MADAME Torialli had once told Jean that if he ever wanted a private
talk with her he might send his name up to her maid early in the
morning, and she would see him in the dressing-room. She often received
visitors there while she was putting those finishing touches which,
besides making her look ten years younger than her age and the most
dangerous woman in Paris, slipped into the interviews themselves and
were apt to make the rawest materials change swiftly into the most
miraculous results. Jean hardly knew why he had not taken advantage of
the invitation before; he did not realize that what held him back was
the reverence of a great passion which had now reached its maturity and
was unconsciously afraid of its own strength. He had not gone to her
room because he had known how much it would mean to him.
Even now he trembled as he sent up his name, and almost hoped that
the maid would bring him down a refusal; but she did not. Madame would
receive him. Jean followed her blindly to a new quarter of the house
over the noiseless carpets, and through passages which seemed full of
light and air, the discreetest colours, and an absence of superfluous
things. Jean felt that he would have turned and run downstairs if he
had had to knock at the door himself; but the maid knocked for him.
And when he heard Madame’s “Entrez donc!” his courage came back to him
again. It was a part of Gabrielle’s charm that no situation was ever
unusual with her, and when Jean found himself a moment later seated in
a chair beside her dressing-table he felt as if he had been there all
his life, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Gabrielle was dressed in a soft green chiffon peignoir, with pale blue
forget-me-not embroideries. Her maid had just finished piling up the
golden masses of her hair (an astounding quantity of which was still
her own), and she was seated in the shaded light of a big bay window,
delicately manipulating various small boxes and bottles in front of
her, and carrying into the operation the masterly light handling of an
artist. Her room was painted a rich creamy pink, and everything in it
was either mother-of-pearl or of such material as exactly matched it.
The door opening into Madame’s bedroom was shut, but another door stood
open leading down four marble steps into a spacious bath, very deep
and wide, taking up the entire room and lined with old dutch tiles.
Gabrielle gave Jean her left hand while she continued to use a long
thin brush in her right.
“So you’ve come at last,” she said, “to see me--ah, how vainly, my dear
Jean--trying to cheat old time! I don’t dare look at you, for I know
how terribly well youth appears early in the morning, and I don’t at
this moment want to be reminded how little one can manage to replace
its beautiful bloom! All these little pots and pans help, but when you
are thirty-five you’ll know what it feels like to remember that you
can’t for one moment get on without them! And even then you won’t know
the dreadful pang a woman has when she discovers a new wrinkle and has
to fall back on a paint brush. When she doesn’t, poor, dreadful old
thing, any longer dare to trust to the use of her smile!” Gabrielle
glanced over her shoulder at Jean as she spoke, and if she did not
trust to the use of her smile she was needlessly sceptical of her
powers; for if there had been anything in Jean which had not wholly
succumbed to her it succumbed to her then. A stupid woman would only
have owned to thirty years, for Gabrielle looked very little more; but
Gabrielle knew that to have made Torialli’s career in Paris required
time, so that it would be wiser to allow for it. It was very wise, for
Jean perfectly believed her; and she was forty-three.
“As if you needed to talk like that, Madame,” he said in a low voice.
“One never thinks of youth or of age when one is with you, for you have
all that is most beautiful in either; one thinks only of--you.”
“As a reward for that sweet little speech,” said Gabrielle laughing
quietly, “I shall ask you to manicure my hands. I know well enough that
those clever musician’s hands of yours can do anything they are put to.
Here are mine, then; make of them what you can!” And Gabrielle slipped
both her dainty, slim, little hands into his, while he held his breath
and wondered. They were ringless and soft as a child’s, and the palms
and finger-tips were pink as sea-shells. Their touch made his blood run
like fire.
“Here are the things,” said Gabrielle lightly. She was smiling a
little, she saw that Jean dared not meet her eyes, and she felt
him tremble. She had given him her hands, it was true, but she had
surrendered nothing; she was apt to give a great deal, but she had
never been known to surrender--the surrendering invariably came from
the person to whom she gave. This is the secret of success in passion.
Jean had forgotten the existence of Margot; all the mind he had at
present and all his strength were needed if he was to keep his head.
Meanwhile he took up Gabrielle’s manicure things, and if he did not
make a clumsy job of it, it was entirely due to the fact to which
Madame had already alluded, that he had great skill in the use of his
hands. Still, Gabrielle could have done it better herself. Gabrielle
let a silence come between them, but she saw that she must not let it
last very long. She watched the colour rise in Jean’s face with her
innocent, untroubled eyes.
“I wish I could believe that you came here only to see me,” she said
at last. “But I don’t. I am sure you had some other intention, or you
would have been at work long ago. You see, I know what a faithful
workman my little Jean is.”
“I want only to see you, and if I work it is only for you,” muttered
Jean. “And if----”
“No, that little box on the right,” said Madame coolly. “Torialli
looked all over Paris for it. You see, I wanted it to match the
rest. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a perfect match in
mother-of-pearl. Well! what were you saying? Oh yes! you work only for
me--that is charming of you, my dear boy. And now I think you’ve worked
on that finger long enough! Not even a genius like you can climb past
perfection. Then there is nothing you want to ask me?”
“If I dared,” said Jean, suddenly crushing the hand he held.
“No! don’t spoil your work!” said Madame quickly. Jean pulled himself
together. He dragged Margot’s name into his mind and held it there.
“Yes, yes,” he said; “there is something about a poor girl in trouble.
I want your help, Gabrielle.”
Again she let her Christian name pass; he hardly dared to believe it,
but perhaps she had not heard.
“Ah! I am glad you came to me,” said Madame. “Tell me about her, Jean!
it’s not the dear funny little person who’s to marry the grocer, is
it? I rather hope it is, you know. I should always love her for having
nursed you when you were ill.”
“Yes, Madame, it is my friend--it is Margot Selba,” said Jean, thinking
how differently in her tolerant sweetness Gabrielle spoke of little
Margot from foolish Margot’s vindictive unreasoning bitterness about
Madame!
“Margot Selba!” said Gabrielle slowly. “Surely I must have seen her!
isn’t that the little brown-eyed one I discovered singing in Louis’
room? Yes, I am sure it must be--her eyes were so frightened, and I
remember thinking that brown eyes always show terror so easily. Now,
I have never seen blue eyes frightened.” And Madame opened her own a
little wider. Jean looked so long at them that Madame had to move her
hand to draw his attention back to his work. “What about this little
person?” she asked.
“She is in most terrible distress,” said Jean. “She works for her
mother and herself. I want you to help me about the account; it’s a
very large one, and she can’t pay it. She’s asked for a month’s grace,
and if she doesn’t get it she’ll be turned out into the streets of
Paris; and, Madame, it seems to me for the lessons she has received
from Flaubert altogether too large a sum!”
“Oh, my dear boy, how terrible!” cried Gabrielle quickly. “It seems to
me that all girls with voices have to support a mother! I have heard,
ah! so many such sad tales, and you believe it all, of course!”
“These are my friends--I know that it is true,” said Jean, simply.
Gabrielle shivered a little.
“Ah! how hard life is!” she murmured. “We sometimes ask God why? But
there is never any answer.”
“I knew--I knew that you’d feel like that,” said Jean. “I should have
come to you before, there is no one like you in the world for courage
and kindness. You’re--you’re so beautiful, Gabrielle!”
This time he knew that she had heard him.
“Hush! Hush, my child!” she said gently. “We must think, mustn’t we?
Do you know, years ago when I was first married Torialli’s pupils came
to me very often--oh, with such tragic stories! How I cried over
them, and I would go to him and tease him to alter the accounts, and
he was too good to me--dear old Torialli--he always altered them, and
he worked so hard. And then one day he was ill; I shall never forget
it. He said to me ‘Little one, I must go on working as hard as I can,
because you see my work is cheap.’ And Jean, it was I who had made it
so by my foolish woman’s sympathy. I had made my husband’s work cheap!
I promised him then, and I have always kept it, never to interfere with
his business again.”
“But she isn’t Torialli’s pupil, you know; she’s Flaubert’s,” Jean
explained. “And it’s only that I do not feel the account to be fair!--I
have said I think it is too much. If it is necessary to pay it--I will
try to do so, but it seems to me that Flaubert has asked more than he
has earned!”
Gabrielle pressed his hand.
“You dear, dear boy!” she said. “You bring me back my youth, that
happy, happy time when I was generously ignorant and impetuously
wrong! How I loved that time, and how I love these things in you!
But, my dear Jean, in the old days to be a Knight Errant was a simple
matter; you rushed out into a wood, found a demoiselle in distress,
and ran a wicked villain through the body. Things are not quite so
simple nowadays; the distress is the same, but everything else is
different. The demoiselle probably is entirely in the wrong. The
villain is possibly a kind-hearted misunderstood person, trying to get
his deserts, and if you run him through the body you will be certain
to suffer for it, without at all profiting the lady. As for me--what
can I do to help you? If I give four hundred francs to this poor girl,
which would be my impulse, of course, however much a secret we make
of it, in fact the moment we attempt to make a secret of it, it would
be all over Paris by to-morrow! And I should simply ruin my poor old
Louis! I don’t speak of my good name, though that wouldn’t be worth
an hour’s purchase. Paris has a quick brain, as you know, and unless
a quick brain is also a very pure one it is apt to jump at incredibly
ugly conclusions. I should be accused of privately buying one of Louis’
pupils off to cover up a scandal! And it will be the same if you do it
for the little Margot. And what right have I--or you either, my dear
Jean, to interfere with poor Louis’ business? He may have his reasons
for pushing this affair, reasons which you and I know nothing at all
about, but which, if they were any affairs of ours, might appear to be
very good ones. Only, don’t you see, _mon petit_, they aren’t?”
Jean sat silent under Gabrielle’s quick, soft words; they fell upon
him and drowned his reason. He had finished his work on her delicate
hands, but they still lay in his, and though he had ceased to work it
is possible that they had not. He was so near Gabrielle that he could
see the quick heaving of her breast, and feel her very thoughts run
into his answering blood. He tried valiantly to keep his head clear and
to think of Margot; but what is a boy of twenty-three in the hands of a
woman like Gabrielle when he loves her, and she does not love him? He
fought, fought better than Madame had expected he would fight, but that
is all that can be said for him.
“Then you can do nothing?” he whispered.
“I don’t say that,” said Gabrielle very gently. “I even hope we may be
able to do something; but nothing immediately, nothing rash! Will you
leave it all to me, dear Jean?”
Jean hesitated. Even now he hesitated.
Gabrielle withdrew her hands. He caught them back.
“Yes! yes!” he stammered. “Everything--everything to you, Gabrielle!”
Then she let him kiss her hands. She did not need to give him any more.
She had only, after a moment or two, to say:
“But Jean--I trusted you----”
That was enough. He left her.
It is easy to manage a man who has a certain kind of honour. You touch
his pride, and you touch the one thing in him more fundamental than
his desires, and by which he can control them. “I cannot think,” said
Gabrielle to herself, “why Louis finds him difficult to deal with; men
are so stupid.” Then she rang for her maid and finished her toilette.
Madame Torialli never wasted her time.