A SCRUPLE
The "Sire" de Corancez--as Madame de Carlsberg disdainfully called the
Southerner--was not a man to neglect the slightest detail that he
thought advantageous to a well-studied plan. His father, the
vine-grower, used to say to him, "Marius? Don't worry about Marius. He's
a shrewd bird." And, in truth, at the very moment when the Baroness Ely
was beginning her melancholy confidences in the deserted garden alleys
of the Villa Brion, this adroit person discovered Hautefeuille at the
station, installed him in the train between Chésy and Dickie Marsh and
manœuvred so skilfully that before reaching Nice the American had
invited Pierre to visit the next morning his yacht, the Jenny, anchored
in the roadstead at Cannes. But the next morning would be the last hours
that Corancez could spend at Cannes before his departure, ostensibly for
Marseilles and Barbentane, in reality for Italy.
He had the promise of Florence Marsh that Hautefeuille's visit to the
_Jenny_ would be immediately followed by an invitation to take part in
the cruise of the 14th. Would Pierre accept? Above all, would he consent
to act as witness in that clandestine ceremony, at which the queerly
named Venetian _abbé_, Don Fortunato Lagumina, would pronounce the
words of eternal union between the millions of the deceased Francesco
Bonnacorsi and the heir of the doubtful scutcheon of the Corancez? The
Provençal had but this last morning to persuade his friend.
But he had no fear of failure, and at half-past nine, fresh, in spite of
the fact that he had returned from Monte Carlo on the last train the
night before, he briskly descended the steps of the hill that separates
Cannes from the Gulf of Juan. Pierre Hautefeuille had installed himself
for the winter in one of those hotels whose innumerable flower-framed
windows line this height, which the people of Cannes have adorned with
the exotic name of California.
It was one of those mornings of sun and wind--of fresh sunlight and warm
breeze--which are the charm of winter on this coast. Roses bloomed by
hundreds on hedge and terrace. The villas, white or painted, shone
through their curtains of palm trees and araucarias, aloes and bamboos,
mimosas and eucalyptus. The peninsula of La Croisette projected from the
hill toward the islands, and its dark forest of pines, flecked with
white houses, arose in strong relief between the tender blue of the sky
and the sombre blue of the sea, and the Sire de Corancez went on gayly,
a bouquet of violets in the buttonhole of the most becoming coat that a
complacent tailor ever fashioned for a handsome young man in chase of an
heiress, his small feet tightly fitted in russet shoes, a straw hat on
his thick, black hair; his eyes bright, his teeth glistening in a half
smile, his beard lustrous and scented, his movements graceful.
He was happy in the animal portion of his nature; a happiness that was
wholly physical and sensual. He was able to enjoy the divine sunlight,
the salt breeze, odorous with flowers; this atmosphere, soft as spring;
to enjoy the morning and his own sense of youth, while the calculator
within him soliloquized upon the character of the man he was about to
rejoin and upon the chances of success:--
"Will he accept or not? Yes, he will beyond any doubt, when he knows
that Madame de Carlsberg will be on the boat. Should I tell him? No; I
would offend him. How his arm trembled in mine last night when I
mentioned her name! Bah! Marsh or his niece will speak to him about her,
or they are no Americans. That is their way--and it succeeds with
them--to speak right out whatever they think or wish.--If he accepts? Is
it prudent to have one more witness? Yes; the more people there are in
the secret, the more Navagero will be helpless when the day comes for
the great explanation.--A secret? With three women knowing it? Madame de
Carlsberg will tell it all to Madame Brion. It will go no further on
that side. Flossie Marsh will tell it all to young Verdier. And it will
stop there, too. Hautefeuille? Hautefeuille is the most reliable of
all.--How little some men change! There is a boy I have scarcely seen
since our school-days. He is just as simple and innocent as when we used
to confess our sins to the good Father Jaconet. He has learned nothing
from life. He does not even suspect that the Baroness is as much in love
with him as he with her. She will have to make a declaration to him. If
we could talk it over together, she and I. Let nature have her way. A
woman who desires a young man and does not capture him--that may occur,
perhaps, in the horrible fogs of the North, but in this sunlight and
among these flowers, never.--Good, here is his hotel. It would be
convenient for a rendezvous, these barracks. So many people going in and
out that a woman might enter ten times without being noticed."
Hôtel des Palmes--the name justified by a tropical garden--appeared in
dazzling letters on the façade of this building, whose gray walls,
pretentiously decorated with gigantic sculpture, arose at a bend of the
road. The balconies were supported by colossal caryatides, the terrace
by fluted columns. Pierre Hautefeuille occupied a modest room in this
caravansary, which had been recommended by his doctor; and if, on the
night before, his sentimental reverie in the hall at Monte Carlo had
seemed paradoxical, his daily presence in a cell of this immense
cosmopolitan hive was no less so.
Here he lived, retired, absorbed in his chimerical fancies, enveloped in
the atmosphere of his dreams, while beside him, above him, and below him
swarmed the agitated colony which the Carnival attracts to the coast.
Again on this morning the indulgent mockery of Corancez might have found
a fitting subject, if the heavy stones of the building had suddenly
become transparent, and the enterprising Southerner had seen his friend,
with his elbows on the writing-table, hypnotized before the gold box
purchased the evening before; and his mockery would have changed to
veritable stupefaction, had he been able to follow the train of this
lover's thoughts, who, ever since his purchase, had been a prey to one
of those fevers of remorseful anxiety which are the great tragedies of a
timid and silent passion.
This fever had begun in the train on the way back from Monte Carlo amid
the party collected by Corancez. One of Chésy's remarks had started it.
"Is it true," Chésy asked of Marius, "that Baroness Ely lost this
evening a hundred thousand francs, and that she sold her diamonds to one
of the gamblers in order to continue?"
"How history is written!" Corancez responded. "I was there with
Hautefeuille. She lost this evening just what she had gained, that is
all; and she sold a trifling jewel worth a hundred louis,--a gold
cigarette case."
"The one she always uses?" asked Navagero; then gayly, "I hope the
Archduke will not hear this story. Although a democrat, he is severe on
the question of good form."
"Who do you suppose would tell him?" Corancez replied.
"The aide-de-camp, _parbleu_," exclaimed Chésy. "He spies into
everything she does, and if the jewel is gone, the Archduke will hear of
it."
"Bah! She will buy it back to-morrow morning. Monte Carlo is full of
these honest speculators. They, in fact, are the only ones who win at
the game."
While Hautefeuille was listening to this dialogue, every word of which
pierced to his heart, he caught a glance from the Marquise Bonnacorsi--a
look of curiosity, full of meaning to the timid lover, for he plainly
read in it the knowledge of his secret. The subject of the conversation
immediately changed, but the words that had been spoken and the
expression in Madame Bonnacorsi's eyes sufficed to fill the young man
with a remorse as keen as though the precious box had been taken from
the pocket of his evening coat, and shown to all these people.
"Could the Marquise have seen me buy it?" he asked himself, trembling
from head to foot. "And if she saw me, what does she think?"
Then, as she entered into conversation with Florence Marsh, and appeared
once more to be perfectly indifferent to his existence, "No, I am
dreaming," he thought; "it is not possible that she saw me. I was
careful to observe the people who were there. I was mistaken. She looked
at me in that fixed way of hers which means nothing. I was dreaming. But
what the others said was not a dream. This cigarette case she will wish
to buy back to-morrow. She will find the merchant. He will tell her that
he has sold it. He will describe me. If she recognizes me from his
description?"
At this thought he trembled once more. In a sudden hallucination he saw
the little parlor of the Villa Helmholtz--the Archduke had thus named
his house after the great savant who had been his master. The lover saw
the Baroness Ely sitting by the fire in a dress of black lace with bows
of myrtle green, the one of her dresses which he most admired. He saw
himself entering this parlor in the afternoon; he saw the furniture, the
flowers in their vases, the lamps with their tinted shades, all these
well-loved surroundings, and a different welcome--a look in which he
would perceive, not by a wild hypothesis this time, but with certitude,
that Madame de Carlsberg knew _what he had done_. The pain which the
mere thought of this caused him brought him back to reality.
"I am dreaming again," he said to himself, "but it is none the less
certain that I have been very imprudent--even worse, indelicate. I had
no right to buy that box. No, I had no right. I risked, in the first
place, the chance of being seen, and of compromising her. And then, even
as it is, if some indiscreet remark is made, and if the Prince makes an
investigation?"
In another hallucination he saw the Archduke Henry Francis and the
Baroness face to face. He saw the beautiful, the divine eyes of the
woman he loved fill with tears. She would suffer in her private life
once more, and from his fault, on account of him who would have given
all his blood with delight in order that mouth so wilfully sad
might smile with happiness. Thus the most imaginary, but also the most
painful of anxieties commenced to torture the young man, while Miss
Marsh and Corancez in a corner of the compartment exchanged in a low
voice these comments:--
"I shall ask my uncle to invite him, that's settled," said the young
American girl. "Poor boy, I have a real sympathy for him. He looks so
melancholy. They have pained him by talking so of the Baroness."
"No, no," said Corancez. "He is in despair at having missed, by his own
fault, a chance of speaking with his idol this evening. Imagine, at the
moment when I went up to her--piff--my Hautefeuille disappeared. He is
remorseful at having been too timid. That is a sentiment which I hope
never to feel."
Remorse. The astute Southerner did not realize how truly he had spoken.
He was mistaken in regard to the motive, but he had given the most
precise and fitting term to the emotion which kept Hautefeuille awake
through the long hours of the night, and which this morning held him
motionless before the precious case. It was as though he had not bought
it, but had stolen it, so much did he suffer to have it there before his
eyes. What was he to do now? Keep it? That had been his instinctive, his
passionate desire when he hurried to the merchant. This simple object
would make the Baroness Ely so real, so present to him. Keep it? The
words he had heard the night before came back to him, and with them all
his apprehension. Send it back to her? What could be more certain to
make the young woman seek out who it was who had taken such a liberty,
and if she did find out?
A prey to these tumultuous thoughts, Pierre turned the golden box in his
hands. He spelled out the absurd inscription written in precious stones
on the cover of the case: "M.E. moi. 100 C.C.--Aimez-moi sans cesser,"
the characters said; and the lover thought that this present, bearing
such a tender request, must have been given to Madame de Carlsberg by
the Archduke or some very dear friend.
What agony he would have felt had the feminine trinket been able to
relate its history and all the quarrels that its sentimental device had
caused during the _liaison_ of the Baroness Ely with Olivier du Prat.
How often Du Prat, too, had tried to discover from whom his mistress had
received this present--one of those articles whose unnecessary gaudiness
savors of adultery. And he could never draw from the young woman the
name of the mysterious person who had given it, of whom Ely had said to
Madame Brion, "It was some one who is no longer in this world."
In truth, this suspicious case was not a souvenir of anything very
culpable; the Baroness had received it from one of the Counts Kornow.
She had had with him one of her earliest flirtations, pushed far
enough--as the inscription testified--but interrupted before its
consummation by the departure of the young Count for the war in Turkey.
He had been killed at Plevna.
Yes, how miserable Hautefeuille would have been if he could have divined
the words that had been uttered over this case--words of romantic
tenderness from the young Russian, words of outrageous suspicion from
his dearest friend, that Olivier whose portrait--what irony!--was on the
table before him at this moment. That heart so young, still so intact,
so pure, so confiding, was destined to bleed for that which he did not
suspect on this morning when, in all his delicacy, he accused no one but
himself.
Suddenly a knock on the door made him start in terror. He had been so
absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed the time, or remembered
the rendezvous with his friend. He hid the cigarette case in the table
drawer, with all the agitation of a discovered criminal. "Come in," he
said in a quivering voice; and the elegant and jovial countenance of
Corancez appeared at the door. With that slight accent which neither
Paris nor the princely salons of Cannes had been able wholly to correct,
the Southerner began:--
"What a country mine is, all the same! What a morning, what air, what
sunlight! They are wearing furs up there, and we--" He threw open his
light coat. Then, as his eye caught the view, he continued, thinking
aloud: "I have never before climbed up to your lighthouse. What a scene!
How the long ridge of the Esterel stretches out, and what a sea! A piece
of waving satin. This would be divine with a little more space. You are
not uncomfortable with only one room?"
"Not in the least," said Hautefeuille; "I have so few things with
me--merely a few books."
"That's so," Corancez replied, glancing over the narrow room, which,
with the modest case opened on the bureau, had the look of an officer's
tent. "You have not the mania for _bric-à-brac_. If you could see the
ridiculously complete dressing-case that I carry around with me, not to
speak of a trunk full of knick-knacks. But I have been corrupted by the
foreigners. You have remained a true Frenchman. People never realize how
simple, sober, and economical the French are. They are too much so in
their hate of new inventions. They detest them as much as the English
and Americans love them--you, for example. I am sure that it was only by
accident you came to this ultra-modern hotel, and that you abominate the
luxury and the comfort."
"You call it luxury?" Hautefeuille interrupted, shrugging his shoulders.
"But there is truth in what you say. I don't like to complicate my
existence."
"I know that prejudice," Corancez replied; "you are for the stairway
instead of the lift, for the wood fire instead of the steam heater, for
the oil lamp instead of the electric light, for the post instead of the
telephone. Those are the ideas of old France. My father had them. But I
belong to the new school. Never too many hot and cold water faucets.
Never too many telegraph and telephone wires. Never too many machines to
save you the slightest movement. They have one fault, however, these new
hotels. Their walls are thin as a sheet of paper; and as I have
something serious to say to you, and also a great service to ask of you,
we will go out, if you are willing. We'll walk to the port, where Marsh
will wait for us at half-past ten. Does that suit you? We'll kill time
by taking the longest way."
The Provençal had a purpose in proposing the "longest way." He wished
to lead his friend past the garden of Madame de Carlsberg.
Corancez was something of a psychologist, and was guided by his instinct
with more certainty than he could have been by all the theories of M.
Taine on the revival of images. He was certain that the proposition in
regard to the plot at Genoa would be accepted by Hautefeuille for the
sake of a voyage with the Baroness Ely. The more vividly the image of
the young woman was called up to the young man, the more he would be
disposed to accept Corancez's proposition.
Thanks to his innocent Machiavelism, the two friends, instead of going
straight toward the port, took the road that led to the west of
California. They passed a succession of wild ravines, still covered with
olives, those beautiful trees whose delicate foliage gives a silver tone
to the genuine Provençal landscape. The houses grew more rare and
isolated, till at certain places, as in the valley of Urie, one seemed
to be a hundred miles from town and shore, so completely did the wooded
cliffs hide the sea and the modern city of Cannes.
The misanthropy of the Archduke Henry Francis had led him to build his
villa on this very ridge, at whose foot lay that species of
park--inevitably inhabited and preserved by the English--through which
Corancez conducted Hautefeuille. They came to a point where the Villa
Helmholtz suddenly presented itself to their view. It was a heavy
construction of two stories, flanked on one side by a vast greenhouse
and on the other by a low building with a great chimney emitting a dense
smoke. The Southerner pointed to the black column rising into the blue
sky and driven by the gentle breeze through the palms of the garden.
"The Archduke is in his laboratory," he said; "I hope that Verdier is
making some beautiful discovery to send to the Institute."
"You don't think, then, that he works himself?" asked Pierre.
"Not much," said Corancez. "You know the science of princes and their
literature. However, that doesn't matter to me in the least. But what I
don't like at all is the way he treats his charming wife--for she is
charming, and she has once more proved it to me in a circumstance that I
shall tell you about; and you heard what they said last night, that she
is surrounded by spies."
"Even at Monte Carlo?" Hautefeuille exclaimed.
"Above all at Monte Carlo," replied Corancez. "And then, it is my
opinion that if the Archduke does not love the Baroness he is none the
less jealous, furiously jealous, of her, and nothing is more ferocious
than jealousy without love. Othello strangled his wife for a
handkerchief he had given her, and he adored her. Think of the row the
Archduke would make about the cigarette case she sold if it was he who
gave it to her."
These remarks, in a tone half serious, half joking, contained a piece of
advice which the Southerner wished to give his friend before departing.
It was as though he had said in plain language: "Court this pretty woman
as much as you like; she is delicious; but beware of the husband." He
saw Hautefeuille's expressive face suddenly grow clouded, and
congratulated himself on being understood so quickly. How could he have
guessed that he had touched an open wound, and that this revelation of
the Prince's jealousy had but intensified the pain of remorse in the
lover's tender conscience?
Hautefeuille was too proud, too manly, with all his delicacy, to harbor
for a moment such calculations as his friend had diplomatically
suggested. He was one of those who, when they love, are afflicted by
nothing but the suffering of the loved one, and who are always ready to
expose themselves to any danger. That which he had seen the night before
in the hallucination of his first remorsefulness he saw again, and more
clearly, more bitterly,--that possible scene between the Archduke and
the Baroness Ely, of which he would be the cause, if the Prince learned
of the sale of the case, and the Baroness was unable to recover it.
So he listened distractedly to Corancez's talk, who, however, had had
the tact to change the conversation and to relate one of the humorous
anecdotes of his repertory. What interest could Pierre have in the
stories, more or less true, of the absurdities or scandals of the coast?
He did not again pay attention to his companion until, having reached La
Croisette, Corancez decided to put the great question. Along this
promenade, more crowded than usual, a person was approaching who would
furnish the Southerner with the best pretext for beginning his
confidence; and, suddenly taking the arm of the dreamer to arouse him
from his reveries, Corancez whispered:--
"I told you a moment ago that Madame de Carlsberg had of late been
particularly good to me, and I told you, as we left the hotel, that I
had a service to ask of you, a great service. You do not perceive the
connection between these two circumstances? You will soon understand the
enigma. Do you see who is coming toward us?"
"I see the Count Navagero," Hautefeuille answered, "with his two dogs
and a friend whom I do not know. That is all."
"It is the whole secret of the enigma. But wait till they pass. He is
with Lord Herbert Bohun. He will not deign to speak to us."
The Venetian moved toward them, more English in appearance than the
Englishman by his side. This child of the Adriatic had succeeded in
realizing the type of the Cowes or Scarborough "masher," and with such
perfection that he escaped the danger of becoming a caricature. Clothed
in a London suit of that cloth which the Scotch call "harris" from its
place of origin, and which has a vague smell of peat about it, his
trousers turned up according to the London manner, although not a drop
of rain had fallen for a week, he was walking with long, stiff strides,
one hand grasping his cane by the middle, the other hand holding his
gloves.
His face was smoothly shaven; he wore a cap of the same cloth as that of
his coat, and smoked a briarwood pipe of the shape used at Oxford. Two
small, hairy Skye terriers trotted behind him, their stubby legs
supporting a body three times as long as it was high. From what tennis
match was he returning? To what game of golf was he on his way? His red
hair, of that color so frequent in the paintings of Bonifazio, an
inheritance from the doges, his ancestors, added the finishing touch to
his incredible resemblance to Lord Herbert.
There was, however, one difference between them. As they passed Corancez
and Hautefeuille, the twins uttered a good morning--Bohun's entirely
without accent, while the syllables of the Venetian were emphasized in a
manner excessively Britannic.
"You have observed that man," Corancez continued, when they had passed
beyond earshot, "and you take him for an Anglomaniac of the most
ridiculous kind. But, when you scratch his English exterior, what do you
suppose you find beneath it? An Italian of the time of Machiavelli, as
unscrupulous as though he were living at the court of the Borgias. He
would poison us all, you, me, any one who crossed his path. I have read
it in his hand, but don't be uneasy; he has not yet put his principles
into practice, only he has tortured for six years a poor, defenceless
woman, the adorable Madame Bonnacorsi, his sister. I do not attempt to
explain it. But for six years he has so terrorized over this woman that
she has not taken a step without his knowing of it, has not had a
servant that he has not chosen, has not received a letter without having
to account for it to him. It is one of those domestic tyrannies which
you would not believe possible unless you had read of them in the
newspaper reports, or actually witnessed it as I have. He does not wish
her to remarry, because he lives on her great fortune. That is the
point."
"How infamous!" Hautefeuille exclaimed. "But are you sure?"
"As sure as I am that I see Marsh's boat," replied Corancez, pointing to
the trim yacht at anchor in the bay. And he continued lightly, in a tone
that was sentimental and yet manly, not without a certain grace: "And
what I am going to ask you is to help me circumvent this pretty
gentleman. We Provençaux have always a Quixotic side to our character.
We have a mania for adventurous undertakings; it is the sun that puts
that in our blood. If Madame Bonnacorsi had been happy and free,
doubtless I should not have paid much attention to her. But when I
learned that she was unhappy, and was being miserably abused, I fell
wildly in love with her. How I came to let her know of this and to find
that she loved me I will tell you some other day. If Navagero is from
Venice, I am from Barbentane. It is a little further from the sea, but
we understand navigation. At any rate, I am going to marry Madame
Bonnacorsi, and I am going to ask you to be my groomsman."
"You are going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi?" repeated Hautefeuille, too
astonished to answer his friend's request. "But the brother?"
"Oh! he knows nothing about it," Corancez replied. "But that is just
where the good fairy came into the story in the form of the charming
Baroness Ely. Without her, Andryana--permit me thus to call my
_fiancée_--would never have brought herself to say 'yes.' She loved me,
and yet she was afraid. Do not misjudge her. These tender, sensitive
women have strange timidities, which are difficult to understand. She
was afraid, but chiefly for me. She feared a quarrel between her brother
and me--hot words, a duel. Then I proposed and persuaded her to accept
the most romantic and unusual expedient,--a secret marriage. On the 14th
of next month, God willing, a Venetian priest, in whom she has
confidence, will marry us in the chapel of a palace at Genoa. In the
meantime I shall disappear. I am supposed to be at Barbentane among my
vineyards. And on the 13th, while Navagero is playing the Englishman on
Lord Herbert Bohun's yacht, with the Prince of Wales and other royal
personages, Marsh's boat, to which you will be invited, will sail away
with a number of passengers, among whom will be the woman I love the
most in the world, and to whom I shall devote my life, and the friend I
most esteem, if he does not refuse my request. What does he answer?"
"He answers," said Hautefeuille, "that if ever he was astonished in his
life, he is so now. You, Corancez, in love, and so much in love that you
will sacrifice your liberty. You have always seemed so careless, so
indifferent. And a secret marriage. But it will not remain a secret
twenty-four hours. I know your exuberance. You always tell everything
you know to everybody. But I thank you for the friendship you have shown
me, and I will be your groomsman."
As he said these last words he shook Corancez's hand with that simple
seriousness which he showed for everything. His companion had touched
him deeply. Doubtless this simplicity and candid trustfulness
embarrassed the Southerner. He was very willing to profit from them, but
he felt a little ashamed at abusing too much this loyal nature, whose
charm he also felt, and he mingled with his thanks a confession such as
he had never before made to any one.
"Don't think me so exuberant. The sun always has that effect. But, in
truth, we men of the South never say what we mean.--Here we are.
Remember," he said, with his finger on his lips, "Miss Marsh knows all,
Marsh knows nothing."
"One word more," Hautefeuille replied; "I have promised to be your
groomsman. But you will permit me to go to Genoa another way? I don't
know these people well enough to accept an invitation of that kind."
"I trust to Flossie Marsh to overcome your scruples," said Corancez,
unable to repress a smile. "You will be one of the passengers on the
_Jenny_. Do you know why this boat is called the _Jenny_? Only an
Anglo-Saxon would permit himself seriously such a play upon words. You
have heard of Jenny Lind, the singer? Well, the reason the facetious
Marsh gave this pretty name to his floating villa was _because she keeps
the high seas_. And every time he explains this he is so amazed at his
wit that he fairly chokes with laughter.--But what a delicious day."
The elegant lines of the _Jenny's_ rigging and white hull could now be
seen close at hand. She seemed the young, coquettish queen of the little
port, amid the fishing boats, yawls, and coasters that swarmed about the
quay. A group of sailors on the stone curb sang while they mended their
nets. On the ground-floor of the houses were offices of ship companies,
or shops, stored with provisions and tackle. The working population,
totally absent from this city of leisure, is concentrated upon the
narrow margin of the port, and gives it that popular picturesqueness so
refreshing in contrast with the uniform banality imprinted on the South
by its wealthy visitors. It was doubtless an unconscious sense of that
contrast that led the plebeian Marsh to choose this point of the
roadstead.
This self-made man who also had labored on the quays at Cleveland, by
the shores of Lake Erie, whose waters are more stormy than the
Mediterranean, despised at heart the vain and vapid society in which he
lived. He lived in it, however, because the cosmopolitan aristocracy was
still another world to conquer.
When he regaled some grand duke or prince regent on board his yacht,
what voluptuous pride he might feel on looking at these fishermen of his
own age, and saying to himself, while he smoked his cigar with the royal
or imperial highness: "Thirty years ago these fishermen and I were
equals. I was working just as they are. And now?" As Hautefeuille and
Corancez did not figure on any page of the Almanach de Gotha, the master
of the yacht did not consider it necessary to await his visitors on
deck; and when the young men arrived they found no one but Miss Flossie
Marsh, seated on a camp-stool before an easel, sketching in water
colors. Minutely, patiently, she copied the landscape before her,--the
far-off group of islands melting together like a long, dark carapace
fixed on the blue bay, the hollow and supple line of the gulf, with the
succession of houses among the trees, and, above all, the water of such
an intense azure, dotted with white sails, and over all that other azure
of the sky, clear, transparent, luminous. The industrious hand of the
young girl copied this scene in forms and colors whose exactitude and
hardness revealed a very small talent at the service of a very strong
will.
"These American women are astonishing," whispered Corancez to
Hautefeuille. "Eighteen months ago she had never touched a brush. She
began to work and she has made herself an artist, as she will make
herself a _savante_ if she marries Verdier. They construct talents in
their minds as their dentists build gold teeth in your mouth.--She sees
us."
"My uncle is busy at present," said the young girl, after giving them a
vigorous handshake. "I tell him he should call the boat his office. As
soon as we reach a port his telephone is connected with the telegraph
station, and the cable begins to communicate with Marionville. Let us
say good morning to him, and then I will show you the yacht. It is
pretty enough, but an old model; it is at least ten years old. Mr. Marsh
is having one built at Glasgow that will beat this one and a good many
others. It is to measure four thousand tons. The _Jenny_ is only
eighteen hundred. But here is my uncle."
Miss Florence had led the young men across the deck of the boat, with
its planking as clean, its brass-work as polished, its padded furniture,
of brown straw, as fresh, its Oriental rugs as precious as though this
flooring, this metal, these armchairs, these carpets belonged to one of
the villas on the coast, instead of to this yacht which had been tossed
on all the waves of the Atlantic and Pacific. And the room into which
the young girl introduced them could not have presented a different
aspect had it been situated in Marionville on the fifth story of one of
those colossal buildings which line the streets with their vast cliffs
of iron and brick. Three secretaries were seated at their desks. One of
them was copying letters on a typewriter, another was telephoning a
despatch, the third was writing in shorthand at the dictation of the
little, thick-set, gray-faced man whom Corancez had shown to
Hautefeuille at the table of _trente-et-quarante_. This king of Ohio
paused to greet his visitors:--
"Impossible to accompany you, gentlemen," he said. "While you are taking
your promenade," he added, with that air of tranquil defiance by which
the true Yankee manifests his contempt for the Old World, "we shall
prepare a pretty voyage for you. But you Frenchmen are so contented at
home that you never go anywhere. Do you know the Lake Region? Wait, here
is the map. We have there, just on these four lakes--Superior, Michigan,
Huron, and Erie--sixty thousand ships, amounting to thirty-two million
tons, which transport every year three thousand five hundred million
tons of merchandise. The problem is to put this fleet and the cities on
the lakes--Duluth, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo,
Marionville--in communication with Europe. The lakes empty into the
ocean through the St. Lawrence. That is the road to follow.
Unfortunately we have a little obstacle to overcome at the outlet of
Lake Erie, an obstacle once and a half as high as the Arc de l'Etoile at
Paris. I mean Niagara, and also the rapids at the outlet of Lake
Ontario. They have made seven or eight canals, with locks which permit
the passage of little boats. But we wish a free passage for any
transatlantic vessel. This gentleman is about to conclude the affair,"
and Marsh pointed to the secretary at the telephone. "Our capital has
been completed this morning--two hundred million dollars. In two years I
shall sail home in the _Jenny_ without once disembarking. I wish
Marionville to become the Liverpool of the lakes. It has already a
hundred thousand inhabitants. In two years we shall have a hundred and
fifty thousand; that is equal to your Toulouse. In ten years, two
hundred and fifty thousand--that is equal to your Bordeaux--and in
twenty years we shall reach the five hundred and seventeen thousand of
old Liverpool. We are a young people, and everything young should begin
by progressing. You will excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen?"
And the indefatigable worker had re-commenced his dictation before his
niece had led from the room these degenerate children of slow Europe.
"Is he enough of an American for you?" Corancez whispered to
Hautefeuille. "He knows it too well, and he acts his own rôle to the
point of caricature. All their race appears in that." Then aloud: "You
know, Miss Flossie, we can talk freely of our plan before Pierre. He
consents to be my groomsman."
"Ah! how delightful!" the young girl cried; then added gayly: "I had no
doubt you would accept. My uncle has asked me to invite you to join our
little voyage to Genoa. You will come, then. That will be perfectly
delicious. You will be rewarded for your kindness. You will have on
board your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."
As she said this the laughing girl looked the young man in the face. She
had spoken without malice, with that simple directness upon which
Corancez had justly counted.
The people of the Hew World have this frankness, which we take for
brutality; it results from their profound and total acceptation of
facts. Flossie Marsh knew that the presence of Baroness Ely on the yacht
would be agreeable to Hautefeuille. Innocent American girl as she was,
she did not imagine for a moment that the relations between this young
man and a married woman could exceed the limits of a harmless flirtation
or a permissible sentimentality. So it had seemed to her as natural to
hazard this allusion to Pierre's sentiments as it would have been to
hear an allusion to her own sentiments for Marcel Verdier. Thus it was
strangely painful for her to see by the sudden pallor of the young man
and the trembling of his lips that she had wounded him. And her face
grew very red.
If the Americans in their simplicity are at times wanting in tact, they
are sensitive to the highest degree; and these faults of tact which they
commit so easily are a real affliction to them. But that blush only
aggravated the painful surprise which Hautefeuille had felt at hearing
Madame de Carlsberg thus spoken of. By an inevitable and overwhelming
association of ideas he recalled Corancez's words, "I am sure that Miss
Marsh will overcome your scruples," and the smile with which he said
this. The look Madame Bonnacorsi had given him in the train the night
before returned to his memory. By an intuition, unreasoned yet
irrefutable, he perceived that the secret of his passion, hidden so
profoundly in his heart, had been discovered by these three persons.
He quivered in every nerve with shame, revulsion, and distress; his
heart palpitated so violently that he could scarcely breathe. The
martyrdom of having to speak at this painful moment was spared him,
thanks to Corancez, who saw clearly enough the effect produced upon his
friend by the imprudence of the American girl, and, assuming the rôle
of host, he began:--
"What do you think, Hautefeuille, of this salon and this smoking-room?
Isn't it well arranged? This trimming of light, varnished wood--what
neat and virile elegance! And this dining-room? And these cabins? One
could spend months, years in them. You see, each one with its separate
toilet-room."
And he led on his companion and the young girl herself. He remembered
everything, with that astonishing memory for objects possessed by
natures like his, created for action, adapted to realities; with his
habitual self-assurance, he commented upon everything, from the pikes
and guns on the middle deck, awaiting the pirates of the South Seas, to
the machinery for filling and emptying the baths, and suddenly he asked
Miss Marsh this question, singular enough in a passage of that colossal
and luxurious toy which seemed to sum up the grand total of all
inventions for the refinement of life:--
"Miss Flossie, may we see the death chamber?"
"If it would interest M. Hautefeuille," said Florence Marsh, who had not
ceased to regret her thoughtless remark. "My uncle had an only
daughter," she continued, "who was named Marion, after my poor aunt. You
know that Mr. Marsh, who lost his wife when he was very young, named his
town after her, Marionville. My cousin died four years ago. My uncle was
almost insane with grief. He wished nothing to be altered in the room
she occupied on the yacht. He put her statue in it, and she has always
around her the flowers she loved in life. Wait, look, but do not go in."
She opened the door, and the young men saw, by the light of two
blue-shaded lamps, a room all draped in faded pink. It was filled with a
profusion of small objects such as might be possessed by a spoiled child
of a railroad magnate--a toilet case of silver and gold, jewels in glass
boxes, portraits in carved frames--and in the centre, on a real bed of
inlaid wood, lay the statue of the dead girl, white, with closed
eyelids, the lips slightly parted, among sheaves of carnations and of
orchids. The silence of this strange shrine, the mystery, the delicate
perfume of the flowers, the unlooked-for poetry of this posthumous
idolatry, in the boat of a yachtsman and a man of business, would, in
any other circumstances, have appealed to the romanticism innate in
Pierre Hautefeuille's heart. But during all this visit he had had but
one thought,--to escape from Miss Marsh and Corancez, to be alone in
order to reflect upon the evidence, so painfully unexpected, that his
deepest secret had been discovered. So it was a relief to depart from
the boat, and still a torture to have the company of his friend a few
minutes longer.
"Did you notice," said Corancez, "how much the dead girl resembles
Madame de Chésy? No? Well, when you meet her some time with Marsh, be
sure to observe her. The canal by the Great Lakes, his railroad, the
buildings of Marionville, his mines, his boat--he forgets them all. He
thinks of his dead daughter. If little Madame de Chésy should ask him
for the Kohinoor, he would set out to find it, for the mere sake of this
resemblance. Isn't it singular, such a sentimental trait in a rogue of
his stamp? His character ought to please you. If you are interested in
him, you will be able to study him at your leisure on the 13th, 14th,
and 15th. And let me thank you again for what you are going to do for
me. If you have anything to communicate to me, my address is Genoa,
_poste restante_. And now I must return to look after the packing. Will
you let me take you part of the way? I see the old coachman whom I told
to come here at eleven."
Corancez hailed an empty cab which was passing, drawn by two small
Corsican ponies, who saluted the young man with a wink, his "Good day,
Monsieur Marius" revealing the familiarity of long conversations
between these two Provençaux. Pascal Espérandien, otherwise known as
the Old Man, was an alert little personage and very crafty, the pride of
whose life was to make his two rats trot faster than the Russian horses
of the grand dukes residing at Cannes. He harnessed them, trimmed them,
ornamented them so fantastically that they drew from all Miss Marsh's
compatriots, from Antibes to Napoule, the same exclamations of "How
lovely, how enchanting, how fascinating!" that they would have uttered
before a Raphael or a Worth dress, a polo match or a noted gymnast.
Doubtless the wily old man, with his shrewd smile, possessed diplomatic
talents which might make him useful in a secret intrigue, for the
prudent Corancez never took any other carriage, especially when he had,
as on this morning, a rendezvous with the Marquise Andryana. He was to
see her for five minutes in the garden of a hotel where she had a call
to make. Her carriage was to stand before one of the doors, the Old
Man's equipage before another. So nothing could have been more agreeable
than Pierre's response to this clandestine _fiancé_.
"Thanks, but I prefer to walk."
"Then good-by," said Corancez, getting into the cab. And, parodying a
celebrated verse, "To meet soon again, Seigneur, where you know, with
whom you know, for what you know?"
The cab turned the corner of the Rue d'Antibes, and departed with
furious speed. Hautefeuille was at last alone. He could filially face
the idea which had been formulating itself in his thoughts with terrible
precision ever since Miss Florence Marsh had spoken these simple words,
"Your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."
"They all three know that I love her--the Marquise, Corancez, and Miss
Marsh. The look I caught from one of them last night, the remark and the
smile of the other, and what the third one said, and her blush at having
thought aloud--these are not dreams. They know I love her--But then,
Corancez, last night, when he led me to the gambling-table, must have
divined my thoughts. Such dissimulation!--is it possible? But why not?
He acknowledged it himself awhile ago. To have concealed his sentiments
for Madame Bonnacorsi, he must know how to keep a secret. He kept his
and I have not kept mine. Who knows but they all three saw me buy the
cigarette case? But no. They could not have had the cruelty to speak of
it and to let it be spoken of before me. Marius is not malicious,
neither is the Marquise, nor Miss Marsh. They know--that is all--they
know. But how did they find out?"
Yes, how? With a lover of his susceptibility such a question would of
necessity result in one of those self-examinations in which the scruples
of conscience develop all their feverish illusions. On the way back to
California and at the table where his luncheon was served to him apart,
and afterward on a solitary walk to the picturesque village of Mougins,
his life during these last few weeks came back to him, day by day, hour
by hour, with a displacement of perspective which presented all the
simple incidents of his naïve idyl as irreparable faults, crowned by
that last fault, the purchase of the gold box in a public place and in
full view of such people.
He recalled his first meeting with Madame de Carlsberg, in the Villa
Chésy. How the peculiar beauty of the young woman and her strange charm
had captivated him from the start, and how he had permitted himself to
gaze upon her unrestrainedly, not dreaming that he was thus attracting
attention and causing remarks! He remembered how often he had gone to
her house, seizing every opportunity of meeting her and talking with
her. The indiscretion of such assiduity could not have passed
unperceived, any more than his continued presence at places where he had
never gone before.
He saw again the golf field on those mornings when the Baroness Ely
seemed so beautiful, in her piquant dress of the bright club colors--red
and white. He saw himself at the balls, waiting in a corner of the room
until she entered with that enchantment which emanated from every fold
of her gown. He remembered how often at the confectioner's, or La
Croisette, he had approached her, and how she had always invited him to
sit at her table with such grace in her welcome. Each of these memories
recalled her amiability, her delicate indulgence.
The memory of that charm, to which he yielded himself so completely,
augmented his self-reproach. He recalled his imprudent actions, so
natural when one does not feel one's self to be observed, but which
appear to be such faults as soon as one is conscious of suspicion. For
example, during the ten days on which the Baroness was absent from
Cannes he had not once returned to those places where he had gone simply
for the sake of seeing her. No one had met him at the golf field, nor at
any evening party, nor at any five o'clock tea. He had not even made a
call. Could this coincidence of his retirement with the absence of the
Baroness have failed to be remarked? What had been said about it? Since
his love had drawn him into this agitated world of pleasure he had often
been pained by the light words thrown out at hazard at the women of this
society, when they were not present. Had he been simply an object of
ridicule, or had they taken advantage of his conduct to calumniate the
woman he loved with a love so unhappy, ravaged by all the chimeras of
remorse?
The words used by Florence Marsh--"your flirt"--gave a solid basis to
these hypotheses. He had always despised the things which this word
implied,--that shameful familiarity of a woman with a man, that dangling
of her beauty before his desire, all the vulgarity and indiscretion
which this equivocal relationship suggests. Could they think that he had
such relations with Madame de Carlsberg? Had this evil interpretation
been put upon his impulsiveness? Then he thought of the sorrows which he
divined in the life of this unique woman, of the espionage that was
spoken of, and again the hall at Monte Carlo appeared to him, and he
could not understand why he had not realized the prodigious indelicacy
of his action. He felt it now with most pitiful acuteness.
Haunted by these thoughts he prolonged his walk for hours and hours, and
when in the twilight, suddenly grown dark and cold, as it happens in the
South after days most soft and blue, as he entered the door of his
hotel, the concierge handed him a letter on which he recognized the
writing of Baroness Ely, his hands trembled as he tore open the
envelope, sealed with the imprint of an antique stone--the head of
Medusa. And if the head of this pagan legend had appeared alive before
him he would not have been more overwhelmed than he was by the simple
words of this note:--
"DEAR SIR--I have returned to Cannes and I should be happy if you could
come to-morrow, at about half-past one, to the Villa Helmholtz. I wish
to talk with you upon a serious matter. That is why I set this hour, at
which I am most certain of not being interrupted."
And she signed herself, not as in her last letters with her full name,
but as in the first she had written him--Baroness de Sallach Carlsberg.
Hautefeuille read and re-read these cold, dry lines. It was evident that
the young woman had learned of his purchase at Monte Carlo, and all the
agony of his remorse revealed itself in these words, which he cried
aloud as he entered his room:--
"She knows! I am lost!"