BETWEEN TWO TRAGEDIES
Ely awaited Pierre's reply to her letter without apprehension.
Immediately Olivier had left she wrote, impelled by an instinctive, an
irresistible desire to refresh and purify herself in Hautefeuille's
loyal, devoted tenderness, after the cruel scene from which she issued
broken, humiliated, and soiled. Not for a single minute did she do
Olivier the injustice of suspecting that he would, even though possessed
by the most hateful love, try to destroy the image that Pierre had of
her--an image that bore no resemblance to her in the past, but now so
true--so true to the inner nature of her present being.
She said nothing in this letter to her lover that she had not told him
twenty times before--that she loved him, then again that she loved him,
and, finally, that she loved him. She was sure that he would also reply
with words of love, already read and re-read a score of times, but
always new and welcome as an untasted happiness. When she received the
envelope upon which Pierre had written her address, she weighed it in
her hands, with the joy of a child. "How good he is to send me such a
long letter!" And she tore it open in an ecstasy of love that was at
once changed to terror. She looked first at her own letter with the seal
unbroken and then again at the envelope bearing her name. Was it
possible that such an insult had really been paid her by "her sweet," as
she called her lover, with the affectation common to all sentiments?
Could such an insult really have come from Pierre, who that very night
had clasped her to his bosom with so much respect, mingled with his
idolatry, with piety almost in his passion?
Alas, doubt was not possible! The address was in the young man's
handwriting. It was certainly he who returned the letter to his mistress
without even opening it. Following the terrible scene of a short time
before, this refusal to hear from her, this return of her letter,
signified a rupture. The motive of it was indicated to Ely's terrified
eyes with hideous plainness. It was impossible for her to guess the
exact truth. She could not divine that it had been brought about by
Berthe du Prat's jealousy,--a jealousy awakened by so many suspicions
which started the long-continued inner tragedy and ended in the
irresistible impulse which drove the young wife to make the most
desperate appeal to the most intimate friend of her husband, to make an
appeal that revealed all to him. It was a succession of chances that
nothing could have foretold.
On the other hand, a voluntary indiscretion on the part of Olivier
appeared so probable, so conformable to the habitual meanness of wounded
masculine pride! Ely never thought of any other cause, never sought any
other motive for the crushing revolution wrought in Pierre's soul, of
which she had before her a mute proof, more indisputable, more
convincing than any phrase. The details of the catastrophe appeared
before her simply and logically. Olivier had left her frantic with anger
and desire, with jealousy and humiliated pride. In an excess of
semi-madness he had failed of his honor. He had spoken! What had he
said? All?--
At the mere idea the blood froze in the poor woman's veins. From the
minute when, upon the quay of the old port at Genoa, Hautefeuille had
held out to her the despatch announcing Olivier's return, she had
traversed so many horrible hours that it appeared as though in her
thoughts she must have become accustomed to the danger, that she must
have admitted the possibility of this event. But, when in love, the
heart possesses such stores of confidence, united to a keen power of
self-deception, that she came face to face with the actuality as
unprepared, unresigned, as unwittingly as we all meet death.--Ah! if she
could only see Pierre at once. If she could only be alone with him,
could only talk to him, could only plead her cause, defend herself,
explain to him all she once had been and why, show him what she had now
become and the reason, tell him of her struggles, of her longing to
unbosom herself to him at the beginning, and that she had only kept
silence through fear of losing him, through a trembling terror of
wounding him in his tenderest feelings! If she could only see him to
show him that love had caused it all, that it was love!--
Yes, see him! But where? When? How? At the hotel? He would not receive
her. Olivier was there watching, guarding him. See him at her own villa?
He would not come there again. Make a rendezvous with him? She could
not. He would not even open her letter! She felt in the depths of her
nature, which had remained so primitive and unrestrained, all the savage
spirit of her Black Mountain ancestors rebelling against the bonds that
tied her. With all her wretchedness she could not keep down a movement
of reckless violence. Her powerless rage found vent--it was the only
outlet possible--in a letter written to her cowardly denunciator,
Olivier. She despised him at this moment for all the faith that she had
felt in his loyalty. She loathed him with the same energy that she loved
Pierre.
This second letter was useless and unworthy of herself. But to give free
course to her rage against Olivier was to give relief to her passion for
his friend. Besides--for in stirring up the depths of our nature
suffering arouses that vague foundation of hope that remains with us in
spite of the deepest despair--was it not possible that Olivier, when he
once saw how infamously he had acted, would go to his friend and say:
"It was not true; I lied when I told you she had been my mistress"?
This whirlwind of mad ideas, vain rage, and senseless hypotheses was
shattered and driven away by an event as brutal as the first. Ely sent
the letter to Olivier by one of her footmen about seven o'clock. Half an
hour later, when she was finishing her toilet in a fever of anxiety, the
man brought back the reply. It was a large sealed envelope with her
address written in Olivier's handwriting. Inside was her letter
unopened.
The two friends had thus made a compact. They both insulted her in the
same way! It was as plain to her as though she had seen them take each
other's hand and swear a pact of alliance against her in the name of
their friendship.
For the first time this woman, usually superior to all the pettiness of
her sex, felt against their friendship all the unreasoning hate that the
ordinary mistress has for even the simple companionships of her lover.
She felt that instinctive impulse of feminine antipathy for sentiments
purely masculine, and from which the woman feels excluded forever.
During the hours following the double insult, Ely was not only a woman
in love repulsed and disdained, a woman who loses with him she loves all
joy in life, a woman who will die of the effect of her loss. She was not
only this, she also suffered all the pangs of a devouring jealousy. She
was jealous of Olivier, jealous of the affection he inspired in Pierre
and that Pierre returned. In the despair that the certainty of the cruel
desertion caused her, she felt mingled an additional pang of suffering
at the idea that these two men were happy in the triumph of their
fraternal tenderness, that they dwelt under the same roof, that they
could talk with each other, that they esteemed each other, loved each
other.
True, such impressions were out of conformity with her innate
magnanimity. But extreme sufferings have one trait in common: they
distort the natural feelings and sentiments. The most delicate nature
becomes brutal, the most confiding loses the noble power of expansion,
the most loving becomes misanthropic when in the grasp of a great grief.
There is no more ill-founded prejudice than the one echoed in the famous
line--
"Man is an apprentice; suffering, his master."
It may be a master, but it is a degrading, depraving master. Not to be
corrupted by suffering one must accept the trial as a punishment and a
redemption. And then it is not the suffering that ameliorates one, but
faith!
Without doubt if poor Ely had not been the disabused nihilist who
believed, as she once said energetically, that "there is only this
world," all the obscure fatalities that were crushing her down would
have been made clear with a blinding light. She would have recognized a
mysterious justice, stronger than our intentions, more infallible than
our calculations, in the encounter that made the punishment of her
double adultery issue from the friendship of those who had been her
guilty partners in her failings, and caused those same accomplices to be
each a punishment to the other. But in the blow that overwhelmed her she
saw only the base vengeance of a former lover. And such a form of
suffering could only end in degrading her. All her virtues of generous
indulgence, of tender goodness, of sentimental scrupulousness that her
love, magnificent in its enthusiastic spontaneity, had awakened in her
heart, had receded from her. And she felt that all the most hideous and
all her worst instincts were taking their place at the idea that these
two men, both of whom had possessed her, one of whom she loved to the
verge of madness, despised her. And in imagination she again saw Pierre
as he was there before her, only twenty-four hours before, so devoted,
so noble, so happy!--Ah! Pierre!--All her bitterness melted into a flood
of tears as she cried aloud the beloved name. Ah! to what good was it
that she cried for him? The man for whom such passionate sighs were
breathed would not even listen to them!
What an evening, what a night the unfortunate woman passed, locked in
her room! What courage it needed not to remain there all the following
day, with windows closed, curtains down! How she longed to flee the
daylight, life, to flee from herself, plunged and engulfed in a night
and silence as of death!--But she was the daughter of an officer and the
wife of a prince. She had thus twice over the trait of a military
education, an absolute exactitude in carrying out her promises, a trait
that causes the disciplined will to rise superior to all events and to
execute at the appointed time the duties imposed. She had promised the
night before to intercede with Dickie Marsh in Chésy's favor, and she
was to give his reply in the afternoon. Her lassitude was so great in
the morning that she nearly wrote to Madame Chésy to postpone her visit
and that to the American's yacht. Then she said, "No, that would be
cowardly."--And at eleven o'clock in the morning, her face hidden by a
white veil that prevented her reddened eyes and agitated features from
being seen, she stepped from her carriage on to the little quay to which
the Jenny was moored. When she saw the rigging of the yacht and her
white hull outlined against the sky, pale with the presage of heat, she
remembered her arrival upon the same sun-scorched stones of the little
quay, in the same carriage, only a fortnight before, and the profound
joy she felt when she saw Pierre's silhouette as he looked for her from
the boat anxiously. Those two weeks had been long enough for her
romantic and tender idyl to be transformed into a sinister tragedy.
Where was the lover who was with her when they left for Genoa? Where was
he trying to hide the awful pain caused by her and which she could not
even console? Had he already left Cannes? Ever since the night before
the idea that Pierre had left her forever had made her heart icy with
cold terror. And yet she devoured with her eyes the yacht upon which she
had been so happy.
She was now near enough to be able to count the portholes, of which the
line appeared just above the rail of a cutter moored near the Jenny. The
seventh was the one lighting her cabin, their cabin, the nuptial refuge
where they had tasted the intoxicating joy of their first night of love.
A sailor was seated upon a plank suspended from the rail washing the
shell of the boat with a brush that he dipped from time to time in a big
bucket. The triviality of the detail, of the work being done at that
minute and at that place, completed the faintness of the young woman
caused by the air of contrast. She was speechless with emotion when she
stepped upon the gangway leading from the quay to the boat. Her
agitation was so apparent that Dickie Marsh could not resist an
inclination to question her, thus failing for once to observe the great
Anglo-Saxon principle of avoiding personal remarks.
"It is nothing," she replied; "or rather nothing that concerns me."
Then, making his question an excuse for introducing the subject of her
visit, she said:--
"I am all upset by the news I have just learned from Yvonne."
"Shall we go into the smoking-room?" asked the American, who had
trembled at the sound of Madame de Chésy's name. "We shall be able to
talk better there."
They were in the office where Marsh was busy when Ely arrived. The dry
clicking of the typewriter under the fingers of a secretary had not
stopped or even slackened a moment upon the entrance of the young woman.
Another secretary went on telephoning to the telegraph office, and a
third continued arranging documents. The intensity of their industry
proved the importance and the pressing nature of the work being done.
But the business man left his dictations and his calculations with as
little compunction as an infant displays when he casts aside his hoop or
ball, to question Yvonne's messenger with a veritable fever of anxiety.
"So the bolt has fallen! Are they ruined?" he asked, when they were
alone. Then, in reply to Ely's affirmation, he went on: "Was I not
right? I have not seen the Vicomtesse for some little time. I have not
even tried to see her. I thought Brion was at the bottom of all. I was
sure you would make me a sign at the right moment, unless--But no,
there is no unless--I was sure the poor child would estimate that man
for the abominable cad that he is, and that she would show him the door
the first word he uttered."
"She came to see me," said Ely, "trembling, and revolted at the ignoble
propositions the wretch made to her."
"Ah, what 'punishment' he merits!" said Marsh, with an expressive
gesture that accentuated the energetic boxing term. "Did you tell her to
apply to me? Is her husband willing to work?"
"She came to see me to ask for a place for Gontran as superintendent on
the Archduke's estate," replied Ely.
"No, no!" interrupted Dickie Marsh. "I have the very thing for him. It
is better for me even than for him, for I have a principle that all
services ought to be of some use to him that renders them. In that way,
if the man you oblige proves ungrateful, you are paid in advance.--This
is the affair. Since we were in Genoa we have done a lot of work. We
have founded in Marionville--by we I mean myself and three others, the
'big four,' as we are called--a society for working a score of ruined
ranches we have bought in North Dakota. We have thus miles and miles of
prairies upon which we want to raise not cattle, but horses.--Why
horses? For this reason: In the States a horse is worth nothing. My
countrymen have done away with them, and with that useless thing, the
carriage. Railways, electric tramways, and cable cars are quite
sufficient for every need. In Europe, with your standing armies, things
are different. In another five years you will not be able to find horses
for your cavalry. Now follow me closely. We are going to buy in the
horses in America by the thousand for a song. We shall restore them to
the prairies. We shall cross them with Syrian stallions. I have just
bought five hundred from the Sultan by telegraph."
Excited by the huge perspective of his enterprise, he left the "we" to
use the more emphatic "I."
"I am going to create a new breed, one that will be superb for light
cavalry. I will supply a mount for every hussar, uhlan, and chasseur in
Europe. I have calculated that. I can deliver the animals in Paris,
Berlin, Rome, Vienna at a fourth less than the State pays in France,
Germany, Italy, and in your country. But I must have some competent and
trustworthy man to look after my breeding stables. I want Chésy to take
this place. I will give him $115,000 per year, all his travelling
expenses paid, and a percentage upon the profits. You will perhaps say
that when you want to make wealth by the plough you must put your hand
to it.--That is true. But with the cable I am at hand if only my man
does not rob me. Now, Chésy is honest. He understands horses like any
jockey. He will save for me what a rascally employee would steal and all
that an incompetent one would waste. In ten years he can return to
Europe richer than he would ever have been by following Brion's advice
and without owing me anything.--But will he accept?"
"I can answer for that," replied Ely. "I have an appointment with Yvonne
this afternoon. She will write to you."
"In that case," Marsh continued, "I will cable instructions for the
furnishing of their residences in Marionville and Silver City to be
hurried on. They will have two houses at the society's expense. I shall
go to the States to start him upon his duties. They can be there for
June.--And if they accept will you tell the Vicomtesse that we start for
Beyrout the day after to-morrow on the _Jenny_? I want them to go along
with me. Chésy could begin his work straight away. He will prevent the
Bedouins selling me a lot of old nags in the batch. I will write to him,
however, more at length upon the matter."
There was a short silence. Then he said:--
"There is some one I should like to take with them."
"Who is that?" asked Ely.
The contrast was a very striking one between the sentiment of silent
misery, of despairing prostration, of the uselessness of everything that
prostrated her, and the almost boundless energy of the Yankee business
man. In addition to her sorrow she felt a sort of bewilderment, and she
forgot all about Marsh's intention in regard to his niece's marriage.
"Who?" echoed the American, "why Verdier, naturally. I have also my
secret service bureau," he went on. This time there was even more energy
in his manner. Admiration and covetousness were visible in all his being
as he sounded the praises of the Prince's assistant and of his
inventions. "I know that he has solved his problem. Has he not spoken to
you about it? Well, it is a marvel! You will realize that in a
minute.--You know that aluminum is the lightest of metals. It has only
one fault; it costs too much. Now, in the first place, Verdier has
discovered a process of making it by electrolysis, without the need of
any chemical transformations. He can thus get it very cheap. Then, with
his aluminum, he has invented a new kind of electric accumulator. It is
fifteen times more powerful according to its weight than the
accumulators at present in use.--In other words, the electric railway is
an assured fact. The secret is discovered!--I want to take Verdier with
me to the States, and with the help of his invention we shall wreck the
tramway companies in Marionville and Cleveland and Buffalo. It means the
death of Jim Davis; it means his end, his destruction, his complete
ruin!--You don't know Davis. He is my enemy. You know what it is to have
an enemy, to have some one in the world with whom you have been fighting
for years; all your life, in fact? Well, in my case that some one is Jim
Davis. His affairs are shaky just now. If I can get Verdier's invention,
I can crush him into pieces and utterly smash up the Republican party in
Ohio at the same time."
"Still," said Madame de Carlsberg, interrupting him, "I cannot go to the
laboratory to ask him for his invention."
In spite of her trouble she could not help smiling at the flood of
half-political, half-financial confidences that issued pell-mell from
Marsh. With his strange mixture of self-possession and excitability, he
did not lose sight of his objects for a single moment. He had just
rendered a service to the Baroness Ely. His motto was, give and take. It
was now her turn to serve him.
"No," he replied eagerly, "but you can find out what the young man has
against Flossie. You know that I planned their marriage. Did she not
tell you? It is a very good match for both--for all. To him it means a
fortune, to her it means happiness, to me, a useful instrument. Ah! what
a superb one this genius will be in my hands!" he cried, closing his
hands nervously like a workman seizing the levers of an engine that he
is starting in motion. "Everything seemed to be going on all right when,
suddenly--bang! All came to grief. About five or six days ago I noticed
that the girl was very silent, almost sad. I asked her point-blank, 'Are
you engaged, Flossie?' 'No, uncle,' she replied, 'and I never shall be.'
I talked with her and drew her out--not too much, simply enough to know
that some lovers' quarrel is at the bottom of it all. If you would talk
to her, Baroness, she would tell you more than she will me, and you can
also talk to Verdier. There is no sense in letting the affair drag on in
this way when they love each other as they do. For I know that they are
both in love. I met Mrs. Marsh--she was then Miss Potts--one Thursday at
a bazaar. On the following Saturday we were engaged. There is no time to
lose, not a day, not an hour or minute ought to be thrown away. We shall
waste enough when we are dead!"
"So you would like me to learn from Florence why she is so sad and why
the affair is broken off? I will find out. And I will rearrange the
whole thing if you like."
"That's it, Baroness," said Marsh, adding simply, "Ah! if my niece were
only like you! I would make you a partner in all my business affairs.
You are so intelligent, so quick and matter of fact when it is
necessary. You will find Flossie in her room. As to Chésy, it is an
understood thing. If you like, I will cable for them."
"Do so," said Ely, as she walked away toward Miss Marsh's cabin.
She had to pass the door of the one she had occupied on that
never-to-be-forgotten night. She pushed open the door with a frightful
feeling of melancholy. The little cabin, now unoccupied, was so blank,
seemed so ready to welcome any passing guest, to afford a refuge for
other happiness, other sorrows, other dreams, or other regrets! Was it
possible that the joy felt in this place had disappeared forever?
Whether it was Marsh's conversation which had communicated some of his
energy and confidence to the young woman or that, like the instinct to
struggle to the last that animates a drowning man, the soul is moved by
a vital energy at a certain point of discouragement, whether it were one
or the other motive it is hard to say, but Ely replied, No! to her own
question. Standing upon the threshold of the narrow cell that had been
for her an hour's paradise, she vowed that she would not surrender, that
she would fight for her happiness, that she would again recover it. It
was only a minute's respite, but it sufficed to give her courage to
compose her features so that Miss Marsh, a keener observer than her
uncle, did not notice the marks of a deep sadness imprinted too plainly
upon her face. The young American girl was painting. She was copying a
magnificent bunch of pinks and roses, of yellow, almost golden pinks,
and of blood-red, purple roses, whose deep tints seemed almost black.
The harmonious combination of yellow and red had attracted her eye,
always sensible to bright colors. Her unskilful brush laid coats of
harsh color upon the canvas, but she stuck to her task with an obstinacy
and energy and patience equal to that displayed by her uncle in his
business. And yet she was a true woman, in spite of all her decision and
firm manner. Her emotion upon Ely's entrance was only too visible. She
divined that the Baroness, whose villa she had avoided for several days,
was going to talk to her about Verdier. She did not employ any artifice
with her friend. At her first allusion she replied:--
"I know it is my uncle who has sent you as intermediary. He was quite
right. What I would not tell him, what, in fact, I could not tell him, I
can tell you. It is quite true, I have quarrelled with Monsieur Verdier.
He believed some wicked calumnies that he heard about me. That is all."
"In other words you mean that it is the Archduke who has slandered you,
do you not?" asked Madame de Carlsberg, after a short silence.
"Everything appeared to condemn me," replied Florence, ignoring the
Baroness's remark, "but when there is faith there can be no question of
trusting to appearances. Do you not think so?"
"I think that Verdier loves you," said Ely, in reply, "and that in love
there is jealousy. But what was the matter?"
"There can be no love where there is no esteem," said the young girl,
angrily, "and you cannot esteem a woman whom you think capable of
certain things. You know," she went on, her anger increasing in a way
that proved how keenly she felt the outrage, "you know that Andryana and
her husband hired a villa at Golfe Juan. I went there several times with
Andryana, and Monsieur Verdier knew about it. How I do not know, and yet
it does not astonish me, for once or twice as we went there about
tea-time I thought I saw Monsieur von Laubach prowling about. And what
do you think Monsieur Verdier dared to think of me,--of me, an American?
What do you think he dared to reproach me with? That I was chaperoning
an intrigue between Andryana and Corancez, that I was cognizant of one
of those horrible things you call a liaison."
"But it was the simplest thing in the world to clear yourself," said
Ely.
"I could not betray Andryana's secret," replied Florence. "I had
promised to keep it sacred, and I would not ask her permission to speak;
in the first place, because I had no right to do so, and in the second,"
and her physiognomy betrayed all her wounded pride and sensation of
honor, "in the second because I would not stoop to defend myself against
suspicion. I told Monsieur Verdier that he was mistaken. He did not
believe me, and all is over between us."
"So that you accept the idea of not marrying him," said Ely, "simply
through pride or bitterness rather than make a very simple
explanation!--But suppose he came here, here upon your uncle's boat, to
beg you to forgive him for his unjust suspicions, or rather for what he
believed himself justified in thinking? Suppose he did better still;
suppose he asks for your hand, that he asks you to marry him, will you
say him nay? Will all be over between you?"
"He will not come," said Florence. "He has not written or taken a step
for the last week. Why do you speak to me in that way? You are taking
away all my courage, and, believe me, I have need of it all."
"What a child you are, Flossie!" said Ely, kissing her. "You will
realize some day that we women have no courage to withstand those we
love and those that love us. Let me follow my idea. You will be engaged
before this evening is over."
She spoke the last words of exhortation and hope with a bitter tone that
Florence did not recognize. As she listened to the young girl telling of
the little misunderstanding that separated her and Verdier, she had a
keen sensation of her own misery. This lovers' quarrel was only a
dispute between a child--as she had called Miss Marsh--and another
child. She thought of her rupture with Pierre. She thought of all the
bitterness and vileness and inexpiable offence that there was between
them. Face to face with the pretty American's pride before an unjust
suspicion, she felt more vividly the horror of being justly accused and
of being obliged either to lie or to own her shame while asking for
pity. At the same time she was overwhelmed with a flood of indignation
at the thought of the odious means employed by the Archduke to keep
Verdier with him. She found in it the same sentiment that had aroused
her hatred against Olivier the night before: the attachment of man for
man, the friendship that is jealous of love, that is hostile to woman,
that pursues and tracks her in order to preserve the friend. True, the
sentiment of the Prince for his coadjutor was not precisely the same
that Pierre felt for Olivier and that Olivier felt for Pierre. It was
the affection of a scientist for his companion of the laboratory, of a
master for his disciple, almost of a father for a son.
But this friendship, intellectual though it might be, was not the less
intense after its kind. Madame de Carlsberg, therefore, felt a personal
satisfaction as though she were avenging herself in taking steps to
thwart the Prince's schemes as soon as she had left the Jenny. It was a
poor revenge. It did not prevent her feeling that her heart was broken
by the despair caused by her vanished love, even amid all the intrigues
necessary to protect another's happiness.
Her first step after her conversation with Florence was to go to the
villa that Andryana occupied on the road to Fréjus, at the other end of
Cannes. She had no need to ask anything of the generous Italian. No
sooner had she heard of the misunderstanding that separated Verdier and
Miss Marsh, than she cried:--
"But why did she not speak? Poor, dear girl! I felt sure something was
the matter these last few days. And that was it? But I will go straight
away and see Verdier, see the Prince and tell them all the truth. They
must know that Florence would never countenance any evil. Besides, I
have had enough of living in hiding. I have had enough of being obliged
to lie. I mean to disclose the fact of my marriage to-day. I only
awaited some reason for deciding Corancez, and here it is."
"How about your brother?" asked Ely.
"What? My brother? My brother?" repeated the Venetian.
The rich blood swept to her cheeks in a flood of warm color at this
allusion and then fled, leaving her pale. It was plain that a last
combat was taking place in the nature so long downtrodden. The remains
of her terror fought with her moral courage and was finally conquered.
She had two powerful motives for being brave,--her love, strengthened by
her happiness and rapture, and then a dawning hope of having a child to
love. She told it to Ely with the magnificent daring that is almost
pride of a loving wife.
"Besides," she added, "I shall not have any choice for very much longer.
I think I am about to become a mother. But let us send for Corancez at
once. Whatever you advise, he will do. I do not understand why he
hesitates. If I had not perfect confidence in him, I should think he
already regretted being bound to me."
Contrary to Andryana's sentimental fears, the Southerner did not raise
any objection when Madame de Carlsberg asked him to reveal the mystery
or comedy of the _matrimonio segreto_ to the Archduke and his assistant.
The occasion would have furnished his father with an opportunity of once
more using his favorite dictum, "Marius is a cunning blade," if he had
been able to see the condescending way with which he accorded the
permission that brought to a culminating-point the desires of the
cunning intriguer. There is both Greek and Tuscan in the Southerners
from the neighborhood of Marseilles, and they appear to have written in
their hearts the maxim which contains all Italian or Levantine
philosophy: "Chi ha pazienza, ha gloria." He had expected to make his
marriage public the instant there was a chance that he was to become a
father. But he had never hoped for an opportunity of appearing both
magnanimous and practical, such as was afforded him by consenting to the
announcement upon the request of the Baroness Ely, and that out of
chivalrous pity for a girl who had been calumniated. All these
complexities, natural to an imaginative and practical personage, were to
be found in the discourse that he held with the two women, a discourse
that was almost sincere.
"We have to yield to fate, Andryana," he said. "That is a maxim I
revere, you know. The story of Miss Marsh and Verdier gives us an
indication of what we have to do. We must announce our marriage, no
matter what happens. I should have liked to keep the secret a little
longer. Our romance is so delightful. You know that I am romantic before
everything, that I am a man of the old school, a troubadour. To see her,
to worship her," he indicated Andryana, who blushed with pleasure at his
protestations, "and without any witnesses of our happiness other than
such friends as you"--he turned toward Ely--"such as Pierre, as Miss
Marsh, was to realize an ideal. But it will be another ideal to be able
to say proudly to every one, 'She chose me for a husband.' But," and he
waited a moment in order to accentuate the importance of his advice, "if
Corancez is a troubadour, he is a troubadour who knows his business.
Unless it's contrary to your idea, I do not think it would be very wise
for Andryana and me to announce our marriage to the Prince in person.
Let me speak frankly, Baroness. Besides, I never was good at flattery.
The Prince--I hardly know how to say it--the Prince attaches a great
deal of importance to his own ideas. He does not care to be thwarted,
and Verdier's feelings for Miss Marsh are not very much to his taste. He
must know of their little quarrel. Indeed, he may have spoken very
harshly of the young girl before his assistant. He wants to keep that
youth in his laboratory, and it is only natural. Verdier has so much
talent. In short, all that cannot make it very agreeable for two people
to come and say to him, 'Miss Marsh has been slandered; she has been the
friend of the most honorable and most loyal of women, who is honorably
and legally married to Corancez.'
"And besides, to have to admit that you are in error in such a matter,
and in public, is a very difficult position to be in. Frankly, it
appears to me simpler and more practical, in order to bring about the
final reconciliation, to let the Prince learn all about the matter from
you, my dear Baroness, and from you alone. Andryana will write a letter
to you this very moment. I will dictate it to her, asking you to be her
intercessor with His Royal Highness, and announce our marriage.
Everything else will work easily while we are arranging as well as we
can with good old Alvise."
The most diverse influences, therefore, combined to bring Madame de
Carlsberg again into conflict with her husband at the moment she was
passing through a crisis of such profound sorrow that she was incapable
of forethought and of self-defence, or even of observation. She often
thought about this morning later, and of the whirl of circumstances in
which it seemed as though neither Pierre nor Olivier nor herself could
be dragged, a rush of circumstances which had carried her away in the
first place, and had then reached the two young men. That Chésy had
stupidly ruined himself on the Bourse; that Brion was ready to profit by
his ruin to seduce poor Yvonne; that this latter woman resembled feature
by feature Marsh's dead daughter, and that this identity of physiognomy
interested the Nabob of Marionville to such an extent that he was
determined upon the most romantic and the most practical form of
charity; that Verdier had made a discovery of an immense value to
industry, and that Marsh was trying to gain the benefit of this
invention by the surest means in giving his niece as a wife to the young
scientist; that Andryana and Corancez were waiting for an opportunity to
make their astounding secret marriage public,--were only so many facts
differing with those concerning her own life, facts which appeared to
have never touched her, save indirectly.
And yet each of these stories had some bearing, as though by
prearrangement, upon the step that she was about to take, acting on the
advice of Corancez. This step itself was to prepare an unexpected
dénouement, a terrible dénouement for the moral tragedy in which she
had plunged without any hope of ever issuing. This game of events,
widely separate from each other, which gives to the believer the
soothing certainty of a supreme justice, inflicts on us, on the
contrary, an impression of vertigo when, without faith, we notice the
astounding unexpectedness of certain encounters. How many times did Ely
not ask herself what would have been the future of her passion after the
interview of Olivier with Pierre, if she had not gone upon the _Jenny_
that day to render a service to Yvonne, if Marsh had not asked her to
bring about a reconciliation between Verdier and Florence, and, finally,
if the marriage of Andryana and Corancez had not been announced to the
Archduke under conditions that seemed like bravado, and which only
increased his exasperation and bitterness.
These are vain hypotheses, but they are felt bitterly by those who give
themselves up to the childish work of rebuilding their life in thought.
It seems a manifestation of the irresistible nature of fate.
As she approached the Villa Helmholtz, with Andryana's letter in her
hand, Ely had not the faintest suspicion of the terrible tragedy drawing
near. She was not happy; in fact, joy did not exist for her now that she
was separated so cruelly from Pierre. But she felt a bitter satisfaction
in her vengeance, a feeling that she was to pay for very dearly.
Hardly had she entered the house when she sent a request to the Prince,
who never lunched with her now, to be granted an audience, and she was
ushered into the laboratory, which she had only visited about three
times. The heir of the Hapsburgs, a big apron wrapped around him and a
little cap upon his head, was standing in the scientific workshop before
the furnace of a forge, in which he was heating a bar of iron which he
held in his acid-eaten hands. A little further away Verdier was
arranging some electric batteries. He was dressed like his employer.
There was nothing in the entire room, which was lighted from the
ceiling, except complicated machines, mysterious instruments and
apparatus whose use was unknown to any but the scientists. The two men,
thus surprised in the exercise of their profession, had that attentive
and reflective physiognomy that experimental science always gives to its
followers. It is easy to recognize in it a certain submission to the
object, a patience imposed by the necessary duration of a phenomenon,
the certainty of the result to be gained by waiting--noble, intellectual
virtues created by constant attention to natural law. Nevertheless, in
spite of the calmness he displayed in his work, it was plain that care
hung over the assistant. The Prince appeared rejuvenated by his gayety,
but it was an evil, wicked gayety, which the presence of his wife
appeared to render even more cruel. He met her with this sentence, the
words being full of hideous allusions:--
"What has given us the honor of your visit to our pandemonium? It is not
very gay at the first glance, yet we are happier here than anywhere
else. Natural science gives you a sensation that your life does not even
know of--a sensation of truth. There cannot be either falsehood or
deception in an experiment that has been carefully performed. Is that
not so, Verdier?"
"I am happy to hear Your Highness speak in that way," replied the young
woman, returning irony for irony. "Since you are so fond of the truth,
you will help me, I hope, to secure justice for a person who has been
cruelly slandered here, perhaps even to you, Your Highness, and
certainly to Monsieur Verdier."
"I don't understand," said the Archduke, whose visage suddenly darkened.
"We are not society people, and Monsieur Verdier and I do not permit any
one to be calumniated before us. When we believe anything against any
one, we have decided proof. Is not that so, Verdier?" and he turned
toward his assistant, who did not reply.
The Baroness Ely's words had been as clear to the two men as though she
had named Miss Marsh, and Verdier's look revealed how he loved the young
American, and what suffering it had caused him to know that he could no
longer esteem her. This additional avowal of a hated sentiment was
distasteful to the Archduke, and his voice became authoritative, almost
brutal, as he went on:--
"Besides, madame, we are very busy. An experiment cannot be kept
waiting, and you will oblige me very much if you will speak plainly and
not in enigmas."
"I will obey Your Highness," replied Madame de Carlsberg, "and I will be
very plain. I learn from my friend, Miss Marsh--"
"The conversation is useless if you have come to speak of that
intriguing woman," said the Prince, brusquely.
"Your Highness!"
It was Verdier who spoke as he took a step forward. The insult the
Archduke had cast at Florence had made him tremble to his innermost
being.
"Well," demanded his master, turning toward his assistant, "is it true
that Madame Bonnacorsi arranges for meetings in a little house at Golfe
Juan? Did we see them enter? Do we know by whom the house is engaged and
the lover whom she goes there to meet? If you had a brother or a friend,
would you let him marry a girl whom you knew to be in the secret of such
an intrigue?"
"She is not in the secret of any intrigue," interrupted Ely, with an
indignation that she did not seek to dissimulate. "Madame Bonnacorsi has
not a lover." She repeated: "No, Madame Bonnacorsi has no lover. Since
you have authorized me, let me speak frankly, Your Highness. The 14th of
this month, you understand me, at Genoa, I was present at her marriage
with Monsieur de Corancez in the Chapel of the Fregoso Palace, and Miss
Marsh was also there. Sight or wrong, they did not wish the ceremony to
be made public. I suppose they had their motives. They have not these
motives any longer, and here is the letter in which Andryana begs me to
officially announce to Your Highness the news of her marriage. You see,"
she went on, addressing Verdier, "that Florence was never anything but
the most honest, the most upright, and the purest of young girls. Was I
not right when I said that she has been cruelly, unworthily
calumniated?"
The Archduke took Andryana's letter. He read it and then returned it to
his wife without any comment. He looked her straight in the face with
the keen, haughty regard that seems natural to princes, and whose
imperious, inquisitorial scrutiny reads to the bottom of the soul. He
saw she was telling the truth. He next looked at Verdier. And now the
anger in his eyes changed into an expression of deep sadness. Without
paying any more attention to Ely than if she were not there, he spoke to
the young man with the familiarity that the difference in their ages and
positions authorized, although it was a familiarity that the Prince did
not usually take in speaking to his assistant before witnesses.
"My dear boy," he said--and his voice, usually so metallic and harsh,
became tender--"tell me the truth. Are you sorry for the resolution you
took?"
"I am sorry that I have been unjust," replied Verdier, with a voice
almost as broken as that of his master. "I regret to have been unjust,
Your Highness, and I would like to ask the pardon of the woman whom I
have misjudged."
"You will have all the time you want to ask pardon in," replied the
Archduke. "Of that you may be assured. It is from her that this
knowledge comes. Is it not so, madame?" he replied, looking at Ely.
"Yes," replied the young woman.
"You see I was right," replied the Prince. "Come," he said, with a
peculiar mixture of pity and abruptness, "look into your heart. You have
had eight days in which to make up your mind. Do you still love her?"
"I love her dearly," replied Verdier, after a short silence.
"Another good man ruined," said the Prince, shrugging his shoulders. He
accompanied the brutal triviality of his remark with a deep sigh which
took away its cynicism.
"So," he continued, "the life that we lead together, a life that is so
full, so noble, so free, does not suffice now: our manly joy and the
proud happiness in discovering that we have so often felt together, that
has rewarded us largely, royally, and fully so often, is no longer
enough for you? You want to re-enter that hideous society that I have
taught you to judge at its true value? You wish to marry, to leave this
refuge, leave science, leave your master and your friend?"
"But, Your Highness," interrupted Verdier, "can I not be married and
continue to work with you?"
"With that woman? Never!" replied the Archduke, in a tone of passionate
energy. His anger increased; and he repeated: "Never--Let us separate,
since it has come to that. But let us separate without hypocrisy,
without falsehood, in a manner that is really worthy of what we have
been for each other. You know well enough that the first condition of
your marriage with that girl will be that you make known to her brigand
of an uncle, this secret," and he touched with his hand one of the
accumulators standing on the table. "Don't tell me that you would refuse
to make it known, because the invention belongs to us both. I give you
my part. Do you hear? I give it to you. You would certainly betray me
sooner or later, either through weakness or through that cowardly love
that I see in your heart. I want to spare you that remorse. Marry that
woman. Sell our invention to that business man. Sell him the result of
our research. I give you full authority, but I shall never see you
again. For the secret that you are selling to him is, believe me,
Science. Follow your own will, but it shall at any rate not be said that
you did not know what you were doing, or that in doing it you
participated in all the ignominy of this age: that you lent aid to that
vast collective crime which idiots call civilization. You will continue
to work. You will still have genius, and from this discovery and others
that you will make, your new master will secure millions and millions.
Those millions will signify an abject luxury and viciousness on high,
and a heap of misery and human slavery below. How well I judged that
girl from the first day! Behold her work! She appeared and you have not
been able to hold firm. And against what? Against smiles and looks which
would have been directed at others if you had not been there, which
would have been for the first imbecile who had turned up with a manly
figure and a pair of mustaches!--Against toilet, against dresses, and
against riches. Let me continue for a moment. In an hour you will be
near her, and you can laugh with her at your old master, your old
friend, as much as you like. You do not know what it is to have a friend
like me, one who loves you as I do. You will understand it some day. You
will realize it when you have measured the difference between this
feeling that you are leaving one side, between our manly communion of
ideas, our heroic intimacy of thought, and that which you now prefer,
the life which you are about to commence--an idle, degraded, poisoned
life!
"Good-by, Verdier," and this strange person, in saying the word
_good-by_, spoke with a tone of infinite sadness and bitterness. "I read
in your eyes that you will marry that girl, and since it is to be so,
go. I prefer never to see you again. Make a fortune with the knowledge
that you have secured here. You would certainly have learned it
elsewhere, so we are quits. The happiest hours of my life for years have
been due to you, and I forgive you on that account. But I tell you
again, I see you for the last time. Everything is over between you and
me.
"As for you, madame," he continued, casting a glance of bitter hatred at
Ely, "I promise you I will discover some means of punishing you."