OLIVIER DU PRAT
The second telegram arrived, and on the following Monday, at two
o'clock, Pierre Hautefeuille was at the station at Cannes, awaiting the
arrival of the express. It was the train he had taken to come from Paris
in November, while still suffering from the attack of pleurisy that had
been nearly fatal to him. Any one who had seen him getting out of the
train on that November afternoon, thin, pale, shivering in spite of his
furs, would never have recognized the invalid, the feverish
convalescent, in the handsome young fellow who crossed the track four
months later, supple and erect, rosy-cheeked and smiling, and with his
eyes lit up with a happy reflection that brightened all his visage.
Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, in that period of life
when the vital principle is ripe and intact, the most timid of men have
at times a keen joy in life which betrays itself in every gesture. It is
a sign that they love, that they are beloved, that all around smiles
upon their love. And the sensation that no obstacle stands between them
and their passions fills them to overflowing with happiness. Their very
physique seems to be transfigured, to be exalted. They have a different
bearing, another look, a prouder attitude. It is as though some magnetic
current emanated from happy lovers, that clothes them with a momentary
beauty intelligible to every woman. They recognize at once the
"enraptured lover," and hate him or sympathize with him, according as
they are envious or indulgent, prosaic or romantic.
To this latter class belonged the two people whom Hautefeuille met face
to face on the little central platform that serves as a sort of
waiting-place at the Cannes station. One of these was Yvonne de Chésy,
accompanied by her husband and Horace Brion. The other was the Marchesa
Bonnacorsi,--as she still called herself,--escorted by her brother,
Navagero. To reach them, the young man had to work his way through the
fashionable crowd gathered there, as is usual at this hour, awaiting the
train that is to carry them to Monte Carlo. The comments exchanged
between the two women and their escorts during the few minutes that this
operation took proved once more that the pettiness of malignant jealousy
is not the characteristic of the gentler sex solely.
"Hallo! there is Hautefeuille!" said Madame de Chésy. "How pleased his
sister will be to see him so wonderfully changed!--Don't you think he is
a very handsome young fellow?"
"Yes, very handsome," assented the Venetian, "and the prettiest part of
it is that he does not seem to be aware of it."
"He won't keep that quality long," said Brion. "It is 'Hautefeuille
here, 'Hautefeuille' there! You hear of nothing but Hautefeuille at your
house," addressing Yvonne, "at Madame Bonnacorsi's, at Madame de
Carlsberg's. He was simply a good, little, inoffensive, insignificant
youngster. You are going to make him frightfully conceited."
"Without considering that he will compromise one of you sooner or later
if it continues," said Navagero, glancing at his sister.
Since the trip to Genoa the artful Italian had noticed an unusual air
about Andryana and had been seeking the motive of it, but in the wrong
direction.
"Ah! That's it, is it?" cried Yvonne, laughingly. "Well, just to punish
you I am going to ask him to come into our compartment, and shall invite
him to dine with us at Monte Carlo, so that he can take charge of
Gontran--who needs some one to look after him. I say, Pierre," she went
on, addressing the young man who was now standing before her, "I attach
you to my service for the afternoon and evening.--You will report it to
me if my lord and master loses more than one hundred louis.--He lost a
thousand the day before yesterday at _trente-et-quarante_. Two affairs
like that every week throughout the winter would be a nice income.--I
shall have to begin thinking of how I am to earn the living expenses."
Chésy did not reply. He tugged at his mustache nervously, shrugging his
shoulders. But his features contracted with a forced smile that was very
different from the one his wife's witty sallies usually provoked. The
catastrophe Dickie Marsh had predicted was slowly drawing near, and the
unfortunate fellow was childish enough to try to offset the imminent
disaster by risking the little means he had left upon the green cloth at
Monte Carlo. Heedless to say, his wife was entirely ignorant of the
truth. Thus Yvonne's remark was singularly cruel for him, and for her,
uttered as it was, in the presence of Brion, the professional banker of
needy _mondaines_. Hautefeuille, who had been enlightened by his
conversations with Corancez and Madame de Carlsberg, felt the irony
hidden in the pretty little woman's conversation at such a moment, and
said:--
"I am not going to Monte Carlo. I am simply waiting for one of my
friends--for Olivier du Prat--whom, I think, you know."
"What! Olivier! Why, he is an old sweetheart of mine, when I was staying
with your sister.--Yes, I was crazy about him for at least a fortnight.
Bring him along then and invite him to dine with us this evening. You
can take the five o'clock train."
"But he is married."
"Well, invite his wife as well," cried the giddy creature, gayly. "Come,
Andryana, persuade him. You have more power over him than I have."
Continuing her teasing like a spoilt child, she took Navagero's arm, and
turning away, nothing amused her more than to see the expression on the
Italian's face when he saw his sister in conversation with some one of
whom he was suspicious. She was ignorant of the service she was
rendering her friend, who profited by the few instants of her brother's
absence to say to Pierre:--
"He also arrives by this train. I only came down to see him. Will you
tell him that I am going to meet Florence upon the _Jenny_ to-morrow
morning at eleven o'clock? And, above all, don't be annoyed if Alvise is
not very polite. He has got the idea that you are paying me
attentions.--But here is the train."
The locomotive issued out of the deep cutting that leads into Cannes,
and Pierre saw Corancez's happy profile almost immediately. He jumped
out before the train stopped, and, embracing Hautefeuille, said loudly,
so that his wife could hear:--
"How good of you to come to meet me!" adding in a whisper, "Try to get
my brother-in-law away for a minute."
"I cannot," replied Hautefeuille; "I am expecting Olivier du Prat. Did
you not see him in the train? Ah! I see him."
He left the Provençal's side without troubling himself further about
this new act in the _matrimonio segreto_ which was being played upon the
station platform, and ran toward a young man standing upon the step of
the train looking at him with a tender, happy smile. Although Olivier du
Prat was only the same age as Pierre, he looked several years older, so
stern and strongly marked was his bronzed, emaciated face. His features
were so irregular and striking that it was impossible to forget them.
His black eyes, of a humid, velvety black, the whiteness of his regular
teeth, his thick, flowing hair, gave a sort of animal grace to his
physiognomy which counterbalanced the bitterness that seemed to be
expressed in his mouth, his forehead, and, above all, his hollow cheeks.
Without being tall, his arms and shoulders denoted great strength.
Hardly had he stepped down from the carriage when he embraced
Hautefeuille with a fervor that almost brought the happy tears to his
eyes, and the two friends remained looking at each other for a few
seconds, both forgetting to offer a helping hand to a young woman who
was, in her turn, standing upon the high step awaiting with the most
complete impassibility until one of the young men should think about
her. Madame Olivier du Prat was a mere child of about twenty years of
age, very pretty, very refined, and with a delicacy in her beauty that
was almost doll-like and pretty. Her hair was of a golden color that was
cold through its very lightness. In her blue eyes there was, at this
moment, that indefinable impenetrable expression that can be seen on the
faces of most young wives before the friends of their husband's youth.
Did she feel sympathy or antipathy, confidence or suspicion, for
Olivier's dearest friend, who had been her husband's groomsman at their
marriage? Nothing could be gathered from her greeting when the young man
came and excused himself for not having welcomed her before and assisted
her to the platform. She hardly rested the tips of her fingers upon the
hand that Pierre held out to her. But this might only be a natural
shyness, as the remark she made when he asked her about the journey
might express a natural desire to rest:--
"We had a very pleasant journey," she said, "but after such a long
absence one longs to be at home again."
Yes, the remark was a natural one. But, uttered by the lips of the
slender, chilly little wife, it also signified: "My husband wished to
come and see you and I could not prevent him. But don't be mistaken, I
am very dissatisfied about it." At any rate, this was the involuntary
construction Hautefeuille placed upon the words in his inner
consciousness. Thus he was grateful to Corancez when he approached and
spared him the difficulty of replying. The train started off again,
leaving the road clear for the passengers, and the Southerner walked up,
holding out his hand and smiling.
"How do you do, Olivier?--You don't remember me?--I am Corancez. We
studied rhetoric together. If Pierre had only told me that you were in
the train, we could have travelled together and had a good gossip about
old times. You are looking splendidly, just as you did at twenty. Will
you present me to Madame du Prat?"
"As a matter of fact, I did not recognize him," Olivier said a few
minutes later, when they were in the carriage that was rolling toward
the Hôtel des Palmes. "And yet he has not changed. He is the type of
the Southerner, all familiarity that is intolerable when it is real and
is ignoble when it is affected. Among all the detestable things in our
country--and there is a good assortment — the most detestable is the
'old schoolfellow.' Because he has been a convict with you in one of
those prisons called French colleges, he calls you by your Christian
name, he addresses you as though you were his dearest friend. Do you see
Corancez often?"
"He seems to think a great deal of you, Monsieur' Hautefeuille," said
the young wife. "He embraced you the instant he was on the platform."
"He is rather demonstrative," replied Pierre, "but he is really a very
amiable fellow, and has been very useful to me."
"That surprises me," said Olivier. "But how is it you never spoke to me
of him in your letters? I should have been more communicative."
This little conversation was also unimportant. But it was sufficient to
establish that feeling of awkwardness that is often sufficient to
destroy the joy felt in the most dearly desired meeting. Hautefeuille
divined there was a little reproach in the remark made by his friend
about his letters, and he felt again the sensation, of hostility in
Madame du Prat's observation. He became silent. The carriage was
ascending the network of roads that he had traversed with Corancez upon
the morning of their visit to the Jenny, and the white silhouette of the
Villa Helmholtz stood out upon the left beyond the silvery foliage of
the olive trees. His mistress's image reappeared in the mind of the
young man with the most vivid intensity. He could not help making a
comparison between his dear beloved Ely and his wife's friend. The
little Frenchwoman seated by his side, a little constrained and stiff in
spite of her elegant correctness, suddenly appeared to him so poor, so
characterless, such a nullity, so uninteresting beside the supple,
voluptuous image of the foreigner.
Berthe du Prat was the embodiment of the quiet and somewhat negative
distinction that stamps the educated Parisienne (for the species
exists). Her travelling costume was the work of a famous _costumier_,
but she had been so careful to shun the merest approach to eccentricity
that it was completely impersonal. She was certainly pretty with the
fragile, delicate prettiness of a Dresden china figure. But her visage
was so well under control, her lips so close pressed, her eyes so devoid
of expression, that her charming physiognomy did not provoke the least
desire to know what sort of a soul it hid. It was so apparent that it
would only be made up of accepted ideas, of conventional sentiments, of
perfectly irreproachable desires. This is the sort of woman that men who
have seen much life ordinarily seek for wives. After having corrupted
his imagination in too many cases of irregularity, Olivier had naturally
married the child whose beauty flattered his pride and whose
irreproachable conduct was a guarantee against any cause for jealousy.
It was not less natural that Pierre, educated in the midst of
conventional ideas, and who had suffered from the prejudices of his
family, should remark in the composition of the young woman her very
evident poverty of human sympathy, as well as all that was mean and
mediocre, particularly by comparison.
Impressions of this kind quickly produced that shrinking, that retreat
of the soul, that we call by a big word, convenient by reason of its
very mystery; that is, antipathy. Pierre had not felt this antipathy at
the first meeting with Mademoiselle Berthe Lyonnet, now Madame du Prat.
And yet she ought to have displeased him still more, among her original
surroundings, between her father, the most narrow-minded of solicitors,
and her mother, a veritable dowager of the better class of Parisian
middle life. But at that time the romantic side of the young man was as
yet dormant. The intoxication of love had awakened him, and he was now
sensitive to shades of feminine nature that had been hidden from him
before. Being too little accustomed to analyzing himself to recognize
how the past few weeks had modified his original ideas, he explained the
sentiment of dislike that he felt for Berthe du Prat by this simple
reason, one that helps us to justify all our ignorance on the subject of
another's character.
"What is it that is changed in her?--She was so charming when she was
married! And now she is quite a different woman.--Olivier has also
changed. He used to be so tender, so loving, so gay! And now he is quite
indifferent, almost melancholy. What has happened?--Can it be that he is
not happy?"
The carriage stopped before the Hôtel des Palmes just as this idea took
shape in Pierre's mind with implacable clearness. He kept repeating the
question while watching Olivier and his wife in the vestibule. They
walked about, chatting of the orders to be given about the luggage and
to the chambermaid. Their very step was so out of harmony, so different,
that by itself it opened up a vista of secret divorce between the two.
It is in such minute, in the instinctive fusion, the unison in the
gesture of both, that the inner sympathy animating two lovers, or
husband and wife, must be sought. Olivier and his wife walked out of
step metaphorically, for expressions have to be created to characterize
the shades of feeling that can neither be defined nor analyzed, but
which are attested by indisputable evidence. And what a world of
evidence was contained in a remark made by Du Prat, when the hotel clerk
showed him the rooms that had been kept for him. The suite was composed
of a large room with a big bed, two _cabinets de toilette_, one of which
was huge, and a drawing-room.
"But where are you going to put my bed?" he asked. "This dressing-room
is very little."
"I have another suite with a salon and two contiguous bedrooms," said
the clerk; "but it is on the fourth floor."
"That doesn't matter," replied Du Prat.
He and his wife went up in the elevator without even glancing at the
beautiful flowers with which Pierre had embellished the vases. He had
beautified the conjugal chamber of Olivier and Berthe in the way he
would have liked the room to be decorated which he would have shared
with Ely. Left alone breathing the voluptuous aroma of mimosa mingled
with roses and narcissus, he looked through the window across the clear
afternoon landscape, the Esterels, the sea, and the islands. The little
sunny chamber, quiet and attractive, was a veritable home for kisses
with such perfumes and such a view. And yet Olivier's first idea had
been to go and seek two separate rooms! This little fact added to the
other remarks, and, above all, to his involuntary, intuitive
conclusions, made Hautefeuille become meditative. A comparison between
the passionate joy of his sweet romance and the strange coldness of this
young household again arose in his mind. He recalled the first night of
real love, that night in heavenly intimacy on the yacht. He remembered
the second night, the one Ely and he had passed at Genoa. How sweet it
had been to slumber a brief moment, his head resting upon the bosom of
his beloved mistress. He thought of the very preceding evening when Ely
had yielded to his supplications to allow him to visit her that night at
the Villa Helmholtz, and he had glided into the garden by means of an
unprotected slope. At the hothouse he found the door open with his
mistress awaiting him. She had taken him to her room by a spiral
staircase which led to the little salon and which only she used. Ah!
What passionate kisses they had exchanged under the influence of the
double emotions of Love and Danger! This time he left the room with
despair and heartburning. He had returned alone, along the deserted
roads, under the stars, dreaming of flight with her, with his beloved,
of flight to some distant spot, to live with her forever, husband living
with his wife! Could it be that Olivier had not the same sentiments
toward his young wife; that he could forego that right to rest upon her
adored heart all the night and every night? Could he forego that
precious right, the most precious of all, of passing all the night and
every night, half the year to the end of the year, half a lifetime to
the end of life, with her pressed close to him? Could he renounce the
ecstasy of her presence when, with her dress, the woman had put off her
social existence to become once again the simple, true being, beautified
only with her youth, with her love, to become only the confiding,
tender, all-renouncing creature that no other sees?
But if they loved each other so little after so short a married life,
had he ever really loved her? And if he had never really loved her, why
had he married her?--Pierre had got to this point in his reflections
when he was abruptly aroused by a hand being laid upon his shoulder.
Olivier was again standing before him, this time alone.
"Well," he said, "I have arranged everything. The rooms are rather high,
but the view is all the more beautiful. Have you anything to do just
now? Suppose we go for a walk."
"How about Madame du Prat?" asked Hautefeuille.
"We must give her time to get settled," replied Olivier, "and I admit
that I am very glad to be alone with you for a few minutes. One can only
talk when there are two. By one I mean 'us.'--If you only knew how glad
I am to be with you again!"
"My dear Olivier!" cried Pierre, deeply moved by the sincere accent of
the remark.
They took each other's hands and their glances met, as at the station.
No word was spoken. In the Fioretti of St. Francis it is related how St.
Louis one day, disguised as a pilgrim, came and knocked at the door of
the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Another saint, named Egidio,
opened the door and recognized him. The king and the monk kneeled, the
one before the other, and then separated without speaking. "I read his
heart," said Egidio, "and he read mine." The beautiful legend is the
symbol of the meeting of friends such as the two young people. When two
men who know each other, who have loved each other since infancy, as
Pierre and Olivier did, meet face to face again, they have no need of
protestation, no need of fresh assurances of their reciprocal
faithfulness, esteem, confidence, respect, devotion; all the noble
virtues of male affection need no words to explain them. They shine and
glow, their mere presence sufficing, like a pure and steady flame. Once
again the two friends felt that they could count upon each other.--Once
more they felt how closely they were united with the bonds of fraternal
love.
"So you were good enough to think of putting flowers in the rooms to
welcome us?" said Olivier, taking his friend's arm. "I will just give
orders for them to be taken up to our apartments.--Let us go now.--Not
to the Croisette, eh?--If it is like what it used to be when I stayed
here before, it must be intolerable. Cannes was a real 'Snobopolis' at
that time, with its army of princes and prince worshippers!--I remember
some lovely spots between California and Vallauris, where the scenery is
almost wild, where there are big forests of pines and of oaks--with none
of those grotesque feather brushes they call palms, which I hate."
They were by this time leaving the hotel garden, and Du Prat pointed, as
he spoke, to the alley of trees that gave its name to the fashionable
caravansary. His friend began to laugh, as he replied:--
"Don't throw too much sepia over the gardens of poor Cannes. They are
very excellent hotbeds for an invalid! I know something about it."
This was an allusion to an old joke that Pierre had often made in their
youth when he would liken the wave of bitterness that seemed to sweep
over Olivier in his evil moments to the jet of black liquid projected by
the cuttlefish to hide its whereabouts. Olivier also laughed at the
memories the souvenir recalled. But he continued:--
"I don't recognize you in your present state. You fraternize with
Corancez, you the irreconcilable! You, the master of Chaméane, love
these paltry gardens, with their lawns that they turn up in spring, with
their colored metallic trees and with their imitation verdure!--I prefer
that."
And he pointed, as he spoke, to the turning of the road, where the
mountain showed itself covered with a fleece of dark pines and light
larch trees. At its foot the line of villas from Cannes to Golfe Juan
continued for a little distance and then ceased, leaving nothing upon
the mountain side right up to the peak but a growth of primitive forest.
To the right spread the sea, deserted, unbroken by even a single sail.
The sense of isolation was so complete that for a moment, glancing from
the verdant mountain to the shimmering sea, the illusion of what the
landscape must have been before it had become a fashionable
wintering-place was startlingly complete.
The two young men walked on for a few hundred yards further and plunged
into mid-forest. The red trunks of the pines were now growing so thickly
around them that the azure brilliancy of the waves could only be seen
fitfully. The black foliage above their heads was outlined against the
open sky with singular distinctness. The refreshing, penetrating odor of
resin, mingled at intervals with the delicate perfume of a large,
flowing mimosa, enveloped them in a balmy atmosphere.
Olivier surveyed the forest with its northern aspect with all the
pleasure of a traveller returning from the East, tired of sandy
horizons, weary of that monotonous, implacably burnished nature, and who
feels a keen joy at the sight of a variegated vegetation and in the
multitudinous colors of the European landscape.
Hautefeuille, for his part, looked at Olivier. Disquieted to the verge
of anxiety by the enigma of a marriage that he had formerly accepted
without remark, he began to study the changing shades of thought, grave
and gay, that flitted across his friend's candid physiognomy. Olivier
was plainly more at ease in the absence of his wife. But he retained the
expression of scorn in his eyes and the bitter curve on his lips that
his friend knew so well. These signs were the invariable forerunners of
one of those acrimonious fits of which Madame de Carlsberg had told
Madame Brion. Pierre had always suffered for his friend when these
crises attacked Olivier, and when he began to speak about himself and
about life in a tone of cruel scorn that disclosed an abnormal state of
cynical disillusion, he suffered doubly to-day; for his heart was
unusually sensitive by reason of the love that filled it. What would his
suffering have been could he have understood the entire significance of
the remarks in which his companion's melancholy sought relief!
"It is strange," Olivier began musingly, "how complete a presentiment of
life we have while still very young! I remember, as clearly as though it
were this very moment, a walk we took together in Auvergne.--I am sure
you do not recall it. We had returned to Chaméane from La Varenne,
during the vacation after our third year. I had spent a fortnight with
your mother, and upon the morrow I was to return to that abominable
rascal, my guardian. It was in September. The sky was as soft as it is
to-day, and the atmosphere was as transparent. We sat down at the foot
of a larch for a few minutes' rest. I could see you before me. I saw the
sturdy tree, the lovely forest, the glorious sky. All at once I felt a
nameless languor, a sickly yearning for death. The idea suddenly came
over me that life held nothing better for me, that I need expect
nothing.--What caused such an idea? Whence did it come, for I was only
sixteen then?--Even now I cannot explain it. But I shall never forget
the intense suffering that wrung my soul that mild afternoon under the
branches of the huge tree, with you by my side. It was as though I felt
in advance all the misery, all the vanity, all the disasters of my
life."
"You have no right to speak in that way," said Hautefeuille. "What
miseries have you? What failures? What disasters?--You are thirty-two.
You are young. You are strong. Everything has smiled upon you. You have
been lucky in fortune, in your career,--in your marriage. You have an
income of eighty thousand a year. You are going to be First Secretary.
You have a charming wife--and a friend from Monomotapa," he added
laughingly.
Olivier's deep sigh pained him keenly. He felt all the melancholy that
had prompted his outbreak, which to others would have seemed singularly
exaggerated! And, as he had often done before, he combated it with a
little commonplace raillery. It was rare that Du Prat, with his
delicate, critical turn of mind, sensitive to the least lack of good
taste, did not also change his mood when his friend spoke in such a way.
But this time the weight upon his heart was too heavy. He continued in a
duller, more hopeless tone:--
"Everything has smiled upon me?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "And yet
it seems so when one makes up the account with words.--But in reality,
at thirty-two youth is over, the real, the only youth is
finished.--Health and good fortune still preserve you from a few
worries, but for how long?--They are not additional happinesses.--As to
my career.--Don't let us speak on that idiotic subject.--And my
marriage?"
He paused for a second as though he recoiled from the confidence he had
been about to make. Then with a bitterness in his voice that made Pierre
shudder, for it revealed an interior abscess that was full to bursting
with an evil, malignant substance:--
"My marriage? Well, it is a failure like all the rest, a frightful,
sinister failure.--But," he added, shaking his head, "what does it
matter, either that or anything else?"
And he went on while Pierre listened without further interruption:--
"Did you never wonder what decided me to marry? You thought, I suppose,
like everybody else, that I was tired of a solitary life, and that I
wanted to settle down, that I had met a match that fulfilled all the
conditions requisite for a happy alliance. Nothing was lacking. There
was a good dowry, an honorable name, a pretty, well-educated girl. And
you thought the marriage the most natural thing in the world. I don't
wonder at it. It was simply an illustration of ordinary ideas. We are
the slaves of custom without even knowing it. We ask why so-and-so has
not married like every one else. But we never think of asking why
so-and-so has married like every one else when he is not every one
else.--Besides, you did not know, you could not know, what bitter
experiences had brought me to that point.--We have always respected each
other in our confidences, my dear Pierre. That is why our friendship has
remained so noble, so rare, something so different from the loathsome
companionship that most men designate by the name. I never spoke to you
about my mistresses, about my loves. I never sought to hear of yours.
Such vilenesses, thank God, have always remained outside our affection."
"Stop," broke in Hautefeuille, hurriedly, "don't sully your souvenirs in
that way. I don't know them, but they must be sacred. If I have never
questioned you about the secrets of your sentiments, my dear Olivier, it
is through respect for them and not through any respect for our
friendship.--Our affection would not have been limited by association
with a true, deep love. Do not calumniate yourself. Do not tell me that
you have never loved truly and deeply, and do not blaspheme."
"True love!" interrupted Olivier, with singular irony. "I don't even
know what the two words taken together mean. I have had more than one
mistress. And, when I think of them, they all represent wild desire,
followed by deeper disgust; bitter sensuality, saturated with jealousy,
much falsehood understood, much falsehood uttered, and not an emotion,
not one, do you understand? Not one that I would wish to recall, not a
happiness, not a noble action, not a satisfaction! Whose fault is it? Is
it due to the women I have met or to myself, to their vileness or to my
poverty of heart?--I cannot say."
"The heart is not poor," interrupted Hautefeuille, with just as much
earnestness, "in him who has been the friend that you have been to me."
"I have been that friend to you because you are yourself, my dear
Pierre," replied Olivier, in a tone of absolute sincerity. "Besides, the
senses have no place in friendship. They have a big one in love, and my
senses are cruel. I have always suffered from evil desires, from wicked
voluptuousness. And I cannot tell you what leaven of ferocity has worked
in the deepest depths of my soul every time that my desires have been
strongly aroused.--I do not justify myself. I do not explain the
mystery. It exists, that is all. And all my _liaisons_, from the first
to the last, have been poisoned by this strange, fermenting mixture of
hatred."
"Yes," he went on, "from the first to the last.--Above all, the
last!--It was at Rome, two years ago. If ever I thought I could love it
was at that time. In that unique city I met a woman, herself unique,
different from the others, with so much unflinching courage in her mind,
so much charm in her heart, without any meanness, without any smallness,
and beautiful!--Ah! so beautiful!--And then our pride clashed and
wounded us both. She had had lovers before me.--One at least, whom I was
sure about.--He was a Russian, and had been killed at Plevna. I knew she
had loved him. And although he was no more, that unreasoning jealousy,
the unjust, inexpressible jealousy of the dead, made me cruel toward the
unhappy woman, even before our first rendezvous, from our first
kisses!--I treated her brutally.--She was proud and coquettish. She
avenged herself for my cruelty. She accepted another lover without
dismissing me--or I thought she did, which amounts to the same
thing.--In any case she made me suffer so horribly that I left her, the
first. I left her abruptly one day without even saying farewell,
swearing that never again would I seek satisfaction in that way.
"I was at the middle of my life. From the passionate experiences I had
tasted, all that remained to me was such a poverty of sentiment, such a
singular interior distortion, if I may so explain myself, such a
terrible weariness of my mode of life, that I made a sudden resolution
to change it, certain that nothing would be, nothing could be,
worse.--There are marriages of calculation, of sentiment, of
convenience, of reason. I made a marriage of weariness.--I don't think
that such cases are rare. But it is much more rare for one to admit
having made such a marriage. I admit it.--I never had but one
originality. I was never hypocritical with myself. I hope to die without
having lost the quality.--There you have my story."
"And yet you seemed to love your _fiancée_," said Pierre. "If you had
not loved her, or if you had not thought you loved her, you, the
honorable friend, whom I know so well, would never have linked your life
with hers."
"I did not love her," replied Olivier. "I never thought I loved her. I
hoped to love her. I told myself that I should feel what I had never
felt at the contact of this soul so different, so new, so fresh, and in
a life that resembled my past so little. Yes, once again I hoped and
tried to feel." He accentuated the words with singular energy. "The real
evil of this twilight of the century is the obstinate headstrong
research of emotion. That malady I have.--I said to myself, to soothe my
conscience: 'If I do not marry this girl, another will. She will be
swept off by one of those countless rascals that flourish upon the Paris
boulevards and one who is only hungry for her dowry. I shall not be a
worse husband than such a one.'--And then I hoped for children, for a
son.--Even that would not stir my heart now, I believe. The experiment
has been made. Six months have been enough. My wife does not love me. I
do not love, I never shall love, my wife.--There is the whole
account.--But you are right. Honor still remains, and I will keep my
word to the best of my ability."
He passed his hand before his eyes and across his brow, as though to
drive away the hideous ideas that he had just evoked with such brutal
frankness, and went on more calmly:--
"I don't know why I should sadden you with my nervousness in the first
moments of our meeting.--Yes, I do know.--It is the fault of this
forest, of the color of the sky, of the souvenir of sixteen years ago,
a souvenir so exact that it is a veritable obsession. However, it is
finished. Don't speak; don't console me. The bitter pill has to be
swallowed without a word."
Then, with a smile, once again tender and open, he said:--
"Let us talk about yourself. What are you doing here? How are you? I see
from your face that the South has cured you. But upon these shores,
where the sun does you good, the weariness of life does you so much
harm, that it is more than compensated for."
"But I assure you I am not weary, not the least in the world!" replied
Pierre.
He felt that Olivier could not, that he ought not to, speak any more
intimately about his married life. His heart was torn by the confidences
he had just been listening to, and he could only wait until the wounds
which had been so suddenly exposed to his view were less irritated, more
healed. There was nothing left for him to do other than to give way to
his friend's capricious curiosity. Besides, if Du Prat was going to stay
at Cannes for any length of time, he must be prepared to see him going
about and paying visits. He, therefore, continued:--
"What do I do?--Really, I hardly know. I simply go on living.--I go out
rather less than ordinarily. You have not yet felt the charm of Cannes,
for you stayed here too short a time. It is a town of little circles.
You must be in one or two to feel the sweetness of this place. I have
been lucky enough to fall into the most agreeable of all.--Tennis, golf,
five o'clock teas, dinners here and there, and you have the springtime
upon you before you have even noticed that August has ended. And then
there is yachting.--When I received your telegram from Cairo, I was at
Genoa making a cruise on board an American's yacht. I will introduce you
to him. His name is Marsh. He is very original, and will amuse you."
"I doubt it very much," replied Olivier. "I don't get along very well
with the Americans. The useless energy of the race tires me even to
think of. And what a lot of them there is!--What numbers I saw in Cairo,
or on the Nile, men and women, all rich, all healthy, all active, all
intelligent, observing everything, understanding everything, knowing
everything, digesting everything!--And all had gone, were going, or were
going again round the world. They seemed to me to be a moral
representation of those mountebanks one seeks at the fairs, who swallow
a raw fowl, a shoe sole, a dozen rifle-balls, and a glass of water into
the bargain.--Where do they store the pile of incoherent impressions
which they must carry away with them?--It is a puzzle to me.--But your
Yankee must be of a different sort, since he seems to have pleased
you.--What reigning or dethroned prince had he on board?"
"None!" replied Hautefeuille, happy to see the misanthropic humor of his
friend disappearing before his gayety. "There was simply his niece, Miss
Florence, who has, I must admit, the ostrich-like stomach which amuses
you so much. She paints, she is an archæologist and a chemist, but she
is also a very fine girl.--Then there was a Venetian lady, the Marchesa
Bonnacorsi, a living Veronese."
"I like them best in pictures," said Olivier. "The resemblance of
Italians to the paintings of the great masters was my despair in Rome.
You enter a salon and you see a Luini talking to a Correggio upon a sofa
in the corner. You draw near them. And you find that the Luini is
telling the plot of the vilest and stupidest of the latest French novel
to the Correggio, who listens to the Luini with an interest that
disgusts you forever with the Madonnas of both painters. But, all the
same, you had a pretty cosmopolitan party on your boat. Two Americans,
an Italian, and a Frenchman.--What other nations were represented?"
"France, or rather Paris, and Austria, that was all.--Paris was
represented by the two Chésys. You know the wife; Yvonne.--Don't you
remember?--Mademoiselle Bressuire."
"What, the girl whom your sister wanted me to marry? She who displayed
her shoulders to the middle of her back and painted her face at sixteen
years old?--Who is her lover?"
"Why, she is the best little woman in the world!" replied Hautefeuille.
"Then she was a poor representative of Paris," said Olivier. "What about
the Austrian?"
"The Austrian?" replied Pierre.
He hesitated for a second. He knew that he would have to speak of his
mistress sooner or later to Olivier. He had only mentioned his cruise in
the yacht in order to bring her name into their first conversation. And
yet he was afraid. What remark would his idol's name call forth from his
ironical friend? There was a little unsteadiness in his voice as he
repeated:
"The Austrian?" and he added, "Oh, Austria was represented by the
Baroness de Carlsberg, whom you met in Rome. We have often spoken about
you."
"Yes, I met her in Rome," said Olivier.
It was now his turn to hesitate. At the sound of that name spoken by his
friend in the silence of the wood where was heard but the rustling of
the pines, his surprise was so great that his very countenance changed.
His hesitation, this alteration in his physiognomy, the very reply of Du
Prat, ought to have warned Hautefeuille of some impending danger. But he
dared not look at his friend, who had now mastered his quivering nerves,
and said:--
"Yes, I remember, the Archduke has a villa at Cannes.--Does she live
with him now?"
"Why, was she separated from him then?" asked Pierre.
"Legally, no; in reality, yes," replied Olivier.
He was too much of a gentleman to make even the least slighting remark
about a woman of whom he had been the lover. The bitter, profound grudge
he bore her manifested itself in a strange way. As he could not, as he
would not speak any evil of her, he began to praise her husband, the man
whom he detested the most in the world.
"I never knew why they could not agree," he said. "She is very
intelligent, and he is one of the first men of his time. He is one of
the three or four important personages, with the Emperor of Brazil, the
Prince of Monaco, and the Archduke of Bavaria, who have taken a place in
the ranks of science to the honor of royalty. It appears that he is a
true scientist."
"He may be a true scientist," replied Hautefeuille; "I don't deny it.
But he is a detestable creature.--If you had only seen him as I did, in
his wife's salon, making a violent scene before six people, you would
admire her for supporting life with that monster, even for a single day,
and you would pity her."
He spoke now with a passionate seriousness. At any time Olivier would
have been surprised at the intensity of this openly avowed interest, for
he knew Pierre to be very undemonstrative. But now, agitated as he was,
the sincerity of his friend surprised him still more, stirred him more
deeply. He looked at him again. He perceived an expression that he had
never before seen on the face he had known from childhood. In a sudden
blinding flash of overpowering intuition, he understood. He did not
grasp the entire truth as yet. But he saw enough to stun him. "Does he
love her?" he asked himself. The question sprang into being in his mind
suddenly, spontaneously, as though an unknown voice had whispered it in
him in spite of himself.
The idea was too unexpected, too agonizing, for a reaction to fail to
follow instantly. "I am mad," he thought; "it is impossible." And yet he
felt that it was beyond his strength to question Pierre about the way he
had made the acquaintance of Madame de Carlsberg, about their trip to
Genoa, about the life he led at Cannes. Such inability to lay bare the
truth seizes one before certain hypotheses which touch the tenderest,
most sensitive part of the heart. He replied simply:--
"Perhaps you are right. I was only going upon hearsay."
The conversation continued without any further mention of the Baroness
Ely's name. The two friends spoke of their travels, of Italy, of Egypt.
But when the spirit of observation is once aroused, it is not soothed to
slumber by a mere act of the will. It is like an instinctive and
uncontrollable force working within us and around us, in spite of us,
until the moment that it has satisfied its desire to know. During the
long promenade, upon their return, during and after dinner, all
Olivier's powers of attention were involuntarily, unceasingly, painfully
concentrated upon Pierre. It was as though there were two beings in him.
He joked, replied to his wife, gave orders about the service. And yet
all his senses were upon the _qui vive_, and he discovered signs by the
score that he had not noticed at first, absorbed as he had been by the
joy of revisiting his friend, and then later by his thoughts about
himself and his destiny.
In the first place, he saw the indefinable but unmistakable indications
of a more virile, more decided personality in Pierre, in his looks, in
his features, in his gestures and attitude. His former _farouche_
timidity had yielded to the proud reserve that the certainty of being
loved gives to some delicate, romantic natures. Next he noted the
principal, the infallible sign of secret happiness, the expression of
tender ecstasy that seemed to lurk in the depths of his eyes, and a
constant faraway look. Never had Olivier noticed this abstraction in
their former conversations. Never had Pierre's thoughts been in other
climes while his friend spoke. Lovers are all alike. They speak to you.
You speak to them. They know not what to say, nor do they hear you.
Their soul is elsewhere. At this moment Pierre's thoughts were upon the
deck of a yacht illumined by the moonbeams; upon the staircase of an old
Italian palace; in the patio of the Villa Helmholtz, far away from the
little table of the hotel dining-room; far away from Madame du Prat,
upon whom he forgot to attend; far away from Olivier, whom he no longer
even saw!
And then Olivier noticed tiny details of masculine adornment, little
nothings which disclosed the tender coquetting of a mistress who would
not have her lover make a gesture without being reminded of her by some
caressing souvenir. Pierre wore a ring upon his little finger that his
friend had never seen, two golden serpents interlaced, with emerald
heads. A St. George medal, which he did not recognize, was hanging to
his watch-chain. In taking out his handkerchief it gave forth a delicate
perfume that Pierre had never formerly used. Olivier had been engaged in
too many intrigues to be mistaken for an instant about any of these
evidences of feminine influence. They were only additional proofs. They
simply confirmed the change he had noticed in Pierre's inexplicable
acquaintance with Corancez, in his liking for cosmopolitan society, in
the unexpected frivolity of his mode of life, in his evident sympathy
for things at Cannes that Olivier had expected would have most shocked
his friend.
How was it possible not to put these facts together? How was it possible
not to draw the conclusion from them that Pierre was in love? But with
whom? Did the energy with which he had attacked the Archduke prove that
he loved Madame de Carlsberg? Had he not defended Madame de Chésy with
the same energy? Had he not equally warmly sung the praises of Madame
Bonnacorsi's beauty, of Miss Marsh's grace?
While Olivier was studying his friend with a super-acute and almost
mechanical tension of the nerves, these three names occurred to him
again and again. Ah! how he longed for another sign among all these
indications; for one irrefutable proof, something that would drive away
and annihilate the first hypothesis, the one that he had seen for an
instant as in a flash, and yet plainly enough for him to be already
possessed by it as by the most ghastly, threatening nightmare.
Toward eleven o'clock Pierre withdrew upon the pretext that the
travellers must be longing to rest. Olivier, having taken leave of his
wife, felt that it was impossible any longer to support this
uncertainty. Often, in former days, when Pierre and he were together in
the country, if one was suffering from insomnia, he would awake the
other, and they would go out for a walk in the night air, talking
incessantly. Olivier thought that this would be the surest way of
exorcising the idea that was again beginning to haunt him, an idea that
stirred up in him, without his knowing why, a wave of unreasoning,
violent, almost savage, revolt. Yes, he would go and talk to
Hautefeuille. That would do him good, although he did not know how nor
of what they would talk.
The most elementary delicacy would prevent him speaking a word that
could arouse the suspicions of his friend, no matter what were the
relations that existed between Pierre and Ely de Carlsberg. But the
conversations of close friends afford such opportunities! Perhaps an
intonation of the voice, a look, a movement, would furnish him with the
passionately desired sign after which he would never again even think of
the possibility of Pierre having a sentiment for his former mistress.
He was already in bed when this idea seized him. Automatically, without
any further reflection, he rose. He descended the staircases of the
immense hotel, now silent and in semi-darkness. He arrived at
Hautefeuille's door. He knocked. There was no reply. He knocked again,
and again there was silence. The key was in the lock. He turned it and
entered. By the light of the moon that flooded the room through the open
window, he saw that the bed was undisturbed. Pierre had gone out.
Why did Olivier feel a sudden pain at his heart, followed by an
inexpressible rush of melancholy, as he noticed this? He went and leaned
on the window rail. He glanced over the immense horizon. He saw all the
serene beauty of the Southern night, the stars that glittered in the
soft, velvety blue of the sky, the bronzed golden moon whose beams
played caressingly with the sea--the sea that rolled supple and vast
afar off. He saw the lights of the town shining among the black masses
of shrubbery in the gardens. The warm breeze enveloped him with the
languorous, enthralling, enchanting odor of lemon blossom. What a divine
night for the meeting of lovers! And what a divine night for a lover
dreaming of his mistress, as he wandered along the solitary paths!--Was
Pierre that lover? Had he gone to meet his mistress? Or was he simply
pursuing his vision in the perfumed solitude of the gardens?--How was he
to know?--Olivier thought of the Yvonne de Chésy with whom he had
danced. He recalled all the Americans and the Italians he had ever
known, in order to compose a Marchesa Bonnacorsi and an ideal Florence
Marsh.--It was in vain! Always did his imagination return to the
souvenir of Ely de Carlsberg, to that mistress of a so short time ago,
whose image was still so present. Always did his thoughts return to the
memory of those caresses, whose intoxicating tenderness he had tested.
And he sighed, sadly and mournfully, in the pure night air:--
"Ah! What unhappiness if he loves her! My God! What unhappiness!"
His sigh floated off and was lost in the soft voluptuous breeze which
bore it away from him who unconsciously called it forth. At this moment
Pierre was making his way through the shrubbery of the Villa Helmholtz
gardens as he had done once before. He arrived at the door of the
hothouse. A woman awaited him there, trembling with love and
terror.--What caused the terror? Hot the fear of being surprised in this
secret meeting. Ely's courage was superior to such weaknesses. No. She
knew that Olivier had returned that day. She knew that he had passed the
afternoon talking with Pierre. She knew that her name must have been
pronounced between them. She was certain that Pierre would not betray
their dear secret. But he was so young, so innocent, so transparent to
the observer, while the other was so penetrating, so keen!--She was
going to learn if their love had been suspected by Olivier, if this man
had warned his friend against her in revenge.--When she heard Pierre's
slow, furtive footsteps upon the pathway, her heart beat so strongly
that she seemed to hear it echo through the deathly silence of the
hothouse!--He is here. She takes his hand. She feels that the beloved
fingers reply with their old confident pressure. She takes him in her
arms. She seeks his mouth and their lips unite in a kiss in which she
feels that he is all hers to the depths of his soul. That other has not
spoken! And now tears begin to flow down the cheeks of the loving woman,
warm tears that the lover dries with his burning kisses, as he asks:--
"What, are you weeping! What is it, my beloved?"
"I love you," she replies, "and they are tears of joy."