CONSPIRACY
They were to meet next morning in front of the inn to say good-bye
to one another. André, the first one down, awaited her coming with a
poignant feeling of mixed uneasiness and delight. What would she do?
What would she be to him? What would become of her and of him? In
what thrice-happy or terrible adventure had he engaged himself? She
had it in her power to make of him what she would, a visionary, like
an opium-eater, or a martyr, at her will. He paced to and fro beside
the two carriages, for they were to separate, he, to continue the
deception, ending his trip by way of Saint Malo, they returning to
Avranches.
When would he see her again? Would she cut short her visit to her
family, or would she delay her return? He was horribly afraid of what
she would first say to him, how she would first look at him, for he had
not seen her and they had scarcely spoken during their brief interview
of the night before. There remained to Mariolle from that strange,
fleeting interview the faint feeling of disappointment of the man who
has been unable to reap all that harvest of love which he thought was
ready for the sickle, and at the same time the intoxication of triumph
and, resulting from that, the almost assured hope of finally making
himself complete master of her affections.
He heard her voice and started; she was talking loudly, evidently
irritated at some wish that her father had expressed, and when he
beheld her standing at the foot of the staircase there was a little
angry curl upon her lips that bespoke her impatience.
Mariolle took a couple of steps toward her; she saw him and smiled.
Her eyes suddenly recovered their serenity and assumed an expression
of kindliness which diffused itself over the other features, and she
quickly and cordially extended to him her hand, as if in ratification
of their new relations.
"So then, we are to separate?" she said to him.
"Alas! Madame, the thought makes me suffer more than I can tell."
"It will not be for long," she murmured. She saw M. de Pradon coming
toward them, and added in a whisper: "Say that you are going to take a
ten days' trip through Brittany, but do not take it."
Mme. de Valsaci came running up in great excitement. "What is this that
your father has been telling me--that you are going to leave us day
after to-morrow? You were to stay until next Monday, at least."
Mme. de Burne replied, with a suspicion of ill humor: "Papa is nothing
but a bungler, who never knows enough to hold his tongue. The sea-air
has given me, as it does every year, a very unpleasant neuralgia, and I
did say something or other about going away so as not to have to be ill
for a month. But this is no time for bothering over that."
Mariolle's coachman urged him to get into the carriage and be off, so
that they might not miss the Pontorson train.
Mme. de Burne asked: "And you, when do you expect to be back in Paris?"
He assumed an air of hesitancy: "Well, I can't say exactly; I want to
see Saint Malo, Brest, Douarnenez, the Bay des Trépassés, Cape Raz,
Audierne, Penmarch, Morbihan, all this celebrated portion of the Breton
country, in a word. That will take me say--" after a silence devoted to
feigned calculation, he exceeded her estimate--"fifteen or twenty days."
"That will be quite a trip," she laughingly said. "For my part, if my
nerves trouble me as they did last night, I shall be at home before I
am two days older."
His emotion was so great that he felt like exclaiming: "Thanks!" He
contented himself with kissing, with a lover's kiss, the hand that she
extended to him for the last time, and after a profuse exchange of
thanks and compliments with the Valsacis and M. de Pradon, who seemed
to be somewhat reassured by the announcement of his projected trip, he
climbed into his vehicle and drove off, turning his head for a parting
look at her.
He made no stop on his journey back to Paris and was conscious of
seeing nothing on the way. All night long he lay back in the corner
of his compartment with eyes half closed and folded arms, his mind
reverting to the occurrences of the last few hours, and all his
thoughts concentrated upon the realization of his dream.
Immediately upon his arrival at his own abode, upon the cessation of
the noise and bustle of travel, in the silence of the library where
he generally passed his time, where he worked and wrote, and where he
almost always felt himself possessed by a restful tranquillity in the
friendly companionship of his books, his piano, and his violin, there
now commenced in him that unending torment of impatient waiting which
devours, as with a fever, insatiable hearts like his. He was surprised
that he could apply himself to nothing, that nothing served to occupy
his mind, that reading and music, the occupations that he generally
employed to while away the idle moments of his life, were unavailing,
not only to afford distraction to his thoughts, but even to give rest
and quiet to his physical being, and he asked himself what he was to
do to appease this new disturbance. An inexplicable physical need of
motion seemed to have taken possession of him--of going forth and
walking the streets, of constant movement, the crisis of that agitation
that is imparted by the mind to the body and which is nothing more than
an instinctive and unappeasable longing to seek and find some other
being.
He put on his hat and overcoat, and as he was descending the stairs
he asked himself: "In which direction shall I go?" Thereupon an idea
occurred to him that he had not yet thought of: he must procure a
pretty and secluded retreat to serve them as a trysting place.
He pursued his investigations in every quarter, ransacking streets,
avenues, and boulevards, distrustfully examining _concierges_ with
their servile smiles, lodging-house keepers of suspicious appearance
and apartments with doubtful furnishings, and at evening he returned
to his house in a state of discouragement. At nine o'clock the next
day he started out again, and at nightfall he finally succeeded in
discovering at Auteuil, buried in a garden that had three exits, a
lonely pavilion which an upholsterer in the neighborhood promised to
render habitable in two days. He ordered what was necessary, selecting
very plain furniture of varnished pine and thick carpets. A baker who
lived near one of the garden gates had charge of the property, and an
arrangement was completed with his wife whereby she was to care for the
rooms, while a gardener of the quarter also took a contract for filling
the beds with flowers.
All these arrangements kept him busy until it was eight o'clock, and
when at last he got home, worn out with fatigue, he beheld with a
beating heart a telegram lying on his desk. He opened it and read:
"I will be home to-morrow. Await instructions. "MICHE."
He had not written to her yet, fearing that as she was soon to leave
Avranches his letter might go astray, and as soon as he had dined
he seated himself at his desk to lay before her what was passing in
his mind. The task was a long and difficult one, for all the words
and phrases that he could muster, and even his ideas, seemed to him
weak, mediocre, and ridiculous vehicles in which to convey to her the
delicacy and passionateness of his thanks.
The letter that he received from her upon waking next morning confirmed
the statement that she would reach home that evening, and begged him
not to make his presence known to anyone for a few days, in order that
full belief might be accorded to the report that he was traveling. She
also requested him to walk upon the terrace of the Tuileries garden
that overlooks the Seine the following day at ten o'clock.
He was there an hour before the time appointed, and to kill time
wandered about in the immense garden that was peopled only by a few
early pedestrians, belated officeholders on their way to the public
buildings on the left bank, clerks and toilers of every condition.
It was a pleasure to him to watch the hurrying crowds driven by the
necessity of earning their daily bread to brutalizing labors, and to
compare his lot with theirs, on this spot, at the minute when he was
awaiting his mistress--a queen among the queens of the earth. He felt
himself so fortunate a being, so privileged, raised to such a height
beyond their petty struggles, that he felt like giving thanks to the
blue sky, for to him Providence was but a series of alternations of
sunshine and of rain due to Chance, mysterious ruler over weather and
over men.
When it wanted a few minutes of ten he ascended to the terrace and
watched for her coming. "She will be late!" he thought. He had scarcely
more than heard the clock in an adjacent building strike ten when
he thought he saw her at a distance, coming through the garden with
hurrying steps, like a working-woman in haste to reach her shop. "Can
it indeed be she?" He recognized her step but was astonished by her
changed appearance, so unassuming in a neat little toilette of dark
colors. She was coming toward the stairs that led up to the terrace,
however, in a bee-line, as if she had traveled that road many times
before.
"Ah!" he said to himself, "she must be fond of this place and come to
walk here sometimes." He watched her as she raised her dress to put her
foot on the first step and then nimbly flew up the remaining ones, and
as he eagerly stepped forward to meet her she said to him as he came
near with a pleasant smile, in which there was a trace of uneasiness:
"You are very imprudent! You must not show yourself like that; I saw
you almost from the Rue de Rivoli. Come, we will go and take a seat on
a bench yonder. There is where you must wait for me next time."
He could not help asking her: "So you come here often?"
"Yes, I have a great liking for this place, and as I am an early walker
I come here for exercise and to look at the scenery, which is very
pretty. And then one never meets anybody here, while the Bois is out of
the question on just that account. But you must be careful not to give
away my secret."
He laughed: "I shall not be very likely to do that." Discreetly taking
her hand, a little hand that was hanging at her side conveniently
concealed in the folds of her dress, he sighed: "How I love you! My
heart was sick with waiting for you. Did you receive my letter?"
"Yes; I thank you for it. It was very touching."
"Then you have not become angry with me yet?"
"Why no! Why should I? You are just as nice as you can be."
He sought for ardent words, words that would vibrate with his emotion
and his gratitude. As none came to him, and as he was too deeply moved
to permit of the free expression of the thought that was within him, he
simply said again: "How I love you!"
She said to him: "I brought you here because there are water and boats
in this place as well as down yonder. It is not at all like what we saw
down there; still it is not disagreeable."
They were sitting on a bench near the stone balustrade that runs along
the river, almost alone, invisible from every quarter. The only living
beings to be seen on the long terrace at that hour were two gardeners
and three nursemaids. Carriages were rolling along the quay at their
feet, but they could not see them; footsteps were resounding upon the
adjacent sidewalk, over against the wall that sustained the promenade;
and still unable to find words in which to express their thoughts,
they let their gaze wander over the beautiful Parisian landscape that
stretches from the Île Saint-Louis and the towers of Nôtre-Dame to the
heights of Meudon. She repeated her thought: "None the less, it is very
pretty, isn't it?"
But he was suddenly seized by the thrilling remembrance of their
journey through space up on the summit of the abbey tower, and with a
regretful feeling for the emotion that was past and gone, he said: "Oh,
Madame, do you remember our escapade of the 'Madman's Path?'"
"Yes; but I am a little afraid now that I come to think of it when it
is all over. _Dieu!_ how my head would spin around if I had it to do
over again! I was just drunk with the fresh air, the sunlight, and the
sea. Look, my friend, what a magnificent view we have before us. How I
do love Paris!"
He was surprised, having a confused feeling of missing something that
had appeared in her down there in the country. He murmured: "It matters
not to me where I am, so that I am only near you!"
Her only answer was a pressure of the hand. Inspired with greater
happiness, perhaps, by this little signal than he would have been by a
tender word, his heart relieved of the care that had oppressed it until
now, he could at last find words to express his feelings. He told her,
slowly, in words that were almost solemn, that he had given her his
life forever that she might do with it what she would.
She was grateful; but like the child of modern scepticism that she
was and willing captive of her iconoclastic irony, she smiled as she
replied: "I would not make such a long engagement as that if I were
you!"
He turned and faced her, and, looking her straight in the eyes with
that penetrating look which is like a touch, repeated what he had
just said at greater length, in a more ardent, more poetical form of
expression. All that he had written in so many burning letters he now
expressed with such a fervor of conviction that it seemed to her as she
listened that she was sitting in a cloud of incense. She felt herself
caressed in every fiber of her feminine nature by his adoring words
more deeply than ever before.
When he had ended she simply said: "And I, too, love you dearly!"
They were still holding each other's hand, like young folks walking
along a country road, and watching with vague eyes the little
steamboats plying on the river. They were alone by themselves in Paris,
in the great confused uproar, whether remote or near at hand, that
surrounded them in this city full of all the life of all the world,
more alone than they had been on the summit of their aerial tower, and
for some seconds they were quite oblivious that there existed on earth
any other beings but their two selves.
She was the first to recover the sensation of reality and of the flight
of time. "Shall we see each other again to-morrow?" she said.
He reflected for an instant, and abashed by what he had in mind to ask
of her: "Yes--yes--certainly," he replied. "But--shall we never meet
in any other place? This place is unfrequented. Still--people may come
here."
She hesitated. "You are right. Still it is necessary also that you
should not show yourself for at least two weeks yet, so that people may
think that you are away traveling. It will be very nice and mysterious
for us to meet and no one know that you are in Paris. Meanwhile,
however, I cannot receive you at my house, so--I don't see----"
He felt that he was blushing, and continued: "Neither can I ask you to
come to my house. Is there nothing else--is there no other place?"
Being a woman of practical sense, logical and without false modesty,
she was neither surprised nor shocked.
"Why, yes," she said, "only we must have time to think it over."
"I have thought it over."
"What! so soon?"
"Yes, Madame."
"Well?"
"Are you acquainted with the Rue des Vieux-Champs at Auteuil?"
"No."
"It runs into the Rue Tournemine and the Rue Jean-de-Saulge."
"Well?"
"In this street, or rather lane, there is a garden, and in this
garden a pavilion that also communicates with the two streets that I
mentioned."
"What next?"
"That pavilion awaits you."
She reflected, still with no appearance of embarrassment, and then
asked two or three questions that were dictated by feminine prudence.
His explanations seemed to be satisfactory, for she murmured as she
arose:
"Well, I will go to-morrow."
"At what time?"
"Three o'clock."
"Seven is the number; I will be waiting for you behind the door. Do not
forget. Give a knock as you pass."
"Yes, my friend. Adieu, till to-morrow."
"Till to-morrow, adieu. Thanks; I adore you."
They had risen to their feet. "Do not come with me," she said. "Stay
here for ten minutes, and when you leave go by the way of the quay."
"Adieu!"
"Adieu!"
She started off very rapidly, with such a modest, unassuming air, so
hurriedly, that actually she might have been mistaken for one of Paris'
pretty working-girls, who trot along the streets in the morning on the
way to their honest labors.
He took a cab to Auteuil, tormented by the fear that the house might
not be ready against the following day. He found it full of workmen,
however; the hangings were all in place upon the walls, the carpets
laid upon the floors. Everywhere there was a sound of pounding,
hammering, beating, washing. In the garden, which was quite large and
rather pretty, the remains of an ancient park, containing a few large
old trees, a thick clump of shrubbery that stood for a forest, two
green tables, two grass-plots, and paths twisting about among the beds,
the gardener of the vicinity had set out rose-trees, geraniums, pinks,
reseda, and twenty other species of those plants, the growth of which
is advanced or retarded by careful attention, so that a naked field may
be transformed in a day into a blooming flower garden.
Mariolle was as delighted as if he had scored another success with his
Michèle, and having exacted an oath from the upholsterer that all the
furniture should be in place the next day before noon, he went off to
various shops to buy some bric-à-brac and pictures for the adornment
of the interior of this retreat. For the walls he selected some of
those admirable photographs of celebrated pictures that are produced
nowadays, for the tables and mantelshelves some rare pottery and a few
of those familiar objects that women always like to have about them.
In the course of the day he expended the income of three months, and he
did it with great pleasure, reflecting that for the last ten years he
had been living very economically, not from penuriousness, but because
of the absence of expensive tastes, and this circumstance now allowed
him to do things somewhat magnificently.
He returned to the pavilion early in the morning of the following day,
presided over the arrival and placing of the furniture, climbed ladders
and hung the pictures, burned perfumes and vaporized them upon the
hangings and poured them over the carpets. In his feverish joy, in the
excited rapture of all his being, it seemed to him that he had never in
his life been engaged in such an engrossing, such a delightful labor.
At every moment he looked to see what time it was, and calculated how
long it would be before she would be there; he urged on the workmen,
and stimulated his invention so to arrange the different objects that
they might be displayed in their best light.
In his prudence he dismissed everyone before it was two o'clock, and
then, as the minute-hand of the clock tardily made its last revolution
around the dial, in the silence of that house where he was awaiting
the greatest happiness that ever he could have wished for, alone with
his reverie, going and coming from room to room, he passed the minutes
until she should be there.
Finally he went out into the garden. The sunlight was streaming through
the foliage upon the grass and falling with especially charming
brilliancy upon a bed of roses. The very heavens were contributing
their aid to embellish this trysting-place. Then he went and stood by
the gate, partially opening it to look out from time to time for fear
she might mistake the house.
Three o'clock rang out from some belfry, and forthwith the sounds
were echoed from a dozen schools and factories. He stood waiting now
with watch in hand, and gave a start of surprise when two little,
light knocks were given against the door, to which his ear was closely
applied, for he had heard no sound of footsteps in the street.
He opened: it was she. She looked about her with astonishment. First
of all she examined with a distrustful glance the neighboring houses,
but her inspection reassured her, for certainly she could have no
acquaintances among the humble _bourgeois_ who inhabited the quarter.
Then she examined the garden with pleased curiosity, and finally placed
the backs of her two hands, from which she had drawn her gloves,
against her lover's mouth; then she took his arm. At every step she
kept repeating: "My! how pretty it is! how unexpected! how attractive!"
Catching sight of the rose-bed that the sun was shining upon through
the branches of the trees, she exclaimed: "Why, this is fairyland, my
friend!"
She plucked a rose, kissed it, and placed it in her corsage. Then they
entered the pavilion, and she seemed so pleased with everything that
he felt like going down on his knees to her, although he may have felt
at the bottom of his heart that perhaps she might as well have shown
more attention to him and less to the surroundings. She looked about
her with the pleasure of a child who has received a new plaything, and
admired and appreciated the elegance of the place with the satisfaction
of a connoisseur whose tastes have been gratified. She had feared that
she was coming to some vulgar, commonplace resort, where the furniture
and hangings had been contaminated by other rendezvous, whereas all
this, on the contrary, was new, unforeseen, and alluring, prepared
expressly for her, and must have cost a lot of money. Really he was
perfect, this man. She turned to him and extended her arms, and their
lips met in one of those long kisses that have the strange, twofold
sensation of self-effacement and unadulterated bliss.
When, at the end of three hours, they were about to separate, they
walked through the garden and seated themselves in a leafy arbor where
no eye could reach them. André addressed her with an exuberance of
feeling, as if she had been an idol that had come down for his sake
from her sacred pedestal, and she listened to him with that fatigued
languor which he had often seen reflected in her eyes after people had
tired her by too long a visit. She continued affectionate, however,
her face lighted up by a tender, slightly constrained smile, and she
clasped the hand that she held in hers with a continuous pressure that
perhaps was more studied than spontaneous.
She could not have been listening to him, for she interrupted one of
his sentences to say: "Really, I must be going. I was to be at the
Marquise de Bratiane's at six o'clock, and I shall be very late."
He conducted her to the gate by which she had obtained admission. They
gave each other a parting kiss, and after a furtive glance up and down
the street, she hurried away, keeping close to the walls.
When he was alone he felt within him that sudden void that is ever
left by the disappearance of the woman whose kiss is still warm upon
your lips, the queer little laceration of the heart that is caused by
the sound of her retreating footsteps. It seemed to him that he was
abandoned and alone, that he was never to see her again, and he betook
himself to pacing the gravel-walks, reflecting upon this never-ceasing
contrast between anticipation and realization. He remained there until
it was dark, gradually becoming more tranquil and yielding himself more
entirely to her influence, now that she was away, than if she had been
there in his arms. Then he went home and dined without being conscious
of what he was eating, and sat down to write to her.
The next day was a long one to him, and the evening seemed
interminable. Why had she not answered his letter, why had she sent him
no word? The morning of the second day he received a short telegram
appointing another rendezvous at the same hour. The little blue
envelope speedily cured him of the heart-sickness of hope deferred from
which he was beginning to suffer.
She came, as she had done before, punctual, smiling, and affectionate,
and their second interview in the little house was in all respects
similar to the first. André Mariolle, surprised at first and vaguely
troubled that the ecstatic passion he had dreamed of had not made
itself felt between them, but more and more overmastered by his senses,
gradually forgot his visions of anticipation in the somewhat different
happiness of possession. He was becoming attached to her by reason of
her caresses, an invincible tie, the strongest tie of all, from which
there is no deliverance when once it has fully possessed you and has
penetrated through your flesh, into your veins.
Twenty days rolled by, such sweet, fleeting days. It seemed to him
that there was to be no end to it, that he was to live forever thus,
nonexistent for all and living for her alone, and to his mental vision
there presented itself the seductive dream of an unlimited continuance
of this blissful, secret way of living.
She continued to make her visits at intervals of three days, offering
no objections, attracted, it would seem, as much by the amusement she
derived from their clandestine meetings--by the charm of the little
house that had now been transformed into a conservatory of rare exotics
and by the novelty of the situation, which could scarcely be called
dangerous, since she was her own mistress, but still was full of
mystery--as by the abject and constantly increasing tenderness of her
lover.
At last there came a day when she said to him: "Now, my dear friend,
you must show yourself in society again. You will come and pass the
afternoon with me to-morrow. I have given out that you are at home
again."
He was heartbroken. "Oh, why so soon?" he said.
"Because if it should leak out by any chance that you are in Paris your
absence would be too inexplicable not to give rise to gossip."
He saw that she was right and promised that he would come to her house
the next day. Then he asked her: "Do you receive to-morrow?"
"Yes," she replied. "It will be quite a little solemnity."
He did not like this intelligence. "Of what description is your
solemnity?"
She laughed gleefully. "I have prevailed upon Massival, by means of the
grossest sycophancy, to give a performance of his 'Dido,' which no one
has heard yet. It is the poetry of antique love. Mme. de Bratiane, who
considered herself Massival's sole proprietor, is furious. She will be
there, for she is to sing. Am I not a sly one?"
"Will there be many there?"
"Oh, no, only a few intimate friends. You know them nearly all."
"Won't you let me off? I am so happy in my solitude."
"Oh! no, my friend. You know that I count on you more than all the
rest."
His heart gave a great thump. "Thank you," he said; "I will come."