LONELINESS
The city lay basking in the brightness of a sunny morning. Mariolle
climbed into the carriage that stood waiting at his door with a
traveling bag and two trunks on top. He had made his valet the night
before pack the linen and other necessaries for a long absence, and
now he was going away, leaving as his temporary address Fontainebleau
post-office. He was taking no one with him, it being his wish to see no
face that might remind him of Paris and to hear no voice that he had
heard while brooding over certain matters.
He told the driver to go to the Lyons station and the cab started.
Then he thought of that other trip of his, last spring, to Mont
Saint-Michel; it was a year ago now lacking three months. He looked out
into the street to drive the recollection from his mind.
The vehicle turned into the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which was
flooded with the light of the sun of early spring. The green leaves,
summoned forth by the grateful warmth that had prevailed for a couple
of weeks and not materially retarded by the cold storm of the last
two days, were opening so rapidly on this bright morning that they
seemed to impregnate the air with an odor of fresh verdure and of sap
evaporating on the way to its work of building up new growths. It was
one of those growing mornings when one feels that the dome-topped
chestnut-trees in the public gardens and all along the avenues will
burst into bloom in a single day through the length and breadth of
Paris, like chandeliers that are lighted simultaneously. The earth was
thrilling with the movement preparatory to the full life of summer,
and the very street was silently stirred beneath its paving of bitumen
as the roots ate their way through the soil. He said to himself as he
jolted along in his cab: "At last I shall be able to enjoy a little
peace of mind. I will witness the birth of spring in solitude deep in
the forest."
The journey seemed long to him. The few hours of sleeplessness that he
had spent in bemoaning his fate had broken him down as if he had passed
ten nights at the bedside of a dying man. When he reached the village
of Fontainebleau he went to a notary to see if there was a small house
to be had furnished in the neighborhood of the forest. He was told of
several. In looking over the photographs the one that pleased him most
was a cottage that had just been given up by a young couple, man and
wife, who had resided for almost the entire winter in the village of
Montigny-sur-Loing. The notary smiled, notwithstanding that he was a
man of serious aspect; he probably scented a love story.
"You are alone, Monsieur!" he inquired.
"I am alone."
"No servants, even?"
"No servants, even; I left them at Paris. I wish to engage some of the
residents here. I am coming here to work in complete seclusion."
"You will have no difficulty in finding that, at this season of the
year."
A few minutes afterward an open landau was whirling Mariolle and his
trunks away to Montigny.
The forest was beginning to awake. The copses at the foot of the great
trees, whose heads were covered with a light veil of foliage, were
beginning to assume a denser aspect. The early birches, with their
silvery trunks, were the only trees that seemed completely attired
for the summer, while the great oaks only displayed small tremulous
splashes of green at the ends of their branches and the beeches, more
quick to open their pointed buds, were just shedding the dead leaves of
the past year.
The grass by the roadside, unobscured as yet by the thick shade of the
tree-tops, was growing lush and bright with the influx of new sap, and
the odor of new growth that Mariolle had already remarked in the Avenue
des Champs-Élysées, now wrapped him about and immersed him in a great
bath of green life budding in the sunshine of the early season. He
inhaled it greedily, like one just liberated from prison, and with the
sensation of a man whose fetters have just been broken he luxuriously
extended his arms along the two sides of the landau and let his hands
hang down over the two wheels.
He passed through Marlotte, where the driver called his attention to
the Hotel Corot, then just opened, of the original design of which
there was much talk. Then the road continued, with the forest on the
left hand and on the right a wide plain with trees here and there and
hills bounding the horizon. To this succeeded a long village street,
a blinding white street lying between two endless rows of little
tile-roofed houses. Here and there an enormous lilac bush displayed its
flowers over the top of a wall.
This street followed the course of a narrow valley along which ran a
little stream. It was a narrow, rapid, twisting, nimble little stream,
on one of its banks laving the foundations of the houses and the
garden-walls and on the other bathing the meadows where the small trees
were just beginning to put forth their scanty foliage. The sight of it
inspired Mariolle with a sensation of delight.
He had no difficulty in finding his house and was greatly pleased with
it. It was an old house that had been restored by a painter, who had
tired of it after living there five years and offered it for rent. It
was directly on the water, separated from the stream only by a pretty
garden that ended in a terrace of lindens. The Loing, which just above
this point had a picturesque fall of a foot or two over a dam erected
there, ran rapidly by this terrace, whirling in great eddies. From the
front windows of the house the meadows on the other bank were visible.
"I shall get well here," Mariolle thought.
Everything had been arranged with the notary in case the house should
prove suitable. The driver carried back his acceptance of it. Then
the housekeeping details had to be attended to, which did not take
much time, the mayor's clerk having provided two women, one to do the
cooking, the other to wash and attend to the chamber-work.
Downstairs there were a parlor, dining-room, kitchen, and two small
rooms; on the floor above a handsome bedroom and a large apartment
that the artist owner had fitted up as a studio. The furniture had all
been selected with loving care, as people always furnish when they are
enamored of a place, but now it had lost a little of its freshness and
was in some disorder, with the air of desolation that is noticeable in
dwellings that have been abandoned by their master. A pleasant odor of
verbena, however, still lingered in the air, showing that the little
house had not been long uninhabited. "Ah!" thought Mariolle, "verbena,
that indicates simplicity of taste. The woman that preceded me could
not have been one of those complex, mystifying natures. Happy man!"
It was getting toward evening, all these occupations having made the
day pass rapidly. He took a seat by an open window, drinking in the
agreeable coolness that exhaled from the surrounding vegetation and
watching the setting sun as it cast long shadows across the meadows.
The two servants were talking while getting the dinner ready and the
sound of their voices ascended to him faintly by the stairway, while
through the window came the mingled sounds of the lowing of cows,
the barking of dogs, and the cries of men bringing home the cattle
or conversing with their companions on the other bank of the stream.
Everything was peaceful and restful.
For the thousandth time since the morning Mariolle asked himself:
"What did she think when she received my letter? What will she do?"
Then he said to himself: "I wonder what she is doing now?" He looked at
his watch; it was half past six. "She has come in from the street. She
is receiving."
There rose before his mental vision a picture of the drawing-room, and
the young woman chatting with the Princess de Malten, Mme. de Frémines,
Massival, and the Comte de Bernhaus.
His soul was suddenly moved with an impulse that was something like
anger. He wished that he was there. It was the hour of his accustomed
visit to her, almost every day, and he felt within him a feeling of
discomfort, not of regret. His will was firm, but a sort of physical
suffering afflicted him akin to that of one who is denied his morphine
at the accustomed time. He no longer beheld the meadows, nor the sun
sinking behind the hills of the horizon; all that he could see was her,
among her friends, given over to those cares of the world that had
robbed him of her. "I will think of her no more," he said to himself.
He arose, went down to the garden and passed on to the terrace. There
was a cool mist there rising from the water that had been agitated
in its fall over the dam, and this sensation of chilliness, striking
to a heart already sad, caused him to retrace his steps. His dinner
was awaiting him in the dining-room. He ate it quickly; then, having
nothing to occupy him, and feeling that distress of mind and body, of
which he had had the presage, now increasing on him, he went to bed and
closed his eyes in an attempt to slumber, but it was to no purpose.
His thoughts refused to leave that woman; he beheld her in his thought
and he suffered.
On whom would she bestow her favor now? On the Comte de Bernhaus,
doubtless! He was just the man, elegant, conspicuous, sought after, to
suit that creature of display. He had found favor with her, for had she
not employed all her arts to conquer him even at a time when she was
mistress to another man?
Notwithstanding that his mind was beset by these haunting thoughts,
it would still keep wandering off into that misty condition of
semi-somnolence in which the man and woman were constantly reappearing
to his eyes. Of true sleep he got none, and all night long he saw them
at his bedside, braving and mocking him, now retiring as if they would
at last permit him to snatch a little sleep, then returning as soon
as oblivion had begun to creep over him and awaking him with a spasm
of jealous agony in his heart. He left his bed at earliest break of
day and went away into the forest with a cane in his hand, a stout
serviceable stick that the last occupant of the house had left behind
him.
The rays of the newly risen sun were falling through the tops of the
oaks, almost leafless as yet, upon the ground, which was carpeted in
spots by patches of verdant grass, here by a carpet of dead leaves and
there by heather reddened by the frosts of winter. Yellow butterflies
were fluttering along the road like little dancing flames. To the right
of the road was a hill, almost large enough to be called a mountain.
Mariolle ascended it leisurely, and when he reached the top seated
himself on a great stone, for he was quite out of breath. His legs
were overcome with weakness and refused to support him; all his system
seemed to be yielding to a sudden breaking down. He was well aware that
this languor did not proceed from fatigue; it came from her, from the
love that weighed him down like an intolerable burden, and he murmured:
"What wretchedness! why does it possess me thus, me, a man who has
always taken from existence only that which would enable him to enjoy
it without suffering afterward?"
His attention was awakened by the fear of this malady that might prove
so hard to cure, and he probed his feelings, went down to the very
depths of his nature, endeavoring to know and understand it better,
and make clear to his own eyes the reason of this inexplicable crisis.
He said to himself: "I have never yielded to any undue attraction.
I am not enthusiastic or passionate by nature; my judgment is more
powerful than my instinct, my curiosity than my appetite, my fancy
than my perseverance. I am essentially nothing more than a man that is
delicate, intelligent, and hard to please in his enjoyments. I have
loved the things of this life without ever allowing myself to become
greatly attached to them, with the perceptions of an expert who sips
and does not suffer himself to become surfeited, who knows better
than to lose his head. I submit everything to the test of reason, and
generally I analyze my likings too severely to submit to them blindly.
That is even my great defect, the only cause of my weakness.
"And now that woman has taken possession of me, in spite of myself, in
spite of my fears and of my knowledge of her, and she retains her hold
as if she had plucked away one by one all the different aspirations
that existed in me. That may be the case. Those aspirations of mine
went out toward inanimate objects, toward nature, that entices and
softens me, toward music, which is a sort of ideal caress, toward
reflection, which is the delicate feasting of the mind, toward
everything on earth that is beautiful and agreeable.
"Then I met a creature who collected and concentrated all my somewhat
fickle and fluctuating likings, and directing them toward herself,
converted them into love. Charming and beautiful, she pleased my eyes;
bright, intelligent, and witty, she pleased my mind, and she pleased my
heart by the mysterious charm of her contact and her presence and by
the secret and irresistible emanation from her personality, until all
these things enslaved me as the perfume of certain flowers intoxicates.
She has taken the place of everything for me, for I no longer have any
aspirations, I no longer wish or care for anything."
"In other days how my feelings would have thrilled and started in this
forest that is putting forth its new life! To-day I see nothing of it,
I am regardless of it; I am still at that woman's side, whom I desire
to love no more.
"Come! I must kill these ideas by physical fatigue; unless I do I shall
never get well."
He arose, descended the rocky hillside and resumed his walk with long
strides, but still the haunting presence crushed him as if it had
been a burden that he was bearing on his back. He went on, constantly
increasing his speed, now and then encountering a brief sensation of
comfort at the sight of the sunlight piercing through the foliage or at
a breath of perfumed air from some grove of resinous pine-trees, which
inspired in him a presentiment of distant consolation.
Suddenly he came to a halt. "I am not walking any longer," he said, "I
am flying from something!" Indeed, he was flying, straight ahead, he
cared not where, pursued by the agony of his love.
Then he started on again at a more reasonable speed. The appearance
of the forest was undergoing a change. The growth was denser and the
shadows deeper, for he was coming to the warmer portions of it, to the
beautiful region of the beeches. No sensation of winter lingered there.
It was wondrous spring, that seemed to have been the birth of a night,
so young and fresh was everything.
Mariolle made his way among the thickets, beneath the gigantic trees
that towered above him higher and higher still, and in this way he went
on for a long time, an hour, two hours, pushing his way through the
branches, through the countless multitudes of little shining leaves,
bright with their varnish of new sap. The heavens were quite concealed
by the immense dome of verdure, supported on its lofty columns, now
perpendicular, now leaning, now of a whitish hue, now dark beneath the
black moss that drew its nourishment from the bark.
Thus they towered, stretching away indefinitely in the distance, one
behind the other, lording it over the bushy young copses that grew
in confused tangles at their feet and wrapping them in dense shadow
through which in places poured floods of vivid sunlight. The golden
rain streamed down through all this luxuriant growth until the wood no
longer remained a wood, but became a brilliant sea of verdure illumined
by yellow rays. Mariolle stopped, seized with an ineffable surprise.
Where was he? Was he in a forest, or had he descended to the bottom of
a sea, a sea of leaves and light, an ocean of green resplendency?
He felt better--more tranquil; more remote, more hidden from his
misery, and he threw himself down upon the red carpet of dead leaves
that these trees do not cast until they are ready to put on their new
garments. Rejoicing in the cool contact of the earth and the pure
sweetness of the air, he was soon conscious of a wish, vague at first
but soon becoming more defined, not to be alone in this charming spot,
and he said to himself: "Ah! if she were only here, at my side!"
He suddenly remembered Mont Saint-Michel, and recollecting how
different she had been down there to what she was in Paris, how her
affection had blossomed out in the open air before the yellow sands, he
thought that on that day she had surely loved him a little for a few
hours. Yes, surely, on the road where they had watched the receding
tide, in the cloisters where, murmuring his name: "André," she had
seemed to say, "I am yours," and on the "Madman's Path," where he
had almost borne her through space, she had felt an impulsion toward
him that had never returned since she placed her foot, the foot of a
coquette, on the pavement of Paris.
He continued to yield himself to his mournful reveries, still stretched
at length upon his back, his look lost among the gold and green of
the tree-tops, and little by little his eyes closed, weighed down with
sleep and the tranquillity that reigned among the trees. When he awoke
he saw that it was past two o'clock of the afternoon.
When he arose and proceeded on his way he felt less sad, less ailing.
At length he emerged from the thickness of the wood and came to a great
open space where six broad avenues converged and then stretched away
and lost themselves in the leafy, transparent distance. A signboard
told him that the name of the locality was "Le Bouquet-du-Roi." It was
indeed the capital of this royal country of the beeches.
A carriage passed, and as it was empty and disengaged Mariolle took it
and ordered the driver to take him to Marlotte, whence he could make
his way to Montigny after getting something to eat at the inn, for he
was beginning to be hungry.
He remembered that he had seen this establishment, which was only
recently opened, the day before: the Hotel Corot, it was called, an
artistic public-house in middle-age style of decoration, modeled on
the Chat Noir in Paris. His driver set him down there and he passed
through an open door into a vast room where old-fashioned tables and
uncomfortable benches seemed to be awaiting drinkers of a past century.
At the far end a woman, a young waitress, no doubt, was standing on top
of a little folding ladder, fastening some old plates to nails that
were driven in the wall and seemed nearly beyond her reach. Now raising
herself on tiptoe on both feet, now on one, supporting herself with one
hand against the wall while the other held the plate, she reached up
with pretty and adroit movements; for her figure was pleasing and the
undulating lines from wrist to ankle assumed changing forms of grace at
every fresh posture. As her back was toward him she had been unaware of
Mariolle's entrance, who stopped to watch her. He thought of Prédolé
and his _figurines;_ "It is a pretty picture, though!" he said to
himself. "She is very graceful, that little girl."
He gave a little cough. She was so startled that she came near falling,
but as soon as she had recovered her self-possession, she jumped down
from her ladder as lightly as a rope dancer, and came to him with a
pleasant smile on her face. "What will Monsieur have?" she inquired.
"Breakfast, Mademoiselle."
She ventured to say: "It should be dinner, rather, for it is half past
three o'clock."
"We will call it dinner if you like. I lost myself in the forest."
Then she told him what dishes there were ready; he made his selection
and took a seat. She went away to give the order, returning shortly to
set the table for him. He watched her closely as she bustled around
the table; she was pretty and very neat in her attire. She had a spry
little air that was very pleasant to behold, in her working dress with
skirt pinned up, sleeves rolled back, and neck exposed; and her corset
fitted closely to her pretty form, of which she had no reason to be
ashamed.
Her face was rather red, painted by exposure to the open air, and it
seemed somewhat too fat and puffy, but it was as fresh as a new-blown
rose, with fine, bright, brown eyes, a large mouth with its complement
of handsome teeth, and chestnut hair that revealed by its abundance the
healthy vigor of this strong young frame.
She brought radishes and bread and butter and he began to eat, ceasing
to pay attention to the attendant. He called for a bottle of champagne
and drank the whole of it, as he did two glasses of kummel after his
coffee, and as his stomach was empty--he had taken nothing before
he left his house but a little bread and cold meat--he soon felt a
comforting feeling of tipsiness stealing over him that he mistook for
oblivion. His griefs and sorrows were diluted and tempered by the
sparkling wine which, in so short a time, had transformed the torments
of his heart into insensibility. He walked slowly back to Montigny, and
being very tired and sleepy went to bed as soon as it was dark, falling
asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
He awoke after a while, however, in the dense darkness, ill at ease and
disquieted as if a nightmare that had left him for an hour or two had
furtively reappeared at his bedside to murder sleep. She was there,
she, Mme. de Burne, back again, roaming about his bed, and accompanied
still by M. de Bernhaus. "Come!" he said, "it must be that I am
jealous. What is the reason of it?"
Why was he jealous? He quickly told himself why. Notwithstanding all
his doubts and fears he knew that as long as he had been her lover
she had been faithful to him--faithful, indeed, without tenderness
and without transports, but with a loyal strength of resolution.
Now, however, he had broken it all off, and it was ended; he had
restored her freedom to her. Would she remain without a _liaison_?
Yes, doubtless, for a while. And then? This very fidelity that she had
observed toward him up to the present moment, a fidelity beyond the
reach of suspicion, was it not due to the feeling that if she left him,
Mariolle, because she was tired of him, she would some day, sooner or
later, have to take some one to fill his place, not from passion, but
from weariness of being alone?
Is it not true that lovers often owe their long lease of favor simply
to the dread of an unknown successor? And then to dismiss one lover and
take up with another would not have seemed the right thing to such a
woman--she was too intelligent, indeed, to bow to social prejudices,
but was gifted with a delicate sense of moral purity that kept her from
real indelicacies. She was a worldly philosopher and not a prudish
_bourgeoise_, and while she would not have quailed at the idea of a
secret attachment, her nature would have revolted at the thought of a
succession of lovers.
He had given her her freedom--and now? Now most certainly she would
take up with some one else, and that some one would be the Comte de
Bernhaus. He was sure of it, and the thought was now affording him
inexpressible suffering. Why had he left her? She had been faithful,
a good friend to him, charming in every way. Why? Was it because he
was a brutal sensualist who could not separate true love from its
physical transports? Was that it? Yes--but there was something besides.
He had fled from the pain of not being loved as he loved, from the
cruel feeling that he did not receive an equivalent return for the
warmth of his kisses, an incurable affliction from which his heart,
grievously smitten, would perhaps never recover. He looked forward with
dread to the prospect of enduring for years the torments that he had
been anticipating for a few months and suffering for a few weeks. In
accordance with his nature he had weakly recoiled before this prospect,
just as he had recoiled all his life long before any effort that called
for resolution. It followed that he was incapable of carrying anything
to its conclusion, of throwing himself heart and soul into such a
passion as one develops for a science or an art, for it is impossible,
perhaps, to have loved greatly without having suffered greatly.
Until daylight he pursued this train of thought, which tore him like
wild horses; then he got up and went down to the bank of the little
stream. A fisherman was casting his net near the little dam, and when
he withdrew it from the water that flashed and eddied in the sunlight
and spread it on the deck of his small boat, the little fishes danced
among the meshes like animated silver.
Mariolle's agitation subsided little by little in the balmy freshness
of the early morning air. The cool mist that rose from the miniature
waterfall, about which faint rainbows fluttered, and the stream that
ran at his feet in rapid and ceaseless current, carried off with them
a portion of his sorrow. He said to himself: "Truly, I have done
the right thing; I should have been too unhappy otherwise!" Then he
returned to the house, and taking possession of a hammock that he had
noticed in the vestibule, he made it fast between two of the lindens
and throwing himself into it, endeavored to drive away reflection by
fixing his eyes and thoughts upon the flowing stream.
Thus he idled away the time until the hour of breakfast, in an
agreeable torpor, a physical sensation of well-being that communicated
itself to the mind, and he protracted the meal as much as possible
that he might have some occupation for the dragging minutes. There was
one thing, however, that he looked forward to with eager expectation,
and that was his mail. He had telegraphed to Paris and written to
Fontainebleau to have his letters forwarded, but had received nothing,
and the sensation of being entirely abandoned was beginning to be
oppressive. Why? He had no reason to expect that there would be
anything particularly pleasing or comforting for him in the little
black box that the carrier bore slung at his side, nothing beyond
useless invitations and unmeaning communications. Why, then, should he
long for letters of whose contents he knew nothing as if the salvation
of his soul depended on them? Was it not that there lay concealed in
his heart the vainglorious expectation that she would write to him?
He asked one of his old women: "At what time does the mail arrive?"
"At noon, Monsieur."
It was just midday, and he listened with increased attention to the
noises that reached him from outdoors. A knock at the outer door
brought him to his feet; the messenger brought him only the newspapers
and three unimportant letters. Mariolle glanced over the journals until
he was tired, and went out.
What should he do? He went to the hammock and lay down in it, but
after half an hour of that he experienced an uncontrollable desire to
go somewhere else. The forest? Yes, the forest was very pleasant, but
then the solitude there was even deeper than it was in his house, much
deeper than it was in the village, where there were at least some signs
of life now and then. And the silence and loneliness of all those trees
and leaves filled his mind with sadness and regrets, steeping him more
deeply still in wretchedness. He mentally reviewed his long walk of
the day before, and when he came to the wide-awake little waitress of
the Hotel Corot, he said to himself: "I have it! I will go and dine
there." The idea did him good; it was something to occupy him, a means
of killing two or three hours, and he set out forthwith.
The long village street stretched straight away in the middle of the
valley between two rows of low, white, tile-roofed houses, some of them
standing boldly up with their fronts close to the road, others, more
retiring, situated in a garden where there was a lilac-bush in bloom
and chickens scratching over manure-heaps, where wooden stairways in
the open air climbed to doors cut in the wall. Peasants were at work
before their dwellings, lazily fulfilling their domestic duties. An
old woman, bent with age and with threads of gray in her yellow hair,
for country folk rarely have white hair, passed close to him, a ragged
jacket upon her shoulders and her lean and sinewy legs covered by a
woolen petticoat that failed to conceal the angles and protuberances
of her frame. She was looking aimlessly before her with expressionless
eyes, eyes that had never looked on other objects than those that might
be of use to her in her poor existence.
Another woman, younger than this one, was hanging out the family wash
before her door. The lifting of her skirt as she raised her arms
aloft disclosed to view thick, coarse ankles incased in blue knitted
stockings, with great, projecting, fleshless bones, while the breast
and shoulders, flat and broad as those of a man, told of a body whose
form must have been horrible to behold.
Mariolle thought: "They are women! Those scarecrows are women!" The
vision of Mme. de Burne arose before his eyes. He beheld her in all
her elegance and beauty, the perfection of the human female form,
coquettish and adorned to meet the looks of man, and again he smarted
with the sorrow of an irreparable loss; then he walked on more quickly
to shake himself free of this impression.
When he reached the inn at Marlotte the little waitress recognized him
immediately, and accosted him almost familiarly: "Good day, Monsieur."
"Good day, Mademoiselle."
"Do you wish something to drink?"
"Yes, to begin with; then I will have dinner."
They discussed the question of what he should drink in the first place
and what he should eat subsequently. He asked her advice for the
pleasure of hearing her talk, for she had a nice way of expressing
herself. She had a short little Parisian accent, and her speech was as
unconstrained as was her movements. He thought as he listened: "The
little girl is quite agreeable; she seems to me to have a bit of the
_cocotte_ about her."
"Are you a Parisian?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir."
"Have you been here long?"
"Two weeks, sir."
"And do you like it?"
"Not very well so far, but it is too soon to tell, and then I was
tired of the air of Paris, and the country has done me good; that is
why I made up my mind to come here. Then I shall bring you a vermouth,
Monsieur?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle, and tell the cook to be careful and pay attention
to my dinner."
"Never fear, Monsieur."
After she had gone away he went into the garden of the hotel, and took
a seat in an arbor, where his vermouth was served. He remained there
all the rest of the day, listening to a blackbird whistling in its
cage, and watching the little waitress in her goings and comings. She
played the coquette, and put on her sweetest looks for the gentleman,
for she had not failed to observe that he found her to his liking.
He went away as he had done the day before after drinking a bottle of
champagne to dispel gloom, but the darkness of the way and the coolness
of the night air quickly dissipated his incipient tipsiness, and sorrow
again took possession of his devoted soul. He thought: "What am I to
do? Shall I remain here? Shall I be condemned for long to drag out this
desolate way of living?" It was very late when he got to sleep.
The next morning he again installed himself in the hammock, and all at
once the sight of a man casting his net inspired him with the idea of
going fishing. The grocer from whom he bought his lines gave him some
instructions upon the soothing sport, and even offered to go with him
and act as his guide upon his first attempt. The offer was accepted,
and between nine o'clock and noon Mariolle succeeded, by dint of
vigorous exertion and unintermitting patience, in capturing three small
fish.
When he had dispatched his breakfast he took up his march again for
Marlotte. Why? To kill time, of course.
The little waitress began to laugh when she saw him coming. Amused by
her recognition of him, he smiled back at her, and tried to engage her
in conversation. She was more familiar than she had been the preceding
day, and met him halfway.
Her name was Elisabeth Ledru. Her mother, who took in dressmaking, had
died the year before; then the husband, an accountant by profession,
always drunk and out of work, who had lived on the little earnings of
his wife and daughter, disappeared, for the girl could not support
two persons, though she shut herself up in her garret room and sewed
all day long. Tiring of her lonely occupation after a while, she got
a position as waitress in a cook-shop, remained there a year, and as
the hard work had worn her down, the proprietor of the Hotel Corot at
Marlotte, upon whom she had waited at times, engaged her for the summer
with two other girls who were to come down a little later on. It was
evident that the proprietor knew how to attract customers.
Her little story pleased Mariolle, and by treating her with respect and
asking her a few discriminating questions, he succeeded in eliciting
from her many interesting details of this poor dismal home that had
been laid in ruins by a drunken father. She, poor, homeless, wandering
creature that she was, gay and cheerful because she could not help
it, being young, and feeling that the interest that this stranger
took in her was unfeigned, talked to him with confidence, with that
expansiveness of soul that she could no more restrain than she could
restrain the agile movements of her limbs.
When she had finished he asked her: "And--do you expect to be a
waitress all your life?"
"I could not answer that question, Monsieur. How can I tell what may
happen to me to-morrow?"
"And yet it is necessary to think of the future."
She had assumed a thoughtful air that did not linger long upon her
features, then she replied: "I suppose that I shall have to take
whatever comes to me. So much the worse!"
They parted very good friends. After a few days he returned, then
again, and soon he began to go there frequently, finding a vague
distraction in the girl's conversation, and that her artless prattle
helped him somewhat to forget his grief.
When he returned on foot to Montigny in the evening, however, he had
terrible fits of despair as he thought of Mme. de Burne. His heart
became a little lighter with the morning sun, but with the night his
bitter regrets and fierce jealousy closed in on him again. He had no
intelligence; he had written to no one and had received letters from no
one. Then, alone with his thoughts upon the dark road, his imagination
would picture the progress of the approaching _liaison_ that he had
foreseen between his quondam mistress and the Comte de Bernhaus. This
had now become a settled idea with him and fixed itself more firmly in
his mind every day. That man, he thought, will be to her just what she
requires; a distinguished, assiduous, unexacting lover, contented and
happy to be the chosen one of this superlatively delicious coquette. He
compared him with himself. The other most certainly would not behave
as he had, would not be guilty of that tiresome impatience and of that
insatiable thirst for a return of his affection that had been the
destruction of their amorous understanding. He was a very discreet,
pliant, and well-posted man of the world, and would manage to get along
and content himself with but little, for he did not seem to belong to
the class of impassioned mortals.
On one of André Mariolle's visits to Marlotte one day, he beheld two
bearded young fellows in the other arbor of the Hotel Corot, smoking
pipes and wearing Scotch caps on their heads. The proprietor, a big,
broad-faced man, came forward to pay his respects as soon as he saw
him, for he had an interested liking for this faithful patron of
his dinner-table, and said to him: "I have two new customers since
yesterday, two painters."
"Those gentlemen sitting there?"
"Yes. They are beginning to be heard of. One of them got a second-class
medal last year." And having told all that he knew about the embryo
artists, he asked: "What will you take to-day, Monsieur Mariolle?"
"You may send me out a vermouth, as usual."
The proprietor went away, and soon Elisabeth appeared, bringing the
salver, the glass, the _carafe_, and the bottle. Whereupon one of the
painters called to her: "Well! little one, are we angry still?"
She did not answer and when she approached Mariolle he saw that her
eyes were red.
"You have been crying," he said.
"Yes, a little," she simply replied.
"What was the matter?"
"Those two gentlemen there behaved rudely to me."
"What did they do to you?"
"They took me for a bad character."
"Did you complain to the proprietor?"
She gave a sorrowful shrug of the shoulders, "Oh! Monsieur--the
proprietor. I know what he is now--the proprietor!"
Mariolle was touched, and a little angry; he said to her: "Tell me what
it was all about."
She told him of the brutal conduct of the two painters immediately
upon their arrival the night before, and then began to cry again,
asking what she was to do, alone in the country and without friends or
relatives, money or protection.
Mariolle suddenly said to her: "Will you enter my service? You shall be
well treated in my house, and when I return to Paris you will be free
to do what you please."
She looked him in the face with questioning eyes, and then quickly
replied: "I will, Monsieur.
"How much are you earning here?"
"Sixty francs a month," she added, rather uneasily, "and I have my
share of the _pourboires_ besides; that makes it about seventy."
"I will pay you a hundred."
She repeated in astonishment: "A hundred francs a month?"
"Yes. Is that enough?"
"I should think that it was enough!"
"All that you will have to do will be to wait on me, take care of my
clothes and linen, and attend to my room."
"It is a bargain, Monsieur."
"When will you come?"
"To-morrow, if you wish. After what has happened here I will go to the
mayor and will leave whether they are willing or not."
Mariolle took two louis from his pocket and handed them to her.
"There's the money to bind our bargain."
A look of joy flashed across her face and she said in a tone of
decision: "I will be at your house before midday to-morrow, Monsieur."