AFLOAT
Fifteen days had passed since Madame de Carlsberg, in spite of her
promises, her resolutions, her remorse, had confessed her passion to
Pierre Hautefeuille. The date fixed for the cruise of the Jenny had
arrived, and he and she were standing side by side on the deck of the
yacht, which was bearing also the Marquise Bonnacorsi toward her
fantastic marriage, and her confidante, Miss Marsh, and pretty Madame de
Chésy and her husband for the entertainment of the Commodore. That was
the nickname given by his niece to the indefatigable Carlyle Marsh, who,
in truth, scarcely ever left the bridge, where he stood directing the
course of the boat with the skill of a professional sailor.
This Marionville potentate would have had no pleasure in a carriage
unless he drove it, or in a yacht unless he steered it. He said himself,
without boasting:--
"If I should be ruined to-morrow I know twenty ways of making a living.
I am a mechanic, coachman, carpenter, pilot."
On this afternoon, while the _Jenny_ sailed toward Genoa, he was at his
post on the bridge, in his gold braided hat, glass in hand, his maps
open before him, and he directed the course with an attention as
complete and scrupulous as though he had been occupied all his life in
giving orders to sailors. He had to a supreme degree that trait common
to all great workers,--the capacity for giving himself always and wholly
to the occupation of the moment. And to him the vast sea, so blue and
soft, whose calm surface scarcely rippled, was but a racecourse upon
which to exercise his love of contest, of struggle, the one pleasure of
the Anglo-Saxon. Five hundred yards to the right, ahead of the _Jenny_,
was a low, black yacht, with a narrower hull, steaming at full speed. It
was the _Dalilah_, of Lord Herbert Bohun. Farther ahead, on the left,
another yacht was sailing in the same direction. This one was white,
like the _Jenny_, but with a wider beam. It was the _Albatross_, the
favorite plaything of the Grand Dukes of Russia. The American had
allowed these two yachts to leave Cannes some time before him, with the
intention, quickly perceived by the others, of passing them, and
immediately, as it were, a tacit wager was made by the Russian prince,
the English lord, and the American millionaire, all three equally
fanatical of sport, each as proud of his boat as a young man of his
horses or his mistress.
To Dickie Marsh, as he stood with his glass in his hand, giving orders
to the men, the whole scene reduced itself to a triangle, whose corners
were marked by the three yachts. He was literally blind to the admirable
horizon that stretched before him; the violet Esterel, with the long,
undulating line of its mountains, its dark ravines and jagged
promontories, the port of Cannes and the mole, with the old town and the
church rising behind it, all bathed in an atmosphere so transparent that
one could distinguish every little window and its shutters, every tree
behind the walls, the luxuriant hills of Grasse in the background, and
along the bay the line of white villas set in their gardens; then the
islands, like two oases of dark green, and suddenly the curve of another
gulf, terminated by the solitary point of the Antibes. And the trees on
this point, like those of the islands, bouquets of parasol pines, all
bent in one direction, spoke of the eternal drama of this shore, the war
of the mistral and the waves. But now the drama was suspended, giving
place to the most intoxicating flood of light. Not a fleck of foam
marred the immense sweep of liquid sapphire over which the Jenny
advanced with a sonorous and fresh sound of divided water. Not one of
those flaky clouds, which sailors call cattails, lined the radiant dome
of the sky where the sun appeared to expand, dilate, rejoice in ether
absolutely pure. It seemed as though this sky and sea and shore had
conspired to fulfil the prophecy of the chiromancer, Corancez, upon the
passage of the boat that was bearing his clandestine _fiancée_; and
Andryana Bonnacorsi recalled that prediction to Flossie Marsh as they
leaned on the deck railing, clothed in similar costumes of blue and
white flannel--the colors of the _Jenny's_ awning--and talked while they
watched the _Dalilah_ drawing nearer and nearer.
"You remember in the Casino at Monte Carlo how he foretold this weather
from our hands, exactly this and no other. Isn't it extraordinary, after
all?"
"You see how wrong you were to be afraid," replied Miss Marsh; "if he
saw clearly in one case, he must have done so in the others. We are
going to have a fine night on sea, and by one o'clock to-morrow we shall
head for Genoa."
"Don't be so confident," said the Italian, extending her hand with two
fingers crossed to charm away the evil fates; "you will bring us bad
luck."
"What! with this sky, this sea, this yacht, these lifeboats?"
"How should I know? But suppose Lord Herbert Bohun decides simply to
follow us to the end and go with us to Genoa?"
"Follow us to the end on the _Dalilah_ and we on the _Jenny_? I should
like to see him try it!" said the American. "See how we gain on him. But
be careful, Chésy and his wife are coming in this direction. Well,
Yvonne," she said to the pretty little Vicomtesse, blond and rosy in her
dress of white serge, embroidered with the boat's colors, "you are not
afraid to go so fast?"
"No," said Madame de Chésy, laughing; and, turning toward the bow, she
drew in a long breath. "This air intoxicates me like champagne!"
"Do you see your brother, Marquise?" asked Chésy, pointing to one of
the persons standing on the deck of the _Dalilah_. "He is beside the
Prince. They must not feel very well satisfied. And his terriers, do you
see his terriers running around like veritable rats? I am going to make
them angry. Wait." And making a trumpet of his hands he shouted these
words, whose irony he did not suspect:--
"Ay, Navagero; can we do anything for you at Genoa?"
"He doesn't understand, or pretends not to," said Madame de Chésy. "But
here's something he will understand. The Prince is not looking, is he?"
And boyishly she stretched her two hands from her nose with the most
impertinent gesture that a pretty woman ever made to a company
containing a royal highness. "Ah! the Prince saw me," she cried, with a
wild laugh. "Bah! he's such a good fellow! And if he doesn't like it,"
and she softly tapped her eye with the ends of her fingers, "et voilà!"
When the frolicsome Parisienne began this piece of disrespectful
childishness the two yachts had come abreast of each other. For a
quarter of an hour they went side by side, cutting through the water,
propelled only by the force of their robust lungs of steel, vomiting
from their chimneys two straight, black columns, which scarcely curved
in the calm air; and behind them stretched a furrow of glaucous green
over the blue water, like a long and moving path of emerald fringed with
silver, and on it rolled and pitched a sailboat manned by two young men,
sporting in the wake of the steamers.
On this wild race the deck was yet so motionless that the water did not
tremble in the vases of Venetian glass placed on the table near a group
of three women. The purple and saffron petals of the large roses slowly
dropped upon the table. Beside the flowers, amid their perfume, Madame
de Carlsberg was sitting. She had ungloved one of her beautiful hands to
caress the bloom of the flowers, and she gazed, smiling and dreamily,
from the _Dalilah_ to the luminous horizon, from her fellow-voyagers out
to the vast sea, and at Hautefeuille standing, with Chésy, beside her,
and turning to her incessantly. The breeze of the boat's motion revealed
the slender form of the young man under his coat of navy blue and
trousers of white flannel, and softly fluttered the supple red stuff of
Baroness Ely's blouse and her broad tie of black _mousseline de soie_,
matched with the large white and black squares of her skirt. The young
man and the young woman both had in their eyes a feverish joy in living
that harmonized with the radiance of the beautiful afternoon. How little
his smile--the tender and ready smile of a lover who is loved--resembled
the tired laughter that the jokes of Corancez had won from him two weeks
before. And she, with the faint rose that tinged her cheeks, usually so
pale, with her half-opened lips breathing in the healthful odor of the
sea and the delicate perfume of the flowers, with her calm, clear
brow--how little she resembled the Ely of the villa garden, defying,
under the stars of the softest Southern night, the impassive beauty of
nature. Seated near her loved one, how sweet nature now appeared--as
sweet as the perfume of the roses that her fingers deflowered, as
caressing as the soft breeze, as intoxicating as the free sky and water!
How indulgent she felt for the little faults of her acquaintances, which
she had condemned so bitterly the other night! For the eternal
hesitations of Andryana Bonnacorsi, for the positivism of Florence
Marsh, for the fast tone of Yvonne Chésy, she had now but a complacent
half-smile. She forgot to be irritated at the naïve and comic
importance which Chésy assumed on board the boat. In his blue yachting
cap, his little body stiff and straight, he explained the reasons of the
_Jenny's_ superiority over the _Dalilah_ and the _Albatross_, with the
technical words he had caught from Marsh, and he gave the orders for
tea:--
"Dickie is coming down as soon as we pass the other yacht," he said,
and, turning to a sailor, "John, tell the _chef_ to have everything
ready in a quarter of an hour;" then addressing Madame de Carlsberg:
"You are uncomfortable here, Baroness. I told Dickie that he should
change his chairs. He is so careless at times. Do you notice these rugs?
They are Bokharas--magnificent! He bought five at Cairo, and they would
have rotted on the lower deck if I had not discovered them and had them
brought here from the horrible place where he left them. You remember?
And these plants on deck — that is better, is it not? But has he taken
too many cocktails this morning--See how close we are passing to the
Albatross! Good evening, monseigneur."
And he saluted the Grand Duke--a kind of giant, with the broad, genial
face of a moujik--who applauded the triumph of the _Jenny_, calling out
in his strong voice:--
"Next year I'll build another that will beat you!"
"Do you know I was frightened," said Chésy to Marsh, who, according to
his promise, had descended from the bridge; "we just grazed the
_Albatross_!"
"I was very sure of the boat," Marsh continued; "but I should not have
done it with Bohun. You saw how far I kept away from him. He would have
cut our yacht in two. When the English see themselves about to be
beaten, their pride makes them crazy, and they are capable of anything."
"That is just what they say of the Americans," gayly replied Yvonne de
Chésy.
The pretty Parisienne was probably the only person in the world that the
master of the Jenny would have permitted such a pleasantry. But Corancez
had been right in what he said to Hautefeuille--when the malicious
Vicomtesse was speaking Marsh could see his daughter. So he did not take
offence at this epigram against his country, susceptible as he usually
was to any denial that in everything America "beat the Old World."
"You are attacking my poor compatriots again," he said simply. "That is
very ungrateful. All of them that I know are in love with you."
"Come, Commodore," replied the young woman; "don't try the madrigal. It
is not your specialty. But lead us down to tea, which ought to be
served, should it not, Gontran?"
"They are astonishing," Miss Marsh whispered, when her uncle and the
Chésys had started toward the stairway that led to the salon. "They act
as though they were at home."
"Don't be jealous," said Madame Bonnacorsi. "They will be so useful to
us at Genoa in occupying the terrible uncle."
"If it were only she," Florence replied; "she is amusing and such a good
girl. But he--I don't know if it is the blood of a daughter of the great
Republic, but I can't endure a nobleman who has a way of being insolent
in the rôle of a parasite and domestic."
"Chésy is simply the husband of a very pretty woman," said Madame de
Carlsberg. "Everything is permitted to those husbands on account of
their wives, and they become spoilt children. You are going down? I
shall remain on deck. Send us tea here, will you? I say us, for I shall
keep you for company," she continued, turning to Hautefeuille. "I know
Chésy. Now that the race is over he will proceed to act as the
proprietor of the yacht. Happily, I shall protect you. Sit here."
And she motioned to a chair beside her own, with that tender and
imperious grace by which a woman who loves, but is obliged to restrain
herself before others, knows how to impart all the trembling passion of
the caress she cannot give. Lovers like Pierre Hautefeuille obey these
orders in an eager, almost religious, way which makes men smile, but not
the women. They know so well that this devotion in the smallest things
is the true sign of an inward idolatry. So neither Miss Marsh nor Madame
Bonnacorsi thought of jesting at Hautefeuille's attitude. But while
retiring, with that instinctive complicity with which the most virtuous
women have for the romance of another, they said:--
"Corancez was indeed right. How he loves her!"
"Yes, he is happy to-day; but to-morrow?"
But to-morrow? He had no thought for the mysterious and dangerous morrow
of all our peaceful to-days. The _Jenny_, free of her antagonists,
continued with her rapid and cradling motion over this velvet sea. The
_Dalilah_ and the _Albatross_ were already faint in the blue distance,
where the coast also was disappearing. A few more strokes of the
engines, a few more turns of the screw, and there would be nothing
around them but the moving water, the motionless sky, and the sinking
sun. The end of a beautiful winter day in Provence is really divine
during that hour before the chill of evening has touched the air and
darkened the sea and land. Now that the other guests of the yacht had
gone down to the dining-room, it seemed as though the two lovers were
all alone in the world on a floating terrace, amid the shrubbery and the
perfume of flowers. One of the boat's servants, a kind of agile and
silent genius, had placed the small tea-table beside them, with a
complicated little apparatus of silver, on which, as well as on the cups
and plates, was the fantastic coat of arms adopted by Marsh--the arch of
a bridge over a swamp, "arch on Marsh"--this pun, in the same taste as
that in which the boat had been baptized, was written under the
scutcheon. The bridge was in or, the marsh in sable, on a field of
gules. The American cared nothing for heraldic heresies. Black, red, and
yellow were the colors of the deck awning, and this scutcheon and device
signified that his railroad, celebrated in fact for the boldness of its
viaducts, had saved him from misery, here represented by the marsh.
Naïve symbolism which would have typified even more justly the arch of
dreams thrown by the two lovers over all the mire of life. Even the
little tea-set, with its improvised coat of arms, added to this fleeting
moment a charm of intimacy, the suggestion of a home where they two
might have lived heart to heart in the uninterrupted happiness of each
other's daily presence; and it was this impression that the young man
voiced aloud after they had enjoyed their solitude for a few moments in
silence.
"How delicious is this hour," he said, "more delicious than I had ever
dreamed! Ah! if this boat belonged to us, and we could go thus on a long
voyage, you and I, to Italy, which I would not see without you, to
Greece, which gave you your beauty. How beautiful you are, and how I
love you! _Dieu_! if this hour would never end!"
"Every hour has an end," answered Ely, half shutting her eyes, which had
filled with ecstasy at the young man's impassioned words, and then, as
though to repress a tremor of the heart that was almost painful in its
tenderness, she said, with the grace and gayety of a young girl: "My old
German governess used to say, as she pointed to the eagles of Sallach,
'You must be like the birds who are happy with crumbs'; and it is true
that we find only crumbs in life.--I have sworn," she went on, "that
you, that we, will not fall into the 'terrible sorrow.'"
She emphasized the last two words, which were doubtless a tender
repetition of a phrase often spoken between them, and which had become a
part of their lovers' dialect. And playfully she turned to the table and
filled the two cups, adding:--
"Let us drink our tea wisely, and be as _gemüthlich_ as the good
_bourgeois_ of my country."
She handed one of the cups to Hautefeuille while she said this. As the
young man took it, he touched with his fingers the small and supple hand
that served him with the delight in humble indulgences so dear to women
who are really in love. His simple caress caused them to exchange one of
those looks in which two souls seem to touch, melt together, and absorb
each other by the magnetism of their desire. They paused once more, rapt
in the sense of their mutual fever so intoxicating to share amid that
atmosphere, mixed with the scent of the sea and the perfume of the
roses, with the languid palpitation of the immense waters sleeping
around them in their silence. During the two weeks that had passed since
the sudden avowal of Madame de Carlsberg they had repeated their vows of
love, they had written passionate, wild letters, and had exchanged their
souls in kisses, but they had not given themselves yet wholly to each
other. As he looked at her now on the deck of the yacht he trembled
again from head to foot to see her smile with those lips, whose fresh
and delicious warmth he still felt on his own. To see her so supple and
so young, her body quivering with all the nervousness of a creature of
fine race, recalled the passionate clasp with which he had enfolded her
in the garden of her villa two days after the first vows. She had led
him, under the pretext of a conversation, to a kind of belvedere, or
rather cloister, a double row of marble columns, overlooking the sea and
the islands. In the centre was a square space thick planted with
gigantic camellias. The ground was all strewn with blossoms, buried in
the large petals of red and rose and white fallen from the trees, and
the red, rose, and white of other flowers gleamed above amid the sombre
and lustrous foliage. It was there that he had for the second time held
her close in his arms, and again still more closely in an obscure spot
of the adorable villa of Ellenrock, at Antibes, where he had gone to
wait for her. She had come to him, in her dress of mauve, along a path
bordered with blue cineraria, violet heart's-ease, and great anemones.
The neighboring roses filled the air with a perfume like that around
them now, and sitting on the white heather, beneath the pines that
descended to a little gray-rocked cove, he rested his head upon the
heart of his dear companion.
All these memories--and others as vivid and troubling--mingled with his
present emotion and intensified it. The total unlikeness of Ely to all
the women he had met served to quiet the young man's naïve remorse for
his past experiences, and to make him forget the culpability of that
sweet hour. Ely was married, she had given herself to one man, and had
no right while he lived to give herself to a second. Although Pierre was
no longer sufficiently religious to respect marriage as a sacrament, the
imprint of his education and his memories of home were too deep, and
above all he was too loyal not to feel a repugnance for the stains and
miseries of adultery. But Ely had been careful to prevent him from
meeting the Archduke after that terrible scene, and to the lover's
imagination the Prince appeared only in the light of a despot and a
tormentor. His wife was not his wife; she was his victim. And the young
man's pity was too passionate not to overcome his scruples; all the more
since he had, for the last two weeks, found his friend in an incessant
revolt against an outrageous espionage--that of the sinister Baron von
Laubach, the aide-de-camp with the face of a Judas. And this voluntary
policeman must really have pursued Ely with a very odious surveillance
for his memory to come to her at this moment when she wished to forget
everything except this sky and sea, the swift boat, and the ecstatic
lover who was speaking by her side.
"Do you remember," he was saying, "our uneasiness three days ago, when
the sea was so rough that we thought we could not start? We had the same
idea of going up to La Croisette to see the storm. I could have thanked
you on my knees when I met you with Miss Marsh."
"And then you thought that I was angry with you," she said, "because I
passed with scarcely speaking to you. I had just caught a glimpse of
that foxlike Iago von Laubach. Ah! what a relief to know that all on
board are my friends, and incapable of perfidy! Marsh, his niece,
Andryana, are honor itself. The little Chésys are light and frivolous,
but there is not a trace of ill-nature about them. The presence of a
traitor, even when he is not feared, is enough to spoil the most
delightful moments. And this moment, ah! how I should suffer to have it
spoiled!"
"How well I understand that!" he answered, with the quick and tender
glance of a lover who is delighted to find his own ways of feeling in
the woman he loves. "I am so much like you in that; the presence of a
person whom I know to be despicable gives me a physical oppression of
the heart. The other evening at your house, when I met that Navagero of
whom Corancez had so often spoken, he poisoned my visit, although I had
with me that dear, dear letter which you had written the night before."
Then, dreamily following this train of thought, he continued: "It is
strange that every one does not feel the same about this. To some
people, and excellent ones too, a proof of human infamy is almost a joy.
I have a friend like that--Olivier du Prat, of whom I spoke to you and
whom you knew at Rome. I have never seen him so gay as when he had
proved some villainy. How he has made me suffer by that trait of his!
And he was one of the most delicate of men, with the tenderest of hearts
and finest of minds. Can you explain that?"
The name of Olivier du Prat, pronounced by that voice which had been
moving Ely to the heart--what an answer to the wish sighed by the
amorous woman that this divine moment should not be spoiled! These
simple words were enough to dissipate her enchantment, and to interrupt
her happiness with a pain so acute that she almost cried aloud. Alas!
she was but at the very beginning of her love's romance, and already
that which had been predicted by Louise Brion, her faithful and too
lucid friend, had come true--she was shut in the strange and agonizing
inferno of silence which must avoid, as the most terrible of dangers,
the solace of confession. How many times already in like moments had a
similar allusion evoked between her and Pierre the image of that other
lover! Pierre had very soon alluded lightly and gayly to his friend, and
as the Baroness had thought it best not to conceal the fact that she had
met him in Rome, he continued to recall memories of Du Prat, without
suspecting that his words entered like a knife into the poor woman's
heart. To see how much Hautefeuille loved Du Prat--with a friendship
equal to that which the latter had for him--how could she help feeling
anew the constant menace hanging over her? And then, as at the present,
she was filled with an inexpressible anguish. It was as though all the
blood in her veins had suddenly flowed out through some deep and
invisible wound. At other times it was not even necessary that the
redoubtable name should be mentioned in their conversation. It sufficed
that the young man, in the course of the intimate talks which she
encouraged as often as her social servitude permitted, should
ingenuously express his opinion on some of the love-affairs reported by
the gossips of the coast. She would then insist upon his talking in
order to measure his uncompromising morality. She would have been pained
if he had felt differently, for then he would not have been that noble
and pure conscience unspotted by life; and she suffered because he did
feel thus, and so unconsciously condemned her past. She made him open
his mind to her, and always she found at the bottom this idea, natural
to an innocent soul, that if love may be pardoned for everything,
nothing should be pardoned to caprice, and that a woman of noble heart
could not love a second time. When Hautefeuille would make some remark
like this, which revealed his absolute and naïve faith in the
singleness and uniqueness of true love, inevitably, implacably, Olivier
would reappear before the inward eye of the poor woman. Wherever they
were, in the silent patio strewn with camellia leaves, under the
murmuring pines of the Villa Ellenrock, on the field at La Napoule,
where the golf players moved amid the freshest and softest of
landscapes, all the marvellous scenery of the South would vanish,
disappear--the palms and orange trees, the ravines, the blue sky and the
luminous sea, and the man she loved. She would see nothing before her
but the cruel eyes and evil smile of her old lover at Rome. In a sudden
half hallucination she would hear him speaking to Pierre. Then all her
happy forces would suddenly be arrested. Her eyelids would quiver, her
mouth gasp for air, her features contract with pain, her breast shudder
as though pierced by a knife; and, as at present, her tender and
unconscious tormentor would ask, "What is the matter?" with an eager
solicitude that at the same time tortured and consoled her; and she
would answer, as now, with one of those little falsehoods for which true
love cannot forgive itself. For hearts of a certain depth of feeling,
complete and total sincerity is a need that is almost physical, like
hunger and thirst. What an inoffensive deception it was! And yet Ely had
once more a feeling of remorse at giving this explanation of her sudden
distress:--
"It is a chill that has come over me. The night comes so quickly in this
country, with such a sudden fall of temperature."
And while the young man was helping to envelop her in her cloak, she
said, in a tone that contrasted with the insignificance of her remark:--
"Look how the sea has changed with the sinking sun; how dark it has
grown--almost black--and what a deep blue the sky is. It is as though
all nature had suddenly been chilled. How beautiful it is yet, but a
beauty in which you feel the approach of shadows."
And, indeed, by one of those atmospheric phenomena more general in the
South than elsewhere, the radiant and almost scorching afternoon had
suddenly ended, and the evening had come abruptly in the space of a few
minutes. The _Jenny_ moved on over a sea without a wave or a ripple. The
masts, the yards, and the funnel threw long shadows across the water,
and the sun, almost at the edge of the horizon, was no longer warm
enough to dissipate the indistinct and chilly vapor that rose and rose,
already wetting with its mist drops the brass and woodwork of the deck.
And the blue of the still sea deepened into black, while the azure of
the clear sky paled and waned. Then, as the disk of the sun touched the
horizon abruptly, the immeasurable fire of the sunset burst from the sky
over the sea. The coast had disappeared, so that the passengers of the
yacht, now returned to the deck, had nothing before them but the water
and the sky, two formless immensities over which the light played in its
fairy fantasies--here spread in a sheet of tender and transparent rose,
like the petals of the eglantine; there rolling in purple waves, the
color of bright blood; there stretching like a shore of emerald and
amethyst, and farther, built into solid and colossal porticos of gold,
and this light opened with the sky, palpitated with the sea, dilated
through infinite space, and suddenly as the disk disappeared beneath the
waves, this splendor vanished as it came, leaving the sea again a bluish
black, and the sky, too, almost black, but with a bar of intense orange
on its verge. This bright line vanished in its turn. The earliest stars
began to come out, and the yacht lights to appear, illumining the dark
mass which went on, bearing into the falling night the heart of a woman
which had all day reflected the divine serenity of the bright hours, and
which now responded to the melancholy of the rapid and fading twilight.
Although she was not at all superstitious, Ely could not help feeling,
with a shudder, how this sudden invasion of the radiant day by the
sadness of evening, resembled the darkening of her inward heaven by the
evocation of her past. This analogy had given an added poignancy to her
contemplation of the tragic sunset, the battle of the day's last fire
with the shadows of night, and happily the magnificence of this
spectacle had been so overwhelming that even her light companions had
felt its solemnity. No one had spoken during the few minutes of this
enchantment in the west. Now, when the babble recommenced, she felt like
fleeing from it--fleeing even from Hautefeuille, whose presence she
feared. Moved as she was, she was afraid of breaking into tears beside
him; tears that she would not be able to explain. When he approached her
she said, "You must pay some attention to the others," and she began to
pace the deck from end to end in company with Dickie Marsh. The American
had the habit, while on board, of taking a certain amount of exercise
measured exactly by the watch. He looked at the time, then paced over a
measured distance until he had complied with his hygienic rules. "At
Marionville," he would say, "it was very simple; the blocks are each
exactly a half mile long. When you have walked eight of them, you know
you have done four miles. And your constitutional is finished." Usually,
when thus engaged in the noble duty of exercise, Marsh remained silent.
It was the time when he invented those schemes that were destined to
make him a billionaire. Ely, knowing of this peculiarity, counted upon
not exchanging ten words while walking with the potentate of
Marionville. She thought that the silent promenade would quiet her
overwrought nerves. They had paced thus for perhaps ten minutes, when
Dickie Marsh, who appeared more preoccupied than usual, suddenly
asked:--
"Does Chésy sometimes speak to you of his affairs?"
"Sometimes," answered the young woman, "as he does to everybody. You
know he has an idea that he is one of the shrewdest on the Bourse, and
he is very glad to talk about it."
"Has he told you," Marsh continued, "that he is speculating in mining
stocks?"
"Very likely. I do not listen to him."
"I heard him say so," the American said, "and just a moment ago, after
tea, and I am still upset by it. And there are not many things that can
worry me. At this moment," he continued, looking at Madame de Chésy,
who was talking with Hautefeuille, "this charming Vicomtesse Yvonne is,
beyond doubt, ruined; absolutely, radically ruined."
"That is impossible. Chésy is advised by Brion, who, I have heard, is
one of the best financiers of the day."
"Pooh!" said Dickie Marsh, "he would be swallowed in one mouthful in
Wall Street. As for the small affairs on this side of the water, he
understands them well enough. But it is just because he understands them
that his advice will ruin Chésy. It will not bore you to have me
explain how and why I am sure that a crash is coming in that famous
silver mine syndicate which you have at least heard of. All those who
buy for a rise--whom we call the bulls--will be caught. Chésy has a
fortune of $300,000. He explained his position to me; he will lose
$250,000. If it has not happened already, it will happen to-morrow."
"And you have told him all that?"
"What's the use?" the American replied. "It would only spoil his trip.
And then it will be time enough at Genoa, where he can telegraph. But
you, Baroness, will help me to do them a real service. You see that if
Brion advises Chésy to join the bulls, it is because he himself is with
the bears. That is our name for those who play for a decline. All this
is legitimate. It is a battle. Each one for himself. All the financiers
who give advice to men of society do the same, and they are right. Only
Brion has still another reason: imagine Madame de Chésy with an income
of ten thousand francs.--You understand."
"It is ignoble enough for him, that calculation," Ely said with disgust.
"But how can I help you to prevent that scoundrel from proposing to the
poor little woman to be his paid mistress, since that is certainly what
you mean?"
"Exactly," replied the American. "I wish you would say to her, not this
evening, or to-morrow, but when things have turned the way I know they
will. 'You have need of some one to help you out of your embarrassment?
Remember Dickie Marsh, of Marionville.' I would tell her myself. But she
would think me like Brion, amorous of her, and offering money for that.
These Frenchwomen are very clever, but there is one thing they will
never understand; that is that a man may not be thinking with them about
the 'little crime,' as they call it themselves. That is the fault of the
men of this country. All Europe is rotten to the core. If you speak to
her, there will be a third person between her and me, and she will know
very well that I have another reason."
He paused. He had so often explained to Madame de Carlsberg the
resemblance between Yvonne de Chésy and his dead daughter, which moved
him so strongly, that she was not deceived in regard to the secret
reason of his strange interest and stranger proposition. There was in
this business man, with all his colossal schemes, a touch of romanticism
almost fantastic, and so singular that Ely did not doubt his sincerity,
nor even wonder at it. The thought of seeing that pretty and charming
face, sister to the one he had loved so much, soiled by the vile lust of
a Brion, or some other _entreteneur_ of impoverished women of society,
filled this man with horror, and, like a genuine Yankee, he employed the
most practical means of preventing this sacrilege. Neither was Ely
surprised at the inconsistency of Marsh's conscience when the speculator
found Brion's rascality in money affairs very natural, while the
Anglo-Saxon was revolted at the mere thought of a love-affair. No, it
was not astonishment that Madame de Carlsberg felt at this unexpected
confidence. Troubled as she was by her own unhappiness, she felt a new
thrill of sadness. While she and Marsh paced from one end of the boat to
the other during this conversation, she could hear Yvonne de Chésy
laughing gayly with Hautefeuille. For this child, too, the day had been
delicious, and yet misfortune was approaching her, from out of the
bottomless gulf of destiny. This impression was so intense that, after
leaving Marsh, Ely went instinctively to the young woman, and kissed her
tenderly. And she, laughing, answered:--
"That is good of you. But you have been so good to me ever since you
discovered me. It took you long enough."
"What do you mean?" asked the Baroness.
"That you did not at first suspect that there was a gallant little man
hidden in your crazy Yvonne! Pierre's sister knows it well, and always
has."
As the pretty and heedless young woman made this profession of faith,
her clear eyes revealed a conscience so good in spite of her fast tone,
that Ely felt her heart still more oppressed. The night had come, and
the first bell for dinner had sounded. The three lights, white, green,
and red, shone now like precious stones on the port, the starboard, and
the foremast. Ely felt an arm pass under hers. It was Andryana
Bonnacorsi who said:--
"It is too bad that we must go down to dress; it would be so pleasant to
spend the whole night here."
"Would it not?" replied the Baroness, murmuring to herself, "She at
least is happy." Then aloud: "It is the farewell dinner to your
widowhood; you must look beautiful. But you seem to be worried."
"I am thinking of my brother," said the Italian woman, "and the thought
of him weighs upon me like remorse. And then, I think also of Corancez.
He is a year younger than I. That is nothing to-day, but in ten years?"
"She too feels the menace of the future," thought Ely, a quarter of an
hour later, while her maid was arranging her hair in the chamber of
honor that had been given her next to that of the dead girl. "Marsh is
disconsolate to see Chésy confronted by a terrible disaster. Andryana
is preparing for marriage, haunted by remorse and fear. Florence is
uncertain of ever being able to wed the man she loves. And Hautefeuille
and I, with a phantom between us, which he does not see, but which I see
so clearly, and which to-morrow, or the day after, in a week or two,
will be a living man, who will see us, whom I shall see, and who will
speak,--will speak to him."
A prey to this growing melancholy, the young woman took her seat at the
dinner table, laden with the costly flowers that delight the
ostentatious Americans. Incomparable orchids spread over the table a
carpet of the softest hues. Other orchids were wreathed about the
candles and the electric chandelier suspended from the varnished
ceiling; and amid this prodigality of fantastic corollas, gleamed a set
of goldware of the time of Louis XIV.--the historical personage who was
second only to Napoleon in the estimation of this Ohio democrat, who
evinced, on this point, as on so many others, one of the most
astonishing inconsistencies of his compatriots. And the bright tones of
the wainscoting, the precision of the service, the delicacy of the food
and wine, the brilliant toilets of the women, made this a setting for
the consummation of refinement, with the sea visible through the open
portholes, still motionless, and now touched by the rays of the crescent
moon. Marsh had ordered the boat's speed to be slackened, so that the
vibration of the screw was scarcely noticeable in the dining-room. The
hour was really so exquisite, that the guests gradually yielded to the
charm, the master of the boat first of all. He had placed Madame de
Carlsberg in front of him, between Chésy and Hautefeuille, in order to
have Madame de Chésy on his left, and in his tones and looks, as he
talked to her, there was an amused and tender affection, a protecting
indulgence, and an inexpressible depth of reverie. Resolved to save her
from the danger which Chésy's confidences had suddenly revealed, it was
as though he were going to do something more for the other, for the dead
one whose image was sleeping in the rear room. He laughed at the follies
of Yvonne, delicious in her pink dress, a little excited by the dry
champagne whose golden foam sparkled in the glass,--a gold the color of
her hair,--and still more excited by the sense of pleasing--the most
dangerous and the only intoxication that women thoroughly enjoy. Miss
Marsh, all in blue, seated between her and Chésy, listened to his
discourse upon hunting, the one subject on which this gentleman was well
informed, with the profound attention of an American girl who is
gathering new information. Andryana Bonnacorsi was silent, but cheered
by the genial surroundings, her tender blue eyes, the color of the
turquoise in her magnificent white corsage, smiled musingly. She forgot
the dangerous character of her brother, and the future infidelity of her
_fiancé_, to think of nothing but the caressing eyes, the voluptuous
lips, and the alluring grace of the young man whose wife she would be in
a few hours. Nor could the Baroness Ely resist the contagion that
floated in this atmosphere. Once more the loved one was near her and all
her own. In his youthful eyes she could see such respect and love,
timidity and desire. He spoke to her in words that all could hear, but
with a trembling in his voice which she alone could understand. She
began by replying to him, then she also grew silent. A great wave of
passion rose within her, drowning all other thoughts. Her fears of the
future, her remorse for the past--all was forgotten in the presence of
Pierre, whom she could see with his heart beating, his breast agitated,
alive and quivering beside her. How often he was thus to see her in
memory, and pardon the fearful suffering she had caused him for the sake
of her beauty at that moment! Ah! divine, divine beauty! Her eyes were
drowned in languorous ecstasy. Her open lips breathed in the air as
though half dying. The admirable curve of her neck rose with such grace
above her low-cut dress of black,--a black that gave a richer gleam to
the whiteness of her flower-soft skin; and in the simple folds of her
hair, crowning her noble head, burned a single stone, a ruby, red and
warm as a drop of blood.
How often he was to remember her thus, and as she appeared to him when
later she leaned on the railing of the deck and watched the water that
murmured, dashed, and sighed in the darkness, and the sky and the silent
innumerable stars; and then looked at him and said: "I love you. Ah! how
I love you." They had exchanged no promises. And yet, as surely as the
sea and sky were there around them he knew that the hour had come, and
that this night, this sky and sea, were the mystic and solemn witnesses
of their secret betrothal! Nothing was audible in the calm night but the
peaceful and monotonous respiration of the moving boat and the rhythmic
splash of the sea--the caressing sea, their accomplice, who enchanted
and rocked them in its gentle waves--while the tempest waited.