And he added:—
"Do not ask me anything more."
Pierre looked at him. The fever of such an interrogation began to scorch him again. A question was burning his lips. He longed to ask, "Did you speak of your past? Did you speak of your love?"
Then his native nobility recoiled before the baseness of such a degrading inquisition. He became silent and began to walk up and down the room, the living scene of a struggle which his friend watched in mortal anguish. The questions that he had just put brought Ely present before him with a too cruel vividness. They had reanimated the sentiments Olivier's manly and apologizing appeal had exorcised a few minutes before. Love, despising, disabused, vilified, and cruel, but still love, struggled with friendship in his aching heart. Suddenly the young man stopped. He stamped upon the floor, shaking his clinched fist at the same time. He uttered a single "Ah!" full of repulsion, of disgust, and of deliverance, and then, looking straight into his friend's eyes, he said:—
"Olivier, give me your word of honor that you will not see this woman again, that you will not receive her if she comes to see you, that you will not answer if she writes to you, that you will never ask after her no matter what may happen, never, never, never."
"I give you my word of honor," said Olivier.
"And I," said Hautefeuille, with a deep sigh that betrayed both despair and relief, "I give you my word of honor to do the same, that I will never see her again, that I will never write to her.—There is not room for you and her in my heart. I feel it now, and I cannot lose you."
"Thank God!" said Olivier, taking his friend's hand. An inexpressible emotion overcame him, a mixed feeling of joy, of gratitude, and of terror—joy because of their beloved friendship, gratitude for the delicacy which had made Pierre save him the pangs of the most horrible jealousy, terror of the terrible agony imprinted upon his friend's face as he made his vow of self-sacrifice.
Hautefeuille seemed eager to escape from the room where such a terrible scene had taken place, and opened the door.
"You have a patient upstairs," he said. "You ought to be near her. She must get better quickly so that we can go away, to-morrow if possible, but the next day at the very latest.—I will come with you and will await you in the salon."
The two friends had hardly stepped into the corridor when they were met by a servant of the hotel. The man had a letter upon a tray, which he held out to Pierre, saying:—
"The bearer is waiting for a reply, Monsieur Hautefeuille."
Hautefeuille took the letter and looked at the superscription. Then, without opening it, he handed it to Olivier, who recognized Ely's bold handwriting. He returned the letter to Pierre and asked:—
"What are you going to do?"
"What I promised," replied Hautefeuille.
Re-entering his room, he put the unopened letter in another envelope. He then wrote on it Madame de Carlsberg's name and the address of her villa. Returning to the corridor he handed it to the servant, saying:—
"There is the reply."
And when he again took Olivier's arm he felt it trembled more than his own did.
Ely awaited Pierre's reply to her letter without apprehension. Immediately Olivier had left she wrote, impelled by an instinctive, an irresistible desire to refresh and purify herself in Hautefeuille's loyal, devoted tenderness, after the cruel scene from which she issued broken, humiliated, and soiled. Not for a single minute did she do Olivier the injustice of suspecting that he would, even though possessed by the most hateful love, try to destroy the image that Pierre had of her—an image that bore no resemblance to her in the past, but now so true—so true to the inner nature of her present being.
She said nothing in this letter to her lover that she had not told him twenty times before—that she loved him, then again that she loved him, and, finally, that she loved him. She was sure that he would also reply with words of love, already read and re-read a score of times, but always new and welcome as an untasted happiness. When she received the envelope upon which Pierre had written her address, she weighed it in her hands, with the joy of a child. "How good he is to send me such a long letter!" And she tore it open in an ecstasy of love that was at once changed to terror. She looked first at her own letter with the seal unbroken and then again at the envelope bearing her name. Was it possible that such an insult had really been paid her by "her sweet," as she called her lover, with the affectation common to all sentiments? Could such an insult really have come from Pierre, who that very night had clasped her to his bosom with so much respect, mingled with his idolatry, with piety almost in his passion?
Alas, doubt was not possible! The address was in the young man's handwriting. It was certainly he who returned the letter to his mistress without even opening it. Following the terrible scene of a short time before, this refusal to hear from her, this return of her letter, signified a rupture. The motive of it was indicated to Ely's terrified eyes with hideous plainness. It was impossible for her to guess the exact truth. She could not divine that it had been brought about by Berthe du Prat's jealousy,—a jealousy awakened by so many suspicions which started the long-continued inner tragedy and ended in the irresistible impulse which drove the young wife to make the most desperate appeal to the most intimate friend of her husband, to make an appeal that revealed all to him. It was a succession of chances that nothing could have foretold.
On the other hand, a voluntary indiscretion on the part of Olivier appeared so probable, so conformable to the habitual meanness of wounded masculine pride! Ely never thought of any other cause, never sought any other motive for the crushing revolution wrought in Pierre's soul, of which she had before her a mute proof, more indisputable, more convincing than any phrase. The details of the catastrophe appeared before her simply and logically. Olivier had left her frantic with anger and desire, with jealousy and humiliated pride. In an excess of semi-madness he had failed of his honor. He had spoken! What had he said? All?—
At the mere idea the blood froze in the poor woman's veins. From the minute when, upon the quay of the old port at Genoa, Hautefeuille had held out to her the despatch announcing Olivier's return, she had traversed so many horrible hours that it appeared as though in her thoughts she must have become accustomed to the danger, that she must have admitted the possibility of this event. But, when in love, the heart possesses such stores of confidence, united to a keen power of self-deception, that she came face to face with the actuality as unprepared, unresigned, as unwittingly as we all meet death.—Ah! if she could only see Pierre at once. If she could only be alone with him, could only talk to him, could only plead her cause, defend herself, explain to him all she once had been and why, show him what she had now become and the reason, tell him of her struggles, of her longing to unbosom herself to him at the beginning, and that she had only kept silence through fear of losing him, through a trembling terror of wounding him in his tenderest feelings! If she could only see him to show him that love had caused it all, that it was love!—
Yes, see him! But where? When? How? At the hotel? He would not receive her. Olivier was there watching, guarding him. See him at her own villa? He would not come there again. Make a rendezvous with him? She could not. He would not even open her letter! She felt in the depths of her nature, which had remained so primitive and unrestrained, all the savage spirit of her Black Mountain ancestors rebelling against the bonds that tied her. With all her wretchedness she could not keep down a movement of reckless violence. Her powerless rage found vent—it was the only outlet possible—in a letter written to her cowardly denunciator, Olivier. She despised him at this moment for all the faith that she had felt in his loyalty. She loathed him with the same energy that she loved Pierre.
This second letter was useless and unworthy of herself. But to give free course to her rage against Olivier was to give relief to her passion for his friend. Besides—for in stirring up the depths of our nature suffering arouses that vague foundation of hope that remains with us in spite of the deepest despair—was it not possible that Olivier, when he once saw how infamously he had acted, would go to his friend and say: "It was not true; I lied when I told you she had been my mistress"?
This whirlwind of mad ideas, vain rage, and senseless hypotheses was shattered and driven away by an event as brutal as the first. Ely sent the letter to Olivier by one of her footmen about seven o'clock. Half an hour later, when she was finishing her toilet in a fever of anxiety, the man brought back the reply. It was a large sealed envelope with her address written in Olivier's handwriting. Inside was her letter unopened.
The two friends had thus made a compact. They both insulted her in the same way! It was as plain to her as though she had seen them take each other's hand and swear a pact of alliance against her in the name of their friendship.
For the first time this woman, usually superior to all the pettiness of her sex, felt against their friendship all the unreasoning hate that the ordinary mistress has for even the simple companionships of her lover. She felt that instinctive impulse of feminine antipathy for sentiments purely masculine, and from which the woman feels excluded forever. During the hours following the double insult, Ely was not only a woman in love repulsed and disdained, a woman who loses with him she loves all joy in life, a woman who will die of the effect of her loss. She was not only this, she also suffered all the pangs of a devouring jealousy. She was jealous of Olivier, jealous of the affection he inspired in Pierre and that Pierre returned. In the despair that the certainty of the cruel desertion caused her, she felt mingled an additional pang of suffering at the idea that these two men were happy in the triumph of their fraternal tenderness, that they dwelt under the same roof, that they could talk with each other, that they esteemed each other, loved each other.
True, such impressions were out of conformity with her innate magnanimity. But extreme sufferings have one trait in common: they distort the natural feelings and sentiments. The most delicate nature becomes brutal, the most confiding loses the noble power of expansion, the most loving becomes misanthropic when in the grasp of a great grief. There is no more ill-founded prejudice than the one echoed in the famous line—
"Man is an apprentice; suffering, his master."
"Man is an apprentice; suffering, his master."
It may be a master, but it is a degrading, depraving master. Not to be corrupted by suffering one must accept the trial as a punishment and a redemption. And then it is not the suffering that ameliorates one, but faith!
Without doubt if poor Ely had not been the disabused nihilist who believed, as she once said energetically, that "there is only this world," all the obscure fatalities that were crushing her down would have been made clear with a blinding light. She would have recognized a mysterious justice, stronger than our intentions, more infallible than our calculations, in the encounter that made the punishment of her double adultery issue from the friendship of those who had been her guilty partners in her failings, and caused those same accomplices to be each a punishment to the other. But in the blow that overwhelmed her she saw only the base vengeance of a former lover. And such a form of suffering could only end in degrading her. All her virtues of generous indulgence, of tender goodness, of sentimental scrupulousness that her love, magnificent in its enthusiastic spontaneity, had awakened in her heart, had receded from her. And she felt that all the most hideous and all her worst instincts were taking their place at the idea that these two men, both of whom had possessed her, one of whom she loved to the verge of madness, despised her. And in imagination she again saw Pierre as he was there before her, only twenty-four hours before, so devoted, so noble, so happy!—Ah! Pierre!—All her bitterness melted into a flood of tears as she cried aloud the beloved name. Ah! to what good was it that she cried for him? The man for whom such passionate sighs were breathed would not even listen to them!
What an evening, what a night the unfortunate woman passed, locked in her room! What courage it needed not to remain there all the following day, with windows closed, curtains down! How she longed to flee the daylight, life, to flee from herself, plunged and engulfed in a night and silence as of death!—But she was the daughter of an officer and the wife of a prince. She had thus twice over the trait of a military education, an absolute exactitude in carrying out her promises, a trait that causes the disciplined will to rise superior to all events and to execute at the appointed time the duties imposed. She had promised the night before to intercede with Dickie Marsh in Chésy's favor, and she was to give his reply in the afternoon. Her lassitude was so great in the morning that she nearly wrote to Madame Chésy to postpone her visit and that to the American's yacht. Then she said, "No, that would be cowardly."—And at eleven o'clock in the morning, her face hidden by a white veil that prevented her reddened eyes and agitated features from being seen, she stepped from her carriage on to the little quay to which the Jenny was moored. When she saw the rigging of the yacht and her white hull outlined against the sky, pale with the presage of heat, she remembered her arrival upon the same sun-scorched stones of the little quay, in the same carriage, only a fortnight before, and the profound joy she felt when she saw Pierre's silhouette as he looked for her from the boat anxiously. Those two weeks had been long enough for her romantic and tender idyl to be transformed into a sinister tragedy. Where was the lover who was with her when they left for Genoa? Where was he trying to hide the awful pain caused by her and which she could not even console? Had he already left Cannes? Ever since the night before the idea that Pierre had left her forever had made her heart icy with cold terror. And yet she devoured with her eyes the yacht upon which she had been so happy.
She was now near enough to be able to count the portholes, of which the line appeared just above the rail of a cutter moored near the Jenny. The seventh was the one lighting her cabin, their cabin, the nuptial refuge where they had tasted the intoxicating joy of their first night of love. A sailor was seated upon a plank suspended from the rail washing the shell of the boat with a brush that he dipped from time to time in a big bucket. The triviality of the detail, of the work being done at that minute and at that place, completed the faintness of the young woman caused by the air of contrast. She was speechless with emotion when she stepped upon the gangway leading from the quay to the boat. Her agitation was so apparent that Dickie Marsh could not resist an inclination to question her, thus failing for once to observe the great Anglo-Saxon principle of avoiding personal remarks.
"It is nothing," she replied; "or rather nothing that concerns me."
Then, making his question an excuse for introducing the subject of her visit, she said:—
"I am all upset by the news I have just learned from Yvonne."
"Shall we go into the smoking-room?" asked the American, who had trembled at the sound of Madame de Chésy's name. "We shall be able to talk better there."
They were in the office where Marsh was busy when Ely arrived. The dry clicking of the typewriter under the fingers of a secretary had not stopped or even slackened a moment upon the entrance of the young woman. Another secretary went on telephoning to the telegraph office, and a third continued arranging documents. The intensity of their industry proved the importance and the pressing nature of the work being done. But the business man left his dictations and his calculations with as little compunction as an infant displays when he casts aside his hoop or ball, to question Yvonne's messenger with a veritable fever of anxiety.
"So the bolt has fallen! Are they ruined?" he asked, when they were alone. Then, in reply to Ely's affirmation, he went on: "Was I not right? I have not seen the Vicomtesse for some little time. I have not even tried to see her. I thought Brion was at the bottom of all. I was sure you would make me a sign at the right moment, unless—But no, there is no unless—I was sure the poor child would estimate that man for the abominable cad that he is, and that she would show him the door the first word he uttered."
"She came to see me," said Ely, "trembling, and revolted at the ignoble propositions the wretch made to her."
"Ah, what 'punishment' he merits!" said Marsh, with an expressive gesture that accentuated the energetic boxing term. "Did you tell her to apply to me? Is her husband willing to work?"
"She came to see me to ask for a place for Gontran as superintendent on the Archduke's estate," replied Ely.
"No, no!" interrupted Dickie Marsh. "I have the very thing for him. It is better for me even than for him, for I have a principle that all services ought to be of some use to him that renders them. In that way, if the man you oblige proves ungrateful, you are paid in advance.—This is the affair. Since we were in Genoa we have done a lot of work. We have founded in Marionville—by we I mean myself and three others, the 'big four,' as we are called—a society for working a score of ruined ranches we have bought in North Dakota. We have thus miles and miles of prairies upon which we want to raise not cattle, but horses.—Why horses? For this reason: In the States a horse is worth nothing. My countrymen have done away with them, and with that useless thing, the carriage. Railways, electric tramways, and cable cars are quite sufficient for every need. In Europe, with your standing armies, things are different. In another five years you will not be able to find horses for your cavalry. Now follow me closely. We are going to buy in the horses in America by the thousand for a song. We shall restore them to the prairies. We shall cross them with Syrian stallions. I have just bought five hundred from the Sultan by telegraph."
Excited by the huge perspective of his enterprise, he left the "we" to use the more emphatic "I."
"I am going to create a new breed, one that will be superb for light cavalry. I will supply a mount for every hussar, uhlan, and chasseur in Europe. I have calculated that. I can deliver the animals in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna at a fourth less than the State pays in France, Germany, Italy, and in your country. But I must have some competent and trustworthy man to look after my breeding stables. I want Chésy to take this place. I will give him $115,000 per year, all his travelling expenses paid, and a percentage upon the profits. You will perhaps say that when you want to make wealth by the plough you must put your hand to it.—That is true. But with the cable I am at hand if only my man does not rob me. Now, Chésy is honest. He understands horses like any jockey. He will save for me what a rascally employee would steal and all that an incompetent one would waste. In ten years he can return to Europe richer than he would ever have been by following Brion's advice and without owing me anything.—But will he accept?"
"I can answer for that," replied Ely. "I have an appointment with Yvonne this afternoon. She will write to you."
"In that case," Marsh continued, "I will cable instructions for the furnishing of their residences in Marionville and Silver City to be hurried on. They will have two houses at the society's expense. I shall go to the States to start him upon his duties. They can be there for June.—And if they accept will you tell the Vicomtesse that we start for Beyrout the day after to-morrow on theJenny? I want them to go along with me. Chésy could begin his work straight away. He will prevent the Bedouins selling me a lot of old nags in the batch. I will write to him, however, more at length upon the matter."
There was a short silence. Then he said:—
"There is some one I should like to take with them."
"Who is that?" asked Ely.
The contrast was a very striking one between the sentiment of silent misery, of despairing prostration, of the uselessness of everything that prostrated her, and the almost boundless energy of the Yankee business man. In addition to her sorrow she felt a sort of bewilderment, and she forgot all about Marsh's intention in regard to his niece's marriage.
"Who?" echoed the American, "why Verdier, naturally. I have also my secret service bureau," he went on. This time there was even more energy in his manner. Admiration and covetousness were visible in all his being as he sounded the praises of the Prince's assistant and of his inventions. "I know that he has solved his problem. Has he not spoken to you about it? Well, it is a marvel! You will realize that in a minute.—You know that aluminum is the lightest of metals. It has only one fault; it costs too much. Now, in the first place, Verdier has discovered a process of making it by electrolysis, without the need of any chemical transformations. He can thus get it very cheap. Then, with his aluminum, he has invented a new kind of electric accumulator. It is fifteen times more powerful according to its weight than the accumulators at present in use.—In other words, the electric railway is an assured fact. The secret is discovered!—I want to take Verdier with me to the States, and with the help of his invention we shall wreck the tramway companies in Marionville and Cleveland and Buffalo. It means the death of Jim Davis; it means his end, his destruction, his complete ruin!—You don't know Davis. He is my enemy. You know what it is to have an enemy, to have some one in the world with whom you have been fighting for years; all your life, in fact? Well, in my case that some one is Jim Davis. His affairs are shaky just now. If I can get Verdier's invention, I can crush him into pieces and utterly smash up the Republican party in Ohio at the same time."
"Still," said Madame de Carlsberg, interrupting him, "I cannot go to the laboratory to ask him for his invention."
In spite of her trouble she could not help smiling at the flood of half-political, half-financial confidences that issued pell-mell from Marsh. With his strange mixture of self-possession and excitability, he did not lose sight of his objects for a single moment. He had just rendered a service to the Baroness Ely. His motto was, give and take. It was now her turn to serve him.
"No," he replied eagerly, "but you can find out what the young man has against Flossie. You know that I planned their marriage. Did she not tell you? It is a very good match for both—for all. To him it means a fortune, to her it means happiness, to me, a useful instrument. Ah! what a superb one this genius will be in my hands!" he cried, closing his hands nervously like a workman seizing the levers of an engine that he is starting in motion. "Everything seemed to be going on all right when, suddenly—bang! All came to grief. About five or six days ago I noticed that the girl was very silent, almost sad. I asked her point-blank, 'Are you engaged, Flossie?' 'No, uncle,' she replied, 'and I never shall be.' I talked with her and drew her out—not too much, simply enough to know that some lovers' quarrel is at the bottom of it all. If you would talk to her, Baroness, she would tell you more than she will me, and you can also talk to Verdier. There is no sense in letting the affair drag on in this way when they love each other as they do. For I know that they are both in love. I met Mrs. Marsh—she was then Miss Potts—one Thursday at a bazaar. On the following Saturday we were engaged. There is no time to lose, not a day, not an hour or minute ought to be thrown away. We shall waste enough when we are dead!"
"So you would like me to learn from Florence why she is so sad and why the affair is broken off? I will find out. And I will rearrange the whole thing if you like."
"That's it, Baroness," said Marsh, adding simply, "Ah! if my niece were only like you! I would make you a partner in all my business affairs. You are so intelligent, so quick and matter of fact when it is necessary. You will find Flossie in her room. As to Chésy, it is an understood thing. If you like, I will cable for them."
"Do so," said Ely, as she walked away toward Miss Marsh's cabin.
She had to pass the door of the one she had occupied on that never-to-be-forgotten night. She pushed open the door with a frightful feeling of melancholy. The little cabin, now unoccupied, was so blank, seemed so ready to welcome any passing guest, to afford a refuge for other happiness, other sorrows, other dreams, or other regrets! Was it possible that the joy felt in this place had disappeared forever? Whether it was Marsh's conversation which had communicated some of his energy and confidence to the young woman or that, like the instinct to struggle to the last that animates a drowning man, the soul is moved by a vital energy at a certain point of discouragement, whether it were one or the other motive it is hard to say, but Ely replied, No! to her own question. Standing upon the threshold of the narrow cell that had been for her an hour's paradise, she vowed that she would not surrender, that she would fight for her happiness, that she would again recover it. It was only a minute's respite, but it sufficed to give her courage to compose her features so that Miss Marsh, a keener observer than her uncle, did not notice the marks of a deep sadness imprinted too plainly upon her face. The young American girl was painting. She was copying a magnificent bunch of pinks and roses, of yellow, almost golden pinks, and of blood-red, purple roses, whose deep tints seemed almost black. The harmonious combination of yellow and red had attracted her eye, always sensible to bright colors. Her unskilful brush laid coats of harsh color upon the canvas, but she stuck to her task with an obstinacy and energy and patience equal to that displayed by her uncle in his business. And yet she was a true woman, in spite of all her decision and firm manner. Her emotion upon Ely's entrance was only too visible. She divined that the Baroness, whose villa she had avoided for several days, was going to talk to her about Verdier. She did not employ any artifice with her friend. At her first allusion she replied:—
"I know it is my uncle who has sent you as intermediary. He was quite right. What I would not tell him, what, in fact, I could not tell him, I can tell you. It is quite true, I have quarrelled with Monsieur Verdier. He believed some wicked calumnies that he heard about me. That is all."
"In other words you mean that it is the Archduke who has slandered you, do you not?" asked Madame de Carlsberg, after a short silence.
"Everything appeared to condemn me," replied Florence, ignoring the Baroness's remark, "but when there is faith there can be no question of trusting to appearances. Do you not think so?"
"I think that Verdier loves you," said Ely, in reply, "and that in love there is jealousy. But what was the matter?"
"There can be no love where there is no esteem," said the young girl, angrily, "and you cannot esteem a woman whom you think capable of certain things. You know," she went on, her anger increasing in a way that proved how keenly she felt the outrage, "you know that Andryana and her husband hired a villa at Golfe Juan. I went there several times with Andryana, and Monsieur Verdier knew about it. How I do not know, and yet it does not astonish me, for once or twice as we went there about tea-time I thought I saw Monsieur von Laubach prowling about. And what do you think Monsieur Verdier dared to think of me,—of me, an American? What do you think he dared to reproach me with? That I was chaperoning an intrigue between Andryana and Corancez, that I was cognizant of one of those horrible things you call a liaison."
"But it was the simplest thing in the world to clear yourself," said Ely.
"I could not betray Andryana's secret," replied Florence. "I had promised to keep it sacred, and I would not ask her permission to speak; in the first place, because I had no right to do so, and in the second," and her physiognomy betrayed all her wounded pride and sensation of honor, "in the second because I would not stoop to defend myself against suspicion. I told Monsieur Verdier that he was mistaken. He did not believe me, and all is over between us."
"So that you accept the idea of not marrying him," said Ely, "simply through pride or bitterness rather than make a very simple explanation!—But suppose he came here, here upon your uncle's boat, to beg you to forgive him for his unjust suspicions, or rather for what he believed himself justified in thinking? Suppose he did better still; suppose he asks for your hand, that he asks you to marry him, will you say him nay? Will all be over between you?"
"He will not come," said Florence. "He has not written or taken a step for the last week. Why do you speak to me in that way? You are taking away all my courage, and, believe me, I have need of it all."
"What a child you are, Flossie!" said Ely, kissing her. "You will realize some day that we women have no courage to withstand those we love and those that love us. Let me follow my idea. You will be engaged before this evening is over."
She spoke the last words of exhortation and hope with a bitter tone that Florence did not recognize. As she listened to the young girl telling of the little misunderstanding that separated her and Verdier, she had a keen sensation of her own misery. This lovers' quarrel was only a dispute between a child—as she had called Miss Marsh—and another child. She thought of her rupture with Pierre. She thought of all the bitterness and vileness and inexpiable offence that there was between them. Face to face with the pretty American's pride before an unjust suspicion, she felt more vividly the horror of being justly accused and of being obliged either to lie or to own her shame while asking for pity. At the same time she was overwhelmed with a flood of indignation at the thought of the odious means employed by the Archduke to keep Verdier with him. She found in it the same sentiment that had aroused her hatred against Olivier the night before: the attachment of man for man, the friendship that is jealous of love, that is hostile to woman, that pursues and tracks her in order to preserve the friend. True, the sentiment of the Prince for his coadjutor was not precisely the same that Pierre felt for Olivier and that Olivier felt for Pierre. It was the affection of a scientist for his companion of the laboratory, of a master for his disciple, almost of a father for a son.
But this friendship, intellectual though it might be, was not the less intense after its kind. Madame de Carlsberg, therefore, felt a personal satisfaction as though she were avenging herself in taking steps to thwart the Prince's schemes as soon as she had left the Jenny. It was a poor revenge. It did not prevent her feeling that her heart was broken by the despair caused by her vanished love, even amid all the intrigues necessary to protect another's happiness.
Her first step after her conversation with Florence was to go to the villa that Andryana occupied on the road to Fréjus, at the other end of Cannes. She had no need to ask anything of the generous Italian. No sooner had she heard of the misunderstanding that separated Verdier and Miss Marsh, than she cried:—
"But why did she not speak? Poor, dear girl! I felt sure something was the matter these last few days. And that was it? But I will go straight away and see Verdier, see the Prince and tell them all the truth. They must know that Florence would never countenance any evil. Besides, I have had enough of living in hiding. I have had enough of being obliged to lie. I mean to disclose the fact of my marriage to-day. I only awaited some reason for deciding Corancez, and here it is."
"How about your brother?" asked Ely.
"What? My brother? My brother?" repeated the Venetian.
The rich blood swept to her cheeks in a flood of warm color at this allusion and then fled, leaving her pale. It was plain that a last combat was taking place in the nature so long downtrodden. The remains of her terror fought with her moral courage and was finally conquered. She had two powerful motives for being brave,—her love, strengthened by her happiness and rapture, and then a dawning hope of having a child to love. She told it to Ely with the magnificent daring that is almost pride of a loving wife.
"Besides," she added, "I shall not have any choice for very much longer. I think I am about to become a mother. But let us send for Corancez at once. Whatever you advise, he will do. I do not understand why he hesitates. If I had not perfect confidence in him, I should think he already regretted being bound to me."
Contrary to Andryana's sentimental fears, the Southerner did not raise any objection when Madame de Carlsberg asked him to reveal the mystery or comedy of thematrimonio segretoto the Archduke and his assistant. The occasion would have furnished his father with an opportunity of once more using his favorite dictum, "Marius is a cunning blade," if he had been able to see the condescending way with which he accorded the permission that brought to a culminating-point the desires of the cunning intriguer. There is both Greek and Tuscan in the Southerners from the neighborhood of Marseilles, and they appear to have written in their hearts the maxim which contains all Italian or Levantine philosophy: "Chi ha pazienza, ha gloria." He had expected to make his marriage public the instant there was a chance that he was to become a father. But he had never hoped for an opportunity of appearing both magnanimous and practical, such as was afforded him by consenting to the announcement upon the request of the Baroness Ely, and that out of chivalrous pity for a girl who had been calumniated. All these complexities, natural to an imaginative and practical personage, were to be found in the discourse that he held with the two women, a discourse that was almost sincere.
"We have to yield to fate, Andryana," he said. "That is a maxim I revere, you know. The story of Miss Marsh and Verdier gives us an indication of what we have to do. We must announce our marriage, no matter what happens. I should have liked to keep the secret a little longer. Our romance is so delightful. You know that I am romantic before everything, that I am a man of the old school, a troubadour. To see her, to worship her," he indicated Andryana, who blushed with pleasure at his protestations, "and without any witnesses of our happiness other than such friends as you"—he turned toward Ely—"such as Pierre, as Miss Marsh, was to realize an ideal. But it will be another ideal to be able to say proudly to every one, 'She chose me for a husband.' But," and he waited a moment in order to accentuate the importance of his advice, "if Corancez is a troubadour, he is a troubadour who knows his business. Unless it's contrary to your idea, I do not think it would be very wise for Andryana and me to announce our marriage to the Prince in person. Let me speak frankly, Baroness. Besides, I never was good at flattery. The Prince—I hardly know how to say it—the Prince attaches a great deal of importance to his own ideas. He does not care to be thwarted, and Verdier's feelings for Miss Marsh are not very much to his taste. He must know of their little quarrel. Indeed, he may have spoken very harshly of the young girl before his assistant. He wants to keep that youth in his laboratory, and it is only natural. Verdier has so much talent. In short, all that cannot make it very agreeable for two people to come and say to him, 'Miss Marsh has been slandered; she has been the friend of the most honorable and most loyal of women, who is honorably and legally married to Corancez.'
"And besides, to have to admit that you are in error in such a matter, and in public, is a very difficult position to be in. Frankly, it appears to me simpler and more practical, in order to bring about the final reconciliation, to let the Prince learn all about the matter from you, my dear Baroness, and from you alone. Andryana will write a letter to you this very moment. I will dictate it to her, asking you to be her intercessor with His Royal Highness, and announce our marriage. Everything else will work easily while we are arranging as well as we can with good old Alvise."
The most diverse influences, therefore, combined to bring Madame de Carlsberg again into conflict with her husband at the moment she was passing through a crisis of such profound sorrow that she was incapable of forethought and of self-defence, or even of observation. She often thought about this morning later, and of the whirl of circumstances in which it seemed as though neither Pierre nor Olivier nor herself could be dragged, a rush of circumstances which had carried her away in the first place, and had then reached the two young men. That Chésy had stupidly ruined himself on the Bourse; that Brion was ready to profit by his ruin to seduce poor Yvonne; that this latter woman resembled feature by feature Marsh's dead daughter, and that this identity of physiognomy interested the Nabob of Marionville to such an extent that he was determined upon the most romantic and the most practical form of charity; that Verdier had made a discovery of an immense value to industry, and that Marsh was trying to gain the benefit of this invention by the surest means in giving his niece as a wife to the young scientist; that Andryana and Corancez were waiting for an opportunity to make their astounding secret marriage public,—were only so many facts differing with those concerning her own life, facts which appeared to have never touched her, save indirectly.
And yet each of these stories had some bearing, as though by prearrangement, upon the step that she was about to take, acting on the advice of Corancez. This step itself was to prepare an unexpected dénouement, a terrible dénouement for the moral tragedy in which she had plunged without any hope of ever issuing. This game of events, widely separate from each other, which gives to the believer the soothing certainty of a supreme justice, inflicts on us, on the contrary, an impression of vertigo when, without faith, we notice the astounding unexpectedness of certain encounters. How many times did Ely not ask herself what would have been the future of her passion after the interview of Olivier with Pierre, if she had not gone upon theJennythat day to render a service to Yvonne, if Marsh had not asked her to bring about a reconciliation between Verdier and Florence, and, finally, if the marriage of Andryana and Corancez had not been announced to the Archduke under conditions that seemed like bravado, and which only increased his exasperation and bitterness.
These are vain hypotheses, but they are felt bitterly by those who give themselves up to the childish work of rebuilding their life in thought. It seems a manifestation of the irresistible nature of fate.
As she approached the Villa Helmholtz, with Andryana's letter in her hand, Ely had not the faintest suspicion of the terrible tragedy drawing near. She was not happy; in fact, joy did not exist for her now that she was separated so cruelly from Pierre. But she felt a bitter satisfaction in her vengeance, a feeling that she was to pay for very dearly.
Hardly had she entered the house when she sent a request to the Prince, who never lunched with her now, to be granted an audience, and she was ushered into the laboratory, which she had only visited about three times. The heir of the Hapsburgs, a big apron wrapped around him and a little cap upon his head, was standing in the scientific workshop before the furnace of a forge, in which he was heating a bar of iron which he held in his acid-eaten hands. A little further away Verdier was arranging some electric batteries. He was dressed like his employer. There was nothing in the entire room, which was lighted from the ceiling, except complicated machines, mysterious instruments and apparatus whose use was unknown to any but the scientists. The two men, thus surprised in the exercise of their profession, had that attentive and reflective physiognomy that experimental science always gives to its followers. It is easy to recognize in it a certain submission to the object, a patience imposed by the necessary duration of a phenomenon, the certainty of the result to be gained by waiting—noble, intellectual virtues created by constant attention to natural law. Nevertheless, in spite of the calmness he displayed in his work, it was plain that care hung over the assistant. The Prince appeared rejuvenated by his gayety, but it was an evil, wicked gayety, which the presence of his wife appeared to render even more cruel. He met her with this sentence, the words being full of hideous allusions:—
"What has given us the honor of your visit to our pandemonium? It is not very gay at the first glance, yet we are happier here than anywhere else. Natural science gives you a sensation that your life does not even know of—a sensation of truth. There cannot be either falsehood or deception in an experiment that has been carefully performed. Is that not so, Verdier?"
"I am happy to hear Your Highness speak in that way," replied the young woman, returning irony for irony. "Since you are so fond of the truth, you will help me, I hope, to secure justice for a person who has been cruelly slandered here, perhaps even to you, Your Highness, and certainly to Monsieur Verdier."
"I don't understand," said the Archduke, whose visage suddenly darkened. "We are not society people, and Monsieur Verdier and I do not permit any one to be calumniated before us. When we believe anything against any one, we have decided proof. Is not that so, Verdier?" and he turned toward his assistant, who did not reply.
The Baroness Ely's words had been as clear to the two men as though she had named Miss Marsh, and Verdier's look revealed how he loved the young American, and what suffering it had caused him to know that he could no longer esteem her. This additional avowal of a hated sentiment was distasteful to the Archduke, and his voice became authoritative, almost brutal, as he went on:—
"Besides, madame, we are very busy. An experiment cannot be kept waiting, and you will oblige me very much if you will speak plainly and not in enigmas."
"I will obey Your Highness," replied Madame de Carlsberg, "and I will be very plain. I learn from my friend, Miss Marsh—"
"The conversation is useless if you have come to speak of that intriguing woman," said the Prince, brusquely.
"Your Highness!"
It was Verdier who spoke as he took a step forward. The insult the Archduke had cast at Florence had made him tremble to his innermost being.
"Well," demanded his master, turning toward his assistant, "is it true that Madame Bonnacorsi arranges for meetings in a little house at Golfe Juan? Did we see them enter? Do we know by whom the house is engaged and the lover whom she goes there to meet? If you had a brother or a friend, would you let him marry a girl whom you knew to be in the secret of such an intrigue?"
"She is not in the secret of any intrigue," interrupted Ely, with an indignation that she did not seek to dissimulate. "Madame Bonnacorsi has not a lover." She repeated: "No, Madame Bonnacorsi has no lover. Since you have authorized me, let me speak frankly, Your Highness. The 14th of this month, you understand me, at Genoa, I was present at her marriage with Monsieur de Corancez in the Chapel of the Fregoso Palace, and Miss Marsh was also there. Sight or wrong, they did not wish the ceremony to be made public. I suppose they had their motives. They have not these motives any longer, and here is the letter in which Andryana begs me to officially announce to Your Highness the news of her marriage. You see," she went on, addressing Verdier, "that Florence was never anything but the most honest, the most upright, and the purest of young girls. Was I not right when I said that she has been cruelly, unworthily calumniated?"
The Archduke took Andryana's letter. He read it and then returned it to his wife without any comment. He looked her straight in the face with the keen, haughty regard that seems natural to princes, and whose imperious, inquisitorial scrutiny reads to the bottom of the soul. He saw she was telling the truth. He next looked at Verdier. And now the anger in his eyes changed into an expression of deep sadness. Without paying any more attention to Ely than if she were not there, he spoke to the young man with the familiarity that the difference in their ages and positions authorized, although it was a familiarity that the Prince did not usually take in speaking to his assistant before witnesses.
"My dear boy," he said—and his voice, usually so metallic and harsh, became tender—"tell me the truth. Are you sorry for the resolution you took?"
"I am sorry that I have been unjust," replied Verdier, with a voice almost as broken as that of his master. "I regret to have been unjust, Your Highness, and I would like to ask the pardon of the woman whom I have misjudged."
"You will have all the time you want to ask pardon in," replied the Archduke. "Of that you may be assured. It is from her that this knowledge comes. Is it not so, madame?" he replied, looking at Ely.
"Yes," replied the young woman.
"You see I was right," replied the Prince. "Come," he said, with a peculiar mixture of pity and abruptness, "look into your heart. You have had eight days in which to make up your mind. Do you still love her?"
"I love her dearly," replied Verdier, after a short silence.
"Another good man ruined," said the Prince, shrugging his shoulders. He accompanied the brutal triviality of his remark with a deep sigh which took away its cynicism.
"So," he continued, "the life that we lead together, a life that is so full, so noble, so free, does not suffice now: our manly joy and the proud happiness in discovering that we have so often felt together, that has rewarded us largely, royally, and fully so often, is no longer enough for you? You want to re-enter that hideous society that I have taught you to judge at its true value? You wish to marry, to leave this refuge, leave science, leave your master and your friend?"
"But, Your Highness," interrupted Verdier, "can I not be married and continue to work with you?"
"With that woman? Never!" replied the Archduke, in a tone of passionate energy. His anger increased; and he repeated: "Never—Let us separate, since it has come to that. But let us separate without hypocrisy, without falsehood, in a manner that is really worthy of what we have been for each other. You know well enough that the first condition of your marriage with that girl will be that you make known to her brigand of an uncle, this secret," and he touched with his hand one of the accumulators standing on the table. "Don't tell me that you would refuse to make it known, because the invention belongs to us both. I give you my part. Do you hear? I give it to you. You would certainly betray me sooner or later, either through weakness or through that cowardly love that I see in your heart. I want to spare you that remorse. Marry that woman. Sell our invention to that business man. Sell him the result of our research. I give you full authority, but I shall never see you again. For the secret that you are selling to him is, believe me, Science. Follow your own will, but it shall at any rate not be said that you did not know what you were doing, or that in doing it you participated in all the ignominy of this age: that you lent aid to that vast collective crime which idiots call civilization. You will continue to work. You will still have genius, and from this discovery and others that you will make, your new master will secure millions and millions. Those millions will signify an abject luxury and viciousness on high, and a heap of misery and human slavery below. How well I judged that girl from the first day! Behold her work! She appeared and you have not been able to hold firm. And against what? Against smiles and looks which would have been directed at others if you had not been there, which would have been for the first imbecile who had turned up with a manly figure and a pair of mustaches!—Against toilet, against dresses, and against riches. Let me continue for a moment. In an hour you will be near her, and you can laugh with her at your old master, your old friend, as much as you like. You do not know what it is to have a friend like me, one who loves you as I do. You will understand it some day. You will realize it when you have measured the difference between this feeling that you are leaving one side, between our manly communion of ideas, our heroic intimacy of thought, and that which you now prefer, the life which you are about to commence—an idle, degraded, poisoned life!
"Good-by, Verdier," and this strange person, in saying the wordgood-by, spoke with a tone of infinite sadness and bitterness. "I read in your eyes that you will marry that girl, and since it is to be so, go. I prefer never to see you again. Make a fortune with the knowledge that you have secured here. You would certainly have learned it elsewhere, so we are quits. The happiest hours of my life for years have been due to you, and I forgive you on that account. But I tell you again, I see you for the last time. Everything is over between you and me.
"As for you, madame," he continued, casting a glance of bitter hatred at Ely, "I promise you I will discover some means of punishing you."
The Archduke's threat was uttered in a way that betrayed an inflexible resolution. It did not cause the young woman to flinch or to lower her gaze. She did not remember anything of this scene, one, nevertheless, that was momentous for her, since it called down upon her the hatred of the most vindictive and unjust of men. She did not remember anything that had passed when she regained her room save one thing, and that was quite foreign to herself. As she had listened to the Archduke's passionate cry, wrung from him by wounded friendship, she saw, as though in a flash of blinding revelation, what had been the strength of the bonds uniting Olivier and Pierre. She realized keenly the sentiment that linked them in their revolt against her—the revolt of suffering Man against Woman and against Love. She understood at last the impulse that had made them take refuge in a virile fraternal affection, the one fortress which the fatal passion cannot subdue. She had seen the passions of Love and Friendship in conflict.
In Verdier's heart love had conquered. He had for the Prince only the affection of a pupil for his master, of a debtor for his benefactor. It was a sentiment made up of deference and gratitude. Besides, Verdier esteemed the woman he loved. How different would have been his attitude had he returned his protector's friendship with a similar sentiment, had he felt for the Prince the affection that Olivier had for Pierre, that Pierre had for Olivier! And, above all, what a change there would have been in him had he had to condemn Miss Marsh as Pierre had been forced to condemn his mistress!
This analogy and its contrast forced themselves upon Ely's notice, when she left the laboratory, with an intensity that completely exhausted all the physical strength that was left in her. She was no longer supported by the necessity of working for the sake of others. She was now alone, face to face with her grief. And, as often happens after any violent emotion that has been followed by too energetic efforts, she succumbed under the shock. Hardly had she reached her room than she was overpowered by an agonizing nervous headache. Such a crisis is really the shattering of the nervous system, whose strength has been exhausted by the force of will, and which has finally to surrender.
Ely did not try to struggle any longer. She lay down on her bed like some one in death agony, at one o'clock, after having sent off a despatch to the one woman whose presence she felt she could support, the one woman upon whom she could rely—to Louise Brion, whose devotion she had almost forgotten during the past weeks.
"She is my friend," she thought, "and our friendship is better than theirs, for the friendship of those men is made up of hate!"
In the extremity of her distress she, therefore, also had recourse to the sentiment of friendship. She was mistaken in thinking that Louise was more devoted to her than was Pierre to Olivier, or than was the Archduke to Verdier. But she was not mistaken in thinking the devotion of her friend was of a different character. In reality, feminine friendship and masculine friendship have a striking difference. The latter is almost always the mortal foe of love, while the former is most often only love's complacent ally. It is rare that a man can regard with any indulgence the mistress of his friend, while a woman, of even the most upright character, has almost always a natural sympathy for her friend's lover so long as he makes her friend happy; it is because the majority of women have a tender feeling for love, for all love, for that of others as well as for that which concerns them more closely. Men, on the contrary, have an instinct which remains in them, a relic of the savage despotism of an earlier barbarism. They do not sympathize with any love that they do not feel, that they do not inspire.
Louise Brion had felt a pity for Hautefeuille at the very moment when she had received Ely's confession in the garden of her villa, at the very moment she had implored her friend to give up the dangerous passion she had inspired in the young Frenchman. From that evening she had felt an interest in the young man, in his sentiments, in his movements, even though at the time she was using all the eloquence that her trembling affection could suggest to persuade Ely to see him no more. When Ely gave herself up entirely to her passion later, Louise had withdrawn, had effaced herself, on account of her scruples, and in order that she might not be a witness of an intrigue which her conscience considered a great crime. She had gone away through discretion, so as to not impose an inopportune friendship on the two lovers, and delicacy had also had its share in her retirement, for she had felt all the shrinking of the pure woman from forbidden ecstasy. But she had not felt the least hostility to Pierre in her retirement and self-effacement. Her tender woman's imagination had not ceased to link him, in spite of herself, with the romantic passion of her friend. The singular displacement of her personality, which had always made her lead, in imagination, the life Ely was living, rather than her own individual existence, had continued, had been even accentuated.
Since Olivier's return this identification of her feelings with those of her dear friend had been more and more complete. The dinner at Monte Carlo with the Du Prats in such close proximity had made her feverish with anxiety. She had expected an appeal from her friend from that moment. She had lived in expectancy of this summons to help Ely to bear her terrors, to fight with her friend, to share the sufferings of a love whose happiness she had vainly striven to ignore.
She was thus neither surprised nor deceived by Ely's despatch, which simply spoke of a little indisposition. She divined the catastrophe that had happened at once, and before the end of the afternoon she was sitting at the bedside of the poor woman, receiving, accepting, provoking all her confidences, without any further inclination to condemn her. She was ready to do anything to dry the tears that flowed down the beloved face, to calm the fever that burned in the little hand she held. She was ready for anything, weak enough for anything, with indulgence for all and in the secret of all!
For a day and a half Ely was helpless with a severe headache. Then she asked her friend to assist her in her plans. Like all people of vigorous frame, Ely was never either well or ill in extremes. When at last she was able to sleep the heavy slumber that follows such a shock, she felt as well, as energetic, as strong-willed as upon the day her happiness had been so completely destroyed. But she did not knowhow to employ her recovered energy. Again and again she asked herself the question, upon whose answer her movements depended: "Is Pierre still in Cannes?"
She hoped to see some one in the afternoon who would inform her, but none of the visitors who came to see her even uttered Hautefeuille's name. Upon her part she had not the courage to speak of the young man. She felt that her voice could not utter the beloved syllables without her face suffusing with blood, without her emotion being apparent to every one.
And yet there were only very dear friends who called upon her that afternoon. Florence Marsh was one of the first. Her eyes were bright with a deep, contented happiness. Her pleasant smile wreathed her lips at every moment.
"I felt that I had to come to thank you, my dear Baroness. I am engaged to Monsieur Verdier. I shall never forget all that I owe you. My uncle asked me to excuse him to you. He has so many things to do, and we leave to-morrow upon theJenny. Myfiancécomes with us."
How could Ely mingle any of the pain which oppressed her heart with the joy whose innocence caused her deep suffering? How could she let Andryana, who came in smiling at the footman's announcement, "Madame la Comtesse de Corancez"—how could she let Andryana suspect her pain?
"Well," said the Venetian, "Alvise took it very calmly. How childish it was to be afraid! We might have spared ourselves so much trouble if I had only spoken to him from the first. But," she added, "I do not regret our folly. It is such a pleasant memory. And I had told such tales about Alvise to Marius that he was afraid. What could he do to us now?"
Next the Chésys arrived, Madame Chésy quivering with her new-found gayety, while Gontran was simply astoundingly impertinent as he spoke with aristocratic nonchalance of his rôle of horse-breeder in the West.
"When horses are in question, poor Marsh is simply a child," he said. "But he is such a lucky fellow. At the very moment that he undertakes such an enterprise he finds me ready to hand!"
"I am glad I am going to see the Americans at home," said Yvonne. "I am not sorry to be able to give them a few lessons in realchic."
How was Ely to trouble this little household of childlike Parisians? How could she stop their amusing babble? She congratulated herself that they did not even speak of the subject that lay so close to her heart. She listened to them talking of their American expedition with a gayety that gave the impression that they were once more playing at housekeeping, forgetful of the terrible trial they had just gone through.
Ely could not help envying them these faculties of forgetfulness, of freshness, of illusion. But were not the destinies of Marsh, of Verdier, and of Corancez all alike? Had they not all before them space, and the future? Did they not resemble ships sailing upon a vast flood carrying them toward the open ocean? Her destiny, on the contrary, was like that of a boat locked in the narrow turn of a river, arrested and imprisoned by some barrier beyond which lie the rapids, the cataract, the precipice! A word uttered by Yvonne, who was wild with joy at the idea of seeing Niagara, brought this simile up in Ely's mind. The idea pleased her. It was a true image of her sentimental isolation. And while her visitors stayed she looked incessantly at Louise as if she wished to convince herself that there was one witness to her emotions, that there was one heart capable of understanding her, of pitying her, of serving her. Above all, of serving her!
In spite of the conversation she listened to, notwithstanding the questions to which she replied, her thoughts followed one idea. She felt she must know if Pierre had left Cannes. And this was the question that came quite naturally to her lips the instant she was alone with Madame Brion.
"You heard all they said?" she said to her. "I know no more than I did before. Is Pierre still here? And if he is, when is he going away? Ah! Louise!"
She did not finish. The service she wanted to ask of her friend was of too delicate a nature. She was ashamed of her own desire. But the tender creature to whom she spoke understood her and was grateful to her for her hesitation.
"Why do you not speak frankly?" she said. "Would you like me to find out for you?"
"But how can you?" replied Ely, without feeling any astonishment at the facility with which her weak-minded friend lent herself to a mission that was so opposed to her own character, to her principles, and to her reason.
What result could possibly come from this inquiry about Pierre's presence and about his approaching departure? Was not this the occasion for Louise to repeat, with still more energy, the counsels she had given to Ely after her first confidence? There could be nothing but silence and forgetfulness between Madame de Carlsberg and Hautefeuille in future. For them to see each other again would be simply to condemn them to the most useless and painful explanations. For them to recommence their relations would be purgatory. Louise Brion knew all this very well. But she also knew that if she obeyed Ely's wishes, those dear eyes, now so sad, would be brightened by a gleam of joy. And the only reply she gave to the question was to rise and say:—
"How can I arrange it? That is the simplest thing in the world. In half an hour I shall know all you want to know. Have you the list of visitors here?"
"You'll find it on the fourth page of one of the papers," said Ely. "Why do you wish to see it?"
"In order to find the name of a person whom I know and who is staying at the Hôtel des Palmes. I have it. Here it is, Madame Nieul. Try and be patient until I get back."
"Well," she said, re-entering the salon about half an hour later, as she had said she would, "they are both here, and they do not leave for a few days. Madame du Prat is very ill. It cost me little to find that out," she added, with a little nervous smile. "I went to the Hôtel des Palmes and asked if Madame Nieul was there, and sent up my card. Then I looked through the list of visitors and questioned the secretary with an indifferent air. 'I thought Monsieur and Madame du Prat had already left,' I said to him. 'Do they stay much longer?' And his answer told me all I wanted to know."
"How good you were to take all that trouble for me!" replied Ely, taking her hand and stroking it lovingly. "How I love you! It seems to have given me a fresh lease of life. I feel that I shall see him again. And you will help me to meet him. Promise me that. I must speak with him once more, only once. I feel that I must tell him the truth, so that he may know at least how well I have loved him, how sincere and passionate and deep is my love for him! It is so hard not to know what he thinks of me."
Yes! What did Pierre Hautefeuille think of the mistress whom he had idolized only a few days before, of the mistress who had stood so high in his esteem, and who was suddenly convicted in his eyes so shamefully?
Alas! The unhappy youth did not even know himself. He was not capable of finding his way among the maze of ideas and of contradictory impressions that crowded, jostled, and succeeded each other in his soul. If he had been able to leave Cannes at once, this interior tumult might have been less intense. It was the only plan to be followed after the vow that Olivier and he had exchanged. They ought to have gone away, to have put distance and time and events between them and the woman they both loved, and that they had sworn to give up to their friendship. But what can the will do, no matter what its strength, against imagination, sentiment, against the emotion in the troubled depths of the heart? We are only masters of our acts. We cannot govern our dreams, our regrets, and our desires. They awake, quiver, and increase by themselves. They bring back memories until recollection becomes an obsession. All the charm of looks, of smiles, of a face, all the splendor of outline, the beauty of form of a beloved creature, is made a living reality, and the old fever once more burns in our veins. The mistress whom we have abandoned stands before us. She wishes for us, she calls for us, she recovers possession of us. And if we are in the same city with her, if it only requires a quarter of an hour's walk to see her again, what courage is needed in order not to yield!
Pierre and Olivier felt the necessity of this saving flight, and they had taken a resolution to go away. Then an unfortunate event kept them in the hotel. As the secretary had told Louise Brion, Madame du Prat was really ill. She had felt the influence of a shock too great for her strength, and she could not recover from it. A weakness of the heart remained, of such intensity that even when she could leave her bed and stand erect, the least movement brought on palpitations that seemed to suffocate her. The doctor studying her case forbade her to even attempt to travel for several days.
Under these circumstances, if Hautefeuille had been wise, he would have gone away alone. This he did not do. It was impossible for him to leave Du Prat alone in Cannes. He said to himself that it was because he could not leave his friend at such a moment. If he had gone down to the bottom of his heart, if he had probed the place where we dissemble thoughts of which we are ashamed, where lie hidden plans and secret egoism, he would have discovered that there were other motives that kept him there, motives that were much more degrading. Although he had the most complete confidence in Olivier's word, he trembled at the idea of his remaining alone in the same town as Ely de Carlsberg. In spite of the heroic effort to preserve a friendship that was so dear to them both, notwithstanding the esteem, the tenderness and pity they felt for each other, in spite of so many sacred recollections, in spite of honor, a woman stood between them. And that woman had introduced with her all the fatal influence that so quickly creeps into friendly relations, all the instinctive jealousy, the quivering susceptibility and uneasy taciturnity that destroys all.
They were not long in feeling this. Each understood how deeply the fatal poison had eaten into their souls. And soon they understood a thing that is both strange and monstrous in appearance, and yet is really so natural—they realized that the love whose death they had vowed in the name of their friendship was now bound up in that friendship by the closest ties!
Neither one nor the other could think of his friend, could look at him, or hear him, without immediately seeing Ely's image, without immediately thinking of the mistress who had belonged to them both. They were in the grasp of an idea that turned the few following days of intimacy into a veritable crisis of madness, a madness that was all the more torturing because they both avoided the name of the woman out of fidelity to their promise.
But was it necessary for them to speak of her, seeing that each knew the other was thinking of her? How painful these few days were! Although they were not many, they seemed interminable!
They met the morning following their conversation about ten o'clock in Olivier's salon. To hear them greet each other, to hear Pierre ask about Berthe, to listen to Olivier's replies, and then to hear the two speak of the paper they had been reading, of the weather, of what they were going to do, one would never have thought their first meeting so painful. Pierre felt that his friend was studying him. And he was studying his friend. Each hungered and thirsted to know at once if the other had had the same thoughts, or rather the same thought, during the hours they had been separated. Each read this thought in the eyes of the other, as distinctly as though it had been written upon paper like the horrible sentence that had enlightened Pierre. The invisible phantom stood between them, and they were silent. And yet they saw through the open window that the radiant Southern spring still filled the sky with blue, still beautified the roads with flowers and sweetened the air with perfume.
One of them proposed a walk, in the vain hope that a little of the luminous serenity of nature might enter their souls. They used to like to walk together formerly, thinking aloud, keeping step in their minds as in their bodies. They went out, and after ten minutes conversation came to an end between them. Instinctively, and without prearrangement, they shunned the quarters in Cannes where they ran the risk of meeting either Ely or any one of her set. They kept away from the Rue d'Antibes, La Croisette, and the Quai des Yachts. They avoided even the pine forest near Vallauris, where they had spoken of her upon the day that Olivier arrived.
Behind one of the hills which served as outposts to California, they found a deserted valley, quite neglected on account of its northern situation. In this valley there was a kind of wild park, which had been for sale for years. There, in this ravine without horizon, they came almost like two wounded animals taking refuge in the same fold. The roads were so narrow that they could no longer walk abreast. This gave them a pretext for ceasing to talk. The branches stung their faces, their hands were torn with thorns before they arrived at the little rivulet running at the bottom of the gorge. They sat down upon a rock among the tall ferns, and the savageness of this corner of the world, so solitary, and yet so close to the charming city, soothed their suffering for a few moments. The fresh humidity of the vegetation growing in the shadow recalled to their minds similar ravines in the woods of Chaméane. And then they could speak again together, could recall their childhood and their distant friendly souvenirs. It seemed as though they felt their friendship dying away, and that they sought desperately the place whence it had sprung in order to revive its force. From their childhood they passed to their youth, to the years spent together in college, to the impression the war had made upon them.
But there was something forced in these glances backward. There was something conventional, something prearranged, that arrested all freedom of intercourse between them. They felt too keenly in comparison with their former talks in the same way that the spontaneity, the plenitude that had been the charm of their most unimportant conversations formerly was now lacking.
Was their affection any less than at that distant period? Would their friendship never be happy again? Would it never be delivered from this horrible taint of bitterness?
In addition, during their morning and afternoon walks, they only were witnesses to their suffering. If they did not speak freely of their thoughts, at any rate there was no deception. There was no necessity to act before each other. This was all changed during the meal times. They lunched and dined in the salon so that Berthe could be present.
The immediate recommencement of a daily familiarity after such scenes as those which had taken place between the two friends and the young woman appeared at first impossible. In reality it is quite simple and easy. Family life is made up of that only. Olivier and Pierre forced themselves to talk gayly and incessantly out of delicacy toward their companion. The effort was a painful one. And then even the most guarded conversation may be full of danger. A phrase, a word even, was sufficient to send the minds of both back to their relations with Ely. If Olivier made any allusion to something in Italy, Pierre's imagination would turn to Rome. He could see Ely, his Ely of the terrace covered with white and red camellias, his Ely of the garden of Ellenrock, his Ely of the night he had spent at sea. But instead of coming to him she was going toward Olivier. Instead of pressing him to her heart, she flung her arms round Olivier and kissed him. And the vision, prompted by a retrospective jealousy, tortured him.
And if, on his part, he made the most innocent allusion to the beauty of the promenades around Cannes, he saw his friend's eyes dim with a pain which recalled his own sufferings. Olivier could see him in thought walking with Ely, taking her in his arms, kissing her lips. This communion of suffering in the same thought, while it wrung their souls, attracted them with a morbid fascination. How they wished at such moments to question each other about the most secret details of their reciprocal romance! How they wished to know all, to understand all, to suffer at every episode!
When they were alone, a final remnant of dignity forbade them giving way to these hideous confidences, and, when Berthe was there at table, they turned the conversation at once so as not to cause any suffering to the young woman. They could hear her breathe with that uneven respiration, at times short and at others too deep, the breathing that reveals heart-disease. And this sensation of a physical suffering so close to them stirred up a remorse in Olivier and a pity in Pierre that took away all power to act.