"And one possess'd nothing that the other did not share."
"And one possess'd nothing that the other did not share."
In the case of Olivier and Pierre this ideal comradeship had been sacredly cemented. Not only had they been brothers in their dreams, they had been brothers in arms. They were nineteen years of age in 1870. At the first news of the immense national shipwreck both had enlisted. Both had gone through the entire war. The first snowfall of the winter that saw the terrible campaign found them bivouacking upon the banks of the Loire. It was as though this friendship of the two students, now become soldiers in the same battalion, had been heroically baptized. And they had learned to esteem as much as they loved each other as they simply, bravely, obscurely risked their lives side by side. These souvenirs of their youth had remained intact and living in both, but particularly in Olivier. For him they were the only recollections unmixed with bitterness, unsullied by remorse. Before these memories his life had been full of sadness, completely orphaned as he had been early in life and turned over to the guardianship of a horribly selfish uncle. Sensual and jealous, suspicious and despotic as he was, he had only known the bitterness and the pains of love apart from his souvenirs of Pierre. Nothing more is necessary to explain to what a degree this illogical and passionate, this troubled and disillusioned being was moved by the mere idea that a woman had come between his friend and him—and what a woman, if she were Madame de Carlsberg, so hated, despised, condemned by him formerly!
Olivier's imagination could only attach itself to two precise facts during the night that followed the arousing of his first suspicions,—a night that was given up to the consideration, one by one, of the possibilities of a love-affair between Ely and Hautefeuille. These were the character of his friend and that of his former mistress. The character of his friend made him fear for him; the character of his former mistress made him fear for her. Upon this latter point also his feelings were very complex. He was convinced that Ely de Carlsberg had had a lover before him, and the idea had tortured him. He was convinced that she had had a lover at the same time with him, and he had left her on account of this idea. He was mistaken, but he was sincere, and had only yielded to proofs of coquetry that appeared sufficiently damaging to convince his jealous nature. This double conviction had left in him a scornful resentment against Ely; had left that inexpiable bitterness which compels us to continually vilify in our mind an image that we despairingly realize can never become entirely indifferent to us. He would have considered aliaisonwith such a creature a frightful misfortune for any man. What, then, were his feelings when he saw that she had made herself beloved by his friend or that she might make herself beloved?—Having such a prejudiced, violent contempt for this sort of woman, Olivier divined what was really the truth, although it had remained so for so short a time. Ely had been angered by his departure. She had felt the same resentment with him that he had felt with her. Chance had brought her face to face with his dearest friend, with Pierre Hautefeuille, of whom he had so often spoken in exalted terms. She must have decided upon revenge, upon a vengeance that resembled her—criminal, refined, and so profoundly, so cruelly, intelligent!—In this way Du Prat reasoned. And, although his reasoning was only hypothetical, he felt, as he fed his mind with such thoughts, a suffering mingled with a sort of unhealthy and irresistible satisfaction that would have terrified him had he considered it calmly. To suppose that Madame de Carlsberg had avenged herself upon him with such calculation was to suppose that she had not forgotten him. The windings in the human heart are so strange! In spite of the fact that he had insulted his former mistress all the time they had been together, that he had left her first, without a farewell, that he had married after due reflection, and had resolved to keep his vows honorably—in spite of all this, the idea that she still remembered him secretly stirred him strangely. It must be remembered that he was just passing through one of the most dangerous moments of conjugal existence. Every moral crisis is complicated with a multitude of contradictory elements in souls such as his,—souls without fixed principles, that are turned aside at every moment by the influence of their faintest impression. Marriages contracted through sheer lassitude, such as the one he admitted having contracted, bring down their own punishment upon the abominable egoism that prompts them. They have to pay a penalty worse than the most redoubtable catastrophe. They are followed immediately by profound, incurable weariness. The man, thirty years of age, who, thinking he is disgusted forever with sensual passions, and who, mistaking this disgust for wisdom, settles down, as the saying is, quickly finds that those very passions that sickened him are as necessary to him as morphine is to the morphine maniac who has been deprived of his Pravaz syringe, as necessary as alcohol is to the inebriate put upon arégimeof pure water. He suffers from a species of nostalgia, of longing for those unhealthy emotions whose fruitlessness he has himself recognized and condemned. If a brutal but very exact comparison can be borrowed from modern pathology, he becomes a favorable medium for the cultivation of all the morbid germs floating in his atmosphere. And at the very moment when everything seems to point to the pacific arrangement of their destiny, some revolution takes place, as it was doing in Olivier,—a revolution so rapid, so terrible, that the witness and victims of these sudden wild outbursts are left almost more disconcerted than despairing.
He had therefore passed the night meditating upon all the details, significant and unimportant, that he had observed in the afternoon and evening, from the moment he had remarked the unexpected intimacy of Pierre with Corancez until the instant he had entered his friend's chamber hoping for an explanation, and had found it empty.
Toward five o'clock he fell asleep, slumbering brokenly and heavily as one does in a railway train in the morning. He dreamed upon the lines of thought that had kept him awake, as was to be expected. But it heightened his uneasiness by an appearance of presentiment. He thought he was again in the little salon of the palace at Rome, where Ely de Carlsberg used to receive him. Suddenly his wife arrived, leading Pierre Hautefeuille by the hand. Pierre stopped, as though smitten with terror, and tried to scream. Suddenly paralysis struck him down, turning his leg rigid, forcing out his left eye, drawing down the corner of his mouth, whence not a sound issued! The suffering caused by this nightmare was so intense that Olivier felt its influence even after he was awake.
He felt so ill that he could not even wait to see his wife before going out. He scribbled a line telling her that he was suffering from a slight headache, and that he had gone out to try and seek relief. He added that he had not liked to disturb her so early in the morning, and that he would be back about nine o'clock. He told her, however, that she was not to await his return should he happen to be late.
He felt that he must steady his nerves by means of a long walk so as to be prepared to cope with the events of the day, which he was convinced would be decisive. Prolonged walks were his invariable remedy in his nervous crises, and he might have been successful this time if, after having walked straight before him for some time, he had not come, about ten o'clock, to the corner of the Rue d'Antibes, the most animated and interesting part of Cannes.
At this hour the long corridor-like street was one mass of sharply outlined shadow, swept and freshened by one of those brisk breezes that impart a touch of crispness to the burning air of morning in Provence. The carriage wheels seemed to roll more rapidly, the horses' hoofs seemed to ring more resonantly upon the white roadway.
Young people were passing to and fro, English for the most part, attending with characteristic thoroughness to their after-breakfast constitutional or their before-lunch exercise. They walked along, overtaking or meeting young girls with whom they chatted gayly, having doubtless arranged the meeting upon the preceding evening. Others were hastening to the station to catch the train for Nice or Monte Carlo. Their manner, bearing, and costume bore that indescribable imprint of a frivolous life of amusement. Olivier was all the more deeply impressed by this from the mere fact that he had formerly been a leader in such an aimless mode of life.
Mornings such as this recurred to his mind. He remembered his life in Rome just two years before. Yes, the sky was of the same shade of blue, the same fresh breeze softened the sun's burning rays in the streets. Carriages rolled along there with the same busy hurry, people walked about wearing the same unconcerned look of amused idleness. And he, Olivier, was one of those promenaders.
He remembered just such a morning when he had gone to meet Ely at some appointed place. He had bought some flowers in the Piazza di Spagna to brighten the room where he was to meet her.
Moved by that mechanical parody of will which remembrance sometimes calls into action, he entered a florist's in this Rue d'Antibes, which had recalled to him the Roman Corso for a moment. Roses, pinks, narcissus, anemones, mimosa, and violets were piled up in heaps on the counter. Everywhere was displayed the glorious prodigality of the soil which, from Hyères to San Remo, is nothing but a vast garden nestling upon the shores of the sea. The shop was filled with a sweet penetrating odor which resembled the perfumes that enveloped them in their hours of love long ago.
The young man carelessly selected a cluster of pinks. He came out again holding them in his hand. And the thought flashed into his mind: "I have no one to whom I can offer them!" As a contrast to this thought the image of his friend and Madame de Carlsberg recurred to him. The thought provoked another sentiment in addition to those of which he had been the prey for some sixteen hours. He felt the most instinctive, the most unreasoning jealousy. He shrugged his shoulders and was just upon the point of flinging the pinks into the road when he thought, in a rush of the ironical self-analysis with which he often found relief for his weary heart:—
"It is your own doing, Georges Dandin," he thought. "I will offer the bouquet to my wife. It will give me an excuse for having gone out without saying good morning."
Berthe was seated before her desk, writing a letter in her long, characterless hand, upon a travelling pad, when he entered the salon of their little apartment at the hotel, to carry out his project of marital gallantry,—something very novel for him. Around the blotter a score of tiny knick-knacks were arranged—a travelling clock, portraits in leather frames, an address book, a note pad—all ready as though she had inhabited the room for several weeks, instead of several hours. She was dressed in a tailor-made costume which she had put on with the idea that her husband would certainly return to show her around Cannes. Then, as he was late, she began to reply to overdue correspondence with an apparent calmness that completely deceived Olivier.
She did not let him see the slightest sign of vexation or reproach when he came in. Her rigid features remained just as cold and fixed as before. The two young people had begun this life of distant politeness in the early weeks of their married life. Of all forms of conjugal existence, this form is the most contrary to nature and the most exceptional in the beginning. The fact that a marriage has been a failure must be an accepted one before it is possible to realize that politeness is the sole remedy for incompatibility of temper. It, at any rate, reduces the difficulties of daily intercourse which is as intolerable when love is lacking as it is sweet and necessary in a happy marriage.
But even in the most inharmonious households this very politeness often conceals in one of the two persons displaying it all the violence of passion, kept in check because misunderstood. Was this the case with Madame du Prat, with this child of twenty-two, with this woman so completely mistress of herself that she seemed to be naturally indifferent? Did she suffer because of her husband without showing it? The future would show. For the moment she was a woman of the world travelling, tranquil in aspect, who held up her forehead for the kiss of her lord and master, without a complaint, without a shade of surprise, even when he began:—
"I am sorry I let the luncheon hour go by. I hope you did not wait for me. I have brought you these flowers in the hope that you will excuse me."
"They are very beautiful," replied Berthe, burying her face in the bouquet and inhaling its subtle perfume.
The brilliant reds of the large flowers, so warm and rich in hue, seemed to accentuate all the coldness of her blond beauty. Her blue eyes had something metal lie in their depth, something steely, as though they had never felt the softening influence of a tear. And yet, from the manner in which she revelled in the musky, pungent odor of the flowers offered her by her husband, it was easy to detect an almost emotional nervousness. But there was no trace of this in the tone with which she asked:—
"Have you been out without eating?—That is very foolish.—Has your headache disappeared?—You must have slept badly last night, for I heard you walking about."
"Yes; I had a little attack of insomnia," replied Olivier, "but it is nothing. The open air on such a beautiful morning has put me all right again.—Have you seen Hautefeuille?" he added.
"No," she replied dryly. "Where could I see him? I have not been out."
"And he has not asked after me?"
"Not that I know of."
"He is perhaps also unwell," continued Olivier. "If you don't mind, I will go and ask after him."
He left the salon before he had finished speaking. The young woman remained with her forehead resting upon her hand in the same attitude. Her cheeks were burning, and although she was not weeping, her heart was swollen with grief, and her breathing was agitated and hurried. She became another woman with Olivier absent. Apart from him she could abandon herself completely to the strange sentiment that her husband inspired in her. She felt a sort of wounded and unrequited affection for him. Her feelings could not seek relief either in reproaches or in caresses. They were, therefore, in a constant state of mute irritation. Under such moral conditions Olivier's visibly partial affection for Pierre could not be very sympathetic to the young woman, particularly since their return to Cannes, which had delayed their return just at the moment she was longing to see her family again.
But there was another reason that caused her to detest this friendship. Like all young women who marry into a different circle from their own, she was mortally anxious about her husband's past. Olivier, in one of those half-confidences that even the most self-contained men fall into in the moment of candor following marriage, had allowed her to see that he had suffered a particularly cruel disillusion in the latter part of his bachelor life. Another half-confidence had enabled her to learn that this incident had taken place at Rome, and that the cause of it was a foreigner of noble birth.
Olivier had completely forgotten these two imprudent phrases, but Berthe treasured them in the recesses of her memory. She had even not been content to brood over the avowals; she had put them side by side, and had completed them by that species of mental mosaic work in which women excel, seizing a detail here, another there, in the most insignificant conversation to add them to the story upon which they are at work. They make deductions in this way that the most scientific observers, the most wily detectives, cannot equal.
Olivier had not the least suspicion of this work going, on in Berthe's mind. Still less did he suspect that she had discovered the first name of this unknown mistress, a name whose very singularity had helped to betray it. It happened in this way: When they were married he had destroyed a number of letters, thrown a lot of faded flowers into the fire with many a portrait. Then—it is the common story of those mentalautos da fé—his hand had trembled in taking up some of these relics, relics of a troubled, unhappy youth, of his youth. And this had made him treasure a portrait of Madame de Carlsberg, in profile, so beautiful, so clear cut, so marvellously like the profile of some antique medallion that he could not bear to burn it. He slipped the portrait into an envelope, and, some one happening to call upon him at this moment, he placed the envelope in a large portfolio in which he carried his papers. Then he forgot all about it. He had never thought about the portrait until he was in Egypt. Again he decided to burn it, and again he could not bear to destroy it.
In the cosmopolitan society into which his diplomatic functions called him it is a frequent thing for women to give their photographs bearing their signatures to their friends, sometimes even to mere acquaintances. Ely's name written at the foot of the photograph, therefore, signified nothing. Berthe would never find the portrait, or if she did all that he would need to do would be to speak of her as an acquaintance. He, therefore, returned the photograph to its hiding-place in the portfolio, and one day the improbable happened in the simplest way in the world. They were staying at Luxor. He happened to be away from the hotel for a short time. Berthe, who during the entire journey kept the accounts of their expenses with a natural and cultivated exactitude, was looking for a bill that her husband had paid, and, without thinking, opened the portfolio. There she found the photograph. But the second half of Olivier's reasoning was faulty. She never thought of questioning him upon the subject. The presence of the portrait among Olivier's papers, the regal and singular beauty of the woman's face, the strangely foreign name, the elegant toilet, the place where the photograph had been taken,—Rome,—all told the young wife that this was the mysterious rival who had taken up such a large place in her husband's past.
She thought about it continually. But she could not speak to Olivier without his thinking that she had spied upon him, that she had deliberately searched among his papers. And besides, what was there to ask him about? She divined all that she did not actually know. So she kept silent, her heart seared with this torturing and fatal curiosity.
Her knowledge was sufficient to make her think, when her husband went out the day before with the most intimate friend of his youth: "They are going to talk about her!" For who could be in Olivier's confidence if not Pierre Hautefeuille? Was any other reason necessary to explain her antipathy? She had noticed Olivier's agitation upon his return from the walk with his friend. And she had said to herself: "They have talked about her." In the night she had heard her husband walking restlessly about in his room, and she had thought: "He is thinking about her." And this was the reason why she remained, now that the door was again closed, alone, her brow resting upon her hand, motionless, with her heart beating as though it would burst, and hating with an intense hatred the friend who knew what she ignored. By dint of concentrated reflection, she had divined a part of the truth. It would have been better for her, better for Olivier, better for all, had she only known it all!
Olivier's heart was also beating rapidly when, after having knocked at Pierre's door, he heard the words, "Come in," spoken by the voice he knew so well and whose sound he had so longed to hear the night before upon this very staircase. Pierre was not yet out of bed, though it was eleven o'clock. He excused himself merrily.
"You see what Southern habits I have fallen into. I shall soon be like one of the Kornows who stays here. Corancez called the other day and found him in bed at five o'clock in the afternoon. 'You know,' said Kornow, 'we are not early risers in Russia.'"
"You do well to take care of yourself," said Olivier, "seeing that you have been so ill."
He had spoken with some embarrassment and a little at random. How he wished his friend would tell him of his nocturnal promenade in reply! But no, a little crimson flush colored Pierre's cheek, and that was all. But it was sufficient to remove all doubt from Olivier's mind as to the reason of his midnight absence. His mind suddenly made a choice between the two alternatives imagined when he had found the room empty. The evidence was overpowering. Pierre had a mistress and he had gone to meet her. He saw the countenance, still so youthful, reposing upon the pillow and bearing the traces of a voluptuous lassitude imprinted upon it. The eyes were sunken, his face had that pallor that follows the excesses of a too exquisite passion, as though the blood were momentarily fatigued, and his lips were curved in a smile that was both languid and yet contented.
While chatting upon one thing and another, Olivier noted all these overwhelming indications. He suffered, almost physically, as he remarked them, and â pang of agonizing pain shot through his heart, a pain that almost wrung a cry from him, at the idea that the caresses which had. left Pierre weary, and still intoxicated, had been lavished upon him by Ely.
With the passionate anxiety of a trembling friendship, of an awakening jealousy, of a longing that refuses to be calmed, of a curiosity that will not slumber, he continued his implacable and silent reasoning. Yes, Pierre had a mistress. And this mistress was a society woman, and not free. The proof of this was the hour fixed for their meeting, in the precautions taken, and, above all, in the strange pride in his beloved secret that the lover had in the depths of his eyes. To meet her he must have had to go through a thicket in some garden. Upon his return, Pierre had flung his soft hat that he had worn during his promenade upon the drawers. Little twigs of shrubbery still remained on the brim, and a faint green line bore witness to a passage through foliage pushed on one side with the head. The young man had placed his jewellery near the hat, and lying in close proximity to the watch and keys and purse, was the ring that Olivier had already noticed, the two serpents interlaced, with emerald heads. Du Prat rose from his chair under the pretext of walking about the room, in reality to take up the ring. It fascinated him with an unhealthy, irresistible attraction. As he passed before the commode, he took up the ring, mechanically and without ceasing to talk, and turned it about in his hand for a second with an indifferent air. He noticed an inscription engraved in tiny letters upon its inner surface.Ora e sempre, "Now and forever." It was a phrase that Prince Fregoso had used in speaking about Greek art, and, as a souvenir of their voyage to Genoa, Ely had had the idea of having the words engraved upon the love talisman she gave to Pierre upon their return. Olivier could not possibly divine the hidden meaning of this tender allusion to hours of ecstatic happiness. He laid down the ring again without any comment. But if any doubt had remained in his mind as to what was causing him such secret anxiety, it would have disappeared before his immediate relief. He found nothing in the ring to suggest, as he had expected, a present from Madame de Carlsberg. On the contrary, the words, in Italian, again suggested the idea that Pierre's mistress might just as easily be Madame Bonnacorsi as the Baroness Ely. He thought, "I am the horse galloping after its shadow once more." And, looking at his friend, who had again crimsoned under Olivier's brief scrutiny, he asked:—
"Is the Italian colony here very large?"
"I know the Marchesa Bonnacorsi and her brother, Navagero.—And I must admit the latter is a sort of Englishman much more English than all the Englishmen in Cannes!"
Hautefeuille reddened still more as he spoke of the Venetian. He guessed what association of ideas had suggested Olivier's question so quickly after having toyed with the ring and after having undoubtedly read the inscription. His friend thought the souvenir was the gift of some Italian. And who could this be if not the Marchesa Andryana? Any one else would have hailed with satisfaction the error that turned his friend's watchful perspicacity in a wrong direction. Hautefeuille, however, was too sensitive not to be pained by a mistake that compromised an irreproachable woman, to whose marriage he had even been a witness.
His embarrassment, his crimson cheeks, a slight hesitation in his voice, were only so many signs to Olivier that he was upon the right path. He felt remorse at having yielded to an almost instinctive impulse. He was afraid he had wounded his friend and he wished to ask his pardon. But to ask pardon for an indiscretion is sometimes only to be more indiscreet. All that he could do, all that he did, was to make up a little for the impression his sarcasm upon the day before must have made upon Hautefeuille if he was in love with the Venetian. Navagero's Anglomania served him as a pretext to caricature in a few words a snob of the same order whom he had met in Rome and he then said, in conclusion:—
"I was in a vile temper yesterday, and I must have appeared somewhat prudish in my fit of sepia.—I have often been amused by the motley society one meets in watering-places, and I have felt all the charm of the women from other countries!—I was younger then.—I remember even having been fond of Monte Carlo!—I am curious to see it again. Suppose we dine there to-day? It would amuse Berthe, and I don't think it would bore me."
He spoke truly. In such mental crises, purely imaginary, the first moments of relief are accompanied by a strange feeling of light-heartedness, which shows itself in an almost infantile gayety, often as unreasoning as the motives from which it springs. During the rest of the time until the train started for Nice Olivier astonished his wife and friend by the change in his temper and conversation, a change that was inexplicable for them. TheOra e sempreof the ring and its sentimentality; all his recollections of the simplicity, of the naïveté of Italians in love; the opulent beauty that Pierre had suggested in comparing Madame Bonnacorsi to a Veronese,—all gave him the idea that his friend was the lover of an indulgent and willing mistress, one who was both voluptuous and gentle. It pleased him to think of this happy passion. He felt as much satisfaction in contemplating it as he had suffered at the thought of the other possibility. And he believed in all good faith that his anxiety of the night before and of the morning had been solely prompted by his solicitude about Hautefeuille, and that his present content grew out of his reassured friendship.
A very simple incident shattered all this edifice of voluntary and involuntary illusions. At Golfe Juan Station, as Hautefeuille was leaning a little out of the window, a voice hailed him. Olivier recognized the indestructible accent of Corancez. The door opened and gave admittance to a lady, no other than the ex-Marchesa Bonnacorsi, escorted by the Southerner. When she saw that Pierre was not alone, Andryana could not help blushing to the roots of her beautiful blond hair, while Corancez, equal to every circumstance, always triumphant, beaming, smiling, performed the necessary introduction. The conjugal seducer had thought of everything, and before leaving for Genoa he had established a meeting-place in one of the villas at Golfe Juan in which to enjoy the prolongation of their secret honeymoon. Andryana had managed to cheat her brother's watchfulness and had gone to meet her husband upon the first day of his arrival. Her happiness began to give her the courage upon which the wily Southerner had counted to bring his enterprise to a successful conclusion, but he had not yet trained her to lie with grace. Hardly was she seated in the compartment when she said to Olivier and his wife, without waiting for any question:—
"I missed the last train, and as Monsieur de Corancez did the same, we decided to walk to Golfe Juan to take the next train instead of waiting wearily in the station at Cannes."
All the time she was speaking Olivier was looking at her little patent leather shoes and the hem of her dress, which gave such a palpable lie to her statement. There was not a speck of dust upon them and her alleged walking companion's gaiters had very evidently not taken more than fifty steps. The married plotters surprised Olivier's look. It completed the Italian's confusion and almost provoked a wild fit of laughter in Corancez, who said merrily:—
"Are you going to Monte Carlo? I will perhaps meet you there. Where shall you dine?"
"I don't know," replied Olivier, with a forbidding tone that was almost rude.
He did not speak another word while the train fled along the coast, flying through tunnel after tunnel. The Southerner, without taking any notice of his old comrade's very apparent bad temper, entered into a conversation with Madame du Prat, which he managed to make almost a friendly one.
"So this is the first time you have been to the gaming-rooms, madame? In that case I shall ask you to let me play as you think best, in case we meet in the rooms.—Good, here is another tunnel.—Do you know what the Americans call this bit of the railway?—Has Miss Marsh not told you, Marchesa?—No?—Well, they call it 'the flute,' because there are only a few holes up above from time to time.—Isn't it pretty? How did you like Egypt, madame?—They say Alexandria is like Marseilles.—But the Marseillais would say they have no mistral.—Hautefeuille, you know mycocher, L'Ainé, as they call him?—About a couple of months ago at Cannes—one day when all the villas were rocking—he said to me: 'Do you like the South, Monsieur Marius?'—'Yes,' I replied, 'if it were not for the wind.' 'Hé, pécheire!' he cried, 'wind! Why, there is never any wind upon this coast, from Marseilles to Nice!' 'What is that?' I asked, pointing to one of the palms on the Croisette, which was so much bent upon one side that it was slipping into the sea. 'Do you call that the wind, Monsieur Marius?' he said; 'why, that is not wind—it is the mistral, which makes Provence so bright and cheerful!'"
"No, Corancez is the Italian's real lover," thought Olivier. He had only needed to see Hautefeuille with Andryana a couple of minutes to be quite convinced. She was certainly not the unknown mistress with whom the young man had passed part of the previous night.
The evident intimacy existing between her and the Southerner, their pleasure together, the too apparent falsehood she had told, the fascination Corancez's showiness had for her, as well as a host of indications, left no room for doubt.
"Yes," he repeated, "there is her lover.—They are worthy of each other. This beautiful, luxuriant woman, who might sell oranges on the Riva dei Schiavoni, is a fitting mate for this handsome chatterbox! Heavens! What an accurate observer he was who said:—'Will you be quiet a minute, Bouches-du-Rhône?'—Just look how complacently Hautefeuille listens to him! He does not seem at all astonished at these people vaunting their adultery in a train side by side with a young married couple. How he has changed!"
With all his scepticism, Olivier was still a slave to current illogical prejudices. While he was young it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to carry on his intrigues under the shelter of pure-minded women who might happen to be friends or relatives of his mistresses. And yet he was astonished that Pierre was not shocked at the idea of Madame Bonnacorsi and Corancez installing themselves comfortably in the same compartment as Monsieur and Madame du Prat! But the principal portion of his reflections had to do with the painful deductions that had been interrupted for a few hours. "No," he thought, "this plump Italian and this mountebank from the South cannot interest him.—If he tolerates them at all, it is because they are in his secret; they represent an easy-going complicity, or they are simply people who know his mistress.—For I am sure he has one. Even though I did not know that he had passed the night away from his room, even had I not seen him in bed this morning, with sunken eyes and pallid complexion, even had I not held in my hands his ring with its inscription, I should only have to look at him now.—He is another man!"
As he soliloquized in this way Olivier watched his friend intently, taking note of every movement with eager avidity, observing the very fluttering of his eyelids, of his respiration, as closely as a savage would note, analyze, and interpret the trampled grass, a footprint in the earth, a broken branch, a crumpled leaf upon the road taken by a fugitive.
He also noticed the weakening of the exclusively Gallic character in Pierre, which he had formerly liked. The young man had been in love with Ely only three months; it was only three weeks since he had learned that she loved him; but by dint of thinking of her all his associations of ideas, all his quotations, had been modified insensibly but strikingly. His conversation was tinged with an exotic quality. He referred to Italian and Austrian matters quite naturally. He who formerly astonished Olivier by his absolute lack of curiosity, now appeared to enjoy with the pleasure of the newly initiated the stories of the cosmopolitan society to which he was attached by secret but none the less living bonds. He had now an interest in it, was accustomed to it, sympathized with it. And yet nothing in his letters had prepared his friend for this metamorphosis.
Olivier continued to seek indications disclosing the identity of the woman he loved in his conversation, in the expression on Pierre's face, in the least important words of the three speakers. Berthe, who had hardly deigned to reply to Corancez's attempts to interest her, now appeared absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful view across the sea. The afternoon was drawing to its close. The sheets of blue and violet water slumbered in the indented coast. The foam tossed about, appearing and disappearing around the big wooded promontories. And on the other side, shutting in the horizon, beyond the deep mountains, were outlined the white sierras of the snowclad peaks.
But the young woman's self-absorption was but in appearance. And if Olivier had not been too startled by the sound of a name suddenly mentioned he must have seen that the name also made a shudder run through his wife.
"Are you dining at the Villa Helmholtz to-morrow?" Madame Bonnacorsi asked Hautefeuille.
"I shall go later in the evening," he replied.
"Do you know whether the Baroness Ely is at Monte Carlo to-day?" asked Corancez.
"No," answered Hautefeuille; "she is dining with the Grand Duchess Vera."
Simple as was the sentence, his voice trembled as he spoke. It would have seemed to him both puerile and ignoble to attempt to hide anything from Olivier, and it was perfectly natural for Corancez, who knew of his relations with Madame de Carlsberg, to ask him about such a trifling matter. But the gift of second sight seems to descend upon lovers. He felt that his friend was watching him with a singular expression in his eyes. And—more extraordinary still—his friend's young wife was also observing him. The knowledge of the tender secret he carried hidden in his heart, a sanctuary of adoration, made the glances so painful to support that insensibly his face disclosed his feelings just sufficiently to enable the two people spying upon him at the moment to find food in his momentary agitation for their thoughts.
"The Baroness Ely?—Why, that is the name on the portrait!"—How was it possible for Berthe to avoid the rapid reflection? And then she thought: "Can this woman be at Cannes? How embarrassed both Olivier and Pierre look!"
As for Olivier, he thought: "He knows all about her movements.—How naturally Corancez asked him about her!—That is just the tone such people adopt in speaking with you about a woman with whom you have aliaison.—And yet, is it possible there is such aliaison?"
Was it possible? The inner voice, stilled for a moment by the words engraved on the ring, again began to be heard. It replied that aliaisonbetween Ely and Pierre was not only possible; it was probable; it was even certain.—And still the indisputable facts to support this feeling of certitude were far from numerous. But others began to be gathered. In the first place, Pierre disclosed a secret to his friend in the name of Corancez, who had not been blind to the coldness of his old schoolfellow.
"You were not very pleased to see Corancez walk into our compartment. He felt it. Now admit it."
"That is one of the customs of this region," replied Olivier. "I simply think he might have spared me this association with my wife. All the better for him if Madame Bonnacorsi is his mistress, but for him to present her to us in the way he did is, I think, rather cool."
"She is not his mistress," replied Hautefeuille. "She is his wife. He has just asked me to tell you. I will explain all about it."
Pierre continued with the story, in a few hurried words, of the extraordinary secret marriage, of Navagero's tyranny over his sister, of the resolution the lovers had taken, of the departure of them all upon the yacht, and of the ceremony in the ancient Genoese palace. To make this disclosure he had seized the moment, in the vestibule of the restaurant, when Berthe was taking off her veil and cloak a few paces away, and while they themselves were handing their overcoats to the cloak-room attendant. It was the first minute they had had alone since the arrival of the train.
"But, with all that to do, you cannot have had time to see Genoa?" said Olivier, as his wife approached.
"Oh, yes. The sea was so rough that we did not return until next day."
"They passed the night together there," thought Olivier. Even if they had passed it on the boat, his conclusion would have been the same. And then, just as though Fate were obstinately trying to dissipate his last lingering doubts, Hautefeuille stopped as they were traversing the restaurant to secure a table. Among the mingled crowd of diners Pierre saluted four people seated round a table more richly appointed than the others and embellished with rare flowers.
"Did you not recognize your former cotillon partner?" he asked Olivier, when he was once more with the Du Prats.
"Yvonne de Chésy? How little she has changed.—Yes, she is very young," replied Olivier.
Before him there was a large mirror, in which he saw reflected all the picturesque confusion of the fashionable restaurant. He could see the tables surrounded by women of the highest society and women of the most dubious, in gorgeous toilets and coquettish bonnets, elbowing each other, chatting to their companions, men who knew the women of both classes. The position in which he was placed gave him a view of Yvonne's profile. In front of her was her husband, no longer the dazzling, rattlebrained Chésy of theJenny, but a nervous, anxious, absent-minded creature, the exact type of the ruined player who amid the most brilliant surroundings is wondering whether or not he will leave the place to blow out his brains.
Between this poor being, visibly ill at ease, and the laughing young wife, who never dreamed of anything so tragic, was seated an individual of ignoble physiognomy, flabby-cheeked, with double chin, piercing, inquisitorial, brutal eyes set in a full-blooded countenance. He had the rosette of the Legion d'Honneur at his buttonhole, and he was paying manifest court to the young wife.
Between Yvonne and Chésy, a second woman was placed. At first Olivier could only see the back of her head. Then he noticed that this woman turned some three or four times to look toward their table at them. There was something so strange in the action of the unknown, the attention she paid to the group in which Hautefeuille and Olivier were was in such total contrast to the reserved expression on her face and to her quiet bearing, that Olivier had for a moment a flash of fresh hope. What if this woman, so pretty, so refined, with an expression that was so gentle and interesting, were Pierre's beloved mistress? As though absent-mindedly, he asked:—
"Who are the Chésys dining with? Who is the man with the decoration?"
"It is Brion, the financier," replied Hautefeuille. "The charming woman in front of him is his wife."
Again Olivier looked in the mirror. This time he surprised Madame Brion with her eyes evidently fixed upon him. His memory, so tenacious of all touching his sojourn in Rome, awoke and reminded him of the time he heard the name last, reminded him in a souvenir that brought back the name as pronounced by an unforgetable voice. He pictured himself again in a garden walk at the Villa Cœlimontana, talking to Ely about his friendship for Pierre and entering into a discussion with her such as they often had.
He declared that friendship, that pure, proud sentiment, that mixture of esteem and affection, of absolute confidence and sympathy, could not exist except between man and man. She averred that she had a friend upon whom she could depend just as he could upon Hautefeuille. And she had then spoken of Louise Brion. It was Ely's friend who was now dining a few feet away. And if she was regarding him with that singular persistence, it was because she knew.—What did she know?—Did she know that he had been Madame de Carlsberg's lover?—Without doubt that was it. Did she know that Pierre was her lover now?
This time the idea became such a violent, such an imperious obsession that Olivier felt he could no longer stand it. Besides, was there not a means close at hand of learning the truth, and that immediately? Had not Corancez told them that he should finish the evening in the Casino? And he must certainly know, seeing that he had passed the winter with Hautefeuille and Madame de Carlsberg.
"I will ask him about it openly, frankly," said Olivier to himself. "Whether he replies or not, I shall be able to read what he knows in his eyes.—He is so stupid!"
Then he felt ashamed of such a proceeding, as though of a frightful indelicacy in regard to his friend.
"That is what comes of a woman stealing in between two men. They become vile at once!—No, I will not try to get the facts of the case from Corancez. And yet—"
Was Corancez stupid? It was impossible to be more mistaken about the wily Southerner. Unfortunately, he was at times too astute. And in the present case, his excessive subtlety made him commit the irreparable fault of definitely enlightening Olivier. For the scruples of this latter were, alas! powerless to withstand the temptation. After all he had thought, in spite of all he felt so clearly, he succumbed to the fatal desire to know. And when, about ten o'clock, he encountered Corancez in one of the rooms of the Casino, he asked him abruptly:—
"Is the Baroness Ely, of whom you spoke in the train, the Madame de Carlsberg I knew in Rome?—She was the wife of an Austrian archduke."
"The very same," responded Corancez, saying inwardly: "Hallo! Hautefeuille has not said anything.—Du Prat knew her in Rome? Heaven grant he has no feeling in that quarter, and that he will not go chattering to Pierre!"
Then, aloud, he said:—
"Why do you ask?"
"For no reason," replied Olivier.
There was a short silence. Then he said:—
"Is not my dear friend Hautefeuille somewhat in love with her?"
"Ah! Now for it," thought the Southerner. "He'll be sure to learn all about it sooner or later. It had better be sooner. It will prevent mistakes."
And he replied:—
"Is he in love with her? I saw it from the beginning. He simply worships her."
"And she?" asked Olivier.
"She?" echoed Corancez. "She is madly in love with him!"
And he congratulated himself upon his perspicacity, saying to himself:—
"At any rate, I feel more at ease now. Du Prat will not commit any folly."
For once the Southerner had not realized the irony of his own thoughts. He was as naïve as his secret wife, simple-minded Andryana, who, discovering Madame du Prat at one of the roulette tables, replied to the questions of the young wife without noticing her trouble, answering with the most imprudent serenity.
"You were talking about a Baroness Ely in the train.—What an odd name!"
"It is a diminutive of Elizabeth, and is common enough in Austria."
"Then she is an Austrian?"
"What! You don't know her? It is Madame de Carlsberg, the morganatic wife of the Archduke Henry Francis.—You are sure to meet her in Cannes. And you will see for yourself how beautiful and good and sympathetic she is."
"Did she not live in Rome for some time?" continued the young wife.
How her heart beat as she asked the question! The Venetian replied in the most natural tone:—
"Yes, for a couple of winters. She was not on good terms with her husband then, and they lived according to their own guise. Things are a little better now, although—"
And the good creature was discreetly silent.
The sentiment of perfect happiness that Ely experienced when she was convinced, in talking to Pierre, that Olivier had not disclosed anything to his friend did not continue long. She knew her former lover too well not to understand the constant danger threatening her. She knew that he still remembered her, and she realized the intensity of morbid passion of which the unhappy man was capable. It was impossible that he should not feel toward her now as in the past, that he should not judge her in the present as during the time of their liaison, with a savage cruelty allied to a suspicion that had so wounded her. She knew how dearly he loved Hantefeuille. She knew how solicitous, how jealous that friendship was. No, he would not suffer her to possess his beloved companion without a struggle, were it only to save him from her whom he judged so hardly.
Besides her tact, the intuition of the former mistress was not to be deceived. When the man whom she knew to suffer, as from a malady, from a sensuality that was almost ferocious, should learn the truth, his worst, most hideous jealousy would be aroused into action. Had she not counted upon this very thing in the first place when she had nourished a scheme of vengeance that to-day filled her with shame?
All these ideas crowded into her mind immediately Hautefeuille left her. Again, as after his first visit, she accompanied him as far as the threshold of the hothouse, clasping his hand and leading him through the salon plunged in darkness, with a feeling of terror and yet of pride when she felt that the hand of the young man, indifferent to danger, never trembled. She shuddered at the first contact of the cold night air. A last embrace, their lips united in a yearning final kiss, the kiss of farewell,—always heartrending between lovers, for fate is treacherous and misfortune flies swiftly,—a few minutes during which she stood listening to his steps resounding as he walked down the deserted pathways of the garden, and then she returned to her room, returned to find the place, now cold, where her beloved had reposed in her solitary bed. In the sudden melancholy mood caused by separation her intelligence awoke from its vision of happiness and forgetfulness, awoke to a sense of reality. And she was afraid.
Here fear was intense, but short-lived. Ely descended from a line of warriors. She was capable of carrying out actively an energetic policy. She could think out clearly a situation. Resourceful and proud natures like hers have no time for the feverish creations of an unsound imagination enfeebled by terror. She was one of those who dare to look upon approaching danger. Thus in the first flush of her dawning passion for Hautefeuille, as her confession to Madame Brion proved, she had foreseen with a clearness that was almost a certainty the struggle that would take place between her love and Olivier's friendship for Pierre.
But this power of courageous realization allows such natures to measure the danger once they are face to face with it. They lay bare, with the greatest clearness, the facts of the crisis through which they pass. They have the strength that comes from daring to hope, from having an exact idea of the danger in moments that appear desperate. Thus though Ely de Carlsberg was a victim to a return of her awful anxiety, after Hautefeuille's departure, when she again laid down her head upon the pillow, though she suffered from a disquietude that kept her awake, when she arose the following morning she again felt confidence in the future. She had hope!
She had hope, and for motives that she saw clearly, just as the General, her father, used to see a battlefield laid out in imagination definitely and accurately. She had hope, in the first place, in Du Prat's love for his wife. She had felt how refreshing to the heart is the love of a young, pure nature innocent of the world. She had experienced it herself. She knew how the moral nature is restored, reformed, re-created, is purified by contact with the belief in the good, the magnanimity of generous impulses, the nobility of a broad charity. She knew how such an association washes away all shameful bitterness, all evil sentiment, all traces of vice. Olivier had married the girl of his choice. She loved him and he loved her. Why should he not have felt all the beneficent influence of youth and purity? And in that case where would he find the strength to wreck the happiness of a woman whom he had loved, whom he judged severely, but in whose sincerity he could not fail to believe?
Ely had this basis for her hope. She trusted in the truth of her passion for Pierre, in the evidence that would confront Olivier of his friend's happiness. She said to herself: "Once his first moment of suspicion is passed, he will begin to observe, to notice. He will see that with Pierre I have been free from any of the faults that he used to magnify into crimes, that I have been neither proud nor frivolous nor coquettish."—She had been so single-minded, so upright, so true in her love! Like all people possessed by a complete happiness, she thought it impossible for any one to misunderstand the truth of her heart.
Then, again, she trusted in the honor of both—in Pierre's, to begin with. Not only was she sure he would not speak of her, she knew in addition that he would use all his strength to prevent his secret being suspected by even his most intimate friend. Then she trusted in Olivier. She knew him to be of a scrupulous delicacy in all things, to be careful in his speech, to be a perfect gentleman! He would certainly never speak. To utter the name of one who had once been his mistress when their relations had been conducted under certain unrevealed conditions would be an infraction of a tacit agreement, as sacred as his word of honor, would be to be disgraced in his own eyes. Olivier had too much self-respect to be guilty of such a fault, unless it were in a moment of maddening suffering. This condition was lacking in his case. He could never have this excuse under the circumstances in which he returned, married and happy, after an absence of months and months, almost two years! No, there could not arrive this crisis in his life now. And, above all, he would never cause his friend to suffer.—Besides—and this was the final motive upon which Ely's hopes were based, was the most solid of all, and only that proved how thoroughly she knew Olivier—if he spoke of her to Pierre it would place a woman between them, it would trouble the ideal serenity of their affection, which had never been dimmed by a cloud. Even should he lose his self-respect, Olivier would never lose his respect for his friendship.
It was in such thoughts that the unhappy woman sought relief upon the day following Olivier's arrival in Cannes. It was the very day that the young man's suspicions took bodily form, the day when all indications pointed to one thing only, accumulated around him and were condensed into absolute certainty by the well-meant but irreparable words spoken by Corancez!
Ely de Carlsberg hoped, and her reason confirmed her hopes. But that very same reason was to destroy, bit by bit, the ground for hoping in the week following Olivier's return. And this, also, without her once meeting him. She dreaded nothing so much as meeting him face to face, and yet she would have preferred an explanation, even a stormy one, to this total lack of intercourse. That they did not meet was evidently an intentional act upon the part of the young man, for it was an impoliteness that could not be accidental.
There was only one way left for Ely to learn the truth, the talks that she had with Hautefeuille. How her suffering was intensified, how her agony was increased! Only from Hautefeuille could she hear of Olivier during the week. Through Hautefeuille she followed the tragedy being enacted in the heart of her former lover. To Pierre it was quite natural to tell his dear confidante of all the anxiety that his friend caused him. He never dreamt that the least important detail was full of significance for her. In every conversation with Pierre during the first eight days she descended deeper and deeper into the dangerous abyss of Olivier's thoughts. She saw a possible catastrophe approaching from the first,—a possible catastrophe that became a probability, even a certainty, at last.
The first blow to Ely's hope was dealt upon the day following the dinner at Monte Carlo, when she again saw Pierre, not this time in the quiet intimacy of a nocturnal meeting, but at the big soirée which had been spoken about in the train. It was late when he arrived. The salons were quite full, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.
"Olivier insisted upon keeping me," he said, excusing the lateness to Madame de Carlsberg. "I began to think he would never let me go."
"He wanted to keep you for himself," she replied; "it is so long since he saw you."
With a beating heart she waited to hear if Du Prat had manifested any repugnance when he knew that Pierre was coming to her house.
"You must not wound the susceptibility of an old friend."
"He is not susceptible," replied Pierre. "He knows well enough how attached I am to him. He kept me talking about his married life."
And, he added, sadly:—
"He is so unhappy! His wife is so badly suited to him. She does not understand him He does not love her and she does not love him.—Ah! it is frightful!"
So the rejuvenation of Olivier's heart by the love of a girl, the sentimental renewal upon which his former mistress had counted, was only one of her illusions. The man was unhappy in the very marriage in which she would have liked to see a sure guarantee of forgetfulness, the effacing of both their pasts. The revelation was so full of menace to the future of her own happiness that she felt she must know more, and she kept Pierre in a corner of the little salon, questioning him. They were near the foot of the private staircase leading to her room. By one of those contrasts that re-vivify in two lovers the fiery sweetness of their secret this salon, traversed by them with peril, in complete obscurity, hand clasping hand, this little salon, witness of their secret meetings, was now blazing with light, and the crowd moving about gave, as it does to all the fêtes on the Riviera, the sensation of a worldly aristocracy.
It served as a passage between the brilliantly lighted hothouse and the rooms of the ground-floor, decorated with shrubs and flowers and overflowing with guests. The prettiest women in the American and English colonies were there, extravagantly displaying their wealth of jewels, talking and laughing aloud, with the splendid complexion that characterizes the race. And mingling with them were Russians and Italians and Austrians, all looking alike at the first glance: all different at the second. The ostentations elegance of toilets, all daringly bright-colored, spoke loudly of the preponderance of foreign taste.
Evening coats were sprinkled about among these women, worn by all the authentic princes in the wintering-place and also by the society men of the place. All the varieties of the kind were represented there. The most celebrated of sportsmen, renowned for his success as a pigeon shot, elbowed an explorer who had come to Provence in search of rest after five years spent in "Darkest Africa," and both were chatting with a Parisian novelist of the first rank, a Norman Hercules with a faunlike face, contented smile, and laughing eyes, who a few winters later was to die a death worse than death, was to see the wreck of his magnificent intellect.
This evening an air of gayety appeared to hang over the salons, lit by innumerable electric lamps and ventilated by the balmy breath of early spring. In a few more days this society would be dispersed to the four corners of the continent. Did the fête owe its animation to this sentiment of a season that was almost finished, to the approach of an adieu soon to be spoken?
In any case this spring seemed to have penetrated even as far as the master of the house—the Archduke Henry Francis—in person. It was his first appearance in his wife's salon since the terrible day when he came there in search of Verdier to take him off almost by force to the laboratory. Those who had assisted at his cavalier entrance upon that occasion, and who were again present this evening, Madame de Chésy, for example, Madame Bonnacorsi, Madame Brion, who had come from Monte Carlo for two days, and Hautefeuille, were astounded by the change.
The tyrant was in one of his rare moments of good humor, when it was impossible to dislike him. He went about from group to group with a kindly word for all. In his quality of Emperor's nephew, and one who had almost ascended the throne, he had the princely gift of an infallible memory for faces. This enabled him to call by their names people who had been presented to him only once. And he joined to this quality another, one that disclosed him to be a man of superior calibre, an astonishing power of talking with each upon his special subject. To a Russian general, famous for having built at great peril a railroad through an Asiatic desert, he spoke of the Trans-Caspian plains with the knowledge of an engineer, coupled to a thorough familiarity with hydrography. He recited a verse from the Parisian novelist's first work, a volume of poems now too little known. With a diplomatist who had been for a long time in the United States he discussed the question of tariffs, and immediately afterward recommended the latest model of gun, with all the knowledge of a maker, to the celebrated pigeon shot. He talked with Madame Bonnacorsi about her ancestors in Venice, like an archæologist from the St. Mark library; with Madame de Chésy about her costumes, like some habitué of the Opéra, and had a kindly and private word for Madame Brion about the Rodier firm and the rôle it was playing in an important Austrian loan.
This prodigious suppleness of intellect, assisted by such a technical memory, made him irresistibly seductive when he chose to be winning.
He had thus arrived, amid general fascination, at the last salon, when he saw his wife talking with Hautefeuille. At this sight, as though it were an additional pleasure to surprise Elytête-à-têtewith the young man, his blue eyes, which shone so brightly in his ruddy face, became even more brilliant still. Advancing toward the pair, who became silent when they saw him approaching, he said in an easy manner to the Baroness, the friendliness of the tone accentuating the irony of the words:—
"I do not see your friend Miss Marsh this evening. Is she not here?"
"She told me she would come," replied Madame de Carlsberg. "She is perhaps indisposed."
"Have you not seen her to-day?" asked the Prince.
"Yes, I saw her this morning.—Will Your Highness tell me why you ask the question?"
"Simply because I am deeply interested in everybody who interests you," replied the Archduke.
As he uttered the insolently mocking phrase, the eyes of the terrible man shot a glance at Hautefeuille that was so savage that he felt an almost magnetic thrill shoot through him. It was only a flash and then the Prince was in another group talking, this time about horses and the last Derby with the Anglomaniac Navagero, without paying any more attention to the two lovers, who separated after a couple of minutes, heavy with unuttered thoughts.
"I must go and speak to Andryana," said Madame de Carlsberg. "I know the Prince too well not to be sure that his good temper hides some cruel vengeance. He must have found some way of embroiling Florence with Verdier.—Good-by for the present.—And don't be cast down over the misery of your friend's married life.—I assure you there are worse."
As she spoke, she gently waved a big fan of white feathers. The perfume she preferred, the perfume that the young man associated with the sweetest emotions, was waved abroad by the feathers. She gently bowed as a sign of farewell, and her soft brown eyes closed with the tender look of intelligence that falls upon a lover's heart like an invisible kiss.
But at that moment Pierre was unable to feel its sweetness. Again he had experienced, in the presence of the Archduke, the pain that is one of the frightful penalties of adultery; to see the beloved one ill-treated by the man who has the right because he is the husband, see it, and to be unable to defend her. He watched her going away now with the bearing of a beautiful, graceful queen, so proudly regal in her costume of pink moiré shot with silver. Upon the beloved visage which he saw in profile as she crossed the room, he discerned traces of profound melancholy, and again he pitied her with all his heart for the bitterness of her married life. He never dreamt that the Archduke's sarcasm left Madame de Carlsberg completely indifferent, nor that the relations of Miss Marsh and Verdier did not interest her sufficiently to cause such a complete feeling of depression. No. It was this idea that was weighing upon the mind of the young woman, that was lying upon her heart like lead in the midst of the fête: "Olivier is unhappily married! He is miserable. He has not gained that gentleness of heart that he would have done had he loved his wife.—He is still the same.—So he hates me yet.—It was enough for him to learn that Pierre was to pass the evening with me for him to try to prevent him from coming here.—And yet he does not know all.—When he does!"
And hoping against hope, she forced herself to think, to say, to repeat: "Well! When he does know he will see that I am sincere; that I have not made his friend unhappy; that I never will make him suffer."
It was also Pierre who awoke her from the second illusion that Olivier would be touched by the truth and purity of her love. Three days passed after the soirée, during which the young man did not see his mistress. Cruel as were these separations, Ely judged it wisest to prolong them during Du Prat's stay. She hoped to make up for it later; for she counted upon passing the long weeks of April and May at Cannes with Hautefeuille, weeks that were so mild, so covered with flowers, so lonely upon the coast and among the deserted gardens. The idea of making a voyage to Italy, where they could meet, as they had done at Genoa, in surroundings full of charm, also haunted her. The prospect of certain happiness, if she could escape from the danger menacing her, gave her strength to support the insupportable; an absence that contained all the possibilities of presence, the torture of so great a love, of being so near and yet not seeing each other.
It was the one way, she believed, of preventing suspicion from awakening in Olivier. After these three weary days of longing, she appointed a meeting with Pierre one afternoon in the garden of the Villa Ellenrock, which recalled to both an hour of exquisite happiness. While her carriage rolled toward the Cap d'Antibes, she looked out upon the foliage of the climbing roses, peering over the coping of the walls, the branches, already long and full of leaves, falling under their heavy load, instead of standing out strong and boldly, and casting heavy, deep shadows. A conflagration of full-blown roses blazed upon the branches. At the foot of the silvery olive trees, a thick growth of young wheat covered the loose soil of the fields. All these were the visible signs that the year had passed from winter to springtide in the three weeks. And a shudder of melancholy shot through the young woman at the sight. It was as though she felt the time slipping away, bearing her happiness with it. In spite of a sky, daily warmer and of a softer azure; in spite of the blue sea, of the odors permeating the soft, balmy air; in spite of the fascination of the flowers, blooming all around, as she strolled down the alleys, still bordered with cinerarias, anemones, and pansies, she felt that her heart was not as light as when she had flown to the last rendezvous. She perceived Hautefeuille, in profile, awaiting her under the branches of the big pine, at the foot of which they had rested. She felt at the first glance that he was no longer the lover of that time, enraptured with an ecstatic, perfect joy, and without a hidden thought. It seemed as though a shade hovered before his eyes and enveloped his thoughts. It could not be that he was vexed with her. It could not be that his friend had revealed the dreaded secret. And yet Pierre was troubled about Olivier. He admitted it at once before Ely had time to question him.
"I cannot think," he said, "what has come between us. I have the strange impression that certain things in me irritate him, unnerve him, displease him.—He is vexed with me about trifles that he would not even have noticed formerly; as, for example, my friendship with Corancez. Would you believe it? He reproached me yesterday for having witnessed the ceremony at Genoa, as though it were a crime.—And all because we met poor Marius and his wife in the train at Golfe Juan yesterday!
"'Our nest is built there,' Corancez said to me, adding—these were his very words—that 'the bomb was going to explode,' meaning that Andryana was going to speak to her brother.—I told the story to Olivier to amuse him, and he flew into a temper, going so far as to talk of its being 'blackmail,' as though one could blackmail that abominable creature Navagero!—I replied to him, and he answered me.—You cannot imagine in what terms he spoke to me about myself, about the danger that I ran in frequenting the society of this place, of the unhappiness my change of tastes and ideas gave him.—He could not have talked more seriously had Cannes been tenanted by a gang of thieves who wished to enroll me in their ranks.—It is inexplicable, but the fact remains. He is pained, wounded, uneasy because I am happy here. Can you understand such madness in a friend whom I love so sincerely, who loves me so tenderly?"
"That is the very reason why you must not feel angry," replied Ely. "When one suffers, one is unjust. And he is unhappy in his married life. It is so hard to have made a mistake in that way."
She spoke in this way, prompted by a natural jealousy. Her passionate, ungovernable nature was too proud, too noble to employ the method of secretly poisoning the mind of husband or lover against friendships that are disliked, a method that wives and mistresses exercise with a sure and criminal knowledge. But to herself she said:—
"Olivier has discovered that Pierre loves some one. Does he suspect that it is I?"
The reply to the question was not a doubtful one. Ely had too often noticed, when in Rome, the next to infallible perspicacity displayed by Olivier in laying bare the hidden workings of the love intrigues going on all around them. Although she continued, in spite of all, to hope in his honor, she dreaded, with a terror that became daily more intense, the moment when she would acquire the certitude that he knew. These two beings began to draw closer together by means of Hautefeuille, began to measure each other's strength, to penetrate each other's minds, even before the inevitable shock precipitated them into open conflict.
Again it was Pierre who brought to his suffering mistress the proof for which she longed and which she feared.—It was the seventh night after Olivier's arrival, and she was awaiting Pierre at half-past eleven, behind the open door of the hothouse. She had only seen him in the afternoon long enough to fix this nocturnal meeting which made her pulse throb as with a happy fever. The afternoon had been cloudy, heavy, stormy. And the opaque dome of clouds stretched over the sky hid every ray of moonlight, every twinkling star. Heavy lightning glowed upon the horizon at moments, lighting up the garden, disclosing everything to the eyes of the young woman who stooped forward to see the white alleys bordered with the bluish agaves, the lawns with their flowering shrubs, the green stems of the bamboos, a bunch of parasol pines with their red trunks whose dark foliage stood out for a moment in the sudden flash of light followed immediately by a darker, more impenetrable shadow. Was it nervousness caused by the approaching tempest, for a heavy gust of hot wind swept across the garden, announcing the advent of a hurricane, or was it remorse at the idea of exposing her friend to the violence of the storm when he parted from her, that made Ely already anxious, troubled, and unhappy? When she at last saw Hautefeuille, by the light of the cold and livid lightning, passing along the fringe of bamboos, her heart beat with anxiety.
"Heavens!" she said to him, "you ought not to have come upon such a night.—Listen."
Big drops of rain began to fall upon the glass of the hothouse. Two formidable thunderclaps were heard in the distance. And now the drops of rain became more and more general, so that around the two lovers under the protecting dome of glass there was a continuous, sonorous rattle that almost drowned the sound of their voices.
"You see our good genius protects us," answered the young man, pressing her passionately to his heart, "since I got here just in time.—And, besides, I should have come through the tempest without noticing it.—I have been too unhappy this evening. I felt I must see you to comfort me, to help me."
"You look disturbed," she replied. And touching his face in the darkness with her soft, caressing hands, she added, her voice changing: "Your cheeks are burning and there are tears in your eyes.—What is the matter?"
"I will tell you presently," Pierre answered, "when I have been comforted by feeling that you are near me.—God! How I love you! How I love you!" he repeated with an intensity in which she discerned suffering.
Then, later, when they were both in the solitude of her room, he said:—
"I think Olivier is going mad. These last few days he has been even stranger than ever.—This evening, for example, he regarded me with a look that was so curious, so insistent, so penetrating, that I feel positively uneasy. I have not reposed any confidence in him, and yet I had the impression that he read in me — not your name.—Ah! happily, not that—not that!—but how am I to explain it?—my impatience, my desire, my passion, my happiness, all my sensations? And I had a feeling that my sentiments filled him with horror.—Why?—Is he not unjust? Have I taken away from our friendship in loving you? I was very miserable about it. Finally at ten o'clock I bade good night to him and his wife.—A quarter of an hour later some one knocked at my door. It was Olivier.—He said, 'Would you mind coming for a walk? I feel that I cannot sleep until I have taken a stroll.'—I replied, 'I am sorry I cannot; I have some letters to write.' I had to find some excuse. He looked at me again with the same expression that he had had during dinner.—And all at once he began to laugh. I cannot describe his laugh to you. There was something so cruel in it, so frightfully insulting, so impossible to tolerate. He had not spoken a word, and yet I knew that he was laughing at my love. I stopped him, for I felt a sort of fury rising in me. I said, 'What are you laughing at?'—He replied, 'At a souvenir.' His face became perfectly pale. He stopped laughing just as brusquely as he had begun. I saw that he was going to burst into tears, and before I could ask him anything he had said 'Adieu' and gone out of the room."
There is a necessity for conflict in the natural, logical issue of certain situations, a necessity so inevitable that even those who feel they will be destroyed by it accept the struggle when it comes without seeking to avoid it. It is thus, in public life, that peoples go to war, and in private life rivals accept the duel with a passive fatalism that often contradicts their complete character. They recognize that they have been caught in the orbit of action of a power stronger than human will.