CONSOLATION
Elisabeth came to Montigny next day, attended by a countryman with
her trunk on a wheelbarrow. Mariolle had made a generous settlement
with one of his old women and got rid of her, and the newcomer took
possession of a small room on the top floor adjoining that of the
cook. She was quite different from what she had been at Marlotte,
when she presented herself before her new master, less effusive,
more respectful, more self-contained; she was now the servant of the
gentleman to whom she had been almost an humble friend beneath the
arbor of the inn. He told her in a few words what she would have to do.
She listened attentively, went and took possession of her room, and
then entered upon her new service.
A week passed and brought no noticeable change in the state of
Mariolle's feelings. The only difference was that he remained at home
more than he had been accustomed to do, for he had nothing to attract
him to Marlotte, and his house seemed less dismal to him than at first.
The bitterness of his grief was subsiding a little, as all storms
subside after a while; but in place of this aching wound there was
arising in him a settled melancholy, one of those deep-seated sorrows
that are like chronic and lingering maladies, and sometimes end in
death. His former liveliness of mind and body, his mental activity,
his interests in the pursuits that had served to occupy and amuse him
hitherto were all dead, and their place had been taken by a universal
disgust and an invincible torpor, that left him without even strength
of will to get up and go out of doors. He no longer left his house,
passing from the salon to the hammock and from the hammock to the
salon, and his chief distraction consisted in watching the current of
the Loing as it flowed by the terrace and the fisherman casting his net.
When the reserve of the first few days had begun to wear off, Elisabeth
gradually grew a little bolder, and remarking with her keen feminine
instinct the constant dejection of her employer, she would say to him
when the other servant was not by: "Monsieur finds his time hang heavy
on his hands?"
He would answer resignedly: "Yes, pretty heavy."
"Monsieur should go for a walk."
"That would not do me any good."
She quietly did many little unassuming things for his pleasure and
comfort. Every morning when he came into his drawing-room, he found
it filled with flowers and smelling as sweetly as a conservatory.
Elisabeth must surely have enlisted all the boys in the village to
bring her primroses, violets, and buttercups from the forest, as well
as putting under contribution the small gardens where the peasant girls
tended their few plants at evening. In his loneliness and distress he
was grateful for her kind thoughtfulness and her unobtrusive desire to
please him in these small ways.
It also seemed to him that she was growing prettier, more refined in
her appearance, and that she devoted more attention to the care of her
person. One day when she was handing him a cup of tea, he noticed that
her hands were no longer the hands of a servant, but of a lady, with
well-trimmed, clean nails, quite irreproachable. On another occasion he
observed that the shoes that she wore were almost elegant in shape and
material. Then she had gone up to her room one afternoon and come down
wearing a delightful little gray dress, quite simple and in perfect
taste. "Hallo!" he exclaimed, as he saw her, "how dressy you are
getting to be, Elisabeth!"
She blushed up to the whites of her eyes. "What, I, Monsieur? Why, no.
I dress a little better because I have more money."
"Where did you buy that dress that you have on?"
"I made it myself, Monsieur."
"You made it? When? I always see you busy at work about the house
during the day."
"Why, during my evenings, Monsieur."
"But where did you get the stuff? and who cut it for you?"
She told him that the shopkeeper at Montigny had brought her some
samples from Fontainebleau, that she had made her selection from them,
and paid for the goods out of the two louis that he had paid her as
advanced wages. The cutting and fitting had not troubled her at all,
for she and her mother had worked four years for a ready-made clothing
house. He could not resist telling her: "It is very becoming to you.
You look very pretty in it." And she had to blush again, this time to
the roots of her hair.
When she had left the room he said to himself: "I wonder if she is
beginning to fall in love with me?" He reflected on it, hesitated,
doubted, and finally came to the conclusion that after all it might be
possible. He had been kind and compassionate toward her, had assisted
her, and been almost her friend; there would be nothing very surprising
in this little girl being smitten with the master, who had been so
good to her. The idea did not strike him very disagreeably, moreover,
for she was really very presentable, and retained nothing of the
appearance of a servant about her. He experienced a flattering feeling
of consolation, and his masculine vanity, that had been so cruelly
wounded and trampled on and crushed by another woman, felt comforted.
It was a compensation--trivial and unnoteworthy though it might be, it
was a compensation--for when love comes to a man unsought, no matter
whence it comes, it is because that man possesses the capacity of
inspiring it. His unconscious selfishness was also gratified by it;
it would occupy his attention and do him a little good, perhaps, to
watch this young heart opening and beating for him. The thought never
occurred to him of sending the child away, of rescuing her from the
peril from which he himself was suffering so cruelly, of having more
pity for her than others had showed toward him, for compassion is never
an ingredient that enters into sentimental conquests.
So he continued his observations, and soon saw that he had not been
mistaken. Petty details revealed it to him more clearly day by day. As
she came near him one morning while waiting on him at table, he smelled
on her clothing an odor of perfumery--villainous, cheap perfumery,
from the village shopkeeper's, doubtless, or the druggist's--so he
presented her with a bottle of Cyprus toilette-water that he had been
in the habit of using for a long time, and of which he always carried a
supply about with him. He also gave her fine soaps, tooth-washes, and
rice-powder. He thus lent his assistance to the transformation that was
becoming more apparent every day, watching it meantime with a pleased
and curious eye. While remaining his faithful and respectful servant,
she was thus becoming a woman in whom the coquettish instincts of her
sex were artlessly developing themselves.
He, on his part, was imperceptibly becoming attached to her. She
inspired him at the same time with amusement and gratitude. He trifled
with this dawning tenderness as one trifles in his hours of melancholy
with anything that can divert his mind. He was conscious of no other
emotion toward her than that undefined desire which impels every man
toward a prepossessing woman, even if she be a pretty servant, or a
peasant maiden with the form of a goddess--a sort of rustic Venus.
He felt himself drawn to her more than all else by the womanliness
that he now found in her. He felt the need of that--an undefined and
irresistible need, bequeathed to him by that other one, the woman whom
he loved, who had first awakened in him that invincible and mysterious
fondness for the nature, the companionship, the contact of women, for
the subtle aroma, ideal or sensual, that every beautiful creature,
whether of the people or of the upper class, whether a lethargic,
sensual native of the Orient with great black eyes, or a blue-eyed,
keen-witted daughter of the North, inspires in men in whom still
survives the immemorial attraction of femininity.
These gentle, loving, and unceasing attentions that were felt rather
than seen, wrapped his wound in a sort of soft, protecting envelope
that shielded it to some extent from its recurrent attacks of
suffering, which did return, nevertheless, like flies to a raw sore.
He was made especially impatient by the absence of all news, for his
friends had religiously respected his request not to divulge his
address. Now and then he would see Massival's or Lamarthe's name in the
newspapers among those who had been present at some great dinner or
ceremonial, and one day he saw Mme. de Burne's, who was mentioned as
being one of the most elegant, the prettiest, and best dressed of the
women who were at the ball at the Austrian embassy. It sent a trembling
through him from head to foot. The name of the Comte de Bernhaus
appeared a few lines further down, and that day Mariolle's jealousy
returned and wrung his heart until night. The suspected _liaison_ was
no longer subject for doubt for him now. It was one of those imaginary
convictions that are even more torturing than reality, for there is no
getting rid of them and they leave a wound that hardly ever heals.
No longer able to endure this state of ignorance and uncertainty, he
determined to write to Lamarthe, who was sufficiently well acquainted
with him to divine the wretchedness of his soul, and would be likely to
afford him some clew as to the justice of his suspicions, even without
being directly questioned on the subject. One evening, therefore, he
sat down and by the light of his lamp concocted a long, artful letter,
full of vague sadness and poetical allusions to the delights of early
spring in the country and veiled requests for information. When he got
his mail four days later he recognized at the very first glance the
novelist's firm, upright handwriting.
Lamarthe sent him a thousand items of news that were of great
importance to his jealous eyes. Without laying more stress upon Mme.
de Burne and Bernhaus than upon any other of the crowd of people whom
he mentioned, he seemed to place them in the foreground by one of
those tricks of style characteristic of him, which led the attention
to just the point where he wished to lead it without revealing his
design. The impression that this letter, taken as a whole, left upon
Mariolle was that his suspicions were at least not destitute of
foundation. His fears would be realized to-morrow, if they had not been
yesterday. His former mistress was always the same, leading the same
busy, brilliant, fashionable life. He had been the subject of some talk
after his disappearance, as the world always talks of people who have
disappeared, with lukewarm curiosity.
After the receipt of this letter he remained in his hammock until
nightfall; then he could eat no dinner, and after that he could get no
sleep; he was feverish through the night. The next morning he felt so
tired, so discouraged, so disgusted with his weary, monotonous life,
between the deep silent forest that was now dark with verdure on the
one hand and the tiresome little stream that flowed beneath his windows
on the other, that he did not leave his bed.
When Elisabeth came to his room in response to the summons of his bell,
she stood in the doorway pale with surprise and asked him: "Is Monsieur
ill?"
"Yes, a little."
"Shall I send for the doctor?"
"No. I am subject to these slight indispositions."
"What can I do for Monsieur?"
He ordered his bath to be got ready, a breakfast of eggs alone, and tea
at intervals during the day.
About one o'clock, however, he became so restless that he determined to
get up. Elisabeth, whom he had rung for repeatedly during the morning
with the fretful irresolution of a man who imagines himself ill and who
had always come up to him with a deep desire of being of assistance,
now, beholding him so nervous and restless, with a blush for her own
boldness, offered to read to him.
He asked her: "Do you read well?"
"Yes, Monsieur; I gained all the prizes for reading when I was at
school in the city, and I have read so many novels to mamma that I
can't begin to remember the names of them."
He was curious to see how she would do, and he sent her into the studio
to look among the books that he had packed up for the one that he
liked best of all, "Manon Lescaut."
When she returned she helped him to settle himself in bed, arranged
two pillows behind his back, took a chair, and began to read. She read
well, very well indeed, intelligently and with a pleasing accent that
seemed a special gift. She evinced her interest in the story from the
commencement and showed so much feeling as she advanced in it that
he stopped her now and then to ask her a question and have a little
conversation about the plot and the characters.
Through the open windows, on the warm breeze loaded with the sweet
odors of growing things, came the trills and _roulades_ of the
nightingales among the trees saluting their mates with their amorous
ditties in this season of awakening love. The young girl, too, was
moved beneath André's gaze as she followed with bright eyes the plot
unwinding page by page.
She answered the questions that he put to her with an innate
appreciation of the things connected with tenderness and passion, an
appreciation that was just, but, owing to the ignorance natural to
her position, sometimes crude. He thought: "This girl would be very
intelligent and bright if she had a little teaching."
Her womanly charm had already begun to make itself felt in him, and
really did him good that warm, still, spring afternoon, mingling
strangely with that other charm, so powerful and so mysterious, of
"Manon," the strangest conception of woman ever evoked by human
ingenuity.
When it became dark after this day of inactivity Mariolle sank into
a kind of dreaming, dozing state, in which confused visions of Mme.
de Burne and Elisabeth and the mistress of Des Grieux rose before his
eyes. As he had not left his room since the day before and had taken
no exercise to fatigue him he slept lightly and was disturbed by an
unusual noise that he heard about the house.
Once or twice before he had thought that he heard faint sounds
and footsteps at night coming from the ground floor, not directly
underneath his room, but from the laundry and bath-room, small rooms
that adjoined the kitchen. He had given the matter no attention,
however.
This evening, tired of lying in bed and knowing that he had a long
period of wakefulness before him, he listened and distinguished
something that sounded like the rustling of a woman's garments and
the splashing of water. He decided that he would go and investigate,
lighted a candle and looked at his watch; it was barely ten o'clock. He
dressed himself, and having slipped a revolver into his pocket, made
his way down the stairs on tiptoe with the stealthiness of a cat.
When he reached the kitchen, he was surprised to see that there was a
fire burning in the furnace. There was not a sound to be heard, but
presently he was conscious of something stirring in the bath-room, a
small, whitewashed apartment that opened off the kitchen and contained
nothing but the tub. He went noiselessly to the door and threw it open
with a quick movement; there, extended in the tub, he beheld the most
beautiful form that he had ever seen in his life.
It was Elisabeth.