also," said Calixte, "to trouble some naive hearts with burning
avowals."
"Ah!" answered Hubert, "are you become a dilettante? Yes, this is quite
a sadistic pleasure...."
"Nevertheless...."
"Oh!" continued Hubert, "the casuists, whom fools scorn, were profound
analysts of human nature. They gave concessions to love which the
modern Malthusians find extreme, the hypocrites! And in this is
manifest their wisdom and a marvellous intuition about physiological
needs. There is not a kiss which the disdainful boldness of Ligouri
does not concede to the sadness of flesh; nothing astonishes him and
he condemns the most complex satiations as only venial, provided the
dignity of the act be consecrated by the supreme finality."
Calixte was too spontaneous to like casuistry.
"Destiny," he told Hubert, "should have made you a monk in a Spanish
monastery of the sixteenth century."
"Ah!" acquiesced Hubert, "with the grace of God I should have written
fine folios."
"But you are living in the world, in an age little given to
procreation, and if you put your theories to practice...."
"You well know," interrupted Hubert, "that I am, practically,
abstemious, and one need not take account of accidents. Ho! I should
not dislike to have some progeniture. If life were better, it would
be justifiable; if it were good, it would be a strict commandment.
But I have the consciousness of my wretchedness and this will spare
existence to the generations who might have issued from me. Do you know
my principle? It is short, strict, and I would wish it universal: No
children."
Renaudeau and André de Passavant approached.
"Oh!" continued Hubert, "practically, it would be absurd and terrible,
but, the principle admitted, its too numerous violations would suffice
for an always excessive peopling. I should accept this cross, if it
were necessary. My children would bear life as I bear it, without joy
but without despair. The transcendent rascal has not killed all the
swans!"
"Not yet, but he will kill them all," said André. "The lakes will be
deserted and the forests silent, for they no longer will have souls to
people the lakes with dreams and the forests with ideal music. Then
fire will lay waste the terrestrial marsh...."
"And we shall begin again at the beginning," interrupted Renaudeau.
He disappeared without adding anything further, and Passavant, who
followed him with his eyes, explained this sudden flight by seeing him
glide swiftly towards Madame Aubry, who was smiling at him:
"They claim that he has already succeeded in undermining Fortier and
that he is going to replace him in the review, if it is not already
effected--and elsewhere, naturally."
"It was to be foreseen," said Hubert. "But as for myself, I shall not
submit to his impertinences. If a few friends wished to follow me, I
should sacrifice whatever sums were necessary to start a magazine that
will be stricter in its choosing."
"And slightly theological?" added Passavant.
"Mystic theology in fine style...."
"Yes, yes," responded Hubert, suddenly absent-minded.
He instantly recalled that the present imposed other thoughts upon him.
For the first time in his life, perhaps, he escaped the exclusive
domination of art. Sixtine arose before his vision of the world like
a gigantic tree whose boughs and shadows conceal the thick woods
stretching behind it.
"What! Baillot here!" said Passavant, shocked.
"What has he done to you?" asked Calixte.
"Do you not remember that he denounced Desnoyers, the architect of Mont
Saint-Michel, as a clerical?"
"I have seen," said Hubert, "his restorations, and they are admirable.
When the years will have covered the too fresh richness with its
patina, they will be masterpieces marvelously harmonizing with the
architectural creations of ancient time. But I believe that it is just
because he is a believer that he was able to reconstitute, as much by
love as by science, such superb testimonies of a Christian epoch. What
would you, a Maecenas was needed and they got a pedant!"
At this moment, Moscowitch found himself face to face with Entragues.
The Russian knitted his eyebrows, but a smile, at the same instant,
extenuated it:
"My dear, for the moment I renounce my dramatic projects. This damp
winter is unfavorable to me, and I am going to pass a few months in the
south. Thanks for all your excellent advice. They have helped me beyond
your hopes."
This tone of haughty irony displeased Entragues, who answered:
"Take care, Monsieur. Are you so sure of being at such a stage where
absence cannot injure you? Do you leave with the certainty of receiving
letters of recall? Think that more than another I am interested in a
denouement to which I have not been a stranger. Calixte, my friend,
give Monsieur Moscowitch a commentary of the thirty-fourth chapter of
Stendhal. Madame Magne, I think, has a word to tell me, and I am going
to her."
He had perceived Sixtine visibly bored by some fool's compliments.
"At least," he thought, "she will be thankful to me for having
delivered her."
Moscowitch patiently listened to Calixte whose amusing discourse
on discretion yet seemed to him a contrived raillery. During this
torture, Hubert sought to resume his interrupted talk with Sixtine. But
she was distracted and almost meditative. Hubert related to her the
poetry of his desire and she gazed at him, without having the air of
understanding. Playing with her dance card, she said:
"You have not even had the idea of putting your name here and I am no
longer free. Those who have requested to dance with me will come, each
in proper turn, to claim the promised minutes, and, you see, it is
full."
Hubert took the little card and read the inscribed names:
"Well, sacrifice one of these persons for me, the Russian for example.
That would be specially agreeable."
"No," said Sixtine, "that is not possible."
"I see that you take to the man, even more than to his portrait."
"What portrait?"
"That one signed with initials which belongs to your name, and which
was dedicated, still in abbreviation, to Monsieur Sabas Moscowitch...."
"Ah! that amusement of a rainy afternoon?... Is my past not sacred to
you, then?"
"It dismays me. What I do not know bewilders me ... I want to know."
"But what do you gain by tormenting me thus? And by what right do you
ask such questions? You are wicked to make me suffer in my soul and
flesh. Leave me, or I shall tell you cruel things ..."
"I can listen to them."
"No, really, I am tired, ah! how tired I am!"
And her eyes repeated the avowal of her lips.
"But," she continued, "let us have a truce, I want to amuse myself,
I want to forget, in purely nervous excitements, the struggle I am
engaged with. Leave me to my partners and come to-morrow. I am very
much disturbed. Come with confidence: no one has as many privileges
with me as you have, Hubert, but think of all that can happen in a
second, a single brief second. Here is Monsieur de Fortier come to
claim me.... _A demain!_"
Then, instead of rejoining his friends, he strolled about, insinuating
himself into groups, watching, listening.
A young girl, thin and ugly, despite large dark eyes, was languidly
dreaming in a chair. The fancy seized him to amuse this child. He
bowed to her and the young girl, heedless of etiquette, let herself
be lifted into these strange arms. The waltz made her little heart
beat, her pale cheeks grew rosy, she pressed Entragues hand and in
the boldness of pleasure let her bent and radiant head fall on his
shoulder. He made her chat, treated her as a woman, conducted her to
the refreshment-room, made her tipsy with a little champagne and a few
compliments: he was thanked with a smile, which expressed the gift of a
life.
In bringing her back to her place, he was almost as happy as she was
and he thought that the only happiness lies in giving happiness without
demanding a return.
Towards two o'clock, he resisted Calixte Heliot who discreetly tried to
draw him away. Later, he saw Moscowitch, after consulting his watch,
disappear into the antechamber. Sixtine brushed past him at the same
instant; she turned around, chattering, on the arm of Renaudeau, who
seemed to be telling her something malicious. For an hour, perhaps
more, he remained in the same place, alone and motionless, watching her
pass from hand to hand, carefree and smiling. He watched with an empty
brain, rendered anaemic by the late hour, fuddled by the incessant
bustle. Finally the rooms began to thin. While he was hesitating to
offer himself to Sixtine as an escort, she vanished, flying, without
turning her head, like a woman quite decided to refuse or to accept
only with boredom and bad grace the arm of a man.
He suffered her to leave, went to compliment the countess, bowed to the
young girl who gave him her hand, drank a last glass of punch, so as to
be less affected by the morning chill, then departed in his turn and
returned on foot to his dwelling.