THE trouble with keeping a cat in the bag is that, however good it may
be for the cat, it is seldom good for the bag, and the less accustomed
the cat is to this method of confinement, the worse it will be for
the case containing it. Liane was not in the habit of muzzling her
temper; on the contrary, she asked nothing better than a tolerably
good opportunity for letting it fly. To-night, however, she had kept
her temper admirably, first, when Jean had appeared pre-occupied on
the way to the theatre, and secondly, on the stage when her familiar
presence was greeted with less applause than Margot’s little song. She
had made up her mind instantly that the song must go; but she had not
allowed any hint of the intention to appear. The song could easily be
cut, and once it was cut, she would keep no grudge against the absurdly
fresh-looking little person who sang it. But Margot Selba humbly
retiring from her part and Margot sitting on a box with Jean were two
different persons. One needed chastening and the other called for
annihilation. The cat could bear it no longer, it tore its way out of
the bag.
The first creature that it came across under these circumstances was
sure, of course, to get the worst of it--an enraged animal strikes at
what is nearest. In this case it happened to be Jean, and not Margot.
Liane reached her dressing-room in solemn silence; she looked at the
watch on her wrist and saw that she had half an hour. Then she turned
on Jean.
“Never speak to that girl again!” she cried fiercely. “Do you suppose I
bring you here with me to make love to a _cabotine_ behind my back?”
Jean drew back in anger. So this was what he got for sacrificing the
first decent feeling he had had for an age! He had given up his happy
little moment of virtue simply to have Liane fly in his face! He put on
the air of a hard man of the world; he felt a rebuffed boy.
“Really, Liane,” he said, making a pretence of lighting a cigarette;
“one would suppose you had no discrimination. Can’t you see I was
merely being polite to a little girl who sang well?”
Liane flung off her Cleopatra robe and began making-up for a fresh
scene, while she tossed her words at Jean over her shoulder.
“A pretty fool you must think I am!” she said disdainfully. “You were
being polite to a girl who sang well, were you? One would suppose you
had been calling on a _jeune fille_ of the provinces to hear you! No,
no! my friend! this is a theatre and that girl there is a _cabotine_--a
pinch of dust--a little worm under my foot! Sing well indeed! What
next? They will have crows for Opera before you hear Selba on these
boards again! You suppose yourself to be a musician already, it seems,
and you are _not_, you are nothing! I take you away from your cows in
the country, I lift you to an honour many men would perish for, yes,
and have perished for in vain! and I have to see you in my own theatre
treating a woman of my position to the very last indignity--the very
last, I would have you know, Jean, that a woman of my spirit will put
up with. Selba indeed!” She flung her powder-puff across the room, and
touched up her left eyebrow in a dramatic but carefully measured fury.
Jean felt sick. He did not believe in all this nonsense about Selba;
he felt instead the sharp return of his former doubt--had she kept her
promise about Golaud?
It was not the most auspicious moment to ask her, and yet the pressure
of the unendurable was upon him. He felt himself boxed up with a lie;
there was not one word of reality in Liane; she was a splendid vision
as she sat there facing the mirror, but her very beauty seemed to set
his teeth on edge. Was not this false too, upheld by the paraphernalia
of little boxes and paintbrushes, of long, fine coils of false hair,
without any of that tender natural grace which had not been enough to
keep him by Margot’s side a few minutes ago? He was ashamed of himself.
He paced to and fro in the tiny, hot little room and thought of all his
fine principles with a fierce disgust.
“_Eh bien!_” said Liane. “Have you nothing to say for yourself; are you
dumb as well as blind? You could talk well enough, it appears, to that
piece of rubbish downstairs.”
“Liane,” he jerked at her quickly. “Have you seen Golaud again?”
Liane stared at him.
“What?” she said, twisting a pearl net in and out of her hair. “So you
think to get out of it that way, do you? Seen him again? Of course I
have seen him again, and why not, I should like to know! What do you
stare at me like that for, with your mouth open and your face white,
like a foiled villain in the fourth act who sees his wife’s ghost? I
told you once before I was not a nun. I see whom I please, I do what I
like--and I amuse myself! I like you when you are good, because you are
poor and an artist. I like Maurice Golaud because he is rich and _not_
an artist. He does not object to you; why should you object to him?”
“But, Liane, your promise!” cried Jean. He was terribly shaken, the
world seemed to be falling to pieces about him. Where was this dream
that he had thought so magnificent a mystery? this romance to which he
had dedicated himself as a worshipper at a shrine? His romance was a
pricked bubble, the thing he worshipped a monstrous farce.
Some of these thoughts with their roused horror and disgust struck at
Liane out of his expressive eyes. They made her angrier than ever; she
should have received gratitude, and she felt reproach. That he should
dare to reproach her when she had been so good to him! She almost
shrieked at him in reply.
“You are an insect!” she cried, “a bit of dust! a scrub! I snap my
fingers in your face, I despise you! Let me tell you that I have had
enough of this folly; never speak to me of Golaud again, and if I find
you with this woman Selba, you leave me for ever!”
“That is an ultimatum,” said Jean very quietly. “Your words to-night
have given me no choice, Liane, except to take it. I except your
dismissal, then; I go.”
This was not what Liane had meant at all. She had no intention of
dismissing Jean. A woman can hold a proud man only so long as he is
unaware that he is being held. Liane had made the mistake to-night of
showing Jean that she considered his liberty was in her hands. It set
the last touch to his freedom. Passion, which had been her tool, became
his weapon, it entered into his natural distaste for her, and it
turned his emotion into cold hate.
He thrust his chin forward a little and looked at her with half-closed
eyes. She saw what she had done, and she trembled a little, for she was
by no means tired of Jean. The end would come, of course, but it was
impossible that it should come from him; this was an outrage to her
pride which she could not suffer. She appealed to his heart, which she
knew to be tender, but in doing so she overlooked the fact that the
cold water she had flung on his passion had frozen his heart to silence.
“_Mon petit!_” she said gently. “We must not speak to each other like
this, must we? I am tired to-night, forgive me. You know you are
precious to me. Let us turn away from words. I do not talk very well, I
know, Jean.”
Jean still looked at her with imperturbable, cold eyes. Thwarted
passion makes a woman mean, it makes a man cruel. Jean felt very
cruelly towards Liane; for the first time he realized that she was
thirty-five. “She is already an old woman,” he said to himself. “I am
a young man; soon she will grow fat.” He was ashamed of himself for
thinking this, but he could not stop his thoughts; they came to him
with the lucidity of reason stripped of glamour.
Liane saw the look in his eyes; it almost frightened her. It was as if
his thoughts had become a tangible presence, and she seemed in her own
heart to hear the echo: “You are growing old.” She closed her eyes for
a moment, the taste of life was bitter on her lips. Age was her arch
terror; once it had clutched her, there would be no release, her world
would be dead, and she would be a creature without power, sick with her
own insignificance!
Then she played her last card and it was a very good one. She rose with
infinite grace and dignity and her most touching smile.
“Do not kiss me to-night, my friend,” she said. “Our spirits are not
near enough to each other.” It was the most unfortunate reference she
could possibly have made.
“Our spirits!” said Jean, and his lips curled. When had their spirits
ever been near each other? It was horrible for him to think how far.
The lie was an abomination to him, and he was quite merciless to Liane,
as only youth, ignorant and powerful, can be merciless. He looked her
full in the eyes and shrugged his shoulders very slightly.
“You do me too much honour, Madame,” he said. “I had not the intention
of kissing you!”
In a moment he was ashamed of himself; the colour rushed into his face,
he would have given anything to recall his words.
Liane had looked so bewildered and so hurt: her eyes fell on the
innumerable little silver boxes before the looking-glass; they wandered
listlessly, as if she were looking for something she had forgotten.
She drew her breath painfully, it fought in her throat like a wild
thing imprisoned. Jean had hurt her cruelly, and Liane was not easily
hurt; only the sight of her own face in the glass behind Jean saved her
from hysterics. It was magnificent, she had never equalled it on the
stage. The relief was immense: the dresser entered, bringing back to
her the full sense of her own importance.
“But Madame is a wonder to-night--she has veritably the look of a great
queen, has she not, Monsieur?” exclaimed the quick little dresser, who
saw at once that something was wrong, and guessed that flattery could
put it right. “Never have I seen Madame in such form; I think these
pearls suit her--here is the cloak of Madame, and the scarlet slippers.
Yes, and if Monsieur will just hand me the powder-puff on the floor--a
million thanks, Monsieur! Madame has just a little--a little too much
colour. _Voilà, Madame, c’est tout, vous y êtes!_”
It was quite impossible that this obscure young man should cease to
care for Liane. Her fears had been absurd, it was only a momentary
madness of the estranged senses; she had spoken very roughly to him,
she remembered. She looked at him gravely for a moment, his head was
bent, he was frowning, and he looked young and awkward--a mere shaken
boy.
“We will not part like this to-night, _mon petit_,” she murmured with
caressing gentleness. “Wait for me as usual, only this I think I have
the right to ask you; do not again speak to that silly little nobody,
the daughter of a washerwoman, who sings out of tune,” and Liane
laughed contemptuously. That, after all, was the right way to treat the
situation.
It was perhaps the right way, but Liane had lost sight of the fact that
the right way used too late has much the same effect as the wrong way.
Her eyes held Jean’s for a moment; she did not quite understand the
look in his, but she had no time left for explanation.
He bowed, and went straight back to Margot.