Suzanne's great triumph consisted in her ability to preserve her innocent Madonna-like expression amidst all the madness of their love; and, by a singular dispensation of nature, too, this strange creature was entirely devoid of all sense of remorse. She belonged, no doubt by heredity, being the daughter of a statesman, to the great race of active beings whose dominant trait is a faculty for distributing their energies. These beings have the power to make the most of the present without allowing themselves to be troubled either by the past or the future. In modern slang we find a pretty phrase to express this power of temporary oblivion—it is called 'cutting the cord.' Suzanne had parcelled out her life into three parts—one belonging to Paul, one to Desforges, and one to René. During the time she devoted to each there was such absolute suspension of the rest of her existence that she would have had some difficulty in realising the extent of her duplicity had she cared to probe her conscience—a proceeding she never dreamt of whilst the opium of pleasure coursed through her brain. She generally remained with René till about twelve o'clock, and when she was gone Madame Raulet would send up his lunch; and he would stay in the rooms for the rest of the day, ostensibly to work, for he had some of his papers there, but really to gloat over the reminiscences that floated in the very air he breathed. When night was beginning to fall he would wend his way homewards, under the twinkling gas lamps that illumined his route, possessed by a divine languor that seemed to combine and blend into one harmonious whole all the delights of the day.
This delightful existence had been going on for about two months with nothing to break its sweet monotony but the pain of parting and the joy of meeting when, one morning, just as René was about to proceed to the Rue des Dames, Françoise handed him a letter that made him start, for on it he recognised Claude Larcher's handwriting. By calling at Larcher's rooms René had learnt from Ferdinand that the writer had stopped at Florence and then at Pisa. He had even sent him a letter to each of these towns addressedposte restante, but had received no reply. He saw by the postmark that Claude was now in Venice, and with feelings of intense curiosity he tore open the envelope, reading the contents as he strolled down to the river through the quiet suburban streets on this fair spring morn that was as fresh and bright as his own love.
'Venice, Palais Dario: April, 1879.'My DEAR RENÉ,—I am writing you these lines from your Venice—from that Venice whence you evoked the cruel features of your Cœlia and the sweet face of your Beatrice; and as this fairy-like city is, as it always was, the land of improbabilities, the city of the Undines, which on these Eastern shores are called sirens, I have, like Byron, discovered a small furnished suite in a most delightful little palace on the Grand Canal, apalazzinowith marble medallions on its façade, all ornamented, carved, and engraved, and leaning as badly as I do on my bad days. As I scribble this letter I have the blue waters of the Canal Grande under my window and around me the peace of this great city—the Cora Pearl of the Adriatic, a wretched play-writer would say—like the silence of a dream. My dear fellow, why have I brought my battered old heart here of all places—here, where I feel it beat louder and stronger in the sweet stillness? I must tell you that it is two o'clock, that I have just breakfasted at Florian's under the arcades after having been to San Giorgio in Bragora to look at a divine Cima, that I am to dine to-night with two ladies directly descended from the Doges—fair as the creations of Veronese—and some Russians as amusing as our friend Beyle's Korazoff, and that, instead of feeling elated, I have come home to look at Her Portrait—with a capital H and a capital P—the portrait of Colette! René, René, why am I not seated in my stall at the Théâtre Français, gazing at her as Camille in "On ne badine pas avec l'amour"—a divine play, as bitter as "Adolphe," yet as sweet as the music of Mozart? Do you remember her smile as she holds her pretty head on one side and says, "Are you sure that a woman lies with all her soul when her tongue lies?" Do you remember Perdican and these words: "Pride, thou most fatal of human counsellors, why art thou come between this maid and me?" All my story—all our story lies in those few words. Only it happens that I am the real Perdican of the play, having in my soul that source of idealism and love, ever flowing in spite of experience, ever pure in spite of so many sins! And she, my Camille, has been stained by so much shame that nought can wash her clean! Alas! how sadly the world treated my flower—when I wished to inhale its fragrance I found instead a smell as of the grave.'Come, come, it was not to write you such stuff that I sat down before my balcony, through the carving of which I can see the gondolas pass. They glide and slant and turn about, looking so pretty with their slim, funereal shapes. If each of these floating biers carried away one of my dead dreams, what an interminable procession there would be on the dreary waters! Would that I were an etcher! I know what Dance of Death I would engrave—a flight of these black barques in the twilight, with white skeletons as gondoliers at the prow and poop, and a row of ruined palaces for a background. Under it I should write: "Such is my heart!" After a youth more down-trodden than the grapes in the wine-tubs, and when I had just emerged from the miserable drudgery of my profession, it was this horrible slavery of love that stared me in the face—this love with its basis of hatred and contempt! Why, just Heaven!—why? Who could have guessed on that July evening when this madness began that I was entering upon one of the most solemn periods of my life? I had been dining alone after a hard day's work, and, in order to get a little fresh air and pass the time until ten o'clock, I was just strolling wherever my fancy took me, gazing idly at the passers-by. What invisible demon led my steps to the Comédie Française? Why did I go up into the green-room, where I had not been for months, to shake hands with old Farguet, about whom I did not care a rap? Why had I such a ready flow of wit and such brilliant repartee at my command at that very moment—I who, at fashionable dinners, had frequently found myself as dumb as the carpà la Chambordon the dish? Why was Colette there in that adorable costume that belongs to the oldrépertoire? She was playing Rosine in the "Barber of Seville," and I went to the front to hear her sing the air, "When Love brings us spring again." Why did she look at me as she sang it, and show such real emotion that I dared scarcely believe it was meant for me? Why had she those lips, those eyes, that face on which might be read the sufferings of a conquered Psyche, a prey to love? How passionately we loved each other from that very first evening! And it was only the second time we had met. Can you understand how I was mad enough to expect fidelity from a girl who had thrown herself at me in that fashion? As soon as I got back behind the scenes she invited me into her dressing-room, and before we had been there a quarter of an hour her lips were pressed to mine in most painful ecstasy. Fool that I was! I ought to have taken her for what she was—a charming courtesan—and remembered that women are just the same to others as they are to us. Instead of which—'Let us leave this road, my dear René, for I perceive a finger-post on which is written "To despair," like the posts in that forest of Fontainebleau where I took her one summer morning in a dog-cart drawn by a black horse named Cerberus. I can see the horse now, with a fox-tail hanging down over his forehead, and my Colette beside me, looking pale, but so beautiful. When was she not beautiful to me? But let us leave, I say, this fatal road, and come to the present, of which I owe you an account, since you have been good enough to write me several such nice letters. When I left you in the Rue Coëtlogon and hied me off to Italy—it sounds like a song!—I wanted to see whether I could do without her. Well, the experiment has been made—and has failed. I cannot. I have argued with myself, and I have struggled long and hard. Since my departure I have got up not ten—but twenty, thirty times, and sworn not to think of her during the whole of that day. It's all right for a quarter of an hour, for half an hour even. But at the end of that time I see her again. I see her eyes and her mouth, I see those gestures I have seen in none other—the pretty way she had, for instance, of laying her head on my shoulder when I held her in my arms, and then, wherever I may be, I am obliged to stop and lean against a wall, so sharp is the pain that pierces my heart. Would you believe that I had to leave Florence because I spent my time in the "Uffizi" before Botticelli's "Madonna Incoronata," a photo of which you have seen in my rooms? I have sometimes taken a cab from the other end of the town in order to reach the gallery before closing time, so that I might gaze upon the canvas once more. The angel on the right, the one that lifts the curtain, is the very image of her, and wears that look which has so often made me pity Colette and bewail her misfortune when I ought to have killed her.'So I left Florence and came to Pisa, the dead city whose sweet silence had enchanted me in days gone by. I had taken an immense fancy to the square in which stand the Dome, the Baptistery, and the Belfry, with a cemetery wall and the remains of a battlemented rampart to enclose it. Then there was the shore of the Gombo two hours distant—a sandy desert among the pines—and the yellow Arno flowing sluggishly by! My room looked out upon the dreary river, but it was full of sunshine, warm and clear, and I had come there filled with a glorious plan. An old maxim of Goethe had come into my mind, "Poetry is deliverance!" "I will try it," I said to myself, and I swore not to leave Pisa before I had turned my grief into literature. Perhaps, in making bubbles out of the tears I had already shed, I might forget to shed fresh ones. These bubbles grew into a story which I calledAnalysis.You have no doubt read it in theRevue parisienne.Don't you think it as good as anything I have done? As you see, it is the whole story of my sad love; every detail is absolutely correct, from the episode of the letter to my jealousy of the Sapphos. What do you think of Colette—isn't she well drawn? And of me? Alas! my dear fellow, would that I had obtained peace of mind by besmirching the image of her I have so loved, by dragging in the dirt the idol once adorned with freshest roses, by dishonouring the dear past with all the strength at my command! Hear the result of this noble effort—I had no sooner posted the manuscript of this story than I went home and wrote to Colette asking her to forgive me. An excellent joke, this maxim of Goethe—a sublime Philistine and a Jupiter, as they used to style him! I have plunged a pen into my wound to use my blood for ink, and I have only poisoned myself afresh. If I am to be cured at all, time is the only thing that will cure me. But, after all, why be cured?'Yes, why? I have been proud—I am proud no longer. I have struggled against the passion that abased me—I will struggle no more. If I had the cancer in my cheek, should I be ashamed of it? Well, I have a cancer in my soul, and make no attempt to check its growth. Listen to the end of my story. Colette did not answer my letter. Could I expect her to be kind to me after my behaviour? I had already begun to humble myself by writing to her. I went on doing so. Then I commenced to feel such delight as I had never felt before—that of degrading myself before her, of letting her trample upon my manly dignity. I wrote to her a second, a third, a fourth time.'My novel appeared, and I wrote to her again—letters in which I delighted in humbling myself, letters that she might show about and say: "He has left me, he insults me, and yet see how he loves me!" Should not those very insults have proved to her how much I loved her? You don't know her, René; you don't know how proud she is, in spite of all her faults. What pain that wretched novel must have caused her I scarcely dare to think, and that, too, is why I dare not come back. In my present state of mind I could not possibly face a scene such as we used to have, and to live longer without her is equally beyond me. I have therefore decided, my dear René, to ask you to go and speak to her. I know that she has always liked you, and that she is really grateful to you for the prettyrôleyou wrote her. I know that she will believe you when you say to her, "Claude can stand it no longer—have pity on him." Tell her, too, René, that she need have no fear of my horrible temper. The rebellious Larcher she could not bear exists no longer. To be near her, to live in her shadow, to have her near me, I will tolerate all, all—you understand. Our last months together were not all honey, it is true, but what a paradise they were compared with this Inferno of absence! And we had our happy hours, too—those afternoons we spent together in her rooms in the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the gardens of the Tuileries. The bustle of the great city went on around us as I held my darling pressed to my heart. See how my hand trembles only to think of it! If I have ever done you a service in the past, as you say I have, be my friend now and call on her, show her this letter, speak to her, appeal to her heart. Ask her to say that she forgives me and that I may come back to her. Good-bye. I await your reply in agony, and you know what torture that machine is capable of suffering which calls itself your old friend.'C. L.'P.S.—Go to theRevueoffice and ask for five copies of my story; I can get rid of them here.'
'Venice, Palais Dario: April, 1879.
'My DEAR RENÉ,—I am writing you these lines from your Venice—from that Venice whence you evoked the cruel features of your Cœlia and the sweet face of your Beatrice; and as this fairy-like city is, as it always was, the land of improbabilities, the city of the Undines, which on these Eastern shores are called sirens, I have, like Byron, discovered a small furnished suite in a most delightful little palace on the Grand Canal, apalazzinowith marble medallions on its façade, all ornamented, carved, and engraved, and leaning as badly as I do on my bad days. As I scribble this letter I have the blue waters of the Canal Grande under my window and around me the peace of this great city—the Cora Pearl of the Adriatic, a wretched play-writer would say—like the silence of a dream. My dear fellow, why have I brought my battered old heart here of all places—here, where I feel it beat louder and stronger in the sweet stillness? I must tell you that it is two o'clock, that I have just breakfasted at Florian's under the arcades after having been to San Giorgio in Bragora to look at a divine Cima, that I am to dine to-night with two ladies directly descended from the Doges—fair as the creations of Veronese—and some Russians as amusing as our friend Beyle's Korazoff, and that, instead of feeling elated, I have come home to look at Her Portrait—with a capital H and a capital P—the portrait of Colette! René, René, why am I not seated in my stall at the Théâtre Français, gazing at her as Camille in "On ne badine pas avec l'amour"—a divine play, as bitter as "Adolphe," yet as sweet as the music of Mozart? Do you remember her smile as she holds her pretty head on one side and says, "Are you sure that a woman lies with all her soul when her tongue lies?" Do you remember Perdican and these words: "Pride, thou most fatal of human counsellors, why art thou come between this maid and me?" All my story—all our story lies in those few words. Only it happens that I am the real Perdican of the play, having in my soul that source of idealism and love, ever flowing in spite of experience, ever pure in spite of so many sins! And she, my Camille, has been stained by so much shame that nought can wash her clean! Alas! how sadly the world treated my flower—when I wished to inhale its fragrance I found instead a smell as of the grave.
'Come, come, it was not to write you such stuff that I sat down before my balcony, through the carving of which I can see the gondolas pass. They glide and slant and turn about, looking so pretty with their slim, funereal shapes. If each of these floating biers carried away one of my dead dreams, what an interminable procession there would be on the dreary waters! Would that I were an etcher! I know what Dance of Death I would engrave—a flight of these black barques in the twilight, with white skeletons as gondoliers at the prow and poop, and a row of ruined palaces for a background. Under it I should write: "Such is my heart!" After a youth more down-trodden than the grapes in the wine-tubs, and when I had just emerged from the miserable drudgery of my profession, it was this horrible slavery of love that stared me in the face—this love with its basis of hatred and contempt! Why, just Heaven!—why? Who could have guessed on that July evening when this madness began that I was entering upon one of the most solemn periods of my life? I had been dining alone after a hard day's work, and, in order to get a little fresh air and pass the time until ten o'clock, I was just strolling wherever my fancy took me, gazing idly at the passers-by. What invisible demon led my steps to the Comédie Française? Why did I go up into the green-room, where I had not been for months, to shake hands with old Farguet, about whom I did not care a rap? Why had I such a ready flow of wit and such brilliant repartee at my command at that very moment—I who, at fashionable dinners, had frequently found myself as dumb as the carpà la Chambordon the dish? Why was Colette there in that adorable costume that belongs to the oldrépertoire? She was playing Rosine in the "Barber of Seville," and I went to the front to hear her sing the air, "When Love brings us spring again." Why did she look at me as she sang it, and show such real emotion that I dared scarcely believe it was meant for me? Why had she those lips, those eyes, that face on which might be read the sufferings of a conquered Psyche, a prey to love? How passionately we loved each other from that very first evening! And it was only the second time we had met. Can you understand how I was mad enough to expect fidelity from a girl who had thrown herself at me in that fashion? As soon as I got back behind the scenes she invited me into her dressing-room, and before we had been there a quarter of an hour her lips were pressed to mine in most painful ecstasy. Fool that I was! I ought to have taken her for what she was—a charming courtesan—and remembered that women are just the same to others as they are to us. Instead of which—
'Let us leave this road, my dear René, for I perceive a finger-post on which is written "To despair," like the posts in that forest of Fontainebleau where I took her one summer morning in a dog-cart drawn by a black horse named Cerberus. I can see the horse now, with a fox-tail hanging down over his forehead, and my Colette beside me, looking pale, but so beautiful. When was she not beautiful to me? But let us leave, I say, this fatal road, and come to the present, of which I owe you an account, since you have been good enough to write me several such nice letters. When I left you in the Rue Coëtlogon and hied me off to Italy—it sounds like a song!—I wanted to see whether I could do without her. Well, the experiment has been made—and has failed. I cannot. I have argued with myself, and I have struggled long and hard. Since my departure I have got up not ten—but twenty, thirty times, and sworn not to think of her during the whole of that day. It's all right for a quarter of an hour, for half an hour even. But at the end of that time I see her again. I see her eyes and her mouth, I see those gestures I have seen in none other—the pretty way she had, for instance, of laying her head on my shoulder when I held her in my arms, and then, wherever I may be, I am obliged to stop and lean against a wall, so sharp is the pain that pierces my heart. Would you believe that I had to leave Florence because I spent my time in the "Uffizi" before Botticelli's "Madonna Incoronata," a photo of which you have seen in my rooms? I have sometimes taken a cab from the other end of the town in order to reach the gallery before closing time, so that I might gaze upon the canvas once more. The angel on the right, the one that lifts the curtain, is the very image of her, and wears that look which has so often made me pity Colette and bewail her misfortune when I ought to have killed her.
'So I left Florence and came to Pisa, the dead city whose sweet silence had enchanted me in days gone by. I had taken an immense fancy to the square in which stand the Dome, the Baptistery, and the Belfry, with a cemetery wall and the remains of a battlemented rampart to enclose it. Then there was the shore of the Gombo two hours distant—a sandy desert among the pines—and the yellow Arno flowing sluggishly by! My room looked out upon the dreary river, but it was full of sunshine, warm and clear, and I had come there filled with a glorious plan. An old maxim of Goethe had come into my mind, "Poetry is deliverance!" "I will try it," I said to myself, and I swore not to leave Pisa before I had turned my grief into literature. Perhaps, in making bubbles out of the tears I had already shed, I might forget to shed fresh ones. These bubbles grew into a story which I calledAnalysis.You have no doubt read it in theRevue parisienne.Don't you think it as good as anything I have done? As you see, it is the whole story of my sad love; every detail is absolutely correct, from the episode of the letter to my jealousy of the Sapphos. What do you think of Colette—isn't she well drawn? And of me? Alas! my dear fellow, would that I had obtained peace of mind by besmirching the image of her I have so loved, by dragging in the dirt the idol once adorned with freshest roses, by dishonouring the dear past with all the strength at my command! Hear the result of this noble effort—I had no sooner posted the manuscript of this story than I went home and wrote to Colette asking her to forgive me. An excellent joke, this maxim of Goethe—a sublime Philistine and a Jupiter, as they used to style him! I have plunged a pen into my wound to use my blood for ink, and I have only poisoned myself afresh. If I am to be cured at all, time is the only thing that will cure me. But, after all, why be cured?
'Yes, why? I have been proud—I am proud no longer. I have struggled against the passion that abased me—I will struggle no more. If I had the cancer in my cheek, should I be ashamed of it? Well, I have a cancer in my soul, and make no attempt to check its growth. Listen to the end of my story. Colette did not answer my letter. Could I expect her to be kind to me after my behaviour? I had already begun to humble myself by writing to her. I went on doing so. Then I commenced to feel such delight as I had never felt before—that of degrading myself before her, of letting her trample upon my manly dignity. I wrote to her a second, a third, a fourth time.
'My novel appeared, and I wrote to her again—letters in which I delighted in humbling myself, letters that she might show about and say: "He has left me, he insults me, and yet see how he loves me!" Should not those very insults have proved to her how much I loved her? You don't know her, René; you don't know how proud she is, in spite of all her faults. What pain that wretched novel must have caused her I scarcely dare to think, and that, too, is why I dare not come back. In my present state of mind I could not possibly face a scene such as we used to have, and to live longer without her is equally beyond me. I have therefore decided, my dear René, to ask you to go and speak to her. I know that she has always liked you, and that she is really grateful to you for the prettyrôleyou wrote her. I know that she will believe you when you say to her, "Claude can stand it no longer—have pity on him." Tell her, too, René, that she need have no fear of my horrible temper. The rebellious Larcher she could not bear exists no longer. To be near her, to live in her shadow, to have her near me, I will tolerate all, all—you understand. Our last months together were not all honey, it is true, but what a paradise they were compared with this Inferno of absence! And we had our happy hours, too—those afternoons we spent together in her rooms in the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the gardens of the Tuileries. The bustle of the great city went on around us as I held my darling pressed to my heart. See how my hand trembles only to think of it! If I have ever done you a service in the past, as you say I have, be my friend now and call on her, show her this letter, speak to her, appeal to her heart. Ask her to say that she forgives me and that I may come back to her. Good-bye. I await your reply in agony, and you know what torture that machine is capable of suffering which calls itself your old friend.
'C. L.
'P.S.—Go to theRevueoffice and ask for five copies of my story; I can get rid of them here.'
'How like him!' said René, after having read this strange epistle, which was nothing but a bundle of the different elements that made up Claude's composite personality. Childish sincerity wedded to a taste for dramatic display; a love of posing even when suffering bitter anguish; most susceptible professional vanity and an absolute lack of all pretensions; profound self-knowledge and total inability to govern himself—all this was there. 'I shall go to the theatre to-night if Colette is playing,' said René to himself. He bought a paper and saw her name in the list for that evening. 'But,' he thought, 'how will she receive me?'
He was so interested in what would happen and so moved by his dear friend's grief that he could not help telling Suzanne all about it as soon as he reached the trysting-place. He even gave her the letter to read, and as she handed it back to him she said: 'Poor fellow!' adding, in an indifferent tone, 'Haven't you really ever mentioned me when talking together?'
'Yes, once, quite casually,' replied René, with some hesitation. Since he had become Suzanne's lover he had never forgiven himself for the question he had put to Claude about her—the unfortunate question which had drawn down upon him the sarcasm of his friend.
Suzanne mistook the cause of his hesitation and returned to the charge. 'I am sure that he said something nasty about me?'
'Indeed, he didn't,' replied René, in a tone of assurance. He was too well acquainted with the play of Suzanne's face not to have remarked the look of anxiety in her eyes as she put her second question, and he, in his turn, now asked: 'How you distrust him! Why?'
'Why?' she repeated with a smile; 'because I love you so dearly, René, and men are so bad.' Then, wishing to entirely destroy the effect that her excessive distrust might have produced in the poet, she added, 'You must go and see Mademoiselle Rigaud.'
'Certainly I must,' said René; 'I intend going to-night And you?' he asked, as he often did, 'how are you going to spend your evening?'
'I am going to the theatre, too,' she replied; 'but not behind the scenes. My husband wants to take me to the Gymnase. Why do you put me in mind of it? I shall be quite miserable enough when I'm there all alone with him. . . Come, give me a nice kiss.'
That voice, sweet as the sweetest music, was still in the poet's ears, and his soul was still troubled by those kisses, more intoxicating than strong drink, when about nine that night he entered the stage door of the Théâtre Français in order to reach the celebrated green-room. He cast a glance round the doorkeeper's lodge, remembering that the room had been one of the stations in Claude's Calvary. Frequently, when entering the theatre together, Larcher would say to his friend as he pointed to the pigeon-hole that contained Colette's letters: 'If I stole them I should perhaps know the truth.'
'How happy I am,' thought René, 'not to know that terrible malady called suspicion!' And he smiled as he ascended the staircase, whose walls are covered with the portraits of actors and actresses of a bygone age. There, fixed on the canvas, are the grinning faces of past Scapins—there the Célimènes, who lived and loved long years ago, still smile down upon us. These reminders of mirth for ever vanished, of passions for ever stilled, of once happy generations for ever gone, have something strangely sad about them for the dreamers who feel their life, like all life, slipping away, and who realise the brevity of human joys.
Often had René experienced this feeling of vague sadness; it came over him again now, in spite of himself, and made him hasten to the green-room, expecting to find a good many acquaintances there with whom he might exchange a few words of greeting. But he found the place entirely given up to two actors in Louis XIV. costumes, their heads adorned with enormous wigs, their legs incased in red stockings, and their feet cramped in high-heeled shoes. They were engaged in a political argument, and took no notice of the poet, who heard one of them, a long, thin, bilious-looking creature, say to the other, a round, red-faced individual, 'All the misfortunes of our country arise from the fact that people do not take sufficient interest in politics.'
'What a pity Larcher isn't here!' thought René as he caught these words; he knew what pleasure they would have given his friend, the exclamation that would have escaped him—'This is grand!'—and how he would have clapped his hands with delight. Everything in this part of the theatre reminded him of Claude, who had so often accompanied him there. They had sat together in the little green-room, now empty. Together they had descended the few steps that lead behind the scenes, and, slipping in between the properties, had mingled with the actors and actresses standing in the narrow passage waiting for their calls.
Colette was not there, and René determined to go up the steep staircase and along the interminable corridors lined with private dressing-rooms. He at length reached the door that bore the name of Mademoiselle Rigaud; he knocked, feebly at first, but conversation was probably going on inside, and he was not heard. He had to knock louder. 'Come in!' cried a shrill voice, which he recognised; it was the same that could make itself so sweet to recite:
If kisses for kisses the roses could pay . . .
If kisses for kisses the roses could pay . . .
On opening the door the visitor entered a tiny ante-room, which communicated with a tiny dressing-room. René lifted the gilt-embroidered curtain of black satin that divided the two miniature apartments, and found himself in an atmosphere overheated by the lamps and the presence of six people; five of these were men, two in evening dress being evidently 'swells,' and the other three friends of the actress of a slightly inferior order. One of the two black-coated gentlemen was Salvaney, but he did not recognise René. He and his friend were the only two who were seated. The ottoman on which they sat had been recovered with an old Chinese dress of pink satin; it was Claude who had given Colette that dress, and who, in the heyday of their love, had presided over the arrangement of the whole dressing-room. He had ransacked Paris to collect the panels set in bamboo frames which adorned the walls. Three of these panels bore figures of Chinese women painted on pale silk. The widest, which, like the heavy curtain, was of black satin, represented a flight of white birds amidst peach blossoms and lilies of the valley. Bright-coloured fans and bunches of peacock's feathers distributed here and there, and a great gilt dragon with enamelled eyes suspended from the ceiling, helped to give this pretty little cabin an air of charming originality.
Colette, with her hair all undone and her bare arms emerging from the wide sleeves of a loose bright blue dressing-gown, was 'making up' under the gaze of the five men. Before her, on the dressing-table, stood a whole row of pots filled with different salves. There were other pots, containing white, yellow, and pink powder, and a few saucers filled with long 'tragedy' pins, while hare's feet covered with paint, enormous powder puffs, black pencils, and small sponges lay scattered all about. The actress could see who entered by looking in the large glass before her. Recognising the author of the 'Sigisbée,' she half turned and showed him her hands covered with vaseline as an apology for not offering him one, and by the look she gave him René understood how prudent Claude had been in not coming back without some previous understanding.
'Good evening!' she cried. 'Why, I thought you were dead, but I see by your face that you've only had an excess of happiness. I'm playing you to-morrow, you know. Sit down, if you can find room.' And before René had time to reply she turned to Salvaney, saying: 'Well, I will if you like. Come for me to-morrow at twelve. Aline will be there, and we'll go and have lunch together first.'
Having uttered these words, she darted another look at René. The lines of her mouth deepened, and her charming face suddenly assumed an expression of intense cruelty. The words had really been hurled in defiance at Claude through his most intimate friend. This friend would certainly repeat them to the jealous lover. It was just as if she had shouted through space to the man whom she could not forget in spite of his flight and his insults: 'You are not here, and so I do exactly what will cause you most pain.'
She then exchanged a few words with the other visitors, recommending some poor fellow in whom she was interested to one, importuning another for the insertion of a complimentary notice in some paper, returning to Salvaney to ask him for a tip for the next races, until at last, having wiped her hands, she rose and said, 'And now, my dear fellows, it is very kind of you to stay, but'—pointing to the door—'I am going to dress, so you must go. No, not you,' she went on, speaking to René, and not minding the others, 'I want to talk to you for a minute.' As soon as they were alone, and she was again seated before the glass pencilling her eyebrows, she asked, 'Have you read Claude's infamous work?'
'No,' replied René, 'but I have received a letter from him; he is terribly unhappy.'
'Oh! haven't you read it?' cried Colette, interrupting him. 'Well, read it! You will see what a cad your friend is!' Crossing her arms, she turned to face the poet, the angry glitter in her eyes intensified by their painted rings and by the artificial pallor of her cheeks. 'Tell me, is it right for a man to insult a woman? What have I done to this gentleman? I refused to slavishly obey his whims, to cut off all my friends, and lead the life of a dog! Did he imagine that I was his wife? Did he keep me? Did I ask him for an account of what he did? And even if I had been in the wrong, was that why he must go and tell the public all the lies he can invent about me? He's a cad, I tell you—a low cad! You can write and tell him so from me, and tell him that I shall spit in his face when I see him! Your fine gentleman treated me like a drab, did he? Well, he shall find out how the drab takes her revenge! Not yet, Mélanie,' she said, as the dresser came in, 'I'll call you in a quarter of an hour.'
'But if he did not love you,' replied René, taking advantage of this interruption, 'he would not carry on in this fashion. He is maddened by grief.'
'Oh! don't come to me with such rubbish,' cried Colette, shrugging her shoulders and again setting to work on her eyebrows; 'do you think that creature has got a heart? And he's no friend of yours, my dear fellow. If you had heard him making fun of your love affairs you would know what to think of him.'
'Of my love affairs?' repeated René, in blank astonishment.
'Come, come,' said the actress, with a nasty laugh, 'it's no use trying to bluff me; but when you want a confidant, choose a better one than your friend Monsieur Larcher?'
'I don't understand you,' replied the poet, his heart beating fast; 'I have never made a confidant of him.'
'Then he must have invented the story of your being in love with Madame Moraines, that pretty, fair woman, the mistress of old Desforges. Well, that beats all!' exclaimed the cruel actress, with the bitter and ironical laugh of a creature whose pride has been deeply wounded. The unhappy Claude, who in his tender moments forgot what he thought of Colette in his lucid ones, had simply said to her on the morrow of René's visit, 'Poor Vincy is in love.' 'With whom?' she had asked. And he had told her.
Colette was well acquainted with the rumours that were afloat concerning Suzanne and the Baron, thanks to the habit most fast men have of retailing Society scandal, be it true or not, to thedemi-mondaineswhom they frequent. In alluding to René's love affair with Madame Moraines, the actress, beside herself with passion, had spoken almost at random, in order to lower Larcher in his friend's esteem. Seeing the effect that her words had produced on the latter, she continued the theme. To torture the man she had before her, and in whose features she could read the suffering she caused, was to satisfy to a certain extent her thirst for revenge against the other, knowing, as she did, how dear the poet was to Claude.
'Claude did not tell you that,' cried René, excitedly, 'and if he were here he would forbid you to slander a woman whom he knows to be worthy of your respect.'
'Of my respect!' repeated Colette, with a shrill, nervous laugh. 'What do you take me for, my dear fellow? Of my respect! Because she has a husband to hide her shame and help her spend the old man's money? Of my respect! Because she wants a higher wage than the girl in the street who hasn't the price of a dinner? Do you believe in them, these Society women? And look here,' she cried, rising in her fury and betraying her low extraction by the way in which she jerked her head and blinked her eyes, 'if you don't like me telling you that she is your mistress and the Baron's too, go and fight it out with Claude. It'll furnish my fine gentleman with copy. Are you beginning to have the same opinion about him as I have? Between you and me, my boy—just you keep your eyes open. Worthy of my respect! Ha! ha! ha! No—that's a bit too thick. Well, good-bye. This time I am going to dress in earnest. Mélanie!' she cried, opening the door, 'Mélanie! Give Claude my compliments,' she added, as a parting shot, 'and tell him that trifling with Colette is as dangerous as trifling with love.'
With this allusion to the play so enthusiastically mentioned by Claude in his letter, she pushed René out of her room, and as she closed the door broke out once more into silvery but cruel, mocking laughter—laughter that was a strange mixture of affectation and hatred, of a courtesan's nonchalance and the vengeance of a slighted mistress.
'What a wicked woman! What a wicked woman!' muttered René as he went down the staircase, now re-echoing with the shouts of the call-boy. He trembled with agitation and asked himself, 'What harm have I ever done her?' forgetting that for a quarter of an hour he had represented Claude in Colette's eyes. Perhaps the joy felt by the actress in wounding him to the quick might have had its rise in the malice often occasioned by a man's unwillingness to pay his friend's mistress attentions. The loyalty of one man to another ranks amongst the sentiments most odious to women.
'What have I done to her?' repeated the poet, unable to find an answer to his question, unable even to collect his thoughts. There are phrases which, flung at us unexpectedly, will stun us as surely as any blow physically dealt. They bring about a sudden cessation of all consciousness—a cessation even of pain. René was not quite himself again until he stood in the Place du Palais Royal amid its throng of traffic. The first feeling that animated him was a fit of furious rage against Claude. 'The perfidious wretch!' he cried; 'how could he trust my secret to a creature like that? And such a secret, too! What did he know about it?' A slight blush and a moment's hesitation in uttering her name. 'He thinks that is sufficient evidence upon which to slander a woman he hardly knows, and in the ears, too, of a hussy whose infamy he proclaims from the housetops!'
He recalled to mind every detail of the only conversation in which Larcher might have discovered his nascent feelings for Suzanne. He saw himself once more in Claude's rooms in the Rue de Varenne, with the manuscripts and proofs strewn about, and the writer's face looking livid in the greenish light of the stained-glass windows. He saw the sceptical smile flit across that face whilst the sarcastic lips uttered the words: 'So you are not in love with her!' Borne on the same wave of memory came other visions connected with the last. He heard Suzanne's voice saying on the occasion of his third visit: 'Your friend M. Larcher—I am sure he doesn't like me.' Had she not expressed her distrust of him only that morning? Her suspicions had, indeed, been only too well justified. And then if he had only contented himself with coupling her name with his, René's. But he had even dared to make this other vile accusation—that she was kept by Desforges! Not that René harboured the least shadow of a suspicion against his divine mistress—it was not that which maddened him—but the knowledge that Colette had not lied in claiming to have heard this infamous thing from Larcher. If Larcher repeated it, he must have got it from some one else. And if Suzanne had insisted, as she had twice done, upon being told how Claude spoke of her, it was because she knew she was exposed to the insult of this abominable calumny.
René remembered the old beau whom he had once met at her house, with his military bearing, his red, bloated face, and his grey hair. And then he saw her as she had looked only that morning, so fair, so white, so dainty—with her pale blue eyes and that peculiar air of refinement that lent an almost ideal charm to her most passionate embraces. Was it possible that such vile calumnies could have been spread concerning this woman! 'People are too horribly wicked!' exclaimed René aloud. 'And as for Claude——' His affection for him had been so sincere, and it was this man, his dearest friend, who had spoken of Suzanne in such a shameless manner, like a blackguard and a traitor. What a contrast with the poor angel thus insulted, who, knowing it, had taken no further revenge than to say, 'I have forgiven him!' On every other occasion when she had spoken of Claude it had been to admire him for his talents and to pity him for his faults. Another phrase of Suzanne's suddenly struck him. 'That is no reason why he should revenge himself by forcing his attentions upon any woman chance throws in his way. I got quite angry one day when he was seated next to me at table.' 'That is the reason!' said the poet to himself with returning anger; 'he has paid her attentions which she has repelled, and so he slanders her. It is too disgusting!'
A prey to these painful reflections, René had walked as far as the Place de l'Opéra, and, mechanically turning to the right, had ascended the boulevard without really noticing where he was. Hatred and rancour were so repugnant to his soul that these feelings were soon supplanted by the love he bore the beautiful woman so basely reviled by the vindictive actress. What was she doing at that moment? She was yonder, in a box at the Gymnase, obliged to sit out some play with her husband, and, no doubt, sadly dreaming of their love and their last kisses. No sooner had he conjured up her adorable image than he was seized with an instinctive and irresistible longing to see her in the flesh. He hailed a passing cab and gave the driver the name of the theatre. How often had he been similarly tempted to go to some place of amusement when he knew Suzanne would be there! But having given his mistress a promise that he would not do so, he had always scrupulously repelled the temptation. Besides, he took a curious pleasure in dwelling upon the absolute distinction between the two Suzannes—between the woman of fashion and his simple love—above all, he feared to meet Paul Moraines. He had read Ernest Feydeau's 'Fanny,' and was more afraid of the terrible jealousy described in that fine work than of death itself. To an analytical writer, like Claude, this would have been an excellent reason for seeking an encounter with the husband, so as to have a new kind of wound to examine under the microscope. The poets who have not turned their art into a trade nor their hearts into a raree-show are possessed of an instinct which makes them avoid such degrading experiments; they respect the beauty of their own feelings.
Whilst the cab was rolling along towards the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle all these scruples, which René had once so religiously observed, returned to him. But Colette's words had moved him more deeply than he cared to admit. A hideous vision had flashed across his brain. He half feared that it might come again, and he knew that Suzanne's presence was the best preventive. Lovers frequently have these apparently unwarranted ideas—the results of an instinct of self-preservation which our feelings, like animate beings, possess. The cab rolled on whilst René defended his infraction of the agreement made with his mistress. 'If she could know what I have been obliged to hear, would she not be the first to say, "Come and read my love for you in my face?" Besides, I shall only look at her for a quarter of an hour, and then go away purged of this stain. And what of the husband? Well, I must see him sooner or later, and she tells me he is nothing to her!' Madame Moraines had not failed to make her favourite lover swallow the improbable fable served up by all married women to their paramours, though sometimes the fable is true—for woman will be a riddle to all eternity—as the reports of the divorce cases prove. In the delicacy with which Suzanne had allayed his most secret and least legitimate feelings of jealousy René found an additional pretext for denouncing those who slandered this sublime creature. 'This woman the mistress of Desforges! Why? For money? What nonsense! She, the daughter of a Cabinet Minister and the wife of a business man! Claude, Claude! how could you?'
This tumult of ideas was somewhat stilled by the necessity for action as soon as the poet reached the doors of the Gymnase. He was most anxious that he should not be seen by Suzanne, and stood on the steps outside for a moment lost in reflection. The first act was just over, as he could see by the people flocking out, and this circumstance furnished him with an idea for beholding his mistress without being observed by her. He would first take a ticket for one of the cheaper seats in order to get into the house; then, having found out where Suzanne was sitting—which he could easily do during the interval from the corridor at the side of the stalls—he would take a better seat, from which he could safely feast his eyes upon her adorable features.
As he entered the theatre he was startled for a moment by coming face to face with the Marquis de Hère, one of the swells he had seen at Madame Komof's; the young nobleman, wearing a sprig of heather in his button-hole, was swinging his stick and humming an air from the then popular 'Cloches de Corneville' so lightly that he could hardly hear it himself. He brushed past René without recognizing him, or appearing to do so, any more than Salvaney had done an hour ago. The poet quickly made his way to one of the entrances to the stalls. He had not long to look; Madame Moraines was in the third box from the stage, almost opposite him. She occupied the front seat, and there were two men in the background; one, a fine young fellow, with a long beard and a pale complexion—the husband, no doubt—was standing up. The other, who was seated——
But why had chance—it could only be chance—brought into that box on this very night the man whose name the wretched actress had just coupled with Suzanne's? Yes, it was indeed Desforges who occupied the chair behind Madame Moraines. The poet had not the slightest difficulty in recognizing the Baron's energetic countenance, his piercing brown eyes, his fair moustache, his high colour, and his forehead surmounted by a wealth of almost white hair. Why did it distress René to see this old beau talking so familiarly to Suzanne as she sat there fanning herself, her face turned towards him, whilst Moraines scanned the boxes with his opera-glass? Why did it cause him such pain as to make him turn hastily away? For the first time since he had had the happiness to catch sight of this woman on the threshold of the Komof mansion, looking so fair and slim in her red gown, suspicion had entered his soul.
What suspicion? He could not possibly have expressed it in words. And yet? When Suzanne had spoken to him about the theatre that morning she had told him that she was going alone with her husband. What motive had led her to pervert the truth? The detail, it was true, was of no importance. But a lie, be it great or small, is still a lie. After all, perhaps Desforges was only visiting them in their box during the interval. This explanation seemed so natural as well as acceptable that René adopted it on the spot.
Returning to the box-office, he asked for an outside stall, on the left, having calculated that from this seat he would have the best opportunity of watching the Moraines without being seen himself. Meanwhile the audience had again settled down and the curtain rose. Desforges did not leave the box. He kept his seat at the back, leaning forward to talk to Suzanne. But why not? Could not his presence be explained in a thousand ways without Suzanne having lied? Could not Moraines have invited him without his wife's knowledge? He spoke familiarly to the woman, it is true, and she answered him in a similar manner. But had not he, René, met him at her house? A gentleman is sitting down in a theatre talking to a lady he knows. Does that prove that there is a vile bond of sin existing between them?
The poet argued in this fashion, and his arguments would have seemed to him irrefutable if he had seen on Suzanne's face a single one of those traits of melancholy he had expected to find. On the contrary, as she sat there in her elegant theatre-gown of black lace, with a little pink bonnet on her fair hair, eating, with dainty fingers, from the box of crystallised fruit that stood before her, she looked thoroughly happy, and as though she had not a care in the world. She laughed so heartily at the jokes in the piece, and her eyes were so bright and sparkling as she chatted with her two companions, that it seemed impossible to imagine she had only that morning paid a visit to the shrine of her most secret and heartfelt love. The emotions called forth by her meeting with her lover had left so few traces on her face, now beaming with pleasure, that René scarcely believed his own eyes. He had expected to find her so very different.
The husband, too, with cordial joviality expressed in his manly features, seemed by no means the crabbed and suspicious recluse Suzanne had led her credulous lover to imagine. The unhappy fellow had come to the theatre to get rid of the pain which Colette's words had caused him, but when he reached home his distress had only increased. It has often been said that we should not keep many friends if we could hear those to whom we give that title speak of us behind our back. It is an even less satisfactory experiment to take by surprise the woman we love. René had just tried it, but he was too passionately fond of Suzanne to believe in this first vision of his Madonna's duplicity.
'What am I worrying about after all?' he thought, on waking next morning, and finding that he was still a prey to his painful feelings. 'That she was in a good temper last night? I must be very selfish to reproach her with that! That Baron Desforges was in her box when she had told me that she was going to the theatre with her husband alone? She will explain that next time I see her. That her husband's face was not in keeping with his character? Appearances are so deceptive! How thoroughly have I been deceived in Claude Larcher, with his wheedling ways and his frank face! How often has he done me a favour and then pretended he had forgotten it, and yet how basely he has betrayed me after all!'
All the cruel impressions he had experienced on the preceding evening were now concentrated in a fresh and more furious fit of resentment against the man who, by his wicked gossip, had been the primary cause of his trouble. In the excess of his unjust anger René ignored the unquestionable merits of his friend and protector—absolute disinterestedness, a devotion that hoped for no return, and a total lack of literary envy. He was not even charitable enough to admit that Claude might have spoken to Colette unthinkingly and incautiously, but without any treacherous intentions. Suzanne's lover felt that he could not remain the friend of a man who had gone so far as to say what Larcher had said of his mistress. That is what René kept repeating to himself the whole day. On his return from the Bibliothèque, where he had found it almost impossible to work, he sat down to his table to write this villain one of those letters that are not easily forgotten. Having finished it, he read it over. The terms in which he defended Madame Moraines proclaimed his love, and now more than ever did he wish to keep that a secret from Claude.
'What is the use of writing to him at all?' he thought; 'when he comes back I will tell him what I think of him—that is much better.'
He was just about to destroy this dangerous letter when Emilie came in, as she often did before dinner, to ask him how he was getting on with his work. With a woman's innate curiosity, she read the address on the envelope, and said, 'Oh! is Claude in Venice? Then you've heard from him!'
'Never utter that name before me again!'replied René, tearing up the letter in a kind of cool rage.
Emilie said no more. She had not been mistaken in her brother's accents. René was in pain, and his anger against Claude was very great; but since he was silent concerning its cause, his sister knew that the latter must be something more than a mere literary dispute. By that intuition which always accompanies tender affection, Emilie guessed that the two writers had quarrelled on account of Madame Moraines, whose name René never mentioned now, and whom she was beginning to hate for the same reasons that had at first prompted her to like her. For some weeks past she had noticed a great mental and physical change coming over her brother. Although a model of purity herself, she was shrewd enough to attribute this degeneration to its true cause. She noticed it as she copied the fragments of the 'Savonarola' in the same way as she had copied the 'Sigisbée'; and although her admiration for the lightest trifle that came from René's pen was intense, there were many signs by which she could see how differently the two works had been inspired—from the number of lines written at each sitting to the continual reconstruction of the scenes and even to the handwriting, which had lost a little of its bold character.
The bubbling spring of clear, fresh poetry in which the 'Sigisbée' had had its source seemed to have dried up. What change had taken place in René's life? A woman had entered it, and it was therefore to this woman's influence that Emilie attributed the momentary impairment of the poet's faculties. She went still further, and hated this unknown but formidable creature for the pain inflicted on Rosalie. By a strange lapse of memory, frequently met with in generous natures, she forgot what part she had herself taken in her brother's rupture with his formerfiancée.It was Madame Moraines whom she blamed for it all, and now this same woman was embroiling René with the best and most devoted of his friends—the one whom his faithful sister preferred because she had gauged the strength of his friendship.
'But how could it have happened,' she thought, 'since Claude is not here?'
She cudgelled her brains for a solution to this problem whilst attending to her household duties, hearing Constant's home lessons, making out Fresneau's bills, and conscientiously examining every button-hole and seam of her brother's linen. René was shut up in his room, where everything reminded him of Suzanne's one heavenly visit, and with feverish impatience he awaited the day appointed for their next meeting. Slander was doing its secret work, like some venomous sting. A poisoned man will go about without knowing that he is ill, except for a vague feeling of restlessness, but all the while the virus is fermenting in his blood and will produce sudden and terrible results.
The poet still treated the shameful accusations brought by Colette against Suzanne with scorn, but, by dint of pondering on her words in order to refute them, his mind became more accustomed to their tenour. At the moment when the actress had made her terrible charge he had not stooped to rebut it; but now, as he turned it over in his mind, he tried to save himself from a terrible abyss of doubt and from the most degrading jealousy by clutching at the marks of sincerity Suzanne had given him. What, then, were his feelings when, at the very outset of their next meeting, he received undeniable proofs that her sincerity was not what he had thought it?
He had reached the Rue des Dames with a troubled look on his face that had not escaped Suzanne. In reply to her solicitous inquiries he had pretended that it was due to an unfair article that had appeared in some paper, but had almost immediately felt ashamed of this innocent excuse, so sweetly had his mistress rebuked him.
'You big baby, you cannot have success without inspiring jealousy.'
'Let us talk about you instead,' he replied, and then asked, with a beating heart: What have you been doing since I saw you last?'
Had Suzanne been watching him at that moment she must have seen his agitation. It was a trap—innocent and simple enough—but a trap for all that. In three times twenty-four hours suspicion had brought the enthusiastic lover to this degree of distrust. But Suzanne could not know this, for he was treating her in exactly the same way as she was treating Desforges. She did not think René capable of stepping out of the onlyrôlein which she had seen him. How could she imagine that this simple boy was trying to catch her?
'What have I been doing?' she repeated. 'First of all I went to the Gymnase the other evening with my husband. Fortunately we haven't much to say to each other, so I could think of you just as well as if I were alone—I do feel so alone when I am with him. You talk of the troubles of your literary life—if you only knew the misery of my so-called life of pleasure and the loneliness of these wearytête-à-têtes!'
'Did you feel bored at the theatre, then?' continued René.
'You were not there,' she replied with a smile, and looked more intently at him. 'What is the matter, love?'
She had never seen this bitter, almost hard, expression on René's face.
'It's very stupid of me, but I can't forget that article,' said the poet.
'Was it so very bad, then? Where did it appear?' she asked, her instinct of danger thoroughly aroused; but René, being unable to reply to this unexpected question, merely stammered, 'It isn't worth your troubling to read it.'
This only confirmed her suspicions—he was angry with her about something. A question rose to her lips: 'Has some one been speaking ill of me?' Her diplomacy, however, got the better of her impetuosity. Is not anxiety to disarm suspicion almost a confession in itself? The really innocent are quite callous. Her best course was to find out what René had been doing himself, and what persons he had seen who might have told him something.
'Did you go and see Mademoiselle Rigaud?' she asked, indifferently.
'Yes,' replied René, unable to disguise his embarrassment at the question.
'And has she forgiven poor Claude?' continued Suzanne.
'No,' he rejoined, adding: 'She is a very bad woman,' and in such a bitter tone that Madame Moraines at once guessed part of the truth. The actress must certainly have spoken of her to René. She was again seized with a desire to provoke his confidence, and reflected that the surest means of attaining her object was by intoxicating her lover with passion. She knew how powerless he would be to resist the emotions her caresses would let loose, and at once sealed his lips with a long kiss. By the silent and frenzied ardour with which he returned it Suzanne understood not only that René had suffered, but that she had, to a great extent, been the cause.
In her sweetest voice, and in tones best calculated to reach that heart which had always been open to her, she said, 'What is this trouble that you won't tell me?'
Had she uttered those words at the beginning of their interview he would not have been able to resist them. Amidst tears and kisses, he would have repeated what Colette had said! But alas! it was no longer Colette's words that caused him his present sufferings. What now gave him frightful pain and pierced his heart like a dagger was the fact of having caught her, his idol, in a deliberate lie. Yes, she had lied; this time there was no doubt about it. She had told him that she had been to the theatre with her husband only, and that was false; that she had been sad, and that was false too. Could he reply to her question, which betrayed affectionate concern, by two such clear, explicit, and irrefutable charges? He had not the courage to do it, and got out of the dilemma by repeating his former reply. Suzanne looked at him, and he was obliged to turn his head. She only sighed and said, 'Poor René!' and, as it was almost time for her to go, she pushed her inquiries no further.
'He will tell me all about it next time,' she thought as she went home. In spite of herself she was worried by René's silence. Her love for the poet was sincere, though it was a very different passion from that which she expressed in words. Before all else it was a physical love, but, corrupted as Suzanne was by her life and her surroundings, or perhaps because of this very corruption, the poet's nobility of soul did not fail to impress her. And to such an extent that she imagined their romance would be robbed of half its delight if ever the circle of illusions she had drawn round him were broken. That some one had tried to break this magic circle was evident, and this some one could only be Colette. Everything seemed to prove it. But, on the other hand, what reason could the actress have for hating her, Suzanne, whom she probably did not know, even by name? Colette and Claude were lovers, and here Madame Moraines again came upon the man whom she had distrusted from the first day. If Colette had spoken to René about her, Claude himself must have spoken about her to Colette. At this point her ideas became confused. Larcher had never seen her with René. And the latter, whose word she did not doubt, had told her that he had confided nothing to his friend.
'I am on the wrong track,' thought Suzanne. Argue as she would, she could not convince herself that René was so troubled on account of this pretended newspaper article. There was danger in store for the dear relations that existed between them. She felt it, and the feeling became still more pronounced by what her husband told her on the very next day after her unsatisfactory interview with René.
It was just before seven, and Suzanne was alone in the littlesalonwhere she had first cast her net over the poet—a net as finely woven and as yielding as the web in which the spider catches the unwary fly. She had had more callers than usual that afternoon, and Desforges had only just gone. Suddenly Paul came in his wonted noisy way and in high animal spirits. Seizing her by the waist—for she had started up at his boisterous entry—he said, 'Give me a kiss—no, two kisses,' taking one after the other, 'as a reward for having been good.' Seeing the look of interrogation in Suzanne's eyes, he added, 'I have at last paid Madame Komof that visit I've owed her for so long. Whom do you think I met there? Guess—that young poet, René Vincy. I can't understand why Desforges doesn't like him. He's a charming fellow; he pleased me immensely. We had quite a long talk. I told him that you would be very glad to see him. Was I doing right?'
'Quite right,' replied Suzanne; 'and who else was there?'
Whilst her husband was reciting a list of familiar names she was thinking: 'What reason had René for going to Madame Komof's?' This was the first call of that kind he had made since the beginning of their attachment. He had so often said to his mistress: 'I want only you and my work.' It had been his custom during the past few months to give her a full account not only of what he had done, but of what he was going to do, and yet he had said nothing of this visit, so entirely out of keeping with his present mode of life. And he had met Paul, who had no doubt proved himself the very opposite of what his wife had described him to be.
Suzanne felt quite out of temper with the kindhearted fellow who had been guilty of calling on the Comtesse on the same day as the poet, and she said, in an almost petulant tone: 'I am sure you haven't written to Crucé for that Alençon.'
'I have written,' replied Moraines, with an air of triumph, 'and you shall have it.' Crucé, who acted as a sort of private art broker, had spoken to Suzanne about some old lace, and it was this she wished her husband to get her. From time to time she would ask him for something that she could show her friends and say, 'Paul is so good to me. This a present he brought me only the other day.' She would forget to add that the money for such presents generally came from Desforges—in an indirect way, it is true. Although the Baron seldom troubled himself with business matters except so far as the careful investment of his capital necessitated, he often had opportunities for speculating with almost absolute safety, and always gave Moraines a chance of doing the same. The Compagnie du Nord, of which Desforges was a director, had recently taken over a local line that was on the brink of ruin. Paul had succeeded in making a profit of thirty thousand francs by purchasing some shares at the right moment, and it was out of this profit that Suzanne was going to have her lace. This little business operation, too, had indirectly led to a somewhat strange scene between René and his mistress.
In the course of conversation she had asked him how much the 'Sigisbée' had produced, adding, 'What have you done with all that money?'
'I don't know,' René had replied, with a laugh. 'My sister bought me some stock with the first few thousand francs, and I have kept the rest in my drawer.' 'Will you let me talk to you like a sister, too?' she had said. 'A friend of ours is a director of the Compagnie du Nord, and he has given us a valuable tip. Do you promise to keep it a secret?' Thereupon she had explained to him how to get hold of some shares. 'Give your orders to-morrow, and you can make as much as you like.'
'Hold your tongue!' René had said, putting his hand over her mouth. 'I know it's very kind of you to talk like that, but I can't allow you to give me that sort of information. I should feel ashamed of myself.'
He had spoken so seriously that Suzanne had not dared to press the matter, though his scruples had appeared to her somewhat ridiculous. But then, if he had not been so unsophisticated and such agobeur, as she called him in that horrible Parisian slang that spares not even the highest forms of sentiment, would she have been so fond of him? And yet it was this very innocence of soul that she feared. If ever he should get to hear what her life was really like, how his noble heart would turn against her, and how incompatible it would be with his high sense of honour ever to forgive her! A hint had, nevertheless, somehow reached him. In going over the different signs of danger that she had noticed one after another—René's trouble, his anger against Colette Rigaud, his reticence and his unexpected visit to Madame Komof—Suzanne said to herself: 'I made a mistake in not getting him to explain at once.'
When, therefore, she made her appearance in the Rue des Dames a few days later she was fully determined not to fall into the same error again. She saw at once that the poet was even more distressed than before, though she pretended not to notice this distress nor the cool manner in which he received her first kiss. With a sad smile she said to him:
'It was very silly of you, dear, not to tell me you were about to call on the Comtesse. I would have taken care that you were spared a meeting which must have been very painful?'
'Painful?' repeated René in an ironical tone that Suzanne had never heard him use before, 'why, M. Moraines was charming.'
'Yes,' she replied, 'you have made a conquest. He, so sarcastic as a rule, spoke of you with an enthusiasm that really pained me. Didn't he invite you to call on us? You may be proud. It is so rare that he welcomes a new face. Poor René,' she continued, placing both her hands on her lover's shoulder, and laying her cheek on her hands, 'how you must have suffered!'
'I have indeed suffered,' replied René, in a hollow voice. He looked at the pretty face so near his own and remembered what Suzanne had said to him in the Louvre before the portrait of the Giorgione's mistress, 'How can anyone lie with a face like that?' Yet she had lied to him. And what proof had he that she had not been lying all along? Whilst a prey to the torments of suspicion, and especially since his meeting with Paul, the most frightful conjectures had entered his mind. The contrast between the Moraines he had seen and the tyrannical husband described by Suzanne had been too great. 'Why has she deceived me on that point too?' René had asked himself.
He had called on Madame Komof without any distinct aim, but in the secret hope of hearing Suzanne spoken of by those of her own set. They at least would be sure to know her! But alas! his conversation with Moraines had sufficed to involve him in more horrible doubt than ever. One thing was now very plain to him; Suzanne had used her husband as a bugbear to keep him, René, from visiting their house. Why—if it were not that she had something in her life to hide? What was this something? Colette had taken upon herself to answer this question in advance. Under the influence of that horrible suspicion, René had conceived a plan, very simple of execution, and the result of which he thought would prove decisive. He would take advantage of the husband's invitation to ask Suzanne for permission to visit her at home. If she said yes, she had nothing to hide; if she said no——
And as this resolution recurred to the poet he continued to gaze upon that adorable face resting on his shoulder. Each one of those dear features recalled fresh memories! Those eyes so clear and blue—what faith he had had in them! That noble brow—what refined thoughts he had imagined it to shelter! Those delicate, mobile lips—with what sweet abandonment had he heard them speak! No—what Colette had told him was impossible! But why these lies—a first, a second, and a third time? Yes, she had lied three times. There is no such thing as a trivial lie. René understood this now, and felt that confidence, like love, is governed by the great law of all or nothing. We have it or we have it not. Those who have lost it know this only too well.
'My poor René!' repeated Suzanne. She saw that he was in that state when compassion softens the heart and opens it wide.
'Poor indeed!' replied the poet, moved by this mark of pity, that came just when he had most need of it; then, looking into her eyes, he unburdened himself.
'Listen, Suzanne, I prefer to tell you all. I have come to the conclusion that the life we are leading now cannot last. It makes me too unhappy—it does not satisfy my love. To see you only by stealth, an hour to-day and an hour in a few days' time, to know nothing of what you are doing, to share no part of your life, is too cruel. Be quiet—let me speak. There was a weighty objection to my being received in your house—your husband. Well—I have seen him. I have borne the ordeal. We have shaken hands. Since it is done, allow me at least to benefit by my effort. I know there is nothing very noble in what I am saying, but I have no desire to be noble—I love you. I feel that my mind is getting full of all kinds of ideas about you. I entreat you to let me come to your house, to live in your world, to see you elsewhere than here, where we meet only to—'
'To love each other!' she exclaimed, interrupting him and shaking her head; 'do not utter blasphemy.' Then, sinking down into a chair, she continued, 'Alas! my beautiful dream is over then—that dream in which you seemed to take as much delight as I—the dream of a love all to ourselves, and only for ourselves, with none of those compromises that horrified us both!'
'Then won't you let me come and see you as I ask?' said René, returning to the charge.
'What you are asking me to do is to kill our happiness,' cried Suzanne; 'so sensitive as I know you to be, you would never stand the shocks to which you would be exposed. You know nothing of that world in which I am obliged to live, and how unfitted you are for it. And afterwards you would hold me responsible for your disenchantment. Give up this fatal idea, love, give it up for my sake.'
'What is there then in this life of yours that I may not see?' asked the poet, looking at her fixedly. He could not be aware that Suzanne had only one aim in view—to get him to tell her the reason of this sudden desire—for she concluded that it must be the same reason which had caused his distress the other day, and which had taken him to Madame Komof's so unexpectedly. She was not mistaken as to René's meaning, and replied in the broken accents of a woman unjustly accused:
'How can you talk to me like that, René? Some one must have poisoned your mind. You cannot have got hold of such ideas yourself. Come to my house, love! Come as often as you like! "Something in my life that you may not see"—I, who would rather die than tell you a lie!'
'Then why did you tell me a lie the other day?' cried René. Conquered by the despair he thought he could see in those beautiful eyes, disarmed by the permission she had just given him, unable to keep the secret of his grief any longer, he felt that necessity of unbosoming himself which, in a quarrel with a woman, is as good as putting one's head into a noose.
'I told you a lie?' exclaimed Suzanne.
'Yes, when you told me you went to the theatre with your husband.'
'But I did go——'
'So did I,' said René; 'there was some one else in your box.'
'Desforges!' cried Suzanne; 'you're mad, my dear René—mad! He came into our box during one of the intervals, and my husband made him stay till the piece was over. Desforges!' she repeated with a smile, 'why, he's nobody. I didn't even think of mentioning him. Seriously, you don't mean to say you're jealous of Desforges?'
'You looked so bright and happy,' rejoined René, in a voice that already showed signs of relenting.
'Ungrateful man,' she said; 'I wish you could have read what was going on within me! It is this necessity for continual dissimulation which is the bane of my life; and now, to have you reproach me with it! No, René—this is too cruel, too unjust!'
'Forgive me! Forgive me!' cried the poet, now perfectly convinced by the natural manner of his mistress. 'It is true. Some one has poisoned my mind. It was Colette! How justified you were in your distrust of Claude Larcher!'
'I did not allow him to pay me attentions,' said Suzanne; 'men never forgive that.'
'The wretch!' cried the poet angrily, and then, as if to rid himself of his grief by telling it, he went on: 'He knew that I loved you. How? Because I hesitated and got confused the only time I ever mentioned your name to him. He knows me so well! He guessed my secret and told his mistress all about it—and a lot of other lies. I can't repeat them to you.'
'Tell me, René, tell me,' said Suzanne, wearing at that moment the noble look of resignation that is seen on the faces of those who go to the scaffold innocent. 'Did they say that I had had lovers before you?'
'Would that it were only that!' exclaimed René.
'What then,mon Dieu?' she cried. 'What does it matter to me what they said, but that you, René, should believe it! Come, confess, so that you may have nothing on your mind. I have at least the right to demand that.'
'True,' replied the poet, and looking as shamefaced as though he were the guilty one, he stammered rather than pronounced the following words: 'Colette told me she heard from Claude that you were . . . No—I can't say it—well, that Desforges . . .'
'Still Desforges,' said Suzanne, interrupting him with a sweet but ironical smile; 'it is too comical.' She did not want René to formulate the charge that she could now guess. It would have wounded her dignity to descend to such depths. 'You were told that Desforges had been my lover—that he was still so, no doubt. But that is not slander—it is too ridiculous to be that. Poor old friend—he who knew me when I was as high as that!—he and my father were always together. He has seen me grow up, and loves me as if I were his own child. And it is this man whom—— No, René, swear to me that you didn't believe it. Have I deserved that you should think so badly of me?'
In that strange mental disease called jealousy the intervals between the attacks are periods of delight. For some days or for some hours the feelings of love regain their divine sweetness, like a return to strength in convalescence. Suzanne had so fully convinced René of the absurdity of his suspicions that he did not wish to be behind her in generosity, and refused to avail himself of the permission to call in the Rue Murillo for which he had so earnestly entreated. Two or three phrases uttered in the right manner and with the right expression will always overcome the deepest distrust of a devoted lover, provided he has not had ocular proofs of treason—and even then? But here the elements of which this first suspicion was composed were so fragile!
It was therefore with absolute good faith that the poet said to Suzanne, who was herself quite delighted with this unexpected result, 'No, I shall not come to your house. It was foolish of me to desire any change in our relations. We are so happy as we are.'
'Yes, until some wretch libels me again,' she replied. 'Promise me that you will always tell me.'
'I swear I will, love,' said he. 'But I know you now, and I am more sure of myself.'
He said so, and he thought so. Suzanne thought so too, and gave herself up to the delights of her paradise regained, though fully aware that she would have a second battle to fight when Claude returned. But could Larcher say more than he had already said? Besides, René would tell her of his return, and if the first meeting of the two men did not result in a definite rupture it would be time to act. She would make her lover choose between breaking entirely with Claude or with herself, and about his choice she had no doubt whatever. In spite of his protests, the poet seemed to be less sure of himself, for his heart beat fast when, on his return home from the Bibliothèque one evening about a week after the scene with Suzanne, his sister said to him, 'Claude Larcher is back.'
'And has he dared to call here?' cried René.
Emilie was visibly embarrassed and said, 'He asked me when he could see you?'
'You should have answered "Never,"' replied the poet.
'René!' exclaimed Emilie, 'how could I say that to an old friend who has been so kind and devoted to you? I think I had better tell you——' she added; 'I asked him what had taken place between you. He seemed so surprised—so painfully surprised—that I will swear he has never done you any harm. There is some misunderstanding. I told him to come to-morrow morning, and that he would be sure to find you in.'
'Why don't you mind your own business?' cried René angrily; 'did I ask you to meddle in my affairs?'
'How unkind you are!' said Emilie, deeply hurt by her brother's words, and almost in tears.
'All right, don't cry,' replied the poet, somewhat ashamed of his roughness; 'perhaps it is better that I should see him. I owe him that. But after that, I never want to hear his name again. You understand—never!'
In spite of his apparent firmness, René did not sleep much that night, but lay awake thinking of the approaching meeting. Not that he had much doubt about the issue, but, try as he would to increase his resentment against his old friend, he could not get as far as hating him. He had grown extremely fond of this peculiar individual who, when not intentionally disagreeable, commanded affection by his sincere though frivolous nature, by his originality, by those very faults which only harmed himself, and above all by a kind of innate, indestructible, and invincible generosity.
On the eve of severing their friendship René recalled to mind how it had originated. Claude, then very poor, was a tutor in the Ecole Saint-André when René himself was a scholar in the sixth form. A curious legend concerning the eccentric professor was told in this well-conducted and eminently religious institution. Some of the boys declared they had seen him seated in an open carriage next to a very pretty woman dressed in pink. Then one day Claude disappeared from the school, and René did not see him again until he turned up at Fresneau's wedding as best man, and already on the road to fame. After some talk over old times, Claude had asked to see his poems. The writer of thirty had shown as much indulgence as an elder brother in reading these first essays, and had immediately treated the aspiring lad as an equal. With what tact had he submitted these rough sketches to the processes of a higher criticism—a criticism which encourages an artist by pointing out his defects without crushing him beneath their weight. And then had followed the episode of the 'Sigisbée,' in which Claude had displayed unusual devotion for one who was himself a dramatic author.
The poet was sufficiently well acquainted with literary life to know that even simple kindness is rarely met with between one generation and the next. His rapid success had already procured him what is perhaps the bitterest experience of the years of apprenticeship—the jealousy of those very masters he admired most, in whose school he had formed his style, and at whose feet he would so gladly have laid his sprig of laurel. Claude Larcher's delight in another's talent was as spontaneous and as sincere as if he had not already wielded the pen for fifteen years. And now this valuable, nay, unique friendship was to be severed. But was it his fault, René asked himself, as he tossed about in his bed, and recalled all these things one after another? Why had Larcher spoken to this wretched girl as he had done? Why had he betrayed his young friend, who looked up to him as a brother? Why?
This distressing question again led René's mind to ideas from which he turned instinctively. Basilio's famous phrase—'Slander, slander—some is sure to stick'—expresses one of the saddest and most indisputable truths concerning the human heart. René would, it is true, have despised himself for doubting Suzanne after their reconciliation, but every suspicion, even a groundless one, leaves behind it some poisonous remnant of distrust, and had he dared to look into the very depths of his soul he would have recognised that fact in the unhealthy curiosity he felt to learn from Claude what reasons had led him to make his lying accusation. This curiosity, the reminiscences of a long friendship, and a kind of fear of the man who, by his age alone, had always had an advantage over him—all tended to lessen the anger of the wounded lover. He tried to work himself up to the same degree of fury that had possessed him on leaving Colette's dressing-room, but he was not successful. Like all who know themselves to be weak, he wished to rear an insurmountable barrier between Claude and himself at once, and when Larcher made his appearance at nine o'clock, and held out his hand in friendly greeting, the poet kept his own hand in his pocket.
The two men stood for a moment facing each other, both very pale. Claude, though tanned by his travels, looked thin and careworn, and his eyes blazed at the insult offered him. René knew to what lengths Larcher's anger would lead him, and expected to see the hand he had refused raised to strike a blow. But Claude's will was stronger than his offended pride, and he spoke in a voice that trembled with suppressed passion.
'Vincy, do not tempt me. You are only a child, and it is my duty to think for both of us. Come, come! Listen, René—I know all. Do you understand? All—yes, all. I arrived yesterday. Your sister told me that you were angry with me, and a good many other things that opened my eyes. Your silence had frightened me. I thought that you had betrayed me with Colette. Fool that she is! Fortunately she hadn't the sense to guess that there was my vulnerable point. On leaving here I went to her house. I found her alone. She told me what she had done—what she had told you, and gloried in it, the hussy. Then I did what was right.' Here he began to march up and down the room, absorbed in recollections of the scene he described and almost oblivious of the poet's presence. 'I beat her—beat her like a madman. It did me good. I flung her to the ground and rained blow upon blow until she cried "Mercy! mercy!" I could have killed her—and taken a delight in it. How beautiful she looked, too, with her hair all tumbling about and her dress hanging in shreds where I had torn it from her snowy shoulders. Then she grovelled at my feet, but I was relentless, and left the house. She can show the marks on her body to her next lover if she likes, and tell him from whom she got them. How it relieves one to be a brute sometimes!' Then, suddenly stopping before René, he said, 'And all because she had touched you. Yes or no,' he cried, in his same angry tone, 'is it on account of what this jade told you that you are angry with me?'