DEPRESSION
When André Mariolle had parted from Mme. de Burne and the penetrating
charm of her presence had faded away, he felt within him and all about
him, in his flesh, in his heart, in the air, and in all the surrounding
world a sensation as if the delight of life which had been his support
and animating principle for some time past had been taken from him.
What had happened? Nothing, or almost nothing. Toward the close of the
reception she had been very charming in her manner toward him, saying
to him more than once: "I am not conscious of anyone's presence here
but yours." And yet he felt that she had revealed something to him of
which he would have preferred always to remain ignorant. That, too,
was nothing, or almost nothing; still he was stupefied, as a man might
be upon hearing of some unworthy action of his father or his mother,
to learn that during those twenty days which he had believed were
absolutely and entirely devoted by her as well as by him, every minute
of them, to the sentiment of their newborn love, so recent and so
intense, she had resumed her former mode of life, had made many visits,
formed many plans, recommenced those odious flirtations, had run after
men and disputed them with her rivals, received compliments, and showed
off all her graces.
So soon! All this she had done so soon! Had it happened later he
would not have been surprised. He knew the world, he knew women and
their ways of looking at things, he was sufficiently intelligent
to understand it all, and would never have been unduly exacting or
offensively jealous. She was beautiful; she was born--it was her
allotted destiny--to receive the homage of men and listen to their soft
nothings. She had selected him from among them all, and had bestowed
herself upon him courageously, royally. It was his part to remain,
he would remain in any event, a grateful slave to her caprices and a
resigned spectator of her triumphs as a pretty woman. But it was hard
on him; something suffered within him, in that obscure cavern down at
the bottom of the heart where the delicate sensibilities have their
dwelling.
No doubt he had been in the wrong; he had always been in the wrong
since he first came to know himself. He carried too much sentimental
prudence into his commerce with the world; his feelings were too
thin-skinned. This was the cause of the isolated life that he had
always led, through his dread of contact with the world and of wounded
susceptibilities. He had been wrong, for this supersensitiveness is
almost always the result of our not admitting the existence of a nature
essentially different from our own, or else not tolerating it. He knew
this, having often observed it in himself, but it was too late to
modify the constitution of his being.
He certainly had no right to reproach Mme. de Burne, for if she had
forbidden him her salon and kept him in hiding during those days of
happiness that she had afforded him, she had done it to blind prying
eyes and be more fully his in the end. Why, then, this trouble that had
settled in his heart? Ah! why? It was because he had believed her to be
wholly his, and now it had been made clear to him that he could never
expect to seize and hold this woman of a many-sided nature who belonged
to all the world.
He was well aware, moreover, that all our life is made up of successes
relative in degree to the "almost," and up to the present time
he had borne this with philosophic resignation, dissembling his
dissatisfaction and his unsatisfied yearnings under the mask of an
assumed unsociability. This time he had thought that he was about to
obtain an absolute success--the "entirely" that he had been waiting and
hoping for all his life. The "entirely" is not to be attained in this
world.
His evening was a dismal one, spent in analyzing the painful impression
that he had received. When he was in bed this impression, instead of
growing weaker, took stronger hold of him, and as he desired to leave
nothing unexplored, he ransacked his mind to ascertain the remotest
causes of his new troubles. They went, and came, and returned again
like little breaths of frosty air, exciting in his love a suffering
that was as yet weak and indistinct, like those vague neuralgic pains
that we get by sitting in a draft, presages of the horrible agonies
that are to come.
He understood in the first place that he was jealous, no longer as the
ardent lover only but as one who had the right to call her his own.
As long as he had not seen her surrounded by men, her men, he had not
allowed himself to dwell upon this sensation, at the same time having
a faint prevision of it, but supposing that it would be different,
very different, from what it actually was. To find the mistress whom
he believed had cared for none but him during those days of secret
and frequent meetings--during that early period that should have been
entirely devoted to isolation and tender emotion--to find her as much,
and even more, interested and wrapped up in her former and frivolous
flirtations than she was before she yielded herself to him, always
ready to fritter away her time and attention on any chance comer, thus
leaving but little of herself to him whom she had designated as the man
of her choice, caused him a jealousy that was more of the flesh than of
the feelings, not an undefined jealousy, like a fever that lies latent
in the system, but a jealousy precise and well defined, for he was
doubtful of her.
At first his doubts were instinctive, arising in a sensation of
distrust that had intruded itself into his veins rather than into his
thoughts, in that sense of dissatisfaction, almost physical, of the man
who is not sure of his mate. Then, having doubted, he began to suspect.
What was his position toward her after all? Was he her first lover, or
was he the tenth? Was he the successor of M. de Burne, or was he the
successor of Lamarthe, Massival, George de Maltry, and the predecessor
as well, perhaps, of the Comte de Bernhaus? What did he know of her?
That she was surprisingly beautiful, stylish beyond all others,
intelligent, discriminating, witty, but at the same time fickle, quick
to weary, readily fatigued and disgusted with anyone or anything, and,
above all else, in love with herself and an insatiable coquette. Had
she had a lover--or lovers--before him? If not, would she have offered
herself to him as she did? Where could she have got the audacity that
made her come and open his bedroom door, at night, in a public inn?
And then after that, would she have shown such readiness to visit the
house at Auteuil? Before going there she had merely asked him a few
questions, such questions as an experienced and prudent woman would
naturally ask. He had answered like a man of circumspection, not
unaccustomed to such interviews, and immediately she had confidingly
said "Yes," entirely reassured, probably benefiting by her previous
experiences.
And then her knock at that little door, behind which he was waiting,
with a beating heart, almost ready to faint, how discreetly
authoritative it had been! And how she had entered without any visible
display of emotion, careful only to observe whether she might be
recognized from the adjacent houses! And the way that she had made
herself at home at once in that doubtful lodging that he had hired and
furnished for her! Would a woman who was a novice, how daring soever
she might be, how superior to considerations of morality and regardless
of social prejudices, have penetrated thus calmly the mystery of a
first rendezvous? There is a trouble of the mind, a hesitation of the
body, an instinctive fear in the very feet, which know not whither they
are tending; would she not have felt all that unless she had had some
experience in these excursions of love and unless the practice of these
things had dulled her native sense of modesty?
Burning with this persistent, irritating fever, which the warmth of
his bed seemed to render still more unendurable, Mariolle tossed
beneath the coverings, constantly drawn on by his chain of doubts and
suppositions; like a man that feels himself irrecoverably sliding down
the steep descent of a precipice. At times he tried to call a halt and
break the current of his thoughts; he sought and found, and was glad to
find, reflections that were more just to her and reassuring to him, but
the seeds of distrust had been sown in him and he could not help their
growing.
And yet, with what had he to reproach her? Nothing, except that her
nature was not entirely similar to his own, that she did not look upon
life in the same way that he did and that she had not in her heart an
instrument of sensibility attuned to the same key as his.
Immediately upon awaking next morning the longing to see her and to
re-enforce his confidence in her developed itself within him like a
ravening hunger, and he awaited the proper moment to go and pay her
the visit demanded by custom. The instant that she saw him at the door
of the little drawing-room devoted to her special intimates, where she
was sitting alone occupied with her correspondence, she came to him
with her two hands outstretched.
"Ah! Good day, dear friend!" she said, with so pleased and frank
an air that all his odious suspicions, which were still floating
indeterminately in his brain, melted away beneath the warmth of her
reception.
He seated himself at her side and at once began to tell her of the
manner in which he loved her, for their love was now no longer what it
had been. He gently gave her to understand that there are two species
of the race of lovers upon earth: those whose desire is that of madmen
and whose ardor disappears when once they have achieved a triumph, and
those whom possession serves to subjugate and capture, in whom the love
of the senses, blending with the inarticulate and ineffable appeals
that the heart of man at times sends forth toward a woman, gives rise
to the servitude of a complete and torturing love.
Torturing it is, certainly, and forever so, however happy it may be,
for nothing, even in the moments of closest communion, ever sates the
need of her that rules our being.
Mme. de Burne was charmed and gratified as she listened, carried away,
as one is carried away at the theater when an actor gives a powerful
interpretation of his rôle and moves us by awaking some slumbering echo
in our own life. It was indeed an echo, the disturbing echo of a real
passion; but it was not from her bosom that this passion sent forth
its cry. Still, she felt such satisfaction that she was the object
of so keen a sentiment, she was so pleased that it existed in a man
who was capable of expressing it in such terms, in a man of whom she
was really very fond, for whom she was really beginning to feel an
attachment and whose presence was becoming more and more a necessity to
her--not for her physical being but for that mysterious feminine nature
which is so greedy of tenderness, devotion, and subjection--that she
felt like embracing him, like offering him her mouth, her whole being,
only that he might keep on worshiping her in this way.
She answered him frankly and without prudery, with that profound
artfulness that certain women are endowed with, making it clear to
him that he too had made great progress in her affections, and they
remained _tête-à-tête_ in the little drawing-room, where it so happened
that no one came that day until twilight, talking always upon the same
theme and caressing each other with words that to them did not have the
common significance.
The servants had just brought in the lamps, when Mme. de Bratiane
appeared. Mariolle withdrew, and as Mme. de Burne was accompanying him
to the door through the main drawing-room, he asked her: "When shall I
see you down yonder?"
"Will Friday suit you?"
"Certainly. At what hour?"
"The same, three o'clock."
"Until Friday, then. Adieu. I adore you!"
During the two days that passed before this interview, he experienced
a sensation of loneliness that he had never felt before in the same
way. A woman was wanting in his life--she was the only existent
object for him in the world, and as this woman was not far away and
he was prevented by social conventions alone from going to her, and
from passing a lifetime with her, he chafed in his solitude, in the
interminable lapse of the moments that seemed at times to pass so
slowly, at the absolute impossibility of a thing that was so easy.
He arrived at the rendezvous on Friday three hours before the time, but
it was pleasing to him--it comforted his anxiety--to wait there where
she was soon to come, after having already suffered so much in awaiting
her mentally in places where she was not to come.
He stationed himself near the door long before the clock had struck
the three strokes that he was expecting so eagerly, and when at last
he heard them he began to tremble with impatience. The quarter struck.
He looked out into the street, cautiously protruding his head between
the door and the casing; it was deserted from one end to the other.
The minutes seemed to stretch out in aggravating slowness. He was
constantly drawing his watch from his pocket, and at last when the hand
marked the half-hour it appeared to him that he had been standing there
for an incalculable length of time. Suddenly he heard a faint sound
upon the pavement outside, and the summons upon the door of the little
gloved hand quickly made him forget his disappointment and inspired in
him a feeling of gratitude toward her.
She seemed a little out of breath as she asked: "I am very late, am I
not?"
"No, not very."
"Just imagine, I was near not being able to come at all. I had a
houseful, and I was at my wits' end to know what to do to get rid of
all those people. Tell me, do you go under your own name here?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"So that I may send you a telegram if I should ever be prevented from
coming."
"I am known as M. Nicolle."
"Very well; I won't forget. My! how nice it is here in this garden!"
There were five great splashes of perfumed, many-hued brightness
upon the grass-plots of the flowers, which were carefully tended and
constantly renewed, for the gardener had a customer who paid liberally.
Halting at a bench in front of a bed of heliotrope: "Let us sit here
for a while," she said; "I have something funny to tell you."
She proceeded to relate a bit of scandal that was quite fresh, and
from the effect of which she had not yet recovered. The story was that
Mme. Massival, the ex-mistress whom the artist had married, had come
to Mme. de Bratiane's, furious with jealousy, right in the midst of
an entertainment in which the Marquise was singing to the composer's
accompaniment, and had made a frightful scene: results, rage of the
fair Italian, astonishment and laughter of the guests. Massival,
quite beside himself, tried to take away his wife, who kept striking
him in the face, pulling his hair and beard, biting him and tearing
his clothes, but she clung to him with all her strength and held him
so that he could not stir, while Lamarthe and two servants, who had
hurried to them at the noise, did what they could to release him from
the teeth and claws of this fury.
Tranquillity was not restored until after the pair had taken their
departure. Since then the musician had remained invisible, and the
novelist, witness of the scene, had been repeating it everywhere
in a very witty and amusing manner. The affair had produced a deep
impression upon Mme. de Burne; it preoccupied her thoughts to such an
extent that she hardly knew what she was doing. The constant recurrence
of the names of Massival and Lamarthe upon her lips annoyed Mariolle.
"You just heard of this?" he said.
"Yes, hardly an hour ago."
"And that is the reason why she was late," he said to himself with
bitterness. Then he asked aloud, "Shall we go in?"
"Yes," she absently murmured.
When, an hour later, she had left him, for she was greatly hurried that
day, he returned alone to the quiet little house and seated himself on
a low chair in their apartment. The feeling that she had been no more
his than if she had not come there left a sort of black cavern in his
heart, in all his being, that he tried to probe to the bottom. He could
see nothing there, he could not understand; he was no longer capable
of understanding. If she had not abstracted herself from his kisses,
she had at all events escaped from the immaterial embraces of his
tenderness by a mysterious absence of the will of being his. She had
not refused herself to him, but it seemed as if she had not brought her
heart there with her; it had remained somewhere else, very far away,
idly occupied, distracted by some trifle.
Then he saw that he already loved her with his senses as much as with
his feelings, even more perhaps. The deprivation of her soulless
caresses inspired him with a mad desire to run after her and bring her
back, to again possess himself of her. But why? What was the use--since
the thoughts of that fickle mind were occupied elsewhere that day? So
he must await the days and the hours when, to this elusive mistress of
his, there should come the caprice, like her other caprices, of being
in love with him.
He returned wearily to his house, with heavy footsteps, his eyes fixed
on the sidewalk, tired of life, and it occurred to him that he had
made no appointment with her for the future, either at her house or
elsewhere.