FRIEND AND MISTRESS
Olivier du Prat thought he knew himself. It was a pretension he had
often justified. He was really, as he had said to Hautefeuille, a child
of the declining century in his tastes, in his passion, almost mania,
for self-analysis, in his thirst for emotions, in his powerlessness to
remain faithful to any one of his sensations, in his useless lucidity,
as regarded himself, and in his indulgence of the morbid, unsatisfied,
unquiet longings of his nature. He felt his case was irremediable, the
gloomy sign that characterizes the tragically disturbed age we live in,
and one of the infallible marks of decadence in a race. Healthy life
does not entirely rest upon a freedom from wounds. For the body as for
the soul, for a nation as for an individual, vigorous life is indicated
by the power to heal those that are made. Olivier was entirely without
this capacity. Even the most distant troubles of his childhood became so
real as to be agonizing when he thought of them after all the years that
had passed. In recalling their walk among the mountains of Auvergne, as
he had done the night before to Pierre, he had simply been thinking
aloud as he always thought to himself. His imagination was incessantly
occupied in turning and returning with an unhealthy activity of mental
retrospection, to the hours, the minutes, that had forever vanished. In
his mind he reanimated, revived, the past and lived it over again. And
by this self-abandonment to a past sensitiveness he continually
destroyed all present sensitiveness. He never allowed the wounds that
had once been made to heal over, and his oldest injury was always ready
to bleed afresh.
This unfortunate singularity of his nature would, under any
circumstances, have made a meeting with Madame de Carlsberg very
painful, even though the dearest friend of his youth had not been
concerned in it. And he would never have heard that his friend loved
without being deeply moved. He knew he was so tender-hearted, so
defenceless, so vulnerable! Here, again, he was the victim of a
retrospective sensitiveness. Friendship carried to the extreme point
that his feeling for Hautefeuille occupied is a sentiment of the
eighteenth rather than of the thirty-second year. In the first flush of
youth, when the soul is all innocence, freshness, and purity, these
fervent companionships, these enthusiasms of voluntary fraternity, these
passionate, susceptible, absolute friendships, often appear to quickly
fade away. Later in life self-interest and experience individualize one
and isolation is unavoidable. Complete communion of soul with soul
becomes possible only by the sorcery of love, and friendship ceases to
suffice. It is relegated to the background with those family affections
that once also occupied a unique place in the child and in the youth.
Certain men there are, however, and Olivier was one of the number, upon
whom the impression made by friendships about their eighteenth year has
been too deep, too ineffaceable, and, above all, too delicate, to be
ever forgotten, and even to be ever equalled. It remains an incomparable
sentiment. These men, like Olivier, may pass through burning passions,
suffer all the feverish shocks of love, be bruised in the most daring
intrigues, but the true romance of their sensitive natures is not to be
found in these passions. It is to be found in those hours of life when,
in thought, they project themselves into the future with an ideal
companion, with a brother that they have chosen, in whose society they
realize for an instant La Fontaine's sublime fable, the complete union
of mind, tastes, hopes:--
"And one possess'd nothing that the other did not share."
In the case of Olivier and Pierre this ideal comradeship had been
sacredly cemented. Not only had they been brothers in their dreams, they
had been brothers in arms. They were nineteen years of age in 1870. At
the first news of the immense national shipwreck both had enlisted. Both
had gone through the entire war. The first snowfall of the winter that
saw the terrible campaign found them bivouacking upon the banks of the
Loire. It was as though this friendship of the two students, now become
soldiers in the same battalion, had been heroically baptized. And they
had learned to esteem as much as they loved each other as they simply,
bravely, obscurely risked their lives side by side. These souvenirs of
their youth had remained intact and living in both, but particularly in
Olivier. For him they were the only recollections unmixed with
bitterness, unsullied by remorse. Before these memories his life had
been full of sadness, completely orphaned as he had been early in life
and turned over to the guardianship of a horribly selfish uncle. Sensual
and jealous, suspicious and despotic as he was, he had only known the
bitterness and the pains of love apart from his souvenirs of Pierre.
Nothing more is necessary to explain to what a degree this illogical and
passionate, this troubled and disillusioned being was moved by the mere
idea that a woman had come between his friend and him--and what a woman,
if she were Madame de Carlsberg, so hated, despised, condemned by him
formerly!
Olivier's imagination could only attach itself to two precise facts
during the night that followed the arousing of his first suspicions,--a
night that was given up to the consideration, one by one, of the
possibilities of a love-affair between Ely and Hautefeuille. These were
the character of his friend and that of his former mistress. The
character of his friend made him fear for him; the character of his
former mistress made him fear for her. Upon this latter point also his
feelings were very complex. He was convinced that Ely de Carlsberg had
had a lover before him, and the idea had tortured him. He was convinced
that she had had a lover at the same time with him, and he had left her
on account of this idea. He was mistaken, but he was sincere, and had
only yielded to proofs of coquetry that appeared sufficiently damaging
to convince his jealous nature. This double conviction had left in him a
scornful resentment against Ely; had left that inexpiable bitterness
which compels us to continually vilify in our mind an image that we
despairingly realize can never become entirely indifferent to us. He
would have considered a _liaison_ with such a creature a frightful
misfortune for any man. What, then, were his feelings when he saw that
she had made herself beloved by his friend or that she might make
herself beloved?--Having such a prejudiced, violent contempt for this
sort of woman, Olivier divined what was really the truth, although it
had remained so for so short a time. Ely had been angered by his
departure. She had felt the same resentment with him that he had felt
with her. Chance had brought her face to face with his dearest friend,
with Pierre Hautefeuille, of whom he had so often spoken in exalted
terms. She must have decided upon revenge, upon a vengeance that
resembled her--criminal, refined, and so profoundly, so cruelly,
intelligent!--In this way Du Prat reasoned. And, although his reasoning
was only hypothetical, he felt, as he fed his mind with such thoughts, a
suffering mingled with a sort of unhealthy and irresistible satisfaction
that would have terrified him had he considered it calmly. To suppose
that Madame de Carlsberg had avenged herself upon him with such
calculation was to suppose that she had not forgotten him. The windings
in the human heart are so strange! In spite of the fact that he had
insulted his former mistress all the time they had been together, that
he had left her first, without a farewell, that he had married after due
reflection, and had resolved to keep his vows honorably--in spite of all
this, the idea that she still remembered him secretly stirred him
strangely. It must be remembered that he was just passing through one of
the most dangerous moments of conjugal existence. Every moral crisis is
complicated with a multitude of contradictory elements in souls such as
his,--souls without fixed principles, that are turned aside at every
moment by the influence of their faintest impression. Marriages
contracted through sheer lassitude, such as the one he admitted having
contracted, bring down their own punishment upon the abominable egoism
that prompts them. They have to pay a penalty worse than the most
redoubtable catastrophe. They are followed immediately by profound,
incurable weariness. The man, thirty years of age, who, thinking he is
disgusted forever with sensual passions, and who, mistaking this disgust
for wisdom, settles down, as the saying is, quickly finds that those
very passions that sickened him are as necessary to him as morphine is
to the morphine maniac who has been deprived of his Pravaz syringe, as
necessary as alcohol is to the inebriate put upon a _régime_ of pure
water. He suffers from a species of nostalgia, of longing for those
unhealthy emotions whose fruitlessness he has himself recognized and
condemned. If a brutal but very exact comparison can be borrowed from
modern pathology, he becomes a favorable medium for the cultivation of
all the morbid germs floating in his atmosphere. And at the very moment
when everything seems to point to the pacific arrangement of their
destiny, some revolution takes place, as it was doing in Olivier,--a
revolution so rapid, so terrible, that the witness and victims of these
sudden wild outbursts are left almost more disconcerted than despairing.
He had therefore passed the night meditating upon all the details,
significant and unimportant, that he had observed in the afternoon and
evening, from the moment he had remarked the unexpected intimacy of
Pierre with Corancez until the instant he had entered his friend's
chamber hoping for an explanation, and had found it empty.
Toward five o'clock he fell asleep, slumbering brokenly and heavily as
one does in a railway train in the morning. He dreamed upon the lines of
thought that had kept him awake, as was to be expected. But it
heightened his uneasiness by an appearance of presentiment. He thought
he was again in the little salon of the palace at Rome, where Ely de
Carlsberg used to receive him. Suddenly his wife arrived, leading Pierre
Hautefeuille by the hand. Pierre stopped, as though smitten with terror,
and tried to scream. Suddenly paralysis struck him down, turning his leg
rigid, forcing out his left eye, drawing down the corner of his mouth,
whence not a sound issued! The suffering caused by this nightmare was so
intense that Olivier felt its influence even after he was awake.
He felt so ill that he could not even wait to see his wife before going
out. He scribbled a line telling her that he was suffering from a slight
headache, and that he had gone out to try and seek relief. He added that
he had not liked to disturb her so early in the morning, and that he
would be back about nine o'clock. He told her, however, that she was not
to await his return should he happen to be late.
He felt that he must steady his nerves by means of a long walk so as to
be prepared to cope with the events of the day, which he was convinced
would be decisive. Prolonged walks were his invariable remedy in his
nervous crises, and he might have been successful this time if, after
having walked straight before him for some time, he had not come, about
ten o'clock, to the corner of the Rue d'Antibes, the most animated and
interesting part of Cannes.
At this hour the long corridor-like street was one mass of sharply
outlined shadow, swept and freshened by one of those brisk breezes that
impart a touch of crispness to the burning air of morning in Provence.
The carriage wheels seemed to roll more rapidly, the horses' hoofs
seemed to ring more resonantly upon the white roadway.
Young people were passing to and fro, English for the most part,
attending with characteristic thoroughness to their after-breakfast
constitutional or their before-lunch exercise. They walked along,
overtaking or meeting young girls with whom they chatted gayly, having
doubtless arranged the meeting upon the preceding evening. Others were
hastening to the station to catch the train for Nice or Monte Carlo.
Their manner, bearing, and costume bore that indescribable imprint of a
frivolous life of amusement. Olivier was all the more deeply impressed
by this from the mere fact that he had formerly been a leader in such an
aimless mode of life.
Mornings such as this recurred to his mind. He remembered his life in
Rome just two years before. Yes, the sky was of the same shade of blue,
the same fresh breeze softened the sun's burning rays in the streets.
Carriages rolled along there with the same busy hurry, people walked
about wearing the same unconcerned look of amused idleness. And he,
Olivier, was one of those promenaders.
He remembered just such a morning when he had gone to meet Ely at some
appointed place. He had bought some flowers in the Piazza di Spagna to
brighten the room where he was to meet her.
Moved by that mechanical parody of will which remembrance sometimes
calls into action, he entered a florist's in this Rue d'Antibes, which
had recalled to him the Roman Corso for a moment. Roses, pinks,
narcissus, anemones, mimosa, and violets were piled up in heaps on the
counter. Everywhere was displayed the glorious prodigality of the soil
which, from Hyères to San Remo, is nothing but a vast garden nestling
upon the shores of the sea. The shop was filled with a sweet penetrating
odor which resembled the perfumes that enveloped them in their hours of
love long ago.
The young man carelessly selected a cluster of pinks. He came out again
holding them in his hand. And the thought flashed into his mind: "I have
no one to whom I can offer them!" As a contrast to this thought the
image of his friend and Madame de Carlsberg recurred to him. The thought
provoked another sentiment in addition to those of which he had been the
prey for some sixteen hours. He felt the most instinctive, the most
unreasoning jealousy. He shrugged his shoulders and was just upon the
point of flinging the pinks into the road when he thought, in a rush of
the ironical self-analysis with which he often found relief for his
weary heart:--
"It is your own doing, Georges Dandin," he thought. "I will offer the
bouquet to my wife. It will give me an excuse for having gone out
without saying good morning."
Berthe was seated before her desk, writing a letter in her long,
characterless hand, upon a travelling pad, when he entered the salon of
their little apartment at the hotel, to carry out his project of marital
gallantry,--something very novel for him. Around the blotter a score of
tiny knick-knacks were arranged--a travelling clock, portraits in
leather frames, an address book, a note pad--all ready as though she had
inhabited the room for several weeks, instead of several hours. She was
dressed in a tailor-made costume which she had put on with the idea that
her husband would certainly return to show her around Cannes. Then, as
he was late, she began to reply to overdue correspondence with an
apparent calmness that completely deceived Olivier.
She did not let him see the slightest sign of vexation or reproach when
he came in. Her rigid features remained just as cold and fixed as
before. The two young people had begun this life of distant politeness
in the early weeks of their married life. Of all forms of conjugal
existence, this form is the most contrary to nature and the most
exceptional in the beginning. The fact that a marriage has been a
failure must be an accepted one before it is possible to realize that
politeness is the sole remedy for incompatibility of temper. It, at any
rate, reduces the difficulties of daily intercourse which is as
intolerable when love is lacking as it is sweet and necessary in a happy
marriage.
But even in the most inharmonious households this very politeness often
conceals in one of the two persons displaying it all the violence of
passion, kept in check because misunderstood. Was this the case with
Madame du Prat, with this child of twenty-two, with this woman so
completely mistress of herself that she seemed to be naturally
indifferent? Did she suffer because of her husband without showing it?
The future would show. For the moment she was a woman of the world
travelling, tranquil in aspect, who held up her forehead for the kiss of
her lord and master, without a complaint, without a shade of surprise,
even when he began:--
"I am sorry I let the luncheon hour go by. I hope you did not wait for
me. I have brought you these flowers in the hope that you will excuse
me."
"They are very beautiful," replied Berthe, burying her face in the
bouquet and inhaling its subtle perfume.
The brilliant reds of the large flowers, so warm and rich in hue, seemed
to accentuate all the coldness of her blond beauty. Her blue eyes had
something metal lie in their depth, something steely, as though they had
never felt the softening influence of a tear. And yet, from the manner
in which she revelled in the musky, pungent odor of the flowers offered
her by her husband, it was easy to detect an almost emotional
nervousness. But there was no trace of this in the tone with which she
asked:--
"Have you been out without eating?--That is very foolish.--Has your
headache disappeared?--You must have slept badly last night, for I heard
you walking about."
"Yes; I had a little attack of insomnia," replied Olivier, "but it is
nothing. The open air on such a beautiful morning has put me all right
again.--Have you seen Hautefeuille?" he added.
"No," she replied dryly. "Where could I see him? I have not been out."
"And he has not asked after me?"
"Not that I know of."
"He is perhaps also unwell," continued Olivier. "If you don't mind, I
will go and ask after him."
He left the salon before he had finished speaking. The young woman
remained with her forehead resting upon her hand in the same attitude.
Her cheeks were burning, and although she was not weeping, her heart was
swollen with grief, and her breathing was agitated and hurried. She
became another woman with Olivier absent. Apart from him she could
abandon herself completely to the strange sentiment that her husband
inspired in her. She felt a sort of wounded and unrequited affection for
him. Her feelings could not seek relief either in reproaches or in
caresses. They were, therefore, in a constant state of mute irritation.
Under such moral conditions Olivier's visibly partial affection for
Pierre could not be very sympathetic to the young woman, particularly
since their return to Cannes, which had delayed their return just at the
moment she was longing to see her family again.
But there was another reason that caused her to detest this friendship.
Like all young women who marry into a different circle from their own,
she was mortally anxious about her husband's past. Olivier, in one of
those half-confidences that even the most self-contained men fall into
in the moment of candor following marriage, had allowed her to see that
he had suffered a particularly cruel disillusion in the latter part of
his bachelor life. Another half-confidence had enabled her to learn that
this incident had taken place at Rome, and that the cause of it was a
foreigner of noble birth.
Olivier had completely forgotten these two imprudent phrases, but Berthe
treasured them in the recesses of her memory. She had even not been
content to brood over the avowals; she had put them side by side, and
had completed them by that species of mental mosaic work in which women
excel, seizing a detail here, another there, in the most insignificant
conversation to add them to the story upon which they are at work. They
make deductions in this way that the most scientific observers, the most
wily detectives, cannot equal.
Olivier had not the least suspicion of this work going, on in Berthe's
mind. Still less did he suspect that she had discovered the first name
of this unknown mistress, a name whose very singularity had helped to
betray it. It happened in this way: When they were married he had
destroyed a number of letters, thrown a lot of faded flowers into the
fire with many a portrait. Then--it is the common story of those mental
_autos da fé_--his hand had trembled in taking up some of these relics,
relics of a troubled, unhappy youth, of his youth. And this had made him
treasure a portrait of Madame de Carlsberg, in profile, so beautiful, so
clear cut, so marvellously like the profile of some antique medallion
that he could not bear to burn it. He slipped the portrait into an
envelope, and, some one happening to call upon him at this moment, he
placed the envelope in a large portfolio in which he carried his papers.
Then he forgot all about it. He had never thought about the portrait
until he was in Egypt. Again he decided to burn it, and again he could
not bear to destroy it.
In the cosmopolitan society into which his diplomatic functions called
him it is a frequent thing for women to give their photographs bearing
their signatures to their friends, sometimes even to mere acquaintances.
Ely's name written at the foot of the photograph, therefore, signified
nothing. Berthe would never find the portrait, or if she did all that he
would need to do would be to speak of her as an acquaintance. He,
therefore, returned the photograph to its hiding-place in the portfolio,
and one day the improbable happened in the simplest way in the world.
They were staying at Luxor. He happened to be away from the hotel for a
short time. Berthe, who during the entire journey kept the accounts of
their expenses with a natural and cultivated exactitude, was looking for
a bill that her husband had paid, and, without thinking, opened the
portfolio. There she found the photograph. But the second half of
Olivier's reasoning was faulty. She never thought of questioning him
upon the subject. The presence of the portrait among Olivier's papers,
the regal and singular beauty of the woman's face, the strangely foreign
name, the elegant toilet, the place where the photograph had been
taken,--Rome,--all told the young wife that this was the mysterious
rival who had taken up such a large place in her husband's past.
She thought about it continually. But she could not speak to Olivier
without his thinking that she had spied upon him, that she had
deliberately searched among his papers. And besides, what was there to
ask him about? She divined all that she did not actually know. So she
kept silent, her heart seared with this torturing and fatal curiosity.
Her knowledge was sufficient to make her think, when her husband went
out the day before with the most intimate friend of his youth: "They are
going to talk about her!" For who could be in Olivier's confidence if
not Pierre Hautefeuille? Was any other reason necessary to explain her
antipathy? She had noticed Olivier's agitation upon his return from the
walk with his friend. And she had said to herself: "They have talked
about her." In the night she had heard her husband walking restlessly
about in his room, and she had thought: "He is thinking about her." And
this was the reason why she remained, now that the door was again
closed, alone, her brow resting upon her hand, motionless, with her
heart beating as though it would burst, and hating with an intense
hatred the friend who knew what she ignored. By dint of concentrated
reflection, she had divined a part of the truth. It would have been
better for her, better for Olivier, better for all, had she only known
it all!
Olivier's heart was also beating rapidly when, after having knocked at
Pierre's door, he heard the words, "Come in," spoken by the voice he
knew so well and whose sound he had so longed to hear the night before
upon this very staircase. Pierre was not yet out of bed, though it was
eleven o'clock. He excused himself merrily.
"You see what Southern habits I have fallen into. I shall soon be like
one of the Kornows who stays here. Corancez called the other day and
found him in bed at five o'clock in the afternoon. 'You know,' said
Kornow, 'we are not early risers in Russia.'"
"You do well to take care of yourself," said Olivier, "seeing that you
have been so ill."
He had spoken with some embarrassment and a little at random. How he
wished his friend would tell him of his nocturnal promenade in reply!
But no, a little crimson flush colored Pierre's cheek, and that was all.
But it was sufficient to remove all doubt from Olivier's mind as to the
reason of his midnight absence. His mind suddenly made a choice between
the two alternatives imagined when he had found the room empty. The
evidence was overpowering. Pierre had a mistress and he had gone to meet
her. He saw the countenance, still so youthful, reposing upon the pillow
and bearing the traces of a voluptuous lassitude imprinted upon it. The
eyes were sunken, his face had that pallor that follows the excesses of
a too exquisite passion, as though the blood were momentarily fatigued,
and his lips were curved in a smile that was both languid and yet
contented.
While chatting upon one thing and another, Olivier noted all these
overwhelming indications. He suffered, almost physically, as he remarked
them, and â pang of agonizing pain shot through his heart, a pain that
almost wrung a cry from him, at the idea that the caresses which had.
left Pierre weary, and still intoxicated, had been lavished upon him by
Ely.
With the passionate anxiety of a trembling friendship, of an awakening
jealousy, of a longing that refuses to be calmed, of a curiosity that
will not slumber, he continued his implacable and silent reasoning. Yes,
Pierre had a mistress. And this mistress was a society woman, and not
free. The proof of this was the hour fixed for their meeting, in the
precautions taken, and, above all, in the strange pride in his beloved
secret that the lover had in the depths of his eyes. To meet her he must
have had to go through a thicket in some garden. Upon his return, Pierre
had flung his soft hat that he had worn during his promenade upon the
drawers. Little twigs of shrubbery still remained on the brim, and a
faint green line bore witness to a passage through foliage pushed on one
side with the head. The young man had placed his jewellery near the hat,
and lying in close proximity to the watch and keys and purse, was the
ring that Olivier had already noticed, the two serpents interlaced, with
emerald heads. Du Prat rose from his chair under the pretext of walking
about the room, in reality to take up the ring. It fascinated him with
an unhealthy, irresistible attraction. As he passed before the commode,
he took up the ring, mechanically and without ceasing to talk, and
turned it about in his hand for a second with an indifferent air. He
noticed an inscription engraved in tiny letters upon its inner surface.
_Ora e sempre_, "Now and forever." It was a phrase that Prince Fregoso
had used in speaking about Greek art, and, as a souvenir of their voyage
to Genoa, Ely had had the idea of having the words engraved upon the
love talisman she gave to Pierre upon their return. Olivier could not
possibly divine the hidden meaning of this tender allusion to hours of
ecstatic happiness. He laid down the ring again without any comment. But
if any doubt had remained in his mind as to what was causing him such
secret anxiety, it would have disappeared before his immediate relief.
He found nothing in the ring to suggest, as he had expected, a present
from Madame de Carlsberg. On the contrary, the words, in Italian, again
suggested the idea that Pierre's mistress might just as easily be Madame
Bonnacorsi as the Baroness Ely. He thought, "I am the horse galloping
after its shadow once more." And, looking at his friend, who had again
crimsoned under Olivier's brief scrutiny, he asked:--
"Is the Italian colony here very large?"
"I know the Marchesa Bonnacorsi and her brother, Navagero.--And I must
admit the latter is a sort of Englishman much more English than all the
Englishmen in Cannes!"
Hautefeuille reddened still more as he spoke of the Venetian. He guessed
what association of ideas had suggested Olivier's question so quickly
after having toyed with the ring and after having undoubtedly read the
inscription. His friend thought the souvenir was the gift of some
Italian. And who could this be if not the Marchesa Andryana? Any one
else would have hailed with satisfaction the error that turned his
friend's watchful perspicacity in a wrong direction. Hautefeuille,
however, was too sensitive not to be pained by a mistake that
compromised an irreproachable woman, to whose marriage he had even been
a witness.
His embarrassment, his crimson cheeks, a slight hesitation in his voice,
were only so many signs to Olivier that he was upon the right path. He
felt remorse at having yielded to an almost instinctive impulse. He was
afraid he had wounded his friend and he wished to ask his pardon. But to
ask pardon for an indiscretion is sometimes only to be more indiscreet.
All that he could do, all that he did, was to make up a little for the
impression his sarcasm upon the day before must have made upon
Hautefeuille if he was in love with the Venetian. Navagero's Anglomania
served him as a pretext to caricature in a few words a snob of the same
order whom he had met in Rome and he then said, in conclusion:--
"I was in a vile temper yesterday, and I must have appeared somewhat
prudish in my fit of sepia.--I have often been amused by the motley
society one meets in watering-places, and I have felt all the charm of
the women from other countries!--I was younger then.--I remember even
having been fond of Monte Carlo!--I am curious to see it again. Suppose
we dine there to-day? It would amuse Berthe, and I don't think it would
bore me."
He spoke truly. In such mental crises, purely imaginary, the first
moments of relief are accompanied by a strange feeling of
light-heartedness, which shows itself in an almost infantile gayety,
often as unreasoning as the motives from which it springs. During the
rest of the time until the train started for Nice Olivier astonished his
wife and friend by the change in his temper and conversation, a change
that was inexplicable for them. The _Ora e sempre_ of the ring and its
sentimentality; all his recollections of the simplicity, of the
naïveté of Italians in love; the opulent beauty that Pierre had
suggested in comparing Madame Bonnacorsi to a Veronese,--all gave him
the idea that his friend was the lover of an indulgent and willing
mistress, one who was both voluptuous and gentle. It pleased him to
think of this happy passion. He felt as much satisfaction in
contemplating it as he had suffered at the thought of the other
possibility. And he believed in all good faith that his anxiety of the
night before and of the morning had been solely prompted by his
solicitude about Hautefeuille, and that his present content grew out of
his reassured friendship.
A very simple incident shattered all this edifice of voluntary and
involuntary illusions. At Golfe Juan Station, as Hautefeuille was
leaning a little out of the window, a voice hailed him. Olivier
recognized the indestructible accent of Corancez. The door opened and
gave admittance to a lady, no other than the ex-Marchesa Bonnacorsi,
escorted by the Southerner. When she saw that Pierre was not alone,
Andryana could not help blushing to the roots of her beautiful blond
hair, while Corancez, equal to every circumstance, always triumphant,
beaming, smiling, performed the necessary introduction. The conjugal
seducer had thought of everything, and before leaving for Genoa he had
established a meeting-place in one of the villas at Golfe Juan in which
to enjoy the prolongation of their secret honeymoon. Andryana had
managed to cheat her brother's watchfulness and had gone to meet her
husband upon the first day of his arrival. Her happiness began to give
her the courage upon which the wily Southerner had counted to bring his
enterprise to a successful conclusion, but he had not yet trained her to
lie with grace. Hardly was she seated in the compartment when she said
to Olivier and his wife, without waiting for any question:--
"I missed the last train, and as Monsieur de Corancez did the same, we
decided to walk to Golfe Juan to take the next train instead of waiting
wearily in the station at Cannes."
All the time she was speaking Olivier was looking at her little patent
leather shoes and the hem of her dress, which gave such a palpable lie
to her statement. There was not a speck of dust upon them and her
alleged walking companion's gaiters had very evidently not taken more
than fifty steps. The married plotters surprised Olivier's look. It
completed the Italian's confusion and almost provoked a wild fit of
laughter in Corancez, who said merrily:--
"Are you going to Monte Carlo? I will perhaps meet you there. Where
shall you dine?"
"I don't know," replied Olivier, with a forbidding tone that was almost
rude.
He did not speak another word while the train fled along the coast,
flying through tunnel after tunnel. The Southerner, without taking any
notice of his old comrade's very apparent bad temper, entered into a
conversation with Madame du Prat, which he managed to make almost a
friendly one.
"So this is the first time you have been to the gaming-rooms, madame? In
that case I shall ask you to let me play as you think best, in case we
meet in the rooms.--Good, here is another tunnel.--Do you know what the
Americans call this bit of the railway?--Has Miss Marsh not told you,
Marchesa?--No?--Well, they call it 'the flute,' because there are only
a few holes up above from time to time.--Isn't it pretty? How did you
like Egypt, madame?—They say Alexandria is like Marseilles.--But the
Marseillais would say they have no mistral.--Hautefeuille, you know my
_cocher_, L'Ainé, as they call him?--About a couple of months ago at
Cannes--one day when all the villas were rocking--he said to me: 'Do you
like the South, Monsieur Marius?'--'Yes,' I replied, 'if it were not for
the wind.' '_Hé, pécheire_!' he cried, 'wind! Why, there is never any
wind upon this coast, from Marseilles to Nice!' 'What is that?' I asked,
pointing to one of the palms on the Croisette, which was so much bent
upon one side that it was slipping into the sea. 'Do you call that the
wind, Monsieur Marius?' he said; 'why, that is not wind--it is the
mistral, which makes Provence so bright and cheerful!'"
"No, Corancez is the Italian's real lover," thought Olivier. He had only
needed to see Hautefeuille with Andryana a couple of minutes to be quite
convinced. She was certainly not the unknown mistress with whom the
young man had passed part of the previous night.
The evident intimacy existing between her and the Southerner, their
pleasure together, the too apparent falsehood she had told, the
fascination Corancez's showiness had for her, as well as a host of
indications, left no room for doubt.
"Yes," he repeated, "there is her lover.--They are worthy of each other.
This beautiful, luxuriant woman, who might sell oranges on the Riva dei
Schiavoni, is a fitting mate for this handsome chatterbox! Heavens! What
an accurate observer he was who said:--'Will you be quiet a minute,
Bouches-du-Rhône?'--Just look how complacently Hautefeuille listens to
him! He does not seem at all astonished at these people vaunting their
adultery in a train side by side with a young married couple. How he has
changed!"
With all his scepticism, Olivier was still a slave to current illogical
prejudices. While he was young it had seemed the most natural thing in
the world for him to carry on his intrigues under the shelter of
pure-minded women who might happen to be friends or relatives of his
mistresses. And yet he was astonished that Pierre was not shocked at the
idea of Madame Bonnacorsi and Corancez installing themselves comfortably
in the same compartment as Monsieur and Madame du Prat! But the
principal portion of his reflections had to do with the painful
deductions that had been interrupted for a few hours. "No," he thought,
"this plump Italian and this mountebank from the South cannot interest
him.--If he tolerates them at all, it is because they are in his secret;
they represent an easy-going complicity, or they are simply people who
know his mistress.--For I am sure he has one. Even though I did not know
that he had passed the night away from his room, even had I not seen him
in bed this morning, with sunken eyes and pallid complexion, even had I
not held in my hands his ring with its inscription, I should only have
to look at him now.--He is another man!"
As he soliloquized in this way Olivier watched his friend intently,
taking note of every movement with eager avidity, observing the very
fluttering of his eyelids, of his respiration, as closely as a savage
would note, analyze, and interpret the trampled grass, a footprint in
the earth, a broken branch, a crumpled leaf upon the road taken by a
fugitive.
He also noticed the weakening of the exclusively Gallic character in
Pierre, which he had formerly liked. The young man had been in love with
Ely only three months; it was only three weeks since he had learned that
she loved him; but by dint of thinking of her all his associations of
ideas, all his quotations, had been modified insensibly but strikingly.
His conversation was tinged with an exotic quality. He referred to
Italian and Austrian matters quite naturally. He who formerly astonished
Olivier by his absolute lack of curiosity, now appeared to enjoy with
the pleasure of the newly initiated the stories of the cosmopolitan
society to which he was attached by secret but none the less living
bonds. He had now an interest in it, was accustomed to it, sympathized
with it. And yet nothing in his letters had prepared his friend for this
metamorphosis.
Olivier continued to seek indications disclosing the identity of the
woman he loved in his conversation, in the expression on Pierre's face,
in the least important words of the three speakers. Berthe, who had
hardly deigned to reply to Corancez's attempts to interest her, now
appeared absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful view across the sea.
The afternoon was drawing to its close. The sheets of blue and violet
water slumbered in the indented coast. The foam tossed about, appearing
and disappearing around the big wooded promontories. And on the other
side, shutting in the horizon, beyond the deep mountains, were outlined
the white sierras of the snowclad peaks.
But the young woman's self-absorption was but in appearance. And if
Olivier had not been too startled by the sound of a name suddenly
mentioned he must have seen that the name also made a shudder run
through his wife.
"Are you dining at the Villa Helmholtz to-morrow?" Madame Bonnacorsi
asked Hautefeuille.
"I shall go later in the evening," he replied.
"Do you know whether the Baroness Ely is at Monte Carlo to-day?" asked
Corancez.
"No," answered Hautefeuille; "she is dining with the Grand Duchess
Vera."
Simple as was the sentence, his voice trembled as he spoke. It would
have seemed to him both puerile and ignoble to attempt to hide anything
from Olivier, and it was perfectly natural for Corancez, who knew of his
relations with Madame de Carlsberg, to ask him about such a trifling
matter. But the gift of second sight seems to descend upon lovers. He
felt that his friend was watching him with a singular expression in his
eyes. And--more extraordinary still--his friend's young wife was also
observing him. The knowledge of the tender secret he carried hidden in
his heart, a sanctuary of adoration, made the glances so painful to
support that insensibly his face disclosed his feelings just
sufficiently to enable the two people spying upon him at the moment to
find food in his momentary agitation for their thoughts.
"The Baroness Ely?--Why, that is the name on the portrait!"--How was it
possible for Berthe to avoid the rapid reflection? And then she thought:
"Can this woman be at Cannes? How embarrassed both Olivier and Pierre
look!"
As for Olivier, he thought: "He knows all about her movements.--How
naturally Corancez asked him about her!--That is just the tone such
people adopt in speaking with you about a woman with whom you have a
_liaison_.--And yet, is it possible there is such a _liaison_?"
Was it possible? The inner voice, stilled for a moment by the words
engraved on the ring, again began to be heard. It replied that a
_liaison_ between Ely and Pierre was not only possible; it was probable;
it was even certain.--And still the indisputable facts to support this
feeling of certitude were far from numerous. But others began to be
gathered. In the first place, Pierre disclosed a secret to his friend in
the name of Corancez, who had not been blind to the coldness of his old
schoolfellow.
"You were not very pleased to see Corancez walk into our compartment. He
felt it. Now admit it."
"That is one of the customs of this region," replied Olivier. "I simply
think he might have spared me this association with my wife. All the
better for him if Madame Bonnacorsi is his mistress, but for him to
present her to us in the way he did is, I think, rather cool."
"She is not his mistress," replied Hautefeuille. "She is his wife. He
has just asked me to tell you. I will explain all about it."
Pierre continued with the story, in a few hurried words, of the
extraordinary secret marriage, of Navagero's tyranny over his sister, of
the resolution the lovers had taken, of the departure of them all upon
the yacht, and of the ceremony in the ancient Genoese palace. To make
this disclosure he had seized the moment, in the vestibule of the
restaurant, when Berthe was taking off her veil and cloak a few paces
away, and while they themselves were handing their overcoats to the
cloak-room attendant. It was the first minute they had had alone since
the arrival of the train.
"But, with all that to do, you cannot have had time to see Genoa?" said
Olivier, as his wife approached.
"Oh, yes. The sea was so rough that we did not return until next day."
"They passed the night together there," thought Olivier. Even if they
had passed it on the boat, his conclusion would have been the same. And
then, just as though Fate were obstinately trying to dissipate his last
lingering doubts, Hautefeuille stopped as they were traversing the
restaurant to secure a table. Among the mingled crowd of diners Pierre
saluted four people seated round a table more richly appointed than the
others and embellished with rare flowers.
"Did you not recognize your former cotillon partner?" he asked Olivier,
when he was once more with the Du Prats.
"Yvonne de Chésy? How little she has changed.--Yes, she is very young,"
replied Olivier.
Before him there was a large mirror, in which he saw reflected all the
picturesque confusion of the fashionable restaurant. He could see the
tables surrounded by women of the highest society and women of the most
dubious, in gorgeous toilets and coquettish bonnets, elbowing each
other, chatting to their companions, men who knew the women of both
classes. The position in which he was placed gave him a view of Yvonne's
profile. In front of her was her husband, no longer the dazzling,
rattlebrained Chésy of the _Jenny_, but a nervous, anxious,
absent-minded creature, the exact type of the ruined player who amid the
most brilliant surroundings is wondering whether or not he will leave
the place to blow out his brains.
Between this poor being, visibly ill at ease, and the laughing young
wife, who never dreamed of anything so tragic, was seated an individual
of ignoble physiognomy, flabby-cheeked, with double chin, piercing,
inquisitorial, brutal eyes set in a full-blooded countenance. He had the
rosette of the Legion d'Honneur at his buttonhole, and he was paying
manifest court to the young wife.
Between Yvonne and Chésy, a second woman was placed. At first Olivier
could only see the back of her head. Then he noticed that this woman
turned some three or four times to look toward their table at them.
There was something so strange in the action of the unknown, the
attention she paid to the group in which Hautefeuille and Olivier were
was in such total contrast to the reserved expression on her face and to
her quiet bearing, that Olivier had for a moment a flash of fresh hope.
What if this woman, so pretty, so refined, with an expression that was
so gentle and interesting, were Pierre's beloved mistress? As though
absent-mindedly, he asked:--
"Who are the Chésys dining with? Who is the man with the decoration?"
"It is Brion, the financier," replied Hautefeuille. "The charming woman
in front of him is his wife."
Again Olivier looked in the mirror. This time he surprised Madame Brion
with her eyes evidently fixed upon him. His memory, so tenacious of all
touching his sojourn in Rome, awoke and reminded him of the time he
heard the name last, reminded him in a souvenir that brought back the
name as pronounced by an unforgetable voice. He pictured himself again
in a garden walk at the Villa Cœlimontana, talking to Ely about his
friendship for Pierre and entering into a discussion with her such as
they often had.
He declared that friendship, that pure, proud sentiment, that mixture of
esteem and affection, of absolute confidence and sympathy, could not
exist except between man and man. She averred that she had a friend upon
whom she could depend just as he could upon Hautefeuille. And she had
then spoken of Louise Brion. It was Ely's friend who was now dining a
few feet away. And if she was regarding him with that singular
persistence, it was because she knew.--What did she know?--Did she know
that he had been Madame de Carlsberg's lover?--Without doubt that was
it. Did she know that Pierre was her lover now?
This time the idea became such a violent, such an imperious obsession
that Olivier felt he could no longer stand it. Besides, was there not a
means close at hand of learning the truth, and that immediately? Had not
Corancez told them that he should finish the evening in the Casino? And
he must certainly know, seeing that he had passed the winter with
Hautefeuille and Madame de Carlsberg.
"I will ask him about it openly, frankly," said Olivier to himself.
"Whether he replies or not, I shall be able to read what he knows in his
eyes.--He is so stupid!"
Then he felt ashamed of such a proceeding, as though of a frightful
indelicacy in regard to his friend.
"That is what comes of a woman stealing in between two men. They become
vile at once!--No, I will not try to get the facts of the case from
Corancez. And yet--"
Was Corancez stupid? It was impossible to be more mistaken about the
wily Southerner. Unfortunately, he was at times too astute. And in the
present case, his excessive subtlety made him commit the irreparable
fault of definitely enlightening Olivier. For the scruples of this
latter were, alas! powerless to withstand the temptation. After all he
had thought, in spite of all he felt so clearly, he succumbed to the
fatal desire to know. And when, about ten o'clock, he encountered
Corancez in one of the rooms of the Casino, he asked him abruptly:--
"Is the Baroness Ely, of whom you spoke in the train, the Madame de
Carlsberg I knew in Rome?--She was the wife of an Austrian archduke."
"The very same," responded Corancez, saying inwardly: "Hallo!
Hautefeuille has not said anything.--Du Prat knew her in Rome? Heaven
grant he has no feeling in that quarter, and that he will not go
chattering to Pierre!"
Then, aloud, he said:--
"Why do you ask?"
"For no reason," replied Olivier.
There was a short silence. Then he said:--
"Is not my dear friend Hautefeuille somewhat in love with her?"
"Ah! Now for it," thought the Southerner. "He'll be sure to learn all
about it sooner or later. It had better be sooner. It will prevent
mistakes."
And he replied:--
"Is he in love with her? I saw it from the beginning. He simply worships
her."
"And she?" asked Olivier.
"She?" echoed Corancez. "She is madly in love with him!"
And he congratulated himself upon his perspicacity, saying to himself:--
"At any rate, I feel more at ease now. Du Prat will not commit any
folly."
For once the Southerner had not realized the irony of his own thoughts.
He was as naïve as his secret wife, simple-minded Andryana, who,
discovering Madame du Prat at one of the roulette tables, replied to the
questions of the young wife without noticing her trouble, answering with
the most imprudent serenity.
"You were talking about a Baroness Ely in the train.--What an odd name!"
"It is a diminutive of Elizabeth, and is common enough in Austria."
"Then she is an Austrian?"
"What! You don't know her? It is Madame de Carlsberg, the morganatic
wife of the Archduke Henry Francis.--You are sure to meet her in Cannes.
And you will see for yourself how beautiful and good and sympathetic she
is."
"Did she not live in Rome for some time?" continued the young wife.
How her heart beat as she asked the question! The Venetian replied in
the most natural tone:--
"Yes, for a couple of winters. She was not on good terms with her
husband then, and they lived according to their own guise. Things are a
little better now, although--"
And the good creature was discreetly silent.