FRIEND AND MISTRESS--_Continued_
The sentiment of perfect happiness that Ely experienced when she was
convinced, in talking to Pierre, that Olivier had not disclosed anything
to his friend did not continue long. She knew her former lover too well
not to understand the constant danger threatening her. She knew that he
still remembered her, and she realized the intensity of morbid passion
of which the unhappy man was capable. It was impossible that he should
not feel toward her now as in the past, that he should not judge her in
the present as during the time of their liaison, with a savage cruelty
allied to a suspicion that had so wounded her. She knew how dearly he
loved Hantefeuille. She knew how solicitous, how jealous that friendship
was. No, he would not suffer her to possess his beloved companion
without a struggle, were it only to save him from her whom he judged so
hardly.
Besides her tact, the intuition of the former mistress was not to be
deceived. When the man whom she knew to suffer, as from a malady, from a
sensuality that was almost ferocious, should learn the truth, his worst,
most hideous jealousy would be aroused into action. Had she not counted
upon this very thing in the first place when she had nourished a scheme
of vengeance that to-day filled her with shame?
All these ideas crowded into her mind immediately Hautefeuille left her.
Again, as after his first visit, she accompanied him as far as the
threshold of the hothouse, clasping his hand and leading him through the
salon plunged in darkness, with a feeling of terror and yet of pride
when she felt that the hand of the young man, indifferent to danger,
never trembled. She shuddered at the first contact of the cold night
air. A last embrace, their lips united in a yearning final kiss, the
kiss of farewell,--always heartrending between lovers, for fate is
treacherous and misfortune flies swiftly,--a few minutes during which
she stood listening to his steps resounding as he walked down the
deserted pathways of the garden, and then she returned to her room,
returned to find the place, now cold, where her beloved had reposed in
her solitary bed. In the sudden melancholy mood caused by separation her
intelligence awoke from its vision of happiness and forgetfulness, awoke
to a sense of reality. And she was afraid.
Here fear was intense, but short-lived. Ely descended from a line of
warriors. She was capable of carrying out actively an energetic policy.
She could think out clearly a situation. Resourceful and proud natures
like hers have no time for the feverish creations of an unsound
imagination enfeebled by terror. She was one of those who dare to look
upon approaching danger. Thus in the first flush of her dawning passion
for Hautefeuille, as her confession to Madame Brion proved, she had
foreseen with a clearness that was almost a certainty the struggle that
would take place between her love and Olivier's friendship for Pierre.
But this power of courageous realization allows such natures to measure
the danger once they are face to face with it. They lay bare, with the
greatest clearness, the facts of the crisis through which they pass.
They have the strength that comes from daring to hope, from having an
exact idea of the danger in moments that appear desperate. Thus though
Ely de Carlsberg was a victim to a return of her awful anxiety, after
Hautefeuille's departure, when she again laid down her head upon the
pillow, though she suffered from a disquietude that kept her awake, when
she arose the following morning she again felt confidence in the future.
She had hope!
She had hope, and for motives that she saw clearly, just as the General,
her father, used to see a battlefield laid out in imagination definitely
and accurately. She had hope, in the first place, in Du Prat's love for
his wife. She had felt how refreshing to the heart is the love of a
young, pure nature innocent of the world. She had experienced it
herself. She knew how the moral nature is restored, reformed,
re-created, is purified by contact with the belief in the good, the
magnanimity of generous impulses, the nobility of a broad charity. She
knew how such an association washes away all shameful bitterness, all
evil sentiment, all traces of vice. Olivier had married the girl of his
choice. She loved him and he loved her. Why should he not have felt all
the beneficent influence of youth and purity? And in that case where
would he find the strength to wreck the happiness of a woman whom he had
loved, whom he judged severely, but in whose sincerity he could not fail
to believe?
Ely had this basis for her hope. She trusted in the truth of her passion
for Pierre, in the evidence that would confront Olivier of his friend's
happiness. She said to herself: "Once his first moment of suspicion is
passed, he will begin to observe, to notice. He will see that with
Pierre I have been free from any of the faults that he used to magnify
into crimes, that I have been neither proud nor frivolous nor
coquettish."--She had been so single-minded, so upright, so true in her
love! Like all people possessed by a complete happiness, she thought it
impossible for any one to misunderstand the truth of her heart.
Then, again, she trusted in the honor of both--in Pierre's, to begin
with. Not only was she sure he would not speak of her, she knew in
addition that he would use all his strength to prevent his secret being
suspected by even his most intimate friend. Then she trusted in Olivier.
She knew him to be of a scrupulous delicacy in all things, to be careful
in his speech, to be a perfect gentleman! He would certainly never
speak. To utter the name of one who had once been his mistress when
their relations had been conducted under certain unrevealed conditions
would be an infraction of a tacit agreement, as sacred as his word of
honor, would be to be disgraced in his own eyes. Olivier had too much
self-respect to be guilty of such a fault, unless it were in a moment of
maddening suffering. This condition was lacking in his case. He could
never have this excuse under the circumstances in which he returned,
married and happy, after an absence of months and months, almost two
years! No, there could not arrive this crisis in his life now. And,
above all, he would never cause his friend to suffer.--Besides--and this
was the final motive upon which Ely's hopes were based, was the most
solid of all, and only that proved how thoroughly she knew Olivier--if
he spoke of her to Pierre it would place a woman between them, it would
trouble the ideal serenity of their affection, which had never been
dimmed by a cloud. Even should he lose his self-respect, Olivier would
never lose his respect for his friendship.
It was in such thoughts that the unhappy woman sought relief upon the
day following Olivier's arrival in Cannes. It was the very day that the
young man's suspicions took bodily form, the day when all indications
pointed to one thing only, accumulated around him and were condensed
into absolute certainty by the well-meant but irreparable words spoken
by Corancez!
Ely de Carlsberg hoped, and her reason confirmed her hopes. But that
very same reason was to destroy, bit by bit, the ground for hoping in
the week following Olivier's return. And this, also, without her once
meeting him. She dreaded nothing so much as meeting him face to face,
and yet she would have preferred an explanation, even a stormy one, to
this total lack of intercourse. That they did not meet was evidently an
intentional act upon the part of the young man, for it was an
impoliteness that could not be accidental.
There was only one way left for Ely to learn the truth, the talks that
she had with Hautefeuille. How her suffering was intensified, how her
agony was increased! Only from Hautefeuille could she hear of Olivier
during the week. Through Hautefeuille she followed the tragedy being
enacted in the heart of her former lover. To Pierre it was quite natural
to tell his dear confidante of all the anxiety that his friend caused
him. He never dreamt that the least important detail was full of
significance for her. In every conversation with Pierre during the first
eight days she descended deeper and deeper into the dangerous abyss of
Olivier's thoughts. She saw a possible catastrophe approaching from the
first,--a possible catastrophe that became a probability, even a
certainty, at last.
The first blow to Ely's hope was dealt upon the day following the dinner
at Monte Carlo, when she again saw Pierre, not this time in the quiet
intimacy of a nocturnal meeting, but at the big soirée which had been
spoken about in the train. It was late when he arrived. The salons were
quite full, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.
"Olivier insisted upon keeping me," he said, excusing the lateness to
Madame de Carlsberg. "I began to think he would never let me go."
"He wanted to keep you for himself," she replied; "it is so long since
he saw you."
With a beating heart she waited to hear if Du Prat had manifested any
repugnance when he knew that Pierre was coming to her house.
"You must not wound the susceptibility of an old friend."
"He is not susceptible," replied Pierre. "He knows well enough how
attached I am to him. He kept me talking about his married life."
And, he added, sadly:--
"He is so unhappy! His wife is so badly suited to him. She does not
understand him He does not love her and she does not love him.--Ah! it
is frightful!"
So the rejuvenation of Olivier's heart by the love of a girl, the
sentimental renewal upon which his former mistress had counted, was only
one of her illusions. The man was unhappy in the very marriage in which
she would have liked to see a sure guarantee of forgetfulness, the
effacing of both their pasts. The revelation was so full of menace to
the future of her own happiness that she felt she must know more, and
she kept Pierre in a corner of the little salon, questioning him. They
were near the foot of the private staircase leading to her room. By one
of those contrasts that re-vivify in two lovers the fiery sweetness of
their secret this salon, traversed by them with peril, in complete
obscurity, hand clasping hand, this little salon, witness of their
secret meetings, was now blazing with light, and the crowd moving about
gave, as it does to all the fêtes on the Riviera, the sensation of a
worldly aristocracy.
It served as a passage between the brilliantly lighted hothouse and the
rooms of the ground-floor, decorated with shrubs and flowers and
overflowing with guests. The prettiest women in the American and English
colonies were there, extravagantly displaying their wealth of jewels,
talking and laughing aloud, with the splendid complexion that
characterizes the race. And mingling with them were Russians and
Italians and Austrians, all looking alike at the first glance: all
different at the second. The ostentations elegance of toilets, all
daringly bright-colored, spoke loudly of the preponderance of foreign
taste.
Evening coats were sprinkled about among these women, worn by all the
authentic princes in the wintering-place and also by the society men of
the place. All the varieties of the kind were represented there. The
most celebrated of sportsmen, renowned for his success as a pigeon shot,
elbowed an explorer who had come to Provence in search of rest after
five years spent in "Darkest Africa," and both were chatting with a
Parisian novelist of the first rank, a Norman Hercules with a faunlike
face, contented smile, and laughing eyes, who a few winters later was to
die a death worse than death, was to see the wreck of his magnificent
intellect.
This evening an air of gayety appeared to hang over the salons, lit by
innumerable electric lamps and ventilated by the balmy breath of early
spring. In a few more days this society would be dispersed to the four
corners of the continent. Did the fête owe its animation to this
sentiment of a season that was almost finished, to the approach of an
adieu soon to be spoken?
In any case this spring seemed to have penetrated even as far as the
master of the house--the Archduke Henry Francis--in person. It was his
first appearance in his wife's salon since the terrible day when he came
there in search of Verdier to take him off almost by force to the
laboratory. Those who had assisted at his cavalier entrance upon that
occasion, and who were again present this evening, Madame de Chésy, for
example, Madame Bonnacorsi, Madame Brion, who had come from Monte Carlo
for two days, and Hautefeuille, were astounded by the change.
The tyrant was in one of his rare moments of good humor, when it was
impossible to dislike him. He went about from group to group with a
kindly word for all. In his quality of Emperor's nephew, and one who had
almost ascended the throne, he had the princely gift of an infallible
memory for faces. This enabled him to call by their names people who had
been presented to him only once. And he joined to this quality another,
one that disclosed him to be a man of superior calibre, an astonishing
power of talking with each upon his special subject. To a Russian
general, famous for having built at great peril a railroad through an
Asiatic desert, he spoke of the Trans-Caspian plains with the knowledge
of an engineer, coupled to a thorough familiarity with hydrography. He
recited a verse from the Parisian novelist's first work, a volume of
poems now too little known. With a diplomatist who had been for a long
time in the United States he discussed the question of tariffs, and
immediately afterward recommended the latest model of gun, with all the
knowledge of a maker, to the celebrated pigeon shot. He talked with
Madame Bonnacorsi about her ancestors in Venice, like an archæologist
from the St. Mark library; with Madame de Chésy about her costumes,
like some habitué of the Opéra, and had a kindly and private word for
Madame Brion about the Rodier firm and the rôle it was playing in an
important Austrian loan.
This prodigious suppleness of intellect, assisted by such a technical
memory, made him irresistibly seductive when he chose to be winning.
He had thus arrived, amid general fascination, at the last salon, when
he saw his wife talking with Hautefeuille. At this sight, as though it
were an additional pleasure to surprise Ely _tête-à-tête_ with the
young man, his blue eyes, which shone so brightly in his ruddy face,
became even more brilliant still. Advancing toward the pair, who became
silent when they saw him approaching, he said in an easy manner to the
Baroness, the friendliness of the tone accentuating the irony of the
words:--
"I do not see your friend Miss Marsh this evening. Is she not here?"
"She told me she would come," replied Madame de Carlsberg. "She is
perhaps indisposed."
"Have you not seen her to-day?" asked the Prince.
"Yes, I saw her this morning.--Will Your Highness tell me why you ask
the question?"
"Simply because I am deeply interested in everybody who interests you,"
replied the Archduke.
As he uttered the insolently mocking phrase, the eyes of the terrible
man shot a glance at Hautefeuille that was so savage that he felt an
almost magnetic thrill shoot through him. It was only a flash and then
the Prince was in another group talking, this time about horses and the
last Derby with the Anglomaniac Navagero, without paying any more
attention to the two lovers, who separated after a couple of minutes,
heavy with unuttered thoughts.
"I must go and speak to Andryana," said Madame de Carlsberg. "I know the
Prince too well not to be sure that his good temper hides some cruel
vengeance. He must have found some way of embroiling Florence with
Verdier.--Good-by for the present.--And don't be cast down over the
misery of your friend's married life.--I assure you there are worse."
As she spoke, she gently waved a big fan of white feathers. The perfume
she preferred, the perfume that the young man associated with the
sweetest emotions, was waved abroad by the feathers. She gently bowed as
a sign of farewell, and her soft brown eyes closed with the tender look
of intelligence that falls upon a lover's heart like an invisible kiss.
But at that moment Pierre was unable to feel its sweetness. Again he had
experienced, in the presence of the Archduke, the pain that is one of
the frightful penalties of adultery; to see the beloved one ill-treated
by the man who has the right because he is the husband, see it, and to
be unable to defend her. He watched her going away now with the bearing
of a beautiful, graceful queen, so proudly regal in her costume of pink
moiré shot with silver. Upon the beloved visage which he saw in profile
as she crossed the room, he discerned traces of profound melancholy, and
again he pitied her with all his heart for the bitterness of her married
life. He never dreamt that the Archduke's sarcasm left Madame de
Carlsberg completely indifferent, nor that the relations of Miss Marsh
and Verdier did not interest her sufficiently to cause such a complete
feeling of depression. No. It was this idea that was weighing upon the
mind of the young woman, that was lying upon her heart like lead in the
midst of the fête: "Olivier is unhappily married! He is miserable. He
has not gained that gentleness of heart that he would have done had he
loved his wife.--He is still the same.--So he hates me yet.--It was
enough for him to learn that Pierre was to pass the evening with me for
him to try to prevent him from coming here.--And yet he does not know
all.--When he does!"
And hoping against hope, she forced herself to think, to say, to repeat:
"Well! When he does know he will see that I am sincere; that I have not
made his friend unhappy; that I never will make him suffer."
It was also Pierre who awoke her from the second illusion that Olivier
would be touched by the truth and purity of her love. Three days passed
after the soirée, during which the young man did not see his mistress.
Cruel as were these separations, Ely judged it wisest to prolong them
during Du Prat's stay. She hoped to make up for it later; for she
counted upon passing the long weeks of April and May at Cannes with
Hautefeuille, weeks that were so mild, so covered with flowers, so
lonely upon the coast and among the deserted gardens. The idea of making
a voyage to Italy, where they could meet, as they had done at Genoa, in
surroundings full of charm, also haunted her. The prospect of certain
happiness, if she could escape from the danger menacing her, gave her
strength to support the insupportable; an absence that contained all the
possibilities of presence, the torture of so great a love, of being so
near and yet not seeing each other.
It was the one way, she believed, of preventing suspicion from awakening
in Olivier. After these three weary days of longing, she appointed a
meeting with Pierre one afternoon in the garden of the Villa Ellenrock,
which recalled to both an hour of exquisite happiness. While her
carriage rolled toward the Cap d'Antibes, she looked out upon the
foliage of the climbing roses, peering over the coping of the walls, the
branches, already long and full of leaves, falling under their heavy
load, instead of standing out strong and boldly, and casting heavy, deep
shadows. A conflagration of full-blown roses blazed upon the branches.
At the foot of the silvery olive trees, a thick growth of young wheat
covered the loose soil of the fields. All these were the visible signs
that the year had passed from winter to springtide in the three weeks.
And a shudder of melancholy shot through the young woman at the sight.
It was as though she felt the time slipping away, bearing her happiness
with it. In spite of a sky, daily warmer and of a softer azure; in spite
of the blue sea, of the odors permeating the soft, balmy air; in spite
of the fascination of the flowers, blooming all around, as she strolled
down the alleys, still bordered with cinerarias, anemones, and pansies,
she felt that her heart was not as light as when she had flown to the
last rendezvous. She perceived Hautefeuille, in profile, awaiting her
under the branches of the big pine, at the foot of which they had
rested. She felt at the first glance that he was no longer the lover of
that time, enraptured with an ecstatic, perfect joy, and without a
hidden thought. It seemed as though a shade hovered before his eyes and
enveloped his thoughts. It could not be that he was vexed with her. It
could not be that his friend had revealed the dreaded secret. And yet
Pierre was troubled about Olivier. He admitted it at once before Ely had
time to question him.
"I cannot think," he said, "what has come between us. I have the strange
impression that certain things in me irritate him, unnerve him,
displease him.--He is vexed with me about trifles that he would not even
have noticed formerly; as, for example, my friendship with Corancez.
Would you believe it? He reproached me yesterday for having witnessed
the ceremony at Genoa, as though it were a crime.--And all because we
met poor Marius and his wife in the train at Golfe Juan yesterday!
"'Our nest is built there,' Corancez said to me, adding--these were his
very words--that 'the bomb was going to explode,' meaning that Andryana
was going to speak to her brother.--I told the story to Olivier to amuse
him, and he flew into a temper, going so far as to talk of its being
'blackmail,' as though one could blackmail that abominable creature
Navagero!--I replied to him, and he answered me.--You cannot imagine in
what terms he spoke to me about myself, about the danger that I ran in
frequenting the society of this place, of the unhappiness my change of
tastes and ideas gave him.--He could not have talked more seriously had
Cannes been tenanted by a gang of thieves who wished to enroll me in
their ranks.--It is inexplicable, but the fact remains. He is pained,
wounded, uneasy because I am happy here. Can you understand such madness
in a friend whom I love so sincerely, who loves me so tenderly?"
"That is the very reason why you must not feel angry," replied Ely.
"When one suffers, one is unjust. And he is unhappy in his married life.
It is so hard to have made a mistake in that way."
She spoke in this way, prompted by a natural jealousy. Her passionate,
ungovernable nature was too proud, too noble to employ the method of
secretly poisoning the mind of husband or lover against friendships that
are disliked, a method that wives and mistresses exercise with a sure
and criminal knowledge. But to herself she said:--
"Olivier has discovered that Pierre loves some one. Does he suspect that
it is I?"
The reply to the question was not a doubtful one. Ely had too often
noticed, when in Rome, the next to infallible perspicacity displayed by
Olivier in laying bare the hidden workings of the love intrigues going
on all around them. Although she continued, in spite of all, to hope in
his honor, she dreaded, with a terror that became daily more intense,
the moment when she would acquire the certitude that he knew. These two
beings began to draw closer together by means of Hautefeuille, began to
measure each other's strength, to penetrate each other's minds, even
before the inevitable shock precipitated them into open conflict.
Again it was Pierre who brought to his suffering mistress the proof for
which she longed and which she feared.--It was the seventh night after
Olivier's arrival, and she was awaiting Pierre at half-past eleven,
behind the open door of the hothouse. She had only seen him in the
afternoon long enough to fix this nocturnal meeting which made her pulse
throb as with a happy fever. The afternoon had been cloudy, heavy,
stormy. And the opaque dome of clouds stretched over the sky hid every
ray of moonlight, every twinkling star. Heavy lightning glowed upon the
horizon at moments, lighting up the garden, disclosing everything to the
eyes of the young woman who stooped forward to see the white alleys
bordered with the bluish agaves, the lawns with their flowering shrubs,
the green stems of the bamboos, a bunch of parasol pines with their red
trunks whose dark foliage stood out for a moment in the sudden flash of
light followed immediately by a darker, more impenetrable shadow. Was it
nervousness caused by the approaching tempest, for a heavy gust of hot
wind swept across the garden, announcing the advent of a hurricane, or
was it remorse at the idea of exposing her friend to the violence of the
storm when he parted from her, that made Ely already anxious, troubled,
and unhappy? When she at last saw Hautefeuille, by the light of the cold
and livid lightning, passing along the fringe of bamboos, her heart beat
with anxiety.
"Heavens!" she said to him, "you ought not to have come upon such a
night.--Listen."
Big drops of rain began to fall upon the glass of the hothouse. Two
formidable thunderclaps were heard in the distance. And now the drops of
rain became more and more general, so that around the two lovers under
the protecting dome of glass there was a continuous, sonorous rattle
that almost drowned the sound of their voices.
"You see our good genius protects us," answered the young man, pressing
her passionately to his heart, "since I got here just in time.--And,
besides, I should have come through the tempest without noticing it.--I
have been too unhappy this evening. I felt I must see you to comfort me,
to help me."
"You look disturbed," she replied. And touching his face in the darkness
with her soft, caressing hands, she added, her voice changing: "Your
cheeks are burning and there are tears in your eyes.--What is the
matter?"
"I will tell you presently," Pierre answered, "when I have been
comforted by feeling that you are near me.--God! How I love you! How I
love you!" he repeated with an intensity in which she discerned
suffering.
Then, later, when they were both in the solitude of her room, he said:--
"I think Olivier is going mad. These last few days he has been even
stranger than ever.--This evening, for example, he regarded me with a
look that was so curious, so insistent, so penetrating, that I feel
positively uneasy. I have not reposed any confidence in him, and yet I
had the impression that he read in me — not your name.--Ah! happily,
not that--not that!--but how am I to explain it?--my impatience, my
desire, my passion, my happiness, all my sensations? And I had a feeling
that my sentiments filled him with horror.--Why?--Is he not unjust? Have
I taken away from our friendship in loving you? I was very miserable
about it. Finally at ten o'clock I bade good night to him and his
wife.--A quarter of an hour later some one knocked at my door. It was
Olivier.--He said, 'Would you mind coming for a walk? I feel that I
cannot sleep until I have taken a stroll.'--I replied, 'I am sorry I
cannot; I have some letters to write.' I had to find some excuse. He
looked at me again with the same expression that he had had during
dinner.--And all at once he began to laugh. I cannot describe his laugh
to you. There was something so cruel in it, so frightfully insulting, so
impossible to tolerate. He had not spoken a word, and yet I knew that he
was laughing at my love. I stopped him, for I felt a sort of fury rising
in me. I said, 'What are you laughing at?'--He replied, 'At a souvenir.'
His face became perfectly pale. He stopped laughing just as brusquely as
he had begun. I saw that he was going to burst into tears, and before I
could ask him anything he had said 'Adieu' and gone out of the room."
There is a necessity for conflict in the natural, logical issue of
certain situations, a necessity so inevitable that even those who feel
they will be destroyed by it accept the struggle when it comes without
seeking to avoid it. It is thus, in public life, that peoples go to war,
and in private life rivals accept the duel with a passive fatalism that
often contradicts their complete character. They recognize that they
have been caught in the orbit of action of a power stronger than human
will.
When Pierre Hautefeuille had left Ely that night, she felt very cruelly
the impression that a struggle was inevitable and that it was not only a
struggle with a man, but with destiny! As long as her lover remained
near, her tense nerves dominated this impression, but when he had gone
she gave herself up to its contemplation. Alone, without sufficient
strength to go to her bed, she crouched, thoroughly unnerved, upon a
sofa. She began to weep, a crisis that lasted indefinitely, as though
she felt herself trapped, threatened, conquered in advance! Her last
hope had just been shattered. She could no longer doubt, after the scene
that Pierre had told her of, that Olivier knew all. Yes, he knew all.
And his nervousness, his fits of anger, his laughter, his despair,
proved only too clearly that he would not accept the situation, and that
a tempest of ungovernable desires were unchained within him. Now that he
had arrived at such a point of exasperation and of knowledge, what was
he going to do? In the first place, he would try to meet her again. She
felt as certain of this as though he had been standing there before her
laughing the cruel laugh that had wounded Hautefeuille's heart. In a few
days--perhaps in a few hours--she would be in the presence of her mortal
enemy, an enemy not only of herself but of her love. He would be there;
she would see him, hear him moving, breathing, living! A shudder of
horror ran through her frame at the idea. The thought that this man had
once possessed her filled her with a kind of acute suffering that made
her heart almost stop beating. The remembrance of caresses given and
returned induced a feeling of nausea and crushed her with shameful
distress. She had never felt so much as at this minute how her sincere,
deep love had really changed her, had made of her another woman, a
rejuvenated, forgiven, renewed creature!--But it could not be helped.
She would accept, she would support the odious presence of her former
lover. It would be the punishment for not having awaited her love of the
present in perfect purity; for not having foreseen that one day she
would meet Hautefeuille; for not having lived worthy of his love. She
had arrived at that religion--she, the reasoner, the nihilist, atheist,
had come to accept the mysticism of her happiness so natural to the
woman truly in love, and which makes all previous emotions not provoked
by the loved one a sort of blasphemous sacrilege. She would expiate the
blasphemy by supporting his odious presence.--Alas! Olivier would not be
content with simply inflicting the horror of his presence on her. He
would speak with her. What would he say? What would he want? What would
he ask?--She did not deceive herself for a moment. The sentiments of
this man as regarded herself had not changed. As Hautefeuille had told
her of the incident in his room, she had again heard his laugh, cruel
and agonizing and insulting, that she knew so well. And with this laugh
had come back to her all the flood of jealous sensuality that had
sullied her formerly to so great an extent that the traces were still to
be seen. After he had outraged her, trampled her under foot, left her,
after having placed the irreparable obstacle of marriage and desertion
between them, she felt and understood this monstrous thing, one
impossible in any other man, but quite natural in him, that Olivier
loved her still. He loved her, if it can be called love to have for a
woman that detestable mixture of passion and hatred which calls forth
incessantly the cruelty of enjoyment, the ferocity of pleasure.
He loved her. His attitude toward her would have been inexplicable
without this anomalous, hideous sentiment which had lived in him through
all and in spite of all! And, at the same time, he treasured his friend
with that jealous, stormy, passionate friendship which was tearing his
heart at this moment with unheard-of emotions and sufferings. To what
extent might he not be led by the frenzy of such torture agonizing as a
steel blade turned and re-turned in a wound? What could equal the pain
of having loved, of still loving, a former mistress,--of loving her with
such evil, sinister love,--and of knowing that woman was the
mistress of his best, his most tenderly beloved friend, of a brother by
adoption, cherished more than a brother by blood?
As clearly as she saw the first rays of dawn piercing the curtains at
the end of this night of terrified meditation, Ely saw these sentiments
at work in Olivier's heart.
"He who sows the wind shall reap the tempest," says an Austrian proverb.
When she wished to meet Hautefeuille, to make herself dear to him, she
wanted to strike Du Prat in the tenderest, most vulnerable spot in his
organization, to wound him through his friendship, to torture him
through it, to avenge herself in this way. She had succeeded only too
well! What blow was he going to strike in the rage of suffering now
consuming him? She had changed so much since the moment she had
conceived the project of cruel vengeance that she asked herself what she
was to do, what path she was to take? What if she appealed to this man,
made supplication to him, sought to melt his mood?--Or would it be
better to play with him, to cause him to think no _liaison_ existed
between her and Hautefeuille, for, after all, he had no proof.--Or
better still, why not oppose a bold front, and when he dared to appear
before her, drive him from her door, for he had no claim upon her.--Her
pride revolted against the first, her nobility of character against the
second, her reason against the third. In such a decisive crisis as the
one through which the poor woman was passing, the mind calls
instinctively upon all the most secret resources of nature, just as it
collects, summons to the centre of the personality, all its hidden
strength. Ely was remarkable by her need of truth and energy in the
middle of a society that is refined to excess and composite to the verge
of falsity. As she said to her confidante in the alleys of the Brions'
garden, on that night that was so recent and seemed so distant, it was
the truth in Hautefeuille's soul that had first of all attracted her,
charmed her, seduced her. It was in order to live a true life, to feel
true emotions, that she had entered the paths of this love, whose
dangers she had foreseen. After having in thought taken up and laid
down, accepted and rejected a score of projects, she finished by
deciding within herself that she would trust to the simple truth in the
redoubtable scene she felt was drawing near, thinking:--
"I will show him all my heart, just as it is, and he may trample on it
if he can find the strength."
This was the policy that this woman, capable of any error but not of
meanness or common calculation, arrived at after her wretched
wakefulness. She did not find forgetfulness in it for a peril drawing
near. But it gave her the courage that every human being feels in being
completely, absolutely logical in thought, wish, and belief. She was
not, therefore, as much surprised as she even expected when, about ten
o'clock, she received a note that proved how accurately she had
reasoned.
The letter was very short. But it was full of menace for her who read it
in the same little salon where she had made up her mind to dismiss
Pierre Hautefeuille,--a resolution that had been so weakly broken, and
that had been prompted by the very terror of the catastrophe that the
few lines announced:--
"MADAME--I shall have the honor of calling upon you to-day at two
o'clock. May I hope that you will receive me? or if the hour does not
suit you, that you will fix another? Let me assure you that your
slightest wishes will always be commands for
"Yours respectfully,
"Olivier du Prat."
"Very well," she said, "I shall be at home this afternoon."
It was impossible for her to answer the letter in writing. Commonplace
though it was, she could see that Olivier had written it in a singular
state of agitation and decision. Ely knew his handwriting, and she could
see from the few lines that the pen had been clenched, almost crushed in
his hand.
"It is war!" she said to herself. "So much the better. I shall know what
to expect in a few hours."
But in spite of her native energy, in spite of the power of resistance
that her passion gave her, the hours seemed so long to her. Her nerves
became more tense, painfully and unceasingly, as she counted the
minutes. She had given orders that she was not at home to any one except
her dreaded visitor. It seemed that she must regain her strength in a
final solitary retirement before engaging in the duel upon which the
future of her happiness depended.
For this reason she could not completely hide her disappointment when
about half-past one she saw Yvonne de Chésy, who had insisted upon
being admitted, enter the salon. She had only to give one glance at the
face of the pretty little frivolous Parisienne to see that a tragedy was
being enacted in her life also, a life that seemed created only to enjoy
perpetual happiness. The childish countenance of the young woman was
marked by an expression of astounded suffering. Her eyes, usually so
sparkling and laughing, had in their blue depths an expression of
terror, of stupefaction, as though brought suddenly face to face with
some horrible vision. Her gestures betrayed a strained nervousness that
was in strange contrast with her habitual gayety and butterfly
frivolity.
Ely suddenly remembered Marsh's conversation on the boat. She at once
guessed that Brion had begun his amorous blackmailing of the poor child.
She reproached herself for her momentary impatience, and even with all
her own anguish she welcomed the poor girl with all her accustomed
grace. Yvonne stammered an excuse for her insistence.
"You were quite right in coming in," replied Ely; "you know that I am
always at home for you.--But you are all upset. What is the matter?"
"Simply," replied Yvonne, "that I am lost unless I can find some one to
help me.--Ah!" she continued, holding her face in her hands as though to
shut out some dreadful nightmare, "when I think of all that has taken
place since yesterday, I cannot help thinking that I am in a dream.--In
the first place we are ruined, absolutely, irreparably ruined. I only
heard of it twenty-four hours ago.--Poor Gontran did everything to keep
me from learning the truth right to the end,--and I reproached him for
gambling at Monte Carlo! Poor, dear fellow! He hoped that a lucky chance
would give him a hundred or two hundred thousand francs, something of a
capital with which to rebuild our fortune.--For he is going to work! He
is determined to do something, no matter what.--If you only knew how
good and courageous he is!--It is only on my account he feels the
misfortune. It was for me, to obtain everything for me, that he entered
into too risky investments. He does not know how little I care for
wealth.--I can live on next to nothing, I have already told him.--All I
want is a little _couturière_ whom I can direct to make my costumes
according to my ideas; a little establishment at Passy in one of those
tiny English houses; a hired carriage or a coupé for my visits and for
going to the theatre, and I should be the happiest woman. I would go to
the market in the morning, and I am sure I should have a better table
than we have now. And I know I should be happy in such a life.--As a
matter of fact, I was not born to be rich--happily!"
She sketched out this little programme that she thought so modest and
which would have necessitated at the least 50,000f. a year, with such a
charming mixture of girlishness and courage that Madame de Carlsberg's
heart ached. She took her by the hand and kissed her, saying:--
"I know your kind heart, Yvonne.--But I hope everything is not yet
lost.--You have many friends, good ones, beginning with myself.--At
first one is terrified, and then it is always discovered that the ruin
is not as complete as was thought."
"This time it appears that the contrary is the case," said the young
woman, shaking her head. "But it is precisely because I know you to be
my friend," she went on, "that I have come to see you this morning. The
other evening the Archduke spoke to my husband of the difficulty he
experienced in finding some upright superintendent to look after his
estates in Transylvania.--And as the Prince was so pleasant to us that
evening we thought--"
"That Chésy could become his superintendent," interrupted Ely, who
could not keep back a smile at her friend's naïveté. "I wouldn't wish
such a fate for my worst enemy.--If things are really at such a point
that your husband has to seek a position, there is only one man who can
help him."
As she spoke, she saw Yvonne's infantile visage, which had brightened
for a moment under the influence of her bright welcome, become again
overclouded, and her look betrayed a feeling of pain and disgust.
"Yes," went on Ely, "there is only one man, and it is Dickie Marsh."
"The Commodore!" said Madame de Chésy, with manifest astonishment.
Then, shaking her head again, with her mouth closed in a bitter smile,
she added:--
"No, I know now too well the value of these men's friendships and the
price they place upon their services. I have only been ruined a short
time, and already some one,"--she hesitated a second,--"yes, some one
has offered me wealth.--Ah! dear Ely,"--and she clasped her hands over
her eyes, blushing with indignation,--"if I would become his mistress.
You do not know, you cannot know, what a woman feels when she suddenly
discovers that for months and months she has been tracked and waited for
by a man whom she thought her friend, like an animal tracked by a
hunter.--Every familiarity she has allowed, without thinking, because
she saw no harm in it, the little coquettishness that she has innocently
shown, the intimacy that she has not guarded against, all return to her
with shame, with sickening shame. The vile cleverness that was hidden
under the comedy of friendliness she has not seen, and now it is as
clear as daylight. She has not been culpable, and yet it seems as though
she had been. I will never suffer another such affront! Marsh would make
me the same ignoble proposition that the other did.--Oh! it is horrible,
shameful!"
She had spoken no name. But by her trembling, by her look of outraged
innocence, Madame de Carlsberg could imagine the scene that had taken
place, that very morning, perhaps, between the good, if imprudent,
creature and Brion, vile and despicable as he was. She understood for
the second time that the Parisienne was really pure and innocent and
that she was being initiated in the brutalities of life. There was
something pathetic, something that was heartbreaking, in her remorse,
her scruples, the sudden revulsion of a soul that had remained naïve by
irrealism.
Threatened though she was by another man, Ely felt her soul go out
toward the unhappy child. She determined to speak to her about Marsh, to
tell her of the conversation on the yacht, of the promise made by the
American, when, with that acuity of the senses that is awakened by our
inquietude at certain moments, she heard the door of the outer salon
open.
"It is Olivier," she said to herself.
At the same time, with instinctive superstition, she looked at the still
trembling Yvonne and added mentally:--
"I will help her. Such an action will surely bring me good luck."
Turning away, she said:--
"Do not be alarmed. I cannot speak to you just now, as I am expecting
some one. But come again to-morrow afternoon and I promise you I will
have found the very thing you want for Gontran. Let me act as I think
best,--and, above all, no weakness!--No one must suspect anything.--You
must never let people know that you suffer!"
The heroic counsel was addressed to herself. And she illustrated the
remark at the same moment, for the footman opened the door and announced
Monsieur Olivier du Prat. Madame de Chésy could never have guessed, to
see Ely so calm, with such a welcoming smile, what Hautefeuille's
mistress felt as she saw the newcomer enter the little salon. Olivier,
not less calm and polite than the two women, excused himself for not
having called sooner.
"You are forgiven," said Yvonne, who had risen upon Olivier's entrance
and had remained standing. "Really, if the society round had to be gone
through on one's wedding journey, it would not be worth while having a
honeymoon.--Make yours last as long as you can! That is the advice your
old cotillon partner gives you--and excuse me for running away. Gontran
was to come and meet me, and I don't want to miss him."
Then, turning to Ely, with a parting kiss, she said, in a whisper:--
"Are you satisfied with me?"
And the courageous little woman went off with a smile that her friend
'had hardly strength enough to return. Olivier's first glance had been a
terrible trial to support for Madame de Carlsberg. She read in it so
distinctly that brutality of a physical souvenir so intolerable for a
woman after the breaking off of an intrigue, so intolerable, in fact,
that they often prefer the scandal of an open rupture rather than
undergo the torture of meeting a man whose eyes say plainly: "Go on with
your comedy, my dear friend! Receive everybody's adulation, respect,
affection! I know you, and nothing you understand, nothing can efface
that souvenir."
In love, as she was, still glowing with the memory of Hautefeuille's
caresses of the past night, Ely's soul was so wrung by this impression
that she could have shrieked had she dared. She had only one idea, to
cut his visit short. She felt that if it was prolonged to any extent she
should faint before the end. But, suffering torture though she was,
terrified to the verge of unconsciousness, she was still the woman of
the world, the semi-princess, one who preserves her dignity in the midst
of the most cruel explanations. And she had all the grace of a queen as
she said to the man who had once been her lover and whom she so much
dreaded:--
"You wished to see me? I might have refused to receive you, for I have
that right. But I would not exercise it.--Still, I beg you to remember
that this interview is hideously painful to me. Whatever you have to
tell me, say it without a word that can increase my suffering, if it is
possible.--You see, I have neither hostility, bitterness, nor distrust
for you. Spare me any insinuations, any sarcasm, any cruelty.--It is all
I ask, and it is my right."
She spoke with a simple dignity that astonished Olivier. He no longer
noticed the air of defiance that formerly used to exasperate him with
her. From the moment he entered the salon he had been struck by a change
in the character of her beauty. Her countenance was always the same,
with its noble, pure outline, with its delicate and proud features, lit
up by those fathomless eyes, so charming with their touching
languorousness. But there was no longer that mobile curious expression,
that look of unquiet yearning there used to be imprinted on it.
This sensation was, however, too vague to impress her old lover, to
change his hostility into tenderness. He had brooded over one idea too
intensely during the last week, and an anger that was hardly restrained
betrayed itself in his voice as he replied:--
"I will try to obey you, madame! Still, in order that the interview that
I asked for may be understood, I shall have to say some things that you
might perhaps wish unspoken."
"Say them," she said, interrupting him. "All that I ask is that you
should not add anything that is not distinctly necessary."
"I will be very brief," said Olivier.
There was a moment's silence. Then, in a still more bitter tone, he
said:--
"Do you remember about two years ago in Rome, at the Palazzo
Savorelli,--you see I am being exact,--a young man being presented to
you, a young man who did not even think about you, and with whom you
were--How can I describe it without wounding you?"
"Say at once that I coquetted with him," Ely again interrupted, "and
that I tried to make him love It is the truth."
"Since you have such a good memory," went on Olivier, "you surely
recollect that these coquetries went so far that the young man became
your lover."
What a shudder of horror shot through Ely, making her eyelids tremble
with pain, as he accentuated the word with the cruelty that she had
prayed him to spare her!
He continued remorselessly:--
"You remember also that this love was a very miserable one. The man was
sensitive, suspicious, jealous. He had suffered very much in his life. A
woman who loved him truly would have had but one thought,--to lull to
slumber the horrible malady of distrust that raged in him. You did just
the opposite. Close your eyes and look back in memory to a certain ball
at the Countess Steno's, and that young man in the corner of the salon
and you dancing--with whom?"
This allusion to a forgotten episode of the saddest part of their past
brought a wave of blood to Ely's cheeks. She saw again, as her
implacable questioner had asked her, one of the Princes Pietrapertosa
paying his court to her. He was one of the imaginary rivals that Olivier
had detested the most.
She replied--
"I know. I acted wrongly."
"You admit it," went on Du Prat, "and you will also admit that the young
man with whom you played so cruelly had the right to judge you as he
did, to leave you as he did, because when near you he felt all his worst
impulses rise to the surface, because you made him evil, cruel, through
his suffering. Is that also the truth?--And is it not also true that
your pride was wounded by his desertion and that you determined to be
revenged?--Will you deny that, having encountered later the most
intimate, the dearest friend of that man, the deepest and most complete
affection that had ever entered his life, you conceived a horrible idea?
Will you deny that you determined to make his friend love you with the
hope, the certainty, that he would learn, sooner or later, and would
suffer horribly from the knowledge that his former mistress had become
the mistress of his best, his only friend? Do you deny it?"
"No. It is true," she replied.
This time her beautiful face became livid. Her pallor, her aching head
bowed as though under the weight of the blows it received, the fixed
look in her eyes, her half-open mouth gasping for breath, the humble
character of her replies, which proved how sincere she was in her firm
resolve to not offer any defence of her action, ought to have disarmed
Olivier.
But as he uttered the words "to the mistress of his friend" the image
again rose before his eyes, the vision that had tortured him from the
moment he had suspected the truth. He again saw Hautefeuille's face
close to her lovely countenance, his eyes looking into hers, his lips
pressed upon hers. Ely's avowal only increased the tangibility of the
vision. It completed his madness. He had never thought he loved her so
well, that he had such a desire for the woman he had treated so
brutally. His passion took complete possession of him.
"And you admit it!" he cried; "calmly, frankly, you admit it? You do not
see how infamous, how abominable, monstrous your vengeance is? Think of
it; you take a being such as he is, pure, youthful, delicate, one
incapable of distrust, one all simplicity, all innocence, and you make
him love you at the risk of destroying him, of ruining his soul
forever.--And for what?--To satisfy the miserable spite of a flirt angry
at being deserted.--Even his freshness and nobility of soul did not make
you hesitate. Did you never think that to deceive such a defenceless
creature was infamous? Did you never think of what you were destroying
in his soul? Knowing as you did the friendship that bound him to me, if
there had been a spark of--I will not say nobility--a spark of humanity
in your heart, you must have recoiled from this crime, from the
loathsome infamy of soiling, of ravishing him from his noble, beautiful
affection, to give him in exchange a frivolous _liaison_ of a few days,
just long enough for you to find amusement in the vileness of your
caprice!--He had done nothing to you! He had not deserted you! He had
not married another!--Oh, God! What a cowardly, loathsome
vengeance.--But at any rate I cry in your face that it was cowardly,
cowardly, cowardly!"
Ely sprang to her feet as her implacable enemy flung the insulting words
in her face. Her eyes were fixed on Olivier with a regard in which there
was no anger or revulsion of feeling under his affront. Her eyes even
seemed to have an expression of calmness in their sincerity. She took a
few steps toward the young man and put her hand on his arm--the arm that
menaced her--with a gesture so gentle, and at the same time so firm,
that Olivier stopped speaking. And she began to reply to him in a tone
of voice that he did not recognize. It was so simple, so human, that it
was impossible to doubt the sincerity of her words. Her heart was really
disclosed before him. He felt that her words penetrated to the very
centre of his inner nature. He loved this woman more than he knew
himself. He had sought, without being able to create it, to call into
being exactly what he now saw in the woman whose beauty he idolized. The
soul that he saw shining through her tender, sad eyes, the passionate,
shy, ardent soul, capable of the greatest, the most complete, sacrifice
to love, was what he had divined to exist in her, what he had pursued
without ever capturing, what he had longed for and had never possessed
in spite of all their caresses, of all the violence and brutality of his
jealousy! Her real nature had been awakened by another! And that other
was his dearest friend!--He listened to Ely, for she was now speaking.
"You are unjust, Olivier," she said, "very unjust. But you do not know
all--you cannot know.--You saw that I did not try to contradict you when
you reproached me, that I did not try to brave it out. I was not the
proud woman with whom you fought so often in years gone by.--I seem to
have no pride left! How could I have when I see, as I listen to you,
what I was, what I should be still had I not met Pierre, and without the
love that has taken possession of my soul like an honored guest?--When I
told you that I at first thought only of making him love me to avenge
myself upon you, I told you the truth. You ought to believe me when I
tell you that the mere idea now fills me with the same horror that you
feel.--When I got to know him, when I realized the beauty, the nobility,
the purity of his nature, all the virtues that you have just been
speaking of, I awoke to the sense of the infamy I was going to commit.
You are quite right, I should have been a monster if I had been able to
deceive a soul so youthful, so innocent, so lovable, so true! But I have
not been such a monster.--I had not talked with Pierre more than twice
when I had utterly renounced all idea of such a frightful revenge, when
he had won my love entire. I loved him! I love him!--Do you think that I
have not said, that I do not say every day, every hour, to myself all
that you have just spoken? Do you think I have not felt it ever since I
knew what my sentiments were for him? I loved him, and he was your
friend, your brother. I have been your mistress, and I knew that a time
must come when you would meet again, when he would speak to you of me--a
time when he would perhaps know all. Do you think I did not dread
that a time would come when I should see you again and you would speak
to me as you have just been speaking?--Oh, it is horrible, agonizing!"
She dropped Olivier's arm and pressed her clenched hands upon her eyes
with a movement of physical anguish. It was in her being that she
suffered, in the body once abandoned completely to the man who heard
her, as she continued:--
"But pardon me. I do not concern you. It is not what I have suffered
that we have to think of, but of him.--You cannot doubt now that I love
him with all there is in me that is noble, good, and true. You also must
have realized how he loves me with all the wealth of affection that you
know so well. All this week while he was speaking to me I saw you--with
what agony!--I felt that you were laying bare our secret hour by
hour.--Now you know that secret. Pierre loves me as I love him, with an
absolute, unique, passionate love.--And now, if you choose, go and tell
him that I was once your mistress. I will not defend myself any more
than I did a few minutes ago. I have not strength enough to lie to him.
The day he asks me, 'Is it true that Olivier has been your lover?' I
shall reply, 'It is true!'--But it is not I alone whom you will have
killed!"
She ceased speaking, and fell into her chair with her head resting on
the back, as though exhausted by the effort of laying bare her thoughts,
in which were mingled so many sad and bitter memories. She waited
Olivier's reply with an anxiety so intense that her strength seemed to
be ebbing away, and she closed her eyes as in dread. With the logic of a
woman deeply in love, she had forced the man who had come there to
threaten and insult her into a position where he must take one of the
two courses that their wretched situation left open to him,--either to
tell all to Hautefeuille, who would then decide for himself whether he
loved Ely enough to trust her after he knew that she had been his
friend's mistress; or, to spare him this torture, to leave Hautefeuille
in ignorance with his happiness. In this latter case Olivier would have
to go away, to put an end forever to his own misery, and to cease
inflicting the pain of his presence upon Ely, a pain that, in itself,
was the cause of a nervous state sufficient to reveal sooner or later
their past relations.
What would he do? He did not reply; he, who only a few minutes before
had been so eager to speak, so bitter in his reproaches. Through her
half-closed eyes, quivering with the intensity of her anxiety to know
the worst, Ely saw that he was regarding her with a strange, impassioned
look. A struggle was going on within him. What was its cause? What would
be its result? She was about to learn, and also what sort of a sentiment
her heartbreaking appeal had awakened in the heart that had never been
able to tear itself away from her entirely.
"You love him?" he said at last. "You love him?--But, why do I ask? I
know you love him. I feel it, I see it.--It is only love that could have
prompted such words--could have imprinted such an accent, such truth
upon them.--Oh!" he went on bitterly, "if you had only been, when we
were in Rome, what you are now; if only once I had felt that you
vibrated with genuine emotion!--But you did not love me and you love
him!" He repeated, "You love him!--I thought we had inflicted upon each
other all the pain that is in a human being's power, and that I could
never suffer any more than I did in Rome, than I have done during these
past days when I felt that you were his mistress.--But beside this--that
you love him--my sufferings were nothing.--And yet how could you help
loving him?--How was it that I did not understand at once that you would
be touched, penetrated, changed; that your heart would be imbued with
the charm of his grace, of his youth, of his delicacy, of all that makes
him what he is?--Ah! I see you now as I longed to see you once, as I
despaired of ever seeing you, and it is through him, it is for him!"
Then, with a moan as of some stricken animal, he cried:--
"No! I cannot support it. I suffer too much, I suffer too much!"
And words of grief, mingled with words of rage and love, poured forth in
a wild stream.
"Since you hate me enough to have thought of such a brutal vengeance,"
he cried, cruelly, savagely, "since you longed to make me jealous of him
through you, enjoy your work.--Look at it.--You have succeeded."
"Spare me, spare me!" cried Ely. "Oh, God! do not talk like that!"
His sudden outburst, the strange betrayal of his feelings, even in her
suffering, made her shudder. With a mingled feeling of indescribable
terror and pity she had a glimpse into another secret recess in the
heart of the tortured being who, during a half hour of mortal anguish,
had insulted, humiliated, despised, then had understood, accepted,
justified, pitied, and who now cursed her. She had felt, as she listened
to Pierre's confidences on the subject of his friend, that a reflux of
loathing sensuality still seethed in her former lover's heart. She saw
it now. And she also saw that a deep, true passion had always lived,
palpitated, germinated under his sensuality, under his hate. His passion
had never developed, grown, put forth its blossom, because she had never
been the woman he sought, the woman he yearned for, the woman he felt
was in her. Thanks to the miracle worked by love for another, she had
now become the woman he desired. What a martyrdom of suffering for the
unhappy man! Forgetting her fears and inspired only by a movement of
compassion, she said:--
"What! rejoice in your grief?--Think of my vengeance yet. Did you not
feel how sincere I was, what shame I feel at ever having conceived such
a hideous idea? Did you not see how bitterly I loathe, how I regret my
life at Dome? Do you not feel that my heart bleeds at the sight of your
suffering?"
"I am very grateful for your pity," interrupted Olivier.
His voice suddenly became dry and cold. Was he trying to recover his
dignity? Was he wounded by her womanly pity, a pity that is humiliating
when given in place of love? Was he afraid of saying too much, of
feeling too deeply if the interview was prolonged?
"I beg your pardon for not having kept my nerves under better
control.--There is nothing more to say. I promise you one thing: I will
do everything in my power to keep Pierre from ever knowing. Don't thank
me. I will keep silent on his account, on my own account, so as to
preserve a friendship that has always been dear to me, that always will
be dear. I did not come here to threaten you that I would disclose the
past to him. I came to ask you to be silent, to not push your vengeance
to its last extreme.--And now, as I bid you farewell forever, I still
ask you that. You love Pierre, he loves you; promise me that you will
never use his love against our friendship, to respect that feeling in
his heart."
There was a supplicating humility in Olivier's voice. All the religious
sentiment of his friendship, which Ely knew filled him, betrayed itself
in his tone, sadly, almost solemnly! And with a solemn emotion she
replied:--
"I promise you."
"Thank you again," he said, "and farewell."
"Farewell," she replied.
He took a few steps toward the door. Then he turned and approached her.
This time she read in his eyes all the maddening vertigo of love and
desire. She was seized with such a terror that she could not move. When
he arrived at her chair, he took her head between his hands and
frantically, passionately pressed it to his heart. He covered her brow,
her hair, her eyes with kisses, and strove to kiss her lips with a mad
frenzy that restored the woman all her strength. Thrusting him from her
with all the vigor that her indignation gave her, she rose and took
refuge in the corner of the salon, crying, as though appealing for help
to the being who had the right to defend her:--
"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre!"
As he heard the name of his friend, Olivier seized a chair as though he
were about to faint. And suddenly, without looking at Ely, who was
crouching against the wall almost swooning, with her hand pressed upon
her heart, without saying a single word either of adieu or to ask
pardon, he left the salon.
She heard him traverse the bigger room and heard the second door close.
He went away with the terrified air of a man who had almost succumbed to
the temptation to crime and who flees from himself and his loathsome
desire. He passed, without seeing them, the two footmen in the
vestibule, who had to run after him with his cane and overcoat. He went
along one of the alleys in the garden without knowing it. The rush of
emotion that had flung him upon his former mistress, now the mistress of
his dearest friend, now gave way to such a flood of remorse, he was so
tossed about on the sea of conflicting emotions caused by the kisses
pressed upon the face he had longed for so secretly, with such
intensity, during the past few days, by the sensation of her lips
seeking to avoid contact with his own, of the beloved figure thrusting
him away with repulsion and horror, that he felt his reason was giving
way.
All at once, as he turned round the corner of the railing surrounding
the villa, he saw that some one was awaiting him in a carriage. The
sight arrested him with the same ghastly terror he would have felt at
seeing the spectre of some one he believed dead and resting in the bosom
of the earth. It was the avenger whom Ely had called to her aid. It was
Hautefeuille!
"Olivier!"
It was all he said. But his voice, his deadly pallor, his eyes, in which
shone the suffering of a heartbreaking anguish, told his friend that he
knew all.