There was something frightful in hearing these nihilistic words on the lips of this beautiful young woman, and on such a night, in such a scene. To the tender and religious Madame Brion these words were all the more painful since they were spoken with the same voice that had directed the croupier where to place the final stake. She greatly admired Ely for that high intelligence which enabled her to read all books, to write in four or five languages, to converse with the most distinguished men and on every subject.
Trained until her seventeenth year in the solid German manner, the Baroness Ely had found, at first in the society of the Archduke, then in her life in Italy, an opportunity for an exceptional culture from which her supple mind of a demi-Slave had profited.
Alas! of what use was that learning, that facile comprehension, that power of expression, since she had not learned to govern her caprices—as could be seen in the attitude at the roulette table—nor to govern her thoughts—which was too well shown by the sombre creed that she had just confessed? That inner want, among so many gifts and accomplishments, once more oppressed the faithful friend, who had never brought herself to admit the existence of certain ideas in her companion of Sacré-Cœur. And she said:—
"You speak again as though you did not believe in another life. Is it possible that you are sincere?"
"No, I do not believe in it," the Baroness replied, with a shake of her pretty head, a breath of air lifting the long, silky fur of her sable cape. "That was the one good influence my husband had over me; but he had that. He cured me of that feeble-heartedness that dares not look the truth in the face. The truth is that man has never discovered a trace of a Providence, of a pity or justice from on high, the sign of anything above us but blind and implacable force. There is no God. There is nothing but this world. That is what I know now, and I am glad to know it. I like to oppress myself with the thought of the ferocity and stupidity of the universe. I find in it a sort of savage pleasure, an inner strength."
"Do not talk like that," interrupted Madame Brion, clasping her arms around her friend as though she were a suffering sister or a child. "You make me feel too sad. But," she continued, pressing the hand of the Baroness while they resumed their walk, "I know you have a weight on your heart of which you do not tell me. You have never been happy. You are less so than ever to-day, and you blame God for your hard fate. You relieve yourself in blasphemy as you did to-night in play, wildly, desperately, as they say some men drink; don't deny it. I was there all the evening, hidden in the crowd, while you were playing. Pardon me. You had been so nervous all day. You had worried me. And I did not want to leave you five minutes alone. And, my Ely, I saw you sitting among those women and those men, playing so unreasonably in the sight of all that crowd whispering your name. I saw you sell the case you used so much. Ah, my Ely, my Ely!"
A heavy sigh accompanied this loved name, repeated with passionate tenderness. That innocent affection which suffered from the faults of its idol without daring to formulate a reproach, touched the Baroness, and made her a little ashamed. She disguised her feelings in a laugh, which she attempted to make gay, in order to quiet her friend's emotion.
"How fortunate that I didn't see you! I should have borrowed money from you and lost it. But do not worry; it will not happen again. I had heard so often of the gambling fever that I wished just once, not to trifle as I usually do, but really play. It is even more annoying than it was stupid. I regret nothing but the cigarette case." She hesitated a moment. "It was the souvenir of a person who is no longer in this world. But I shall find the merchant to-morrow."
"That is useless," said Madame Brion, quickly. "He no longer has it."
"You have already bought it? How I recognize my dear friend in that!"
"I thought of doing it," Louise answered in a low voice, "but some one else was before me."
"Some one else?" said Madame de Carlsberg, with a sudden look of haughtiness. "Whom you saw and whom I know?" she asked.
"Whom I saw and whom you know," answered Madame Brion. "But I dare not tell the name, now that I see how you take it.—And yet, it is not one whom you have the right to blame, for if he has fallen in love with you, it is indeed your fault. You have been so imprudent with him—let me say it, so coquettish!"
Then, after a silence: "It was young Pierre Hautefeuille."
The excellent woman felt her heart beat as she pronounced these last words. She was anxious to prevent Madame de Carlsberg from continuing a flirtation which she thought dangerous and culpable; but the anger which she had seen come into her friend's face made her fear that she had gone too far, and would draw down upon the head of the imprudent lover one of Ely's fits of rage, and she reproached herself as for an indelicacy, almost a treachery toward the poor boy whose tender secret she had surprised.
But it was not anger that, at the mention of this name, had changed the expression of Madame de Carlsberg and flushed her cheeks with a sudden red. Her friend, who knew her so well, could see that she was overcome with emotion, but very different from her injured pride of a moment before. She was so astonished that she stopped speaking. The Baroness made no answer, and the two women walked on in silence. They had entered an alley of palm trees, flecked with moonlight, but still obscure. And as Madame Brion could no longer see the face of her friend, her own emotions became so strong that she hazarded, tremblingly:—
"Why do you not answer me? Is it because you think I should have prevented the young man from doing what he did? But for your sake I pretended not to have seen it. Are you wounded at my speaking of your coquetry? You know I would not have spoken in that way, if I did not so esteem your heart."
"You wound me?" said the Baroness. "You? You know that is impossible. No, I am not wounded. I am touched. I did not know he was there," she added in a lower tone, "that he saw me at that table, acting as I did. You think that I have flirted with him? Wait, look."
And as they had reached the end of the alley, she turned. Tears were slowly running down her cheeks. Through her eyes, from whence these tears had fallen, Louise could read to the bottom of her soul, and the evidence which before she had not dared to believe now forced itself upon her.
"Oh! you are weeping." And, as though overcome by the moral tragedy which she now perceived, "You love him!" she cried, "you love him!"
"What use to hide it now?" Ely answered. "Yes, I love him! When you told me what he did this evening, which proves, as I know, that he loves me, too, it touched me in a painful spot. That is all. I should be happy, should I not? And you see I am all upset. If you but knew the circumstances in which this sentiment overtook me, my poor friend, you would indeed pity your Ely. Ah!" she repeated, "pity her, pity her!"
And, resting her head on her friend's shoulder, she began to weep, to weep like a child, while the other, bewildered at this sudden and unexpected outburst, replied—revealing even in her pity the naïveté of an honest woman, incapable of suspicion:—
"I beg you calm yourself. It is true it is a terrible misfortune for a woman to love when she has no right to satisfy it. But, do not feel remorseful, and, above all, do not think I blame you. When I spoke as I did it was to put you on your guard against a wrong that you might do. Ah! I see too well that you have not been a coquette. I know you have not allowed the young man to divine your feelings, and I know, too, that he will never divine them, and that you will be always my blameless Ely. Calm yourself, smile for me. Is it not good to have a friend, a real friend, who can understand you?"
"Understand me? Poor Louise! You love me, yes, you love me well. But you do not know me."
Then, in a kind of transport, she took her friend's arm, and, looking her in the face, "Listen!" she said, "you believe me still to be, as I was once, your blameless Ely. Well, it is not true. I have had a lover. Hush, do not answer. It must be said. It is said. And that lover is the most intimate friend of Pierre Hautefeuille, a friend to him as you are to me, a brother in friendship as you are my sister. That is the weight that you have divined here," and she laid her hand upon her breast. "It is horrible to bear."
Certain confessions are so irremediable that their frankness gives to those who voluntarily make them something of grandeur and nobility even in their fall; and when the confession is made by some one whom we love, as Louise loved Ely, it fills us with a delirium of tenderness for the being who proves her nobility by her confession while the misery of her shame rends her heart. If a few hours before, in some house at Monte Carlo, the slightest word had been said against the honor of Madame de Carlsberg, what indignation would Madame Brion have not felt, and what pain! Pain she indeed had, agonizing pain, as Ely pronounced these unforgetable words; but of indignation there was not a trace in the heart which replied with these words, whose very reproach was a proof of tenderness, blind and indulgent to complicity:—
"Just God! How you must have suffered! But why did you not tell me before? Why did you not confide in me? Did you think that I would love you less? See, I have the courage to hear all."
And she added, in that thirst for the whole truth which we have for the faults of those who are dear to us, as though we looked to find a pardonable excuse in the cruel details:—
"I beg you, tell me all, all. And first, this man? Do I know him?"
"No," replied Madame de Carlsberg, "his name is Olivier du Prat. I met him at Rome two years ago when I was spending the winter there. That was the period of my life when I saw you least, and wrote to you least frequently. It was also the time when I was the most wicked, owing to solitude, inaction, unhappiness, and my disgust with everything, especially with myself. This man was the secretary of one of the two French embassies. He was much lionized because of the passion, he had inspired in two Roman ladies, who almost openly disputed his favors. It is very ignoble, what I am going to tell you, but such was the truth. It amused me to win him from them both. In that kind of an adventure, just as in play, one expects to find the emotions that others have found in it, and then the result is the same as in roulette. One is bored with it, and one throws one's self into the game from wilfulness and vanity, in the excitement of an absurd struggle. I know now," and her voice became graver, "that I never loved Olivier, but that I so persisted in this liaison that he would have the right to say that I wished him to love me, that I wished to be his mistress, and that I did all I could to retain him. He was a singular character, very different from those professional lovers, who are for the most part frightfully vulgar. He was so changeable, so protean, so full of contrasts, so intangible, that to this day I cannot tell whether he loved me or not. You hear me in a dream, and I am speaking as in a dream. I feel that there was something inexplicable in our relations, something unintelligible to a third person. I have never met a being so disconcerting, so irritating, from the endless uncertainty he kept you in, no matter what you did. One day he would be emotional, tremulous, passionate even to frenzy, and on the morrow, sometimes the same day, he would recoil within himself from confidence to suspicion, from tenderness to persiflage, from abandonment to irony, from love to cruelty, without it being possible either to doubt his sincerity or to discover the cause of this incredible alteration. He had these humors not only in his emotions, but even in his ideas. I have seen him moved to tears by a visit to the Catacombs, and on returning as outrageously atheistical as the Archduke. In society I have seen him hold twenty people enraptured by the charm of his brilliant fancy, and then pass weeks without speaking two words. In short, he was from head to foot a living enigma, which I penetrate better at a distance. He had been early left an orphan. His childhood had been unhappy, and his youth precociously disenchanted. He had been wounded and corrupted too soon. Thence came that insatiability of soul, that elusiveness of character which appeared as soon as I became interested in him in a kind of spasmodic force. When I was young at Sallach I loved to mount difficult horses and try to master them. I cannot better describe my relations with Olivier than by comparing them to a duel between a rider and his horse, when each tries to get the better of the other. I repeat it, I am sure I did not love him. I am not certain that I did not hate him."
She spoke with a dryness that showed how deeply these memories were implanted. She paused a moment, and, plucking a rose from a bush near her, she began to bite the petals nervously, while Madame Brion sighed:—
"Need I pity you for that also,—for having sought happiness out of marriage, and for having met this man, this hard and capricious monster of egoism?"
"I do not judge of him," Madame de Carlsberg answered. "If I had been different myself, I should doubtless have changed him. But he had touched me in an irritable spot; I wished to control him, to master him, and I used a terrible weapon. I made him jealous. All that is a bitter story, and I spare you the details. It would be painful to recall it, and it does not matter. You will know enough when I say that after a day of intimacy, when he had been more tender than ever before, Olivier left Rome suddenly, without an explanation, without a word of adieu, without even writing a letter. I have never seen him again. I have never heard of him, except in a chance conversation this winter, when I learned that he was married. Now you will understand the strange emotions I felt when two months ago Chésy asked permission to present a son of a friend of his mother, who had come to Cannes to recover from a bad cold, a young man, rather solitary and very charming; his name was Pierre Hautefeuille. In the countless conversations that Olivier and I had together in the intervals of our quarrelling, this name had often been spoken. Here again I must explain to you a very peculiar thing,—the nature of this man's conversation and the extraordinary attraction it had for me. This self-absorbed and enigmatic being had sudden hours of absolute expansion which I have seen in no one else. It was as though he relived his life aloud for me, and I listened with an unparalleled curiosity. He used at these times a kind of implacable lucidity which almost made you cry out, like a surgical operation, and which at the same time hypnotized you with a potent fascination. It was a brutal yet delicate disrobing of his childhood and his youth, with characterizations of such vividness that certain individuals were presented to me as distinctly as though I had really met them. And he himself? Ah, what a strange soul, incomplete and yet superior, so noble and so degraded, so sensitive and so arid, in whom there seemed to be nothing but lassitude, failure, stain, and disillusionment—excepting one sentiment. This man who despised his family, who never spoke of his country without bitterness, who attributed the worst motive to every action, even his own, who denied the existence of God, of virtue, of love, this moral nihilist, in short, in so many ways like the Archduke, had one faith, one cult, one religion. He believed in friendship, that of man for man, denying that one woman could be the friend of another. He did not know you, dear friend. He pretended—I recall his very words—that between two men who had proved each other, who had lived, and thought, and suffered together, and who esteemed each other while loving each other, there arises a kind of affection so high, so profound, and so strong that nothing can be compared with it. He said that this sentiment was the only one he respected, the only one that time and change could not prevail against. He acknowledged that this friendship was rare; yet he declared that he had met with it several times, and that he himself had experienced one in his life. It was then that he evoked the image of Pierre Hautefeuille. His accent, his look, his whole expression changed while he lingered over the memory of his absent friend. He, the man of all the ironies, recounted with tenderness and respect the naïve details of their first meeting at school, their growing attachment, their boyish vacations. He related with enthusiasm their enlisting together in 1870, and the war, their adventures, their captivity in Germany. He was never tired of praising his friend's purity of soul, his delicacy, his nobility. I have already said that this man was an enigma to me. Such he was above all in his retrospective confidences, to which I listened with astonishment, almost stupor, to behold this anomaly in a heart so lamentably withered, in a land so sterile this flower of delicate sentiment, so young and rare that it made me think—and in spite of Olivier's paradox, it is the highest praise I could give—of our own friendship."
"Thanks," said Madame Brion, "you make me happy. As I listened to you a moment ago I seemed to hear another person speaking whom I did not recognize. But now I have found you again, so loving, gentle, and good."
"No, not good," Madame de Carlsberg replied. "The proof is that no sooner had Chésy pronounced the name of Pierre Hautefeuille than I was possessed by an idea which you will think abominable. I shall pay for it, perhaps, dearly enough. Olivier's departure and then his marriage had stirred in me that hate of which I spoke. I could not hear to think that this man had left me as he did, and was now happy, contented, indifferent—that he had regained his serenity without my being revenged. One acquires these base passions by living as I have so long, unhappy and desperate, surrounded by pleasure and luxury. Too much moral distress is depraving. When I knew that I was to meet the intimate friend of Olivier, a possible vengeance offered itself to me, a refined, atrocious, and certain vengeance. My life was forever separated from that of Du Prat. He had probably forgotten me. I was sure that if I won the affections of his friend, and he knew of it, it would strike the deepest and most sensitive place in his heart; and that is why I permitted Chésy to present Hautefeuille, and why I indulged in those coquetries for which you blamed me. For it is true that I began thus.Dieu! how recent it was, and how long ago it seems!"
"But," interrupted Madame Brion, "does Pierre Hautefeuille know of your relations with Olivier?"
"Ah! you touch me in the sorest spot. He is ignorant of them, as he is of all the base realities of life. It is by his innocence, his simplicity of heart, of which his friend so often spoke—his youth, in short—that this boy, against whom I began so cruel a plot, has won me completely. Never has a doubt or a suspicion entered that heart, so young and so innocent of evil, for which evil does not even exist. I had not spoken with him three times before I understood all that Olivier had said in our conversations at Rome, which left me incredulous and irritated. That respect, that veneration almost, which he professed for this candor and goodness, I felt also in my turn. All the expressions he had used in speaking of his friend came back to me, and at every new encounter I perceived how just they were, how fine, and how true. In my surprise I relinquished my plan of vengeance at the contact of this nature so young and delicate, whose perfume I inhaled as I do that of this flower."
And she lifted to her face the rose with its half-nibbled petals.
"If you only knew how the life I lead wearies and oppresses me! How tired I am of hearing about nothing but the breakfasts that Dickie Marsh gives on his yacht to the grand dukes, of Navagero's bezique with the Prince of Wales, of Chésy's speculations at the Bourse, and the half-dozen titled fools that follow his advice! If you only knew how even the best of this artificial society tires me! What does it matter to me whether Andryana Bonnacorsi decides to marry the Sire de Corancez, or any of the countless subjects of gossip at the five o'clock teas in Cannes? And I need not speak of the inferno my house has become since my husband suspects me of favoring the marriage of Flossie Marsh with his assistant. To meet in this artificial atmosphere, made up ofennuiand vanity, folly and stupidity, a being who is at the same time profound and simple, genuine and romantic, in fact archaic, as I like to call him, was a delight. And then the moment came when I realized that I loved this young man and that he loved me. I learned it through no incident, no scene, no word—just by a look from him which I accidentally caught. That is why I have taken refuge here for the last eight days, I was afraid. I am still afraid—afraid for myself a little. I know myself too well, and I know that once started on that road of passion I would go to the end, I would stake my whole life upon it, and if I lost, if—"
She did not finish, but her friend understood her terrible forebodings as she continued: "And I am afraid for him, too, ah, much afraid! He is so young, so inexperienced! He believes so implicitly in me. I cannot better show you how I have changed than by saying this: six weeks ago, when Hautefeuille was presented to me, I had but one desire,—that Olivier should learn of my acquaintance with his friend. To-day, if I could prevent these two men from ever meeting, or from ever speaking of me to each other, I would give ten years of my life. Now do you understand why the tears came to my eyes when you told me what he did this evening, and how, without speaking to me, he had seen the way I spend my time away from him? I am ashamed, terribly ashamed. Think what it would be if he knew the rest!"
"And what are you going to do?" Madame Brion mournfully exclaimed. "These men will meet again. They will talk about you. And if Olivier loves his friend as you say he does, he will tell him all. Listen," she continued, clasping her hands, "listen to what the tenderest and most devoted affection advises you to do. I do not speak of your duty, of the opinion of the world, or the vengeance of your husband. I know you would brave all that, as you did before, to win your happiness. But you will not win it. You could not be happy in this love with that secret on your heart. You will be tortured by it, and if you speak—I know you, you must have thought of it—if you speak—"
"If I told him, I would never see him again," said Madame de Carlsberg. "Ah! without that certitude—"
"Well! Have the courage to do it," interrupted the other. "You had the strength to leave Cannes for a week. You should have enough to leave for good. You will not be alone. I will go with you. You will suffer. But what is that, when you think of what otherwise would happen,—that you would be everything to this young man, and he everything to you, and he would know that you had been the mistress of his friend!"
"Yes, I have thought of all that," replied the Baroness, "and then I remember I might have had six months, a year, and perhaps more. And that is to have lived, to have been in this hard world for a year one's self, one's true self, the being that one is in one's innermost and deepest reality."
And as she spoke she gazed at the sky with the same look that she had had at the beginning of the walk. She seemed once more to bathe her face in the moonlight, and to absorb the impassive serenity of the mountains and the stars, as though to gather force to go to the end of her desire. And as they resumed again in silence their promenade among the obscure palms, by the fragrant rose-beds, and beneath the sombre shadow of the orange trees, the faithful friend murmured:—
"I will save her in spite of herself."
The "Sire" de Corancez—as Madame de Carlsberg disdainfully called the Southerner—was not a man to neglect the slightest detail that he thought advantageous to a well-studied plan. His father, the vine-grower, used to say to him, "Marius? Don't worry about Marius. He's a shrewd bird." And, in truth, at the very moment when the Baroness Ely was beginning her melancholy confidences in the deserted garden alleys of the Villa Brion, this adroit person discovered Hautefeuille at the station, installed him in the train between Chésy and Dickie Marsh and manœuvred so skilfully that before reaching Nice the American had invited Pierre to visit the next morning his yacht, the Jenny, anchored in the roadstead at Cannes. But the next morning would be the last hours that Corancez could spend at Cannes before his departure, ostensibly for Marseilles and Barbentane, in reality for Italy.
He had the promise of Florence Marsh that Hautefeuille's visit to theJennywould be immediately followed by an invitation to take part in the cruise of the 14th. Would Pierre accept? Above all, would he consent to act as witness in that clandestine ceremony, at which the queerly named Venetianabbé, Don Fortunato Lagumina, would pronounce the words of eternal union between the millions of the deceased Francesco Bonnacorsi and the heir of the doubtful scutcheon of the Corancez? The Provençal had but this last morning to persuade his friend.
But he had no fear of failure, and at half-past nine, fresh, in spite of the fact that he had returned from Monte Carlo on the last train the night before, he briskly descended the steps of the hill that separates Cannes from the Gulf of Juan. Pierre Hautefeuille had installed himself for the winter in one of those hotels whose innumerable flower-framed windows line this height, which the people of Cannes have adorned with the exotic name of California.
It was one of those mornings of sun and wind—of fresh sunlight and warm breeze—which are the charm of winter on this coast. Roses bloomed by hundreds on hedge and terrace. The villas, white or painted, shone through their curtains of palm trees and araucarias, aloes and bamboos, mimosas and eucalyptus. The peninsula of La Croisette projected from the hill toward the islands, and its dark forest of pines, flecked with white houses, arose in strong relief between the tender blue of the sky and the sombre blue of the sea, and the Sire de Corancez went on gayly, a bouquet of violets in the buttonhole of the most becoming coat that a complacent tailor ever fashioned for a handsome young man in chase of an heiress, his small feet tightly fitted in russet shoes, a straw hat on his thick, black hair; his eyes bright, his teeth glistening in a half smile, his beard lustrous and scented, his movements graceful.
He was happy in the animal portion of his nature; a happiness that was wholly physical and sensual. He was able to enjoy the divine sunlight, the salt breeze, odorous with flowers; this atmosphere, soft as spring; to enjoy the morning and his own sense of youth, while the calculator within him soliloquized upon the character of the man he was about to rejoin and upon the chances of success:—
"Will he accept or not? Yes, he will beyond any doubt, when he knows that Madame de Carlsberg will be on the boat. Should I tell him? No; I would offend him. How his arm trembled in mine last night when I mentioned her name! Bah! Marsh or his niece will speak to him about her, or they are no Americans. That is their way—and it succeeds with them—to speak right out whatever they think or wish.—If he accepts? Is it prudent to have one more witness? Yes; the more people there are in the secret, the more Navagero will be helpless when the day comes for the great explanation.—A secret? With three women knowing it? Madame de Carlsberg will tell it all to Madame Brion. It will go no further on that side. Flossie Marsh will tell it all to young Verdier. And it will stop there, too. Hautefeuille? Hautefeuille is the most reliable of all.—How little some men change! There is a boy I have scarcely seen since our school-days. He is just as simple and innocent as when we used to confess our sins to the good Father Jaconet. He has learned nothing from life. He does not even suspect that the Baroness is as much in love with him as he with her. She will have to make a declaration to him. If we could talk it over together, she and I. Let nature have her way. A woman who desires a young man and does not capture him—that may occur, perhaps, in the horrible fogs of the North, but in this sunlight and among these flowers, never.—Good, here is his hotel. It would be convenient for a rendezvous, these barracks. So many people going in and out that a woman might enter ten times without being noticed."
Hôtel des Palmes—the name justified by a tropical garden—appeared in dazzling letters on the façade of this building, whose gray walls, pretentiously decorated with gigantic sculpture, arose at a bend of the road. The balconies were supported by colossal caryatides, the terrace by fluted columns. Pierre Hautefeuille occupied a modest room in this caravansary, which had been recommended by his doctor; and if, on the night before, his sentimental reverie in the hall at Monte Carlo had seemed paradoxical, his daily presence in a cell of this immense cosmopolitan hive was no less so.
Here he lived, retired, absorbed in his chimerical fancies, enveloped in the atmosphere of his dreams, while beside him, above him, and below him swarmed the agitated colony which the Carnival attracts to the coast. Again on this morning the indulgent mockery of Corancez might have found a fitting subject, if the heavy stones of the building had suddenly become transparent, and the enterprising Southerner had seen his friend, with his elbows on the writing-table, hypnotized before the gold box purchased the evening before; and his mockery would have changed to veritable stupefaction, had he been able to follow the train of this lover's thoughts, who, ever since his purchase, had been a prey to one of those fevers of remorseful anxiety which are the great tragedies of a timid and silent passion.
This fever had begun in the train on the way back from Monte Carlo amid the party collected by Corancez. One of Chésy's remarks had started it.
"Is it true," Chésy asked of Marius, "that Baroness Ely lost this evening a hundred thousand francs, and that she sold her diamonds to one of the gamblers in order to continue?"
"How history is written!" Corancez responded. "I was there with Hautefeuille. She lost this evening just what she had gained, that is all; and she sold a trifling jewel worth a hundred louis,—a gold cigarette case."
"The one she always uses?" asked Navagero; then gayly, "I hope the Archduke will not hear this story. Although a democrat, he is severe on the question of good form."
"Who do you suppose would tell him?" Corancez replied.
"The aide-de-camp,parbleu," exclaimed Chésy. "He spies into everything she does, and if the jewel is gone, the Archduke will hear of it."
"Bah! She will buy it back to-morrow morning. Monte Carlo is full of these honest speculators. They, in fact, are the only ones who win at the game."
While Hautefeuille was listening to this dialogue, every word of which pierced to his heart, he caught a glance from the Marquise Bonnacorsi—a look of curiosity, full of meaning to the timid lover, for he plainly read in it the knowledge of his secret. The subject of the conversation immediately changed, but the words that had been spoken and the expression in Madame Bonnacorsi's eyes sufficed to fill the young man with a remorse as keen as though the precious box had been taken from the pocket of his evening coat, and shown to all these people.
"Could the Marquise have seen me buy it?" he asked himself, trembling from head to foot. "And if she saw me, what does she think?"
Then, as she entered into conversation with Florence Marsh, and appeared once more to be perfectly indifferent to his existence, "No, I am dreaming," he thought; "it is not possible that she saw me. I was careful to observe the people who were there. I was mistaken. She looked at me in that fixed way of hers which means nothing. I was dreaming. But what the others said was not a dream. This cigarette case she will wish to buy back to-morrow. She will find the merchant. He will tell her that he has sold it. He will describe me. If she recognizes me from his description?"
At this thought he trembled once more. In a sudden hallucination he saw the little parlor of the Villa Helmholtz—the Archduke had thus named his house after the great savant who had been his master. The lover saw the Baroness Ely sitting by the fire in a dress of black lace with bows of myrtle green, the one of her dresses which he most admired. He saw himself entering this parlor in the afternoon; he saw the furniture, the flowers in their vases, the lamps with their tinted shades, all these well-loved surroundings, and a different welcome—a look in which he would perceive, not by a wild hypothesis this time, but with certitude, that Madame de Carlsberg knewwhat he had done. The pain which the mere thought of this caused him brought him back to reality.
"I am dreaming again," he said to himself, "but it is none the less certain that I have been very imprudent—even worse, indelicate. I had no right to buy that box. No, I had no right. I risked, in the first place, the chance of being seen, and of compromising her. And then, even as it is, if some indiscreet remark is made, and if the Prince makes an investigation?"
In another hallucination he saw the Archduke Henry Francis and the Baroness face to face. He saw the beautiful, the divine eyes of the woman he loved fill with tears. She would suffer in her private life once more, and from his fault, on account of him who would have given all his blood with delight in order that mouth so wilfully sad might smile with happiness. Thus the most imaginary, but also the most painful of anxieties commenced to torture the young man, while Miss Marsh and Corancez in a corner of the compartment exchanged in a low voice these comments:—
"I shall ask my uncle to invite him, that's settled," said the young American girl. "Poor boy, I have a real sympathy for him. He looks so melancholy. They have pained him by talking so of the Baroness."
"No, no," said Corancez. "He is in despair at having missed, by his own fault, a chance of speaking with his idol this evening. Imagine, at the moment when I went up to her—piff—my Hautefeuille disappeared. He is remorseful at having been too timid. That is a sentiment which I hope never to feel."
Remorse. The astute Southerner did not realize how truly he had spoken. He was mistaken in regard to the motive, but he had given the most precise and fitting term to the emotion which kept Hautefeuille awake through the long hours of the night, and which this morning held him motionless before the precious case. It was as though he had not bought it, but had stolen it, so much did he suffer to have it there before his eyes. What was he to do now? Keep it? That had been his instinctive, his passionate desire when he hurried to the merchant. This simple object would make the Baroness Ely so real, so present to him. Keep it? The words he had heard the night before came back to him, and with them all his apprehension. Send it back to her? What could be more certain to make the young woman seek out who it was who had taken such a liberty, and if she did find out?
A prey to these tumultuous thoughts, Pierre turned the golden box in his hands. He spelled out the absurd inscription written in precious stones on the cover of the case: "M.E. moi. 100 C.C.—Aimez-moi sans cesser," the characters said; and the lover thought that this present, bearing such a tender request, must have been given to Madame de Carlsberg by the Archduke or some very dear friend.
What agony he would have felt had the feminine trinket been able to relate its history and all the quarrels that its sentimental device had caused during theliaisonof the Baroness Ely with Olivier du Prat. How often Du Prat, too, had tried to discover from whom his mistress had received this present—one of those articles whose unnecessary gaudiness savors of adultery. And he could never draw from the young woman the name of the mysterious person who had given it, of whom Ely had said to Madame Brion, "It was some one who is no longer in this world."
In truth, this suspicious case was not a souvenir of anything very culpable; the Baroness had received it from one of the Counts Kornow. She had had with him one of her earliest flirtations, pushed far enough—as the inscription testified—but interrupted before its consummation by the departure of the young Count for the war in Turkey. He had been killed at Plevna.
Yes, how miserable Hautefeuille would have been if he could have divined the words that had been uttered over this case—words of romantic tenderness from the young Russian, words of outrageous suspicion from his dearest friend, that Olivier whose portrait—what irony!—was on the table before him at this moment. That heart so young, still so intact, so pure, so confiding, was destined to bleed for that which he did not suspect on this morning when, in all his delicacy, he accused no one but himself.
Suddenly a knock on the door made him start in terror. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed the time, or remembered the rendezvous with his friend. He hid the cigarette case in the table drawer, with all the agitation of a discovered criminal. "Come in," he said in a quivering voice; and the elegant and jovial countenance of Corancez appeared at the door. With that slight accent which neither Paris nor the princely salons of Cannes had been able wholly to correct, the Southerner began:—
"What a country mine is, all the same! What a morning, what air, what sunlight! They are wearing furs up there, and we—" He threw open his light coat. Then, as his eye caught the view, he continued, thinking aloud: "I have never before climbed up to your lighthouse. What a scene! How the long ridge of the Esterel stretches out, and what a sea! A piece of waving satin. This would be divine with a little more space. You are not uncomfortable with only one room?"
"Not in the least," said Hautefeuille; "I have so few things with me—merely a few books."
"That's so," Corancez replied, glancing over the narrow room, which, with the modest case opened on the bureau, had the look of an officer's tent. "You have not the mania forbric-à-brac. If you could see the ridiculously complete dressing-case that I carry around with me, not to speak of a trunk full of knick-knacks. But I have been corrupted by the foreigners. You have remained a true Frenchman. People never realize how simple, sober, and economical the French are. They are too much so in their hate of new inventions. They detest them as much as the English and Americans love them—you, for example. I am sure that it was only by accident you came to this ultra-modern hotel, and that you abominate the luxury and the comfort."
"You call it luxury?" Hautefeuille interrupted, shrugging his shoulders. "But there is truth in what you say. I don't like to complicate my existence."
"I know that prejudice," Corancez replied; "you are for the stairway instead of the lift, for the wood fire instead of the steam heater, for the oil lamp instead of the electric light, for the post instead of the telephone. Those are the ideas of old France. My father had them. But I belong to the new school. Never too many hot and cold water faucets. Never too many telegraph and telephone wires. Never too many machines to save you the slightest movement. They have one fault, however, these new hotels. Their walls are thin as a sheet of paper; and as I have something serious to say to you, and also a great service to ask of you, we will go out, if you are willing. We'll walk to the port, where Marsh will wait for us at half-past ten. Does that suit you? We'll kill time by taking the longest way."
The Provençal had a purpose in proposing the "longest way." He wished to lead his friend past the garden of Madame de Carlsberg.
Corancez was something of a psychologist, and was guided by his instinct with more certainty than he could have been by all the theories of M. Taine on the revival of images. He was certain that the proposition in regard to the plot at Genoa would be accepted by Hautefeuille for the sake of a voyage with the Baroness Ely. The more vividly the image of the young woman was called up to the young man, the more he would be disposed to accept Corancez's proposition.
Thanks to his innocent Machiavelism, the two friends, instead of going straight toward the port, took the road that led to the west of California. They passed a succession of wild ravines, still covered with olives, those beautiful trees whose delicate foliage gives a silver tone to the genuine Provençal landscape. The houses grew more rare and isolated, till at certain places, as in the valley of Urie, one seemed to be a hundred miles from town and shore, so completely did the wooded cliffs hide the sea and the modern city of Cannes.
The misanthropy of the Archduke Henry Francis had led him to build his villa on this very ridge, at whose foot lay that species of park—inevitably inhabited and preserved by the English—through which Corancez conducted Hautefeuille. They came to a point where the Villa Helmholtz suddenly presented itself to their view. It was a heavy construction of two stories, flanked on one side by a vast greenhouse and on the other by a low building with a great chimney emitting a dense smoke. The Southerner pointed to the black column rising into the blue sky and driven by the gentle breeze through the palms of the garden.
"The Archduke is in his laboratory," he said; "I hope that Verdier is making some beautiful discovery to send to the Institute."
"You don't think, then, that he works himself?" asked Pierre.
"Not much," said Corancez. "You know the science of princes and their literature. However, that doesn't matter to me in the least. But what I don't like at all is the way he treats his charming wife—for she is charming, and she has once more proved it to me in a circumstance that I shall tell you about; and you heard what they said last night, that she is surrounded by spies."
"Even at Monte Carlo?" Hautefeuille exclaimed.
"Above all at Monte Carlo," replied Corancez. "And then, it is my opinion that if the Archduke does not love the Baroness he is none the less jealous, furiously jealous, of her, and nothing is more ferocious than jealousy without love. Othello strangled his wife for a handkerchief he had given her, and he adored her. Think of the row the Archduke would make about the cigarette case she sold if it was he who gave it to her."
These remarks, in a tone half serious, half joking, contained a piece of advice which the Southerner wished to give his friend before departing. It was as though he had said in plain language: "Court this pretty woman as much as you like; she is delicious; but beware of the husband." He saw Hautefeuille's expressive face suddenly grow clouded, and congratulated himself on being understood so quickly. How could he have guessed that he had touched an open wound, and that this revelation of the Prince's jealousy had but intensified the pain of remorse in the lover's tender conscience?
Hautefeuille was too proud, too manly, with all his delicacy, to harbor for a moment such calculations as his friend had diplomatically suggested. He was one of those who, when they love, are afflicted by nothing but the suffering of the loved one, and who are always ready to expose themselves to any danger. That which he had seen the night before in the hallucination of his first remorsefulness he saw again, and more clearly, more bitterly,—that possible scene between the Archduke and the Baroness Ely, of which he would be the cause, if the Prince learned of the sale of the case, and the Baroness was unable to recover it.
So he listened distractedly to Corancez's talk, who, however, had had the tact to change the conversation and to relate one of the humorous anecdotes of his repertory. What interest could Pierre have in the stories, more or less true, of the absurdities or scandals of the coast? He did not again pay attention to his companion until, having reached La Croisette, Corancez decided to put the great question. Along this promenade, more crowded than usual, a person was approaching who would furnish the Southerner with the best pretext for beginning his confidence; and, suddenly taking the arm of the dreamer to arouse him from his reveries, Corancez whispered:—
"I told you a moment ago that Madame de Carlsberg had of late been particularly good to me, and I told you, as we left the hotel, that I had a service to ask of you, a great service. You do not perceive the connection between these two circumstances? You will soon understand the enigma. Do you see who is coming toward us?"
"I see the Count Navagero," Hautefeuille answered, "with his two dogs and a friend whom I do not know. That is all."
"It is the whole secret of the enigma. But wait till they pass. He is with Lord Herbert Bohun. He will not deign to speak to us."
The Venetian moved toward them, more English in appearance than the Englishman by his side. This child of the Adriatic had succeeded in realizing the type of the Cowes or Scarborough "masher," and with such perfection that he escaped the danger of becoming a caricature. Clothed in a London suit of that cloth which the Scotch call "harris" from its place of origin, and which has a vague smell of peat about it, his trousers turned up according to the London manner, although not a drop of rain had fallen for a week, he was walking with long, stiff strides, one hand grasping his cane by the middle, the other hand holding his gloves.
His face was smoothly shaven; he wore a cap of the same cloth as that of his coat, and smoked a briarwood pipe of the shape used at Oxford. Two small, hairy Skye terriers trotted behind him, their stubby legs supporting a body three times as long as it was high. From what tennis match was he returning? To what game of golf was he on his way? His red hair, of that color so frequent in the paintings of Bonifazio, an inheritance from the doges, his ancestors, added the finishing touch to his incredible resemblance to Lord Herbert.
There was, however, one difference between them. As they passed Corancez and Hautefeuille, the twins uttered a good morning—Bohun's entirely without accent, while the syllables of the Venetian were emphasized in a manner excessively Britannic.
"You have observed that man," Corancez continued, when they had passed beyond earshot, "and you take him for an Anglomaniac of the most ridiculous kind. But, when you scratch his English exterior, what do you suppose you find beneath it? An Italian of the time of Machiavelli, as unscrupulous as though he were living at the court of the Borgias. He would poison us all, you, me, any one who crossed his path. I have read it in his hand, but don't be uneasy; he has not yet put his principles into practice, only he has tortured for six years a poor, defenceless woman, the adorable Madame Bonnacorsi, his sister. I do not attempt to explain it. But for six years he has so terrorized over this woman that she has not taken a step without his knowing of it, has not had a servant that he has not chosen, has not received a letter without having to account for it to him. It is one of those domestic tyrannies which you would not believe possible unless you had read of them in the newspaper reports, or actually witnessed it as I have. He does not wish her to remarry, because he lives on her great fortune. That is the point."
"How infamous!" Hautefeuille exclaimed. "But are you sure?"
"As sure as I am that I see Marsh's boat," replied Corancez, pointing to the trim yacht at anchor in the bay. And he continued lightly, in a tone that was sentimental and yet manly, not without a certain grace: "And what I am going to ask you is to help me circumvent this pretty gentleman. We Provençaux have always a Quixotic side to our character. We have a mania for adventurous undertakings; it is the sun that puts that in our blood. If Madame Bonnacorsi had been happy and free, doubtless I should not have paid much attention to her. But when I learned that she was unhappy, and was being miserably abused, I fell wildly in love with her. How I came to let her know of this and to find that she loved me I will tell you some other day. If Navagero is from Venice, I am from Barbentane. It is a little further from the sea, but we understand navigation. At any rate, I am going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi, and I am going to ask you to be my groomsman."
"You are going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi?" repeated Hautefeuille, too astonished to answer his friend's request. "But the brother?"
"Oh! he knows nothing about it," Corancez replied. "But that is just where the good fairy came into the story in the form of the charming Baroness Ely. Without her, Andryana—permit me thus to call myfiancée—would never have brought herself to say 'yes.' She loved me, and yet she was afraid. Do not misjudge her. These tender, sensitive women have strange timidities, which are difficult to understand. She was afraid, but chiefly for me. She feared a quarrel between her brother and me—hot words, a duel. Then I proposed and persuaded her to accept the most romantic and unusual expedient,—a secret marriage. On the 14th of next month, God willing, a Venetian priest, in whom she has confidence, will marry us in the chapel of a palace at Genoa. In the meantime I shall disappear. I am supposed to be at Barbentane among my vineyards. And on the 13th, while Navagero is playing the Englishman on Lord Herbert Bohun's yacht, with the Prince of Wales and other royal personages, Marsh's boat, to which you will be invited, will sail away with a number of passengers, among whom will be the woman I love the most in the world, and to whom I shall devote my life, and the friend I most esteem, if he does not refuse my request. What does he answer?"
"He answers," said Hautefeuille, "that if ever he was astonished in his life, he is so now. You, Corancez, in love, and so much in love that you will sacrifice your liberty. You have always seemed so careless, so indifferent. And a secret marriage. But it will not remain a secret twenty-four hours. I know your exuberance. You always tell everything you know to everybody. But I thank you for the friendship you have shown me, and I will be your groomsman."
As he said these last words he shook Corancez's hand with that simple seriousness which he showed for everything. His companion had touched him deeply. Doubtless this simplicity and candid trustfulness embarrassed the Southerner. He was very willing to profit from them, but he felt a little ashamed at abusing too much this loyal nature, whose charm he also felt, and he mingled with his thanks a confession such as he had never before made to any one.
"Don't think me so exuberant. The sun always has that effect. But, in truth, we men of the South never say what we mean.—Here we are. Remember," he said, with his finger on his lips, "Miss Marsh knows all, Marsh knows nothing."
"One word more," Hautefeuille replied; "I have promised to be your groomsman. But you will permit me to go to Genoa another way? I don't know these people well enough to accept an invitation of that kind."
"I trust to Flossie Marsh to overcome your scruples," said Corancez, unable to repress a smile. "You will be one of the passengers on theJenny. Do you know why this boat is called theJenny? Only an Anglo-Saxon would permit himself seriously such a play upon words. You have heard of Jenny Lind, the singer? Well, the reason the facetious Marsh gave this pretty name to his floating villa wasbecause she keeps the high seas. And every time he explains this he is so amazed at his wit that he fairly chokes with laughter.—But what a delicious day."
The elegant lines of theJenny'srigging and white hull could now be seen close at hand. She seemed the young, coquettish queen of the little port, amid the fishing boats, yawls, and coasters that swarmed about the quay. A group of sailors on the stone curb sang while they mended their nets. On the ground-floor of the houses were offices of ship companies, or shops, stored with provisions and tackle. The working population, totally absent from this city of leisure, is concentrated upon the narrow margin of the port, and gives it that popular picturesqueness so refreshing in contrast with the uniform banality imprinted on the South by its wealthy visitors. It was doubtless an unconscious sense of that contrast that led the plebeian Marsh to choose this point of the roadstead.
This self-made man who also had labored on the quays at Cleveland, by the shores of Lake Erie, whose waters are more stormy than the Mediterranean, despised at heart the vain and vapid society in which he lived. He lived in it, however, because the cosmopolitan aristocracy was still another world to conquer.
When he regaled some grand duke or prince regent on board his yacht, what voluptuous pride he might feel on looking at these fishermen of his own age, and saying to himself, while he smoked his cigar with the royal or imperial highness: "Thirty years ago these fishermen and I were equals. I was working just as they are. And now?" As Hautefeuille and Corancez did not figure on any page of the Almanach de Gotha, the master of the yacht did not consider it necessary to await his visitors on deck; and when the young men arrived they found no one but Miss Flossie Marsh, seated on a camp-stool before an easel, sketching in water colors. Minutely, patiently, she copied the landscape before her,—the far-off group of islands melting together like a long, dark carapace fixed on the blue bay, the hollow and supple line of the gulf, with the succession of houses among the trees, and, above all, the water of such an intense azure, dotted with white sails, and over all that other azure of the sky, clear, transparent, luminous. The industrious hand of the young girl copied this scene in forms and colors whose exactitude and hardness revealed a very small talent at the service of a very strong will.
"These American women are astonishing," whispered Corancez to Hautefeuille. "Eighteen months ago she had never touched a brush. She began to work and she has made herself an artist, as she will make herself asavanteif she marries Verdier. They construct talents in their minds as their dentists build gold teeth in your mouth.—She sees us."
"My uncle is busy at present," said the young girl, after giving them a vigorous handshake. "I tell him he should call the boat his office. As soon as we reach a port his telephone is connected with the telegraph station, and the cable begins to communicate with Marionville. Let us say good morning to him, and then I will show you the yacht. It is pretty enough, but an old model; it is at least ten years old. Mr. Marsh is having one built at Glasgow that will beat this one and a good many others. It is to measure four thousand tons. TheJennyis only eighteen hundred. But here is my uncle."
Miss Florence had led the young men across the deck of the boat, with its planking as clean, its brass-work as polished, its padded furniture, of brown straw, as fresh, its Oriental rugs as precious as though this flooring, this metal, these armchairs, these carpets belonged to one of the villas on the coast, instead of to this yacht which had been tossed on all the waves of the Atlantic and Pacific. And the room into which the young girl introduced them could not have presented a different aspect had it been situated in Marionville on the fifth story of one of those colossal buildings which line the streets with their vast cliffs of iron and brick. Three secretaries were seated at their desks. One of them was copying letters on a typewriter, another was telephoning a despatch, the third was writing in shorthand at the dictation of the little, thick-set, gray-faced man whom Corancez had shown to Hautefeuille at the table oftrente-et-quarante. This king of Ohio paused to greet his visitors:—
"Impossible to accompany you, gentlemen," he said. "While you are taking your promenade," he added, with that air of tranquil defiance by which the true Yankee manifests his contempt for the Old World, "we shall prepare a pretty voyage for you. But you Frenchmen are so contented at home that you never go anywhere. Do you know the Lake Region? Wait, here is the map. We have there, just on these four lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie—sixty thousand ships, amounting to thirty-two million tons, which transport every year three thousand five hundred million tons of merchandise. The problem is to put this fleet and the cities on the lakes—Duluth, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Marionville—in communication with Europe. The lakes empty into the ocean through the St. Lawrence. That is the road to follow. Unfortunately we have a little obstacle to overcome at the outlet of Lake Erie, an obstacle once and a half as high as the Arc de l'Etoile at Paris. I mean Niagara, and also the rapids at the outlet of Lake Ontario. They have made seven or eight canals, with locks which permit the passage of little boats. But we wish a free passage for any transatlantic vessel. This gentleman is about to conclude the affair," and Marsh pointed to the secretary at the telephone. "Our capital has been completed this morning—two hundred million dollars. In two years I shall sail home in theJennywithout once disembarking. I wish Marionville to become the Liverpool of the lakes. It has already a hundred thousand inhabitants. In two years we shall have a hundred and fifty thousand; that is equal to your Toulouse. In ten years, two hundred and fifty thousand—that is equal to your Bordeaux—and in twenty years we shall reach the five hundred and seventeen thousand of old Liverpool. We are a young people, and everything young should begin by progressing. You will excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen?"
And the indefatigable worker had re-commenced his dictation before his niece had led from the room these degenerate children of slow Europe.
"Is he enough of an American for you?" Corancez whispered to Hautefeuille. "He knows it too well, and he acts his own rôle to the point of caricature. All their race appears in that." Then aloud: "You know, Miss Flossie, we can talk freely of our plan before Pierre. He consents to be my groomsman."
"Ah! how delightful!" the young girl cried; then added gayly: "I had no doubt you would accept. My uncle has asked me to invite you to join our little voyage to Genoa. You will come, then. That will be perfectly delicious. You will be rewarded for your kindness. You will have on board your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."
As she said this the laughing girl looked the young man in the face. She had spoken without malice, with that simple directness upon which Corancez had justly counted.
The people of the Hew World have this frankness, which we take for brutality; it results from their profound and total acceptation of facts. Flossie Marsh knew that the presence of Baroness Ely on the yacht would be agreeable to Hautefeuille. Innocent American girl as she was, she did not imagine for a moment that the relations between this young man and a married woman could exceed the limits of a harmless flirtation or a permissible sentimentality. So it had seemed to her as natural to hazard this allusion to Pierre's sentiments as it would have been to hear an allusion to her own sentiments for Marcel Verdier. Thus it was strangely painful for her to see by the sudden pallor of the young man and the trembling of his lips that she had wounded him. And her face grew very red.
If the Americans in their simplicity are at times wanting in tact, they are sensitive to the highest degree; and these faults of tact which they commit so easily are a real affliction to them. But that blush only aggravated the painful surprise which Hautefeuille had felt at hearing Madame de Carlsberg thus spoken of. By an inevitable and overwhelming association of ideas he recalled Corancez's words, "I am sure that Miss Marsh will overcome your scruples," and the smile with which he said this. The look Madame Bonnacorsi had given him in the train the night before returned to his memory. By an intuition, unreasoned yet irrefutable, he perceived that the secret of his passion, hidden so profoundly in his heart, had been discovered by these three persons.
He quivered in every nerve with shame, revulsion, and distress; his heart palpitated so violently that he could scarcely breathe. The martyrdom of having to speak at this painful moment was spared him, thanks to Corancez, who saw clearly enough the effect produced upon his friend by the imprudence of the American girl, and, assuming the rôle of host, he began:—
"What do you think, Hautefeuille, of this salon and this smoking-room? Isn't it well arranged? This trimming of light, varnished wood—what neat and virile elegance! And this dining-room? And these cabins? One could spend months, years in them. You see, each one with its separate toilet-room."
And he led on his companion and the young girl herself. He remembered everything, with that astonishing memory for objects possessed by natures like his, created for action, adapted to realities; with his habitual self-assurance, he commented upon everything, from the pikes and guns on the middle deck, awaiting the pirates of the South Seas, to the machinery for filling and emptying the baths, and suddenly he asked Miss Marsh this question, singular enough in a passage of that colossal and luxurious toy which seemed to sum up the grand total of all inventions for the refinement of life:—
"Miss Flossie, may we see the death chamber?"
"If it would interest M. Hautefeuille," said Florence Marsh, who had not ceased to regret her thoughtless remark. "My uncle had an only daughter," she continued, "who was named Marion, after my poor aunt. You know that Mr. Marsh, who lost his wife when he was very young, named his town after her, Marionville. My cousin died four years ago. My uncle was almost insane with grief. He wished nothing to be altered in the room she occupied on the yacht. He put her statue in it, and she has always around her the flowers she loved in life. Wait, look, but do not go in."
She opened the door, and the young men saw, by the light of two blue-shaded lamps, a room all draped in faded pink. It was filled with a profusion of small objects such as might be possessed by a spoiled child of a railroad magnate—a toilet case of silver and gold, jewels in glass boxes, portraits in carved frames—and in the centre, on a real bed of inlaid wood, lay the statue of the dead girl, white, with closed eyelids, the lips slightly parted, among sheaves of carnations and of orchids. The silence of this strange shrine, the mystery, the delicate perfume of the flowers, the unlooked-for poetry of this posthumous idolatry, in the boat of a yachtsman and a man of business, would, in any other circumstances, have appealed to the romanticism innate in Pierre Hautefeuille's heart. But during all this visit he had had but one thought,—to escape from Miss Marsh and Corancez, to be alone in order to reflect upon the evidence, so painfully unexpected, that his deepest secret had been discovered. So it was a relief to depart from the boat, and still a torture to have the company of his friend a few minutes longer.
"Did you notice," said Corancez, "how much the dead girl resembles Madame de Chésy? No? Well, when you meet her some time with Marsh, be sure to observe her. The canal by the Great Lakes, his railroad, the buildings of Marionville, his mines, his boat—he forgets them all. He thinks of his dead daughter. If little Madame de Chésy should ask him for the Kohinoor, he would set out to find it, for the mere sake of this resemblance. Isn't it singular, such a sentimental trait in a rogue of his stamp? His character ought to please you. If you are interested in him, you will be able to study him at your leisure on the 13th, 14th, and 15th. And let me thank you again for what you are going to do for me. If you have anything to communicate to me, my address is Genoa,poste restante. And now I must return to look after the packing. Will you let me take you part of the way? I see the old coachman whom I told to come here at eleven."
Corancez hailed an empty cab which was passing, drawn by two small Corsican ponies, who saluted the young man with a wink, his "Good day, Monsieur Marius" revealing the familiarity of long conversations between these two Provençaux. Pascal Espérandien, otherwise known as the Old Man, was an alert little personage and very crafty, the pride of whose life was to make his two rats trot faster than the Russian horses of the grand dukes residing at Cannes. He harnessed them, trimmed them, ornamented them so fantastically that they drew from all Miss Marsh's compatriots, from Antibes to Napoule, the same exclamations of "How lovely, how enchanting, how fascinating!" that they would have uttered before a Raphael or a Worth dress, a polo match or a noted gymnast. Doubtless the wily old man, with his shrewd smile, possessed diplomatic talents which might make him useful in a secret intrigue, for the prudent Corancez never took any other carriage, especially when he had, as on this morning, a rendezvous with the Marquise Andryana. He was to see her for five minutes in the garden of a hotel where she had a call to make. Her carriage was to stand before one of the doors, the Old Man's equipage before another. So nothing could have been more agreeable than Pierre's response to this clandestinefiancé.
"Thanks, but I prefer to walk."
"Then good-by," said Corancez, getting into the cab. And, parodying a celebrated verse, "To meet soon again, Seigneur, where you know, with whom you know, for what you know?"
The cab turned the corner of the Rue d'Antibes, and departed with furious speed. Hautefeuille was at last alone. He could filially face the idea which had been formulating itself in his thoughts with terrible precision ever since Miss Florence Marsh had spoken these simple words, "Your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."
"They all three know that I love her—the Marquise, Corancez, and Miss Marsh. The look I caught from one of them last night, the remark and the smile of the other, and what the third one said, and her blush at having thought aloud—these are not dreams. They know I love her—But then, Corancez, last night, when he led me to the gambling-table, must have divined my thoughts. Such dissimulation!—is it possible? But why not? He acknowledged it himself awhile ago. To have concealed his sentiments for Madame Bonnacorsi, he must know how to keep a secret. He kept his and I have not kept mine. Who knows but they all three saw me buy the cigarette case? But no. They could not have had the cruelty to speak of it and to let it be spoken of before me. Marius is not malicious, neither is the Marquise, nor Miss Marsh. They know—that is all—they know. But how did they find out?"
Yes, how? With a lover of his susceptibility such a question would of necessity result in one of those self-examinations in which the scruples of conscience develop all their feverish illusions. On the way back to California and at the table where his luncheon was served to him apart, and afterward on a solitary walk to the picturesque village of Mougins, his life during these last few weeks came back to him, day by day, hour by hour, with a displacement of perspective which presented all the simple incidents of his naïve idyl as irreparable faults, crowned by that last fault, the purchase of the gold box in a public place and in full view of such people.
He recalled his first meeting with Madame de Carlsberg, in the Villa Chésy. How the peculiar beauty of the young woman and her strange charm had captivated him from the start, and how he had permitted himself to gaze upon her unrestrainedly, not dreaming that he was thus attracting attention and causing remarks! He remembered how often he had gone to her house, seizing every opportunity of meeting her and talking with her. The indiscretion of such assiduity could not have passed unperceived, any more than his continued presence at places where he had never gone before.
He saw again the golf field on those mornings when the Baroness Ely seemed so beautiful, in her piquant dress of the bright club colors—red and white. He saw himself at the balls, waiting in a corner of the room until she entered with that enchantment which emanated from every fold of her gown. He remembered how often at the confectioner's, or La Croisette, he had approached her, and how she had always invited him to sit at her table with such grace in her welcome. Each of these memories recalled her amiability, her delicate indulgence.
The memory of that charm, to which he yielded himself so completely, augmented his self-reproach. He recalled his imprudent actions, so natural when one does not feel one's self to be observed, but which appear to be such faults as soon as one is conscious of suspicion. For example, during the ten days on which the Baroness was absent from Cannes he had not once returned to those places where he had gone simply for the sake of seeing her. No one had met him at the golf field, nor at any evening party, nor at any five o'clock tea. He had not even made a call. Could this coincidence of his retirement with the absence of the Baroness have failed to be remarked? What had been said about it? Since his love had drawn him into this agitated world of pleasure he had often been pained by the light words thrown out at hazard at the women of this society, when they were not present. Had he been simply an object of ridicule, or had they taken advantage of his conduct to calumniate the woman he loved with a love so unhappy, ravaged by all the chimeras of remorse?
The words used by Florence Marsh—"your flirt"—gave a solid basis to these hypotheses. He had always despised the things which this word implied,—that shameful familiarity of a woman with a man, that dangling of her beauty before his desire, all the vulgarity and indiscretion which this equivocal relationship suggests. Could they think that he had such relations with Madame de Carlsberg? Had this evil interpretation been put upon his impulsiveness? Then he thought of the sorrows which he divined in the life of this unique woman, of the espionage that was spoken of, and again the hall at Monte Carlo appeared to him, and he could not understand why he had not realized the prodigious indelicacy of his action. He felt it now with most pitiful acuteness.
Haunted by these thoughts he prolonged his walk for hours and hours, and when in the twilight, suddenly grown dark and cold, as it happens in the South after days most soft and blue, as he entered the door of his hotel, the concierge handed him a letter on which he recognized the writing of Baroness Ely, his hands trembled as he tore open the envelope, sealed with the imprint of an antique stone—the head of Medusa. And if the head of this pagan legend had appeared alive before him he would not have been more overwhelmed than he was by the simple words of this note:—
"DEAR SIR—I have returned to Cannes and I should be happy if you could come to-morrow, at about half-past one, to the Villa Helmholtz. I wish to talk with you upon a serious matter. That is why I set this hour, at which I am most certain of not being interrupted."
"DEAR SIR—I have returned to Cannes and I should be happy if you could come to-morrow, at about half-past one, to the Villa Helmholtz. I wish to talk with you upon a serious matter. That is why I set this hour, at which I am most certain of not being interrupted."
And she signed herself, not as in her last letters with her full name, but as in the first she had written him—Baroness de Sallach Carlsberg. Hautefeuille read and re-read these cold, dry lines. It was evident that the young woman had learned of his purchase at Monte Carlo, and all the agony of his remorse revealed itself in these words, which he cried aloud as he entered his room:—
"She knows! I am lost!"
The note which had thus brought Pierre's anxiety to its extreme represented the first act in a plan invented by Madame Brion to put an immediate and irreparable end to a sentiment for which her friendly insight had led her to predict frightful suffering, a possible tragedy, a certain catastrophe. After Madame de Carlsberg's sudden and passionate confidences, she had said to herself that if she did not succeed in immediately separating these two beings, drawn to each other by such an instinctive attraction, the young man would not be slow to discover the sentiment he inspired in the woman he loved. It was only thanks to his remarkable ingenuousness and candor that he had not already discovered it.
When he knew the truth, what would happen? Ingenuous and candid though she was herself, Louise Brion could not evade the true answer to this question. As soon as an understanding took place between Hautefeuille and Ely, she would go to the end of her desire. She had too clearly revealed in her confession the indomitable audacity of her character, her need of complying with the demands of her passions. She would become the young man's mistress. Although the conversation of the night before had imposed upon Louise the evidence of faults already committed by her friend, neither her mind nor her heart could entertain the thought of these faults. The mere idea of this liaison filled her with a shudder of fright, almost of horror. All through the night she had tried to think of some way to obtain the only escape she could see for Ely, the voluntary departure of Hautefeuille.
Her first thought was to appeal to his delicacy. The portrait Madame de Carlsberg had drawn of him, his interesting face, his frank and honest look, the naïveté of his amorous action in buying the gold box, all revealed an exquisite fineness of nature. If she should write him, bravely, simply, an unsigned letter, speaking of that action, of that purchase which might have been, and no doubt had been, seen by others too? If on this account she should beg him to leave in order to save Madame de Carlsberg from trouble? During her long and feverish insomnia she had tried to formulate this letter, without discovering expressions which satisfied her.