“Who said that women were no longer interested in history? Surely not our old friend La Crois-Chammerilles, who told me yesterday the following anecdote:“‘For the last six months, one of our prettiest exotics has been taken up with ancient history. And every week, one of our most noted savants comes to her house to give her lessons.“‘As to the period of history of which he teaches her, and as to the name of the illustrious professor, seek them in the neighborhood of the Institute and remember also one of the greatest literary successes of last autumn.“‘Ancient history—old story!’”
“Who said that women were no longer interested in history? Surely not our old friend La Crois-Chammerilles, who told me yesterday the following anecdote:
“‘For the last six months, one of our prettiest exotics has been taken up with ancient history. And every week, one of our most noted savants comes to her house to give her lessons.
“‘As to the period of history of which he teaches her, and as to the name of the illustrious professor, seek them in the neighborhood of the Institute and remember also one of the greatest literary successes of last autumn.
“‘Ancient history—old story!’”
M. Raindal gave one push and the other two newspapers fell to the floor.
“Do you dare to soil me with such infamy?”
He stamped with his heels on the papers:
“There, tha what I think of your filthy rags!... Pshaw! To think that my daughter, my own daughter, collects this filth, and in my own home constitutes herself the auxiliary of my enemies!”
He fell back on his chair. Thérèse rushed to him:
“Father, father!” she implored, kneeling down beside him, “forgive me.... You have misunderstood me.... I failed in showing you proper regard, I was not careful enough ... but you know that I love you, that I am quite incapable of wishing to cause you any pain.”
M. Raindal looked at her with a softened glance. She insisted:
“Kiss me ... forgive me my quickness of temper.... I swear to you....”
Gently he forced her to her feet and set her on his knees as if she were a little child:
“All is forgotten.... I forgive you.... There, do cry, i over.... It is of no importance.”
Her voice checked by sobs, she went on:
“I swear to you, father ... it was for your own good....”
“What good?” said M. Raindal, and his arms relaxed their embrace. Thérèse replied diffidently:
“The good of your reputation, of your name.... You do not realize, father. You are blinded by your friendship.... But you are on the way to compromise both....”
M. Raindal jumped roughly to his feet and replied sarcastically:
“So, I compromise you.... I am bringing dishonor upon you?... Upon your name? It is quite true.... Tha it, for the last thirty-five years, I have practically worked for nothing else but that.... Ha! Ha!... It is pure truth!”
He grew very excited and began again to walk around the table.
“Yes, you are very much to be pitied for having so compromising, as you say, a husband and father!... A man who has piled up turpitude upon turpitude, whose life is but one mass of madness and debauchery.... A man....”
Thérèse interrupted him:
“There, you are getting angry again, father.... You are jeering at us.... You misinterpret my words intentionally.... What I said, and I maintain my position, was that you could not but hurt yourself by preserving this intimacy with Mme. Chambannes.... I told you so because it was my duty, and because the time had come ... and nothing will prevent me from saying it again....”
M. Raindal stopped and crossed his arms over his chest. His glance challenged in turn his wife and Thérèse.
“Well, now,” said he, “what is it you want?... I should think it was time to explain yourselves!... You wish me not to go to Les Frettes?”
“That, to begin with!” Mlle. Raindal replied firmly.
“To begin with!... The words are pleasant sounding in themselves, but I am willing to oblige you!... Let the ‘to begin with’ pass.... And then, after that?...”
“Then,” the young girl said, “we would like you, without breaking with Mme. Chambannes, to decrease the number of those regular calls, those fixed dinners of yours, because, rightly or wrongly, people are talking and gossiping about it....”
“And where is it that they talk, if you please?”
“Everywhere!... At the college, at the Institute, among your colleagues, and even in the newspapers....”
The master smiled bitterly.
“Ah, you are well informed!... It is probably M. Boerzell who....”
“He and everyone else, father.... He and all the allusions, the wicked words with which people delight in wounding us, among our relations, our acquaintances, when we pay or are being paid visits....”
M. Raindal retorted with a broadside of noisy sarcasm:
“Evidently the danger is more serious than I thought. One must not neglect the warnings of so many kind earnest people. One must be cautious and put the brake on.... From now on, I place myself in your hands.... You yourselves will regulate the days and the hours of my visits in the rue de Prony.... If necessary, Brigitte can take me there and bring me back. I am so weak, so inexperienced, so childish!”
He went on in that tone for several minutes. By a phenomenon of auto-suggestion, the whole of his late-come virility was in a state of excitement and increasing revolt against this control, the details and the episodes of which he was himself creating. Every point raised was like a new sting that goaded him further, and poured into his veins a quick, warm poison which over-heated his sufferings with its own energy. He saw himself deprived in future, and forever, of Mme. Chambannes, forever interned far away from her, a prey to the worst torments of separation and perhaps of jealousy. For, supposing that Thérèse had spoken the truth!... A suddenanguish whipped his heart. His imaginary regrets almost reached a paroxysm. He changed his tone suddenly, and in a voice that was hurried and hollow, and which sounded the revolt, he said:
“Enough of this jest!... It is quite enough.... Oh! I know, for a long while I have had some idea of all the wicked thoughts and shameful suspicions which you were piling up against me!... Your plots, your sneers, your confabulations, and even your silence, which was more insidious than all the rest—none of those things has escaped me!... If, a minute ago, when you opened your souls to me, I showed some surprise, it was due less to the unexpectedness of it than to disgust.... Really, I did not believe that I could find so much mud and villainy in them.... Pshaw! Let it be so!... I know neither what your inspiration is, nor what your idea is based on, and I do wish to know.... But what I do wish and what I insist upon henceforth is that I shall be master in my home and free outside of it. What I want and insist upon is an end to your hypocritical grimaces, your aggressive silence, and all those sly maneuvers that are only an imitation of docility and shock me more than your insults of a little while ago.... Finally, I want confidence, esteem, and the respect to which I am entitled by my age, by a continuous life of steady work, and I may even say to have no false modesty, by my rank and my own worth.... If I cannot obtain these, we shall give up our life in common, since it would be unbearable for all of usto continue it.... This is clear, is it not?... I shall not come back to this point.... And to begin, this very day, I have the honor to inform you that, with or without you, I shall go and spend a month at Les Frettes.... You may consult with each other, make up your minds.... You have ample time, for Mme. Chambannes is not going for ten days.... However, until then, not a word on the subject, not a remark.... I will tolerate none. Yes, or no. I will not put up with more.”
He walked towards his study, adding, as he placed his hand on the door-knob:
“I do conceal from myself how regrettable such a situation is. You have no one else to blame for it but your two selves, and your secret hostility towards me.... Everything has an ending, even patience.... And for the last six months, you have strangely overtaxed mine!”
He disappeared. Then, as if he wished to barricade himself against any attempt at conciliation, his key turned twice in the key-hole. M. Raindal had locked himself up.
“Well, my poor child!” Mme. Raindal whispered, her eyes shining with tears.
Either because she was afraid of being heard or because she instinctively imitated the hollow voice of her father, Thérèse replied quietly:
“What can I say, mother!... It is lamentable.... I did think that the evil had gone so far.... Our intervention has come too late!”
“I know it, dear,” the old lady sighed.
Thérèse remained silent, leaning on the table, in an attitude of angry reverie.
“What is to become of us?” Mme. Raindal went on, in a kind tone. “If we shut our eyes, that wicked woman will take him away from us. If we cross him, he will leave us. And we are alone, absolutely alone, without anyone to advise us and defend us....”
“Possibly not!” the young girl replied, looking up.
“Have you anyone in mind?”
“Yes, Uncle Cyprien.... I do see anyone else who can scare father.... I am going there now, at once.... I shall work him up, rouse him to white heat.... And, I should be very disappointed if, with such heavy artillery, we could not overcome the resistance of father!”
The comparison made Mme. Raindal smile in spite of her tears:
“If you hope to succeed with him, go there now, dear! Alas! we have no time to waste!”
Thérèse bent over her and kissed her:
“Do cry, dear mother!... Courage!... I have an idea that we have not lost yet!...”
“May God hear you, my poor dearest!” murmured Mme. Raindal, rolling her eyes with a prayerful expression towards the ceiling.
Her Uncle Cyprie door was ajar when Thérèsereached the sixth floor. She knocked, asking at the same time: “May I come in?”
“Come in, come in!”
From the passage an odor of kerosene was already perceptible. Uncle Cyprien sat on a stool, a towel across his knees, cleaning his tricycle, which stood wheels up and saddle down, like an overturned carriage.
“I you, nephew!” he said, speaking through a corner of his mouth, the other being obstructed by an enormous cigar.... “Take a chair.... Yol excuse me, wo you? When I clean my machine, I get all mixed up if I stop in the middle of it.... Have you found a chair? Very good.... Well, I must say, I did expect you!... Nothing unpleasant, I hope?... Your father is not ill, is he?...”
Thérèse replied:
“Ill? That would be so serious in comparison!”
“Sapristi!” Uncle Cyprien exclaimed, opening his eyes wide. “You frighten me! Worse than being ill, what is it? Good God, what can it be?...”
“ going to tell you, Uncle, but I need all your devotion and all your attention....”
“They are yours, nephew!... I am listening while I work ... or I work while I listen.... For you, my ears, and my eyes for my machine!... But, be quick, because you frighten me with your solemn face.”
While his niece spoke, accordingly, M. Raindal, theyounger never once looked up from his work. He rubbed and polished and oiled; his hands ran among the oil-cans, black rags, greasy bits of flannel, screwdrivers, and wrenches; at first sight, one might have thought him a sheep-shearer practising his art upon a tricycle.
“Unfortunate!” he merely murmured at intervals, his head still bent down. “Very unfortunate!... Most unfortunate!...”
Nevertheless, he was making up his mind very coolly, under the cover of his busy appearance. Although his losses were small, they had, during the previous week, reached the total of his profits. The liquidation of the last eight days showed no profit, and this was almost a loss for a speculator who was, like himself, accustomed to profits. Moreover, other mining stocks had undergone violent fluctuations. The market showed signs of a need for caution, if not for alarm. Business slowed down and the fall had affected several stocks which had until then risen daily. This consideration gave food for thought to Uncle Cyprien. Was it really a favorable time to take sides against his brother, to urge openly the necessity of a break with Mme. Chambannes? Did he not risk, if he took such a decided attitude, alienating the powerful sympathies which he enjoyed with the opposite camp—that is to say, the Chambannes and the whole band behind them, the Pums, the de Meuzes, and the Talloires, in short all his friends ofthe Bourse, and all his advisers? The point deserved to be settled only after proper consideration.
“It was then,” Thérèse concluded, “that the idea came to me to seek your help.... No one but you can save us, because you are the only one who has sufficient authority over father to pull him away from the dangerous path in which he goes deeper every day.”
“Unfortunate! Most unfortunate!” M. Raindal, the younger, repeated.
There was a pause. Uncle Cyprien was busy dropping oil from a little can into one of the oil-holes.
“You are saying anything, uncle!” Thérèse went on, disconcerted by his reserve.... “Why do you speak?... You share our opinion, do you?... Surely this scandal must cease.... We must tear father away from those people!”
“Fuff! nephew,” said Uncle Cyprien, as he rose, folded his stool and put his tricycle on its wheels again.... “You asked my advice, did you, my sincere and friendly advice?... I shall give it to you with brutal frankness.... My own advice is that this affair is exceedingly delicate.... Of course, your fathe behavior seems to me unfortunate, and even deplorable; I would give anything to have him change.... But between that and going to a man of his age, a man of your fathe standing, and saying to him: ‘My friend, I forbid you to goto Mme. So-and-so any more ... and henceforth you shall not go ... ‘—between this and that, there is a difference!”
“And so you refuse to reason with him, to have a serious talk with him!” Mlle. Raindal said, pushing back her hair.
“I do refuse,” the ex-official corrected her. “I am merely explaining the difficulties, almost the impossibility of the mission which you wish me to undertake.... Moreover, your father is not so easy to get on with; he is quite likely to send me about my business and to tell me that his affairs are no concern of mine.... And after that, there would be nothing left for me to do but to pack my things and break with him!”
He seized the handle-bar of his tricycle and led the machine around the room to watch the result of his cleaning operations. Then he added:
“To resume, you understand me, do you?... I do refuse.... I only lay the problem before you.... Do you think in your soul and conscience that I stand any chance of success?... If so, this is just the time to put my hat on and go to him.... Otherwise, it would be better for me not to expose myself to an unnecessary rebuke just for the sake of doing it.... Think it over!”
“It is all thought over, uncle!” Thérèse replied, suppressing a contemptuous smile.... “I am beginning to agree with you.... It is more seemly that you should not figure in this unpleasant affair....”
M. Raindal threw a suspicious glance at his niece.
“Oh-ho! mademoiselle, we are peeved, it seems, ... I am still at your disposal.... But, take my advice, do get excited, ... consider this question calmly.... And l bet you anything you like against a box of cigars that, before two days are past, you will be admitting that your wicked old uncle was right!”
He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead.
“Besides, who said that this infatuation would last?... Your father lost his temper because you opposed him, and the Raindals have a perfect horror of being contradicted.... We are like milk soup!... It falls down as soon as it is removed from the fire.... If you were to come to me this evening and tell me that everything is settled and that your father is going to Langrune with you, why! I would not be so very much surprised!...”
They reached the hall. Thérèse gave his hand a slight touch.
“Oh, what a cotton-hand!” M. Raindal protested. “Will you please shake hands better than that!”
Thérèse obeyed him.
“All right!” he approved. “Tha better! Au revoir, nephew ... and no spite, either, please.”
Thérèse went down holding herself on the banisters. Her legs almost gave way under her. Her ideas were confused in an overwhelming impression of defeat and powerlessness.
When she reached the outside door, she stopped, hesitating. She did not try even to define her sensationof isolation, nor to elucidate the gross defection of her uncle. She felt stupefied, paralyzed, and forever vanquished.
She walked slowly towards the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The passers-by looked at her, surprised by her disordered appearance, staring eyes, and expression of hidden sorrow. Love-trouble?... With those yellow cotton gloves, that faded alpaca dress, and that straw hat bought at a bargain-counter—and moreover, not pretty herself! No! Rather a discharged governess....
Without taking any notice of their glances, without even seeing them, she walked close to the walls, as if she needed a support in case she were to lose consciousness. Suddenly she came to the rue Vavin, and a vision, a ma name brought her to a sharp stop: Boerzell. Why, yes! There was the supreme resource, the supreme protector against the threatening catastrophe, against the ruin which threatened to strike her home very shortly!
A ray of hope enlivened her face, worn out by anguish. She hastened. Five minutes later she was in the rue de Rennes in front of Pierre Boerzel door.
Hearing the bell, he came to the door himself. He was in his shirtsleeves, and without a collar, because of the heat; his plump white neck showing freely above his shirt.
He gave a surprised exclamation on recognizing Thérèse, and quickly smoothed his hair down:
“You, mademoiselle!... I hope there is nothing wrong?”
Thérèse smiled with difficulty.
“No, M. Boerzell!... A service, a piece of advice I have come to seek from you.”
“Will you allow me, mademoiselle?... Let me show you in....”
As soon as they were in the front room, which was his study—a tiny little room, where books and pamphlets covered the table, the chairs, and the divan—he apologized for the exiguity of the place: “You see!... I am very much limited as to space here ... and there are even more books in my room.... I shall have to move one of these days!”
Hastily he cleared the divan and said:
“Please sit down, mademoiselle.... What is it?”
At the same time he hurried to his room. He came back very shortly, having fixed his collar and tie and donned a coat.
“There!... I am at your service.... What can I do for you, mademoiselle?...”
With a thousand reticences, Thérèse took up her narrative. Boerzell followed her attentively, nodding his concern at intervals. But the selfish welcome which her uncle had given her roused him to an expression of indignation:
“That is too much!... Really, it is disgusting!”
“Yet, it is the case!” Thérèse said. “You knew some of our anxieties already before this mornin scene. Now you know everything!... I came toyou as a trusted friend.... I have absolute faith in your discretion, your judgment, and your affection.... Answer me straightforwardly.... What would you do in our place?”
Boerzell lifted his arms in a gesture of despair:
“Ah! mademoiselle!... You will tell me that I am choosing a very bad moment to reproach you ... yet you must agree that, had you been more indulgent and merciful, we should not find ourselves in such a distressing position to-day!...”
“How is that?” Thérèse asked.
“Well! I kept my promise, I kept it religiously.... I never spoke of marriage to you.... Many chances offered themselves to me for doing so.... I took advantage of none of them.... I was counting on your own heart to release me some day from my oath.... The more I came into your intimacy, and the more my hopes were strengthened.... Well! I deplore my patience.... I am sorry for my faithfulness.... If I had overcome them, I may presume that we would be married by now ... and once I were your husband, I could take a part in your family dissensions, I could discuss matters with M. Raindal; I might have persuaded him, caused him to change.... But to-day, as things are, what can I do? Nothing ... nothing, even less than nothing!... At my first words, M. Raindal would show me the door. Ah! mademoiselle, here you have a case, alas! a very painful one, where this marriage whichyou scorned so much might have proved of use to you!”
He walked up and down the room, knocking against the table and the chairs, which he put back in place each time.
Thérèse murmured:
“Outside this marriage, do you see any other solution?”
“No, mademoiselle!” Boerzell replied feverishly.... “I am neither related nor allied to you.... I have no hold on your father.” He sighed deeply: “And to think that I would throw myself into the fire for your sake! I would sacrifice everything for you, anything that you might ask me to—and see now to what I am reduced!... To sending you away as if you were a beggar, a stranger come to beg from me!... I have not even the consolation of giving you my advice left.... Your father is the master.... You have nothing to do but to bow, and to let him go if he so wishes.”
Thérèse was worn out; her head leaning against the back of the divan, she began to cry in her handkerchief.
“And now you are crying!” pursued Boerzell. “And I am compelled to let you cry.... If I only dared to come close to you and to take your hands in mine without your permission, I would at once become hateful to you.... A friend, yes, but a friend with whom one keeps on distance, and whomone would treat as the very opposite of a gentleman if he made the slightest show of love!”
“No, M. Boerzell!...” Thérèse stammered between two sobs. “You are exaggerating.... It is true that I have been hard to you.... But I like you very much ... very much more than I did.”
He paused to look at her. She eyed him with sympathy in her gray eyes, which were full of tears. With an unconscious movement of tenderness, she stretched out her hand to him. He fell back a step, he was so surprised; then he seized Thérès hand and, without kneeling down, without any such demonstration usually made by a lover who has just been accepted, he said in a halting voice which betrayed the intensity of his emotion:
“What! mademoiselle!... Am I mistaken? Do I understand the meaning of your words? You might be willing, you are consenting?”
“I do know,” sighed Mlle. Raindal, oppressed by discouragement, and withal touched by his anxiety. “Later, perhaps.... I shall see....”
“Oh, thank you!” Boerzell exclaimed, as he pressed the feverish hand of his visitor ardently. “Thank you, mademoiselle.... You will see.... You will see how much I shall try to make you happy and contented....”
He looked at her kindly, with little shivers of gratefulness running along the corners of his temples. But suddenly his face darkened and he gently let go the young lad hand:
“And yet, no.... That would be to take advantage of your present state ... of your disturbed condition. I refuse a consent which I could extort from you in the midst of your sorrow and your tears.... Our marriage can only be accomplished through your own free will, and in the complete mastery of yourself. Later, as you say ... later, when you have recovered your calm and your clear sight, if you still hold the same sentiments toward me, you know what happiness you will give me, if you accept and become my wife.... Until then, I seek nothing from you but your friendship.... We are not heroes of novels nor fools nor madmen.... Our union must not be brought about by a subterfuge, by some surprise, or by a lack of reflection that might carry us away.... I would rather renounce you forever than to know I had conquered you by such vulgar means.... In the days to come, whatever may happen, I can assure you that neither you nor I will regret our wisdom of to-day. Am I not right, mademoiselle?”
He stood in front of Thérèse and sought his answer in her eyes. She endured his persistent look for a long time, then replied in melancholy accents:
“You are the very incarnation of common sense!... You are the best and most loyal of friends.... Just as you say!... Let us wait.... That, as a matter of fact, is more worthy of such old wise people as you and I.... Nevertheless, I would like to show you my gratitude. I do want to leave you now,after the words that have passed between us, without giving you some proof of my friendship....”
“That is quite easy, mademoiselle!” Boerzell replied quietly.
“In what way?”
“Allow me, whatever happens, whether M. Raindal goes there or not—to accompany you at Langrune. This vacation of yours which was to separate us was a cause of serious pain to me.... More than once, I was on the verge of asking your leave to come.... I delayed my prayer for fear of displeasing you.... I am bolder now.... Tell me, may I?”
Thereupon Mlle. Raindal stretched out her hand once more:
“What a thing to ask! M. Boerzell! I shall be delighted!...”
He felt bold enough this time for a kiss of thanksgiving. Thérèse thoughtlessly complained of being thirsty. He ran out to his room and came back with a tray. In an instant he had prepared a glass of sugar and water in which he poured a few drops of rum.
“A bachelo home, a savan home!” he grumbled jestingly, as he stirred the mixture.... “No cordial ... no smelling salts ... nothing that is needed for receiving ladies!”
He corrected himself at once:
“Pshaw!... There, I am again alluding to marriage.... I had forgotten that my promise was on again....”
Thérèse drank greedily, her eyes smiling at him. The clock struck three and she started.
“I was forgetting my poor mother!... Good-by.... Thank you again with all my heart!... Till next Sunday then? Perhaps we shall have good news!...”
“It is my dearest wish, mademoiselle!” Boerzell replied skeptically.
He leaned out of his window to watch her go. She walked with a virile and well-balanced step; she made her way among the passers-by holding her head somewhat haughtily as only those women do who have a consciousness of their own charm, or a pride in their thoughts. Boerzell felt instinctively that it was no longer a young girl who was walking away from him: it was rather a sort of leader, a mother by right of intellect—the true head of the Raindal family.
She turned into the next street and was no longer visible to him.... He closed the window. He felt his breast swelling in a glorious satisfaction. Their behavior, the cordial chastity of their interview seemed to him to stamp them out as people who were far from being vulgar.
“We have been very chic!” he summarized, falling back into his student dialect.
Then he sat down at his table once more, his eyes dreamy, as if he were voicing a wish:
“If she only would!” he murmured.... “What a companion for me! What awife!... She is a man ... a man in the finest meaning of the word!”
M. RAINDALreached the station fifteen minutes before the departure of the train which was to take him to Les Frettes. He paced the platform, thinking.
Most of the carriages were empty. On the deserted platform he saw not a porter, not a truck; it stretched out, an endless carpet of asphalt. The glass roof refracted a dark, heavy heat. It was that hour of semi-rest, between the end of morning and the beginning of afternoon, when everything seems to be dozing in the railway stations, apart from the engines, the men, the wagons and the goods.
M. Raindal walked with his head down, his hands clasped behind his back, his big white panama hat set slightly at the back of his head. One by one he recalled the previous days, the painful ten days’ siege from which he had come out at last victorious, although confused, worn-out and wounded. At times he sighed at the thought of it.
The week had surely been a painful one! Twenty meals of sulky silence, shifty glances and contrite looks! In between, never a word; a speechless war of resistances which clashed without coming to a close contact; a strained parody of ease in the midst of utter discomfort. Then, on the eve of his departure, onehour before the women were to leave for Langrune, the last battle had been fought: Thérèse and Mme. Raindal had abdicated all pride, affectionately begged M. Raindal to follow them, and attempted to give him a supreme counsel. A little more and he would have given way. His refusals were softened; the chains of his promise were breaking apart. A careless admission on the part of Thérèse had changed the issue of the battle.
“Well, I admit it, father!” she had said in answer to the maste charge. “We might, after all, have shown ourselves less openly hostile to Mme. Chambannes, less cold perhaps when you described her receptions to us.”
That admission had moved him to a new resentment, bringing back an angry memory of all their previous malice.
“Ha! you acknowledge it now!” he exclaimed. “Now that you see me firm in my decision, now that you realize the extent of your faults.... And you wish me to add to those one more discourtesy, you want me to break my word to Mme. Chambannes who is waiting for me.... Too late! You should have thought of all this sooner.”
He had gone on mumbling indistinct and vindictive recriminations. Intimate arguments supported him. What if he were to listen to these two women—would it not mean that the same thing would have to be gone through again on his return? No, they stood in need of a little lesson, of an exemplary warning!...Brigitte had closed the debate when she came in to announce the arrival of the carriage from the station. They had exchanged icy kisses from the tips of their lips, with hurried promises to write every week and to meet again in September. The door had banged. The sound of heavy wheels came from the street. M. Raindal had been left alone, delivered, saved from going to Langrune.
Still walking up and down, the master sighed. He had now no great illusion concerning the seriousness of that parting. How manyménagessurvived such outbursts! The malice of outsiders took a share in them and exasperated the disagreements. Grievances were sharpened by distance and were sharper on return; when people met again, they were almost enemies.
Why! Should he have submitted to the tyranny which his wife and daughter tried to impose upon him? Should he have sacrificed a precious sympathy, an exceptional friendship, to their envy and prejudice? Ought he to have blindly bent himself to their orders, as if he were repenting of some guilt, instead of opposing them with the firmness of his innocence?
“Passengers for Mantes, Maisons—Lafitte, Poissy, Villedouillet, les Mureaux, take your seats!” proclaimed a guard.
M. Raindal climbed into a carriage. An old attendant closed the door after him. The master noticed in the man a likeness to Uncle Cyprien. He grunted:
“Another one who will not bother me any more!”
He settled in a corner of the carriage, took off his hat, his relaxed frame all ready for a doze. The thought of Cyprien kept him awake a few minutes. He had, until the last minutes, dreaded his brothe lectures, anathemas and curses. But no such outbursts had come. On the eve of his departure, Cyprien had dined with them and expressed no violent opinion whatsoever on hearing from the maste own lips of the dual vacation which was to split the family. All he had done was to risk a harmless jest: “So then, my friends, you are to be bifurcated! Bah! If it suits your taste.... It does rest one, after seeing each other all the year round.”
He had seemed almost ill at ease, kept his eyes on his plate and only reassumed his good humor when they had left the table.... A queer fellow, Cyprien, a foamy brain, any suspicion on his part was out of the question.
This contemptuous judgment fully satisfied the master. He gradually fell into slumber and did not wake up until he reached Villedouillet station.
Mme. Chambannes was on the platform, wearing a dress of batiste, embroidered with pink flowers, and white kid shoes. She waved to him with her sunshade, then followed the train until it came to a stop. Standing at the entrance of his carriage, she smiled at the master as he climbed down the stiff steps.
“So your wife and daughter did not want to come?” she asked maliciously, after the first words of greetings had been exchanged.
“No, my dear friend! I could not persuade them.... Besides, I did insist very much.... The sea air is very good for Thérèse.”
“They must hate me! You must admit it!”
M. Raindal blushed and affected to chuckle.
“Well, well! I would not like to say that this departure took place without some objections on both sides.... These two women have their own views ... and I have mine.... You know, they do always coincide.”
Then he added more boastfully:
“However, they are in the habit of respecting my will and, after all, the parting was better than I had feared, despite the regrettable scene which I mentioned briefly to you in Paris.... At all events, here I am.... Is that the only thing that matters?”
There was a pause. Zozé, a sarcastic and thoughtful expression on her face, stood outside the station. A yellow-painted governess carriage, with a bay pony, its mane close-clipped, stood against the curb. Firmin, who stood at the head of the pony, discreetly greeted the master.
“Here, Firmin!” said Mme. Chambannes. “Keep M. Rainda check.... You will look after his luggage and bring it along in the trap I ordered from the livery man.”
She settled herself in the carriage, sitting sidewise, facing the tail of the horse. She took up the reins.The master sat opposite her. Zozé caressed the flanks of the pony with a light touch of her whip. The carriage ran down the inclined station-yard, pitching at the shock of the uneven stones. A few lookers-on stood on the edge of the pavement and smiled half-jeeringly as they watched it go.
In less than fifteen minutes the carriage entered the graveled avenue which led to the front steps of Les Frettes. Trees made a frame on each side of it; suddenly the house appeared. It was a large modern building with white walls broken at two or three windows by brown blinds.
There was a wide lawn in front with beds of roses, dahlias and mixed phlox in the corners. Behind, the park began at once. It was dark, thick-leaved, endless apparently, and ran for a long distance alongside the state road separated from it by a wall.
Right and left of the house, more trees linked their branches, hiding the country beyond, forming a thick enclosure as far as the back of the building, around another lawn which was like a little field and contained a tennis court with the net hanging slack. To “enjoy the view,” as Mme. Chambannes said, one had to go up to the second floor.
“Your room is on that floor, dear master, and on the side looking right over the tennis lawn.... A superb view, as you will see.”
M. Raindal followed her up the stairs, which were filled with an odor of iris.
Zozé pushed the window open. A great gust of soft wind entered. The master leaned on the balcony and for a long time contemplated the scenery.
Beyond the trees began the immensity of the apparently limitless lower plain. The villages with their belfries seemed like so many topographic points marked, as on a map, with childish signs. To the left, the little hills opposite curved their slopes in a chess-board effect of yellow, brown and green vegetation. At the bottom one could not see but one could guess the presence of the Seine river, a loop of which sparkled like a pruning-hook.
“Is it pretty?” said Mme. Chambannes who, with her plump elbow, touched that of the master on the railing of the balcony.
“Very beautiful!” declared the master.
And he murmured, turning his glance to Zozé:
“I am very happy, my dear friend, very happy to be near you!”
She thanked him with a candid smile on her profile. In this full light, the clearness of her complexion was enlivened. It showed subtle shades finely superposed in a diaphanous blend. The light of day penetrated her batiste blouse and a pale rose reflection breathed under the material. M. Raindal was enumerating all these charms to himself. Unwittingly, he was little by little pressing his elbow against that of the young woman. He was even going to seize the hand of his little pupil—always a perilous operation which henever risked unless moved by a sudden audacious impulse—but the door was unexpectedly opened.
Aunt Panhias entered, escorted by a servant who carried M. Rainda trunk on his shoulder.
From that time, until the next morning, the master and Zozé were never alone. When the trunk was opened, visits began: Mme. Herschstein, Mme. Silberschmidt, with one of her cousins from Breslau, and, at five, the abbé Touronde.
They all gathered at that time, in the shelter of a shady glade which opened on the park, not far from the entrance and on the side of the main path. It was surrounded with lime trees and forest trees not yet grown to their full height. In the center of this circular space stood a mushroom-shaped stone table. Tea was brought in, with cakes and iced fruit in champagne which Zozé served with a small gilt ladle.
The women sat in comfortable reed armchairs which presented this inconvenience, however, that they squeaked under the weight of people who were too heavy. M. Raindal preferred a strong rocking-chair, the balancing of which amused him.
The conversation was kept up, light and easy, until the return of Uncle Panhias who came back from Paris about 6.30. The abbé Touronde, as he left, secured the maste promise that he would come and visit his orphanage in the course of the week.
When the dinner was finished, M. Raindal asked leave to retire. He was, he said, tired out by thisfirst day of settling down. Mme. Chambannes encouraged him to go and rest.
He inspected his room, however, before going to bed. Everything had been arranged with a perfect refinement of country elegance: from the furniture of ash-wood with copper handles to the bed and window curtains of English cretonne and the sachets of lavender scattered about the drawers and on the shelves of the mirrored wardrobe.
The bedclothes smelt of iris, a coarser iris, but more wholesome than that personally used by Zozé. M. Raindal sniffed persistently at this unusual scent which bathed his body; then he blew out his candle.
He was going to sleep. The sound of footsteps above caused him to open his eyes in spite of the utter darkness about him. Who was it? His little pupil, his dear friend? What a flattering and rare pleasure it was to sleep under the same roof with her! The master tossed about several times in his bed. A thousand tempestuous and uncertain images showed Zozé to him. He sighed and grew impatient in this captivating sleeplessness. The fresh air, very likely, the stimulation of the fresh air! At last, he made up his mind about it. Lying on his back, he contemplated, without resisting them, the procession of his feverish reveries. They were beginning to assume a more distinct shape than was altogether seemly when fortunately sleep came and swept them all away.
The next morning, about ten, Mme. Chambannesproposed a ride to the master. They left the house, with Anselme, the coachman, who sat, despite the bumps of the road, stiff and respectful, in the corner of the little carriage, near the case destined for umbrellas.
The morning was clear and fresh, of that August freshness, still cool between the previous da heat and that of the coming hours, but a summer freshness all the same, reassuring and with no chilly signs of any forthcoming cold spell.
Zozé drove with high hands, her eyes free, turning aside according to the conversation, while the pony trotted with all its speed, swinging his back.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the road which climbed under trees towards the tiny forest of Verneuil. Instinctively, the pony slowed its pace. Huge horse-flies scattered under its feet, others stuck greedily to its neck and its fat shiny flanks.
The wood showed a diversity of the most harmonious colors. Broken by daylight here and there, it would seem all white with rows of slender silver birches. Further on were spaces that were wholly pink, invaded by the wild briar. A dark mass of pines dominated everything, clarified only by the growth of the young, light green, pine-needles. The wind had scattered many of the older ones and they lay drying in the dust.
On returning, they stopped by the side of the road which cut the wood. Anselme spread out a rug on the ground, and the master sat there with Mme.Chambannes. Zozé apologized for taking out her cigarette-case. In the country, etiquette might be relaxed, might it not? And then they were in a little wood where they could meet no one.
Hardly had she said this when two young cyclists appeared. They were pedaling in a leisurely way, side by side. At once, M. Raindal angrily recalled his intolerant brother Cyprien.
The two young men winked slyly at each other, indicating Zozé. “Pretty!” the nearer of the two said distinctly.
This familiar remark further provoked M. Raindal.
“Cad!” he said, when the two cyclists had passed on.
“Why?” asked Zozé, blowing out her smoke. “One must not take offense for so little, in the country.”
Those three words constituted her favorite motto at Les Frettes, a permanent justification for all the fantasies of dress and behavior which her gloom and her idleness invented.
She took advantage of it, the next morning, to dispense with Anselm services for their ride. The coachma presence had obviously paralyzed M. Raindal.
“A very good idea!” the master said approvingly, as soon as they had started. “Besides he was of no use at all, that fellow.”
Thereupon he seized his little pupi hand so brusquely and violently that Notpou—such was the almost Egyptian-sounding name which Mme. Chambanneshad bestowed upon her pony—shied with fear, under the pain from his suddenly pulled bit.
“You must keep quiet, dear master?” Zozé chided, as she brought the animal back to its pace. “You are scaring Notpou.... Yol have us tipped over!”
“It was such a long time!” M. Raindal stammered.
She smiled indulgently. Suddenly emboldened, the master asked, in the absent-minded tone he used on such occasions:
“And the Messrs. de Meuze?... Did you have any news from them?”
Mme. Chambannes replied, making an effort to repress the blood she felt rushing to her face:
“None!... I believe that they are at Deauville until the end of the month, as I told you last week.... They were to arrive there the day before I left Paris.”
M. Raindal, his hands hanging, directed a studious look at her.
“In that case, they are not coming here?”
“Not that I know of, during August,” Zozé replied, having almost conquered her blush. “After that, it will be the shooting season.... So ... you see!”
“Quite!” the master murmured, while in his heart he ragingly abused Thérèse.
Ah! how he wished she were here, for an instant only, so that she could hear this! That was the way people made accusations and spread calumny, without proofs, acting upon suspicions and uncertain jealousies! “A woman who publicly gave herself alover!” M. Raindal repeated to himself. Publicly! A lover! Where?... At Deauville, perhaps! (For, gradually, the master had narrowed down his suspicions and centered their watchfulness upon the head of Gerald, the only young man, after all, whom Mme. Chambannes saw frequently.) Yes! At Deauville, fifty leagues from Les Frettes, neglecting his love affair for a month and even more! A fine lover indeed!... How mean and unfair people were! He let out a contemptuous laugh.
“Are you laughing, dear master?” Mme. Chambannes inquired.
“I am laughing,” he replied between two kisses, “I am laughing at the wickedness, or more exactly at the stupidity of mankind!”
The daily schedule soon became regular. Whenever the heat did not prevent it, the morning was spent in driving.
They eschewed the fashionable places beyond Poissy, in the neighborhood of Saint Germain. They preferred to follow the course of the Seine, driving towards Poutoise or even Mantes, an uneven, hilly and often imposing region which attracted the master, as it had Mme. Chambannes.
There the wind rolled its ample currents over plateaux and hills, carrying a strong taste reminiscent of the sea. Sometimes, at the top of a shut-in road that climbed under the shady trees, an unexpected perspective disclosed enormous expanses, forests, cross-roads,the breadth of the river, a big village, oxen in a field, vine on a hill-side, in short, the whole unexpected complexity of the provincial countryside, far from Paris and its suburbs.
The master and Mme. Chambannes would leave about nine and not return until time for lunch. Some days, in order to prevent idle gossip, they took the abbé Touronde with them. M. Raindal and the priest occupied one seat and Zozé, who was driving, the other.
One Thursday, the three of them went as far as Mantes, where the master wished to purchase a pair of brown shoes; their arrival caused a sensation. The strange carriage, the piquant attractiveness of Mme. Chambannes, M. Rainda white hair and the black robe of the abbé impressed the curious with their cumulative effect. In front of the bootmake shop, urchins surrounded the carriage. Neighboring shopkeepers came out on their steps and passed jocular comments. This affair and the popular emotion it caused were summed up in a short anonymous paragraph in thePetit Impartial de Seine-et-Oise. Although names were not given no one could mistake the meaning of the allusions, from the heading,Suzanne, to the bitterness of the writer towards “certain ecclesiastics, friends of the orphans” who were paying for the abbé Tourond holidays.
As a result of this unlucky experience Mme. Chambannes henceforth avoided the towns.
These drives, moreover, were less of a pleasure thana mere pastime between the hours when she read Geral letters—when any came—and those when she wrote to him.
Every day, after lunch, she shut herself up, to write him long pages, cleverly composed so as to stimulate his inert tenderness and his somnolent jealousy. In the meantime, M. Raindal, who had gone up, seemingly to work, enjoyed a nap on the floor above or imitated his hostess by writing a few words to his family. It would have made a piquant comparison to put their two letters side by side. Zozé purposely blackened her own character, multiplied the questionable details, the recital of episodes where her coquetry won her admiration, the masculine homage, the fervent glances of M. Raindal, of the abbé, of a passer-by, of all the men. The master, on the contrary, exhausted all examples in order to whitewash her of everything suspicious, to establish her child-like candor, her virtue and undoubted purity.
They did not meet again until nearly four lock. Then, according to the temperature, they remained in the garden or made visits in the neighborhood, either to the abbé Touronde, whose little orphans M. Raindal inspected twice, the Herschsteins, or the Silberschmidts.
Never did the time lag for the master, unless it were when Zozé left him alone with her Aunt Panhias, having herself to call somewhere in the village, give orders, or change her dress. His only compensation was that he could talk about his little pupil. He confidedto Mme. Panhias his own observations concerning the changing moods of Zozé. Some mornings she seemed a prey to utter weariness, without any notable event justifying these fits of sadness. To what could he attribute them? Mme. Panhias, who had secretly noted the coincidence of such crises with the non-arrival of letters bearing the Deauville post-mark, replied evasively:
“It is hernatourreto be like this! How can it be helped?”
“It may be so!” M. Raindal approved. “Quite so!... A dreamy nature!... A nature essentially melancholy!”
And he promised himself to neglect nothing that could bring distraction to his little pupil.
He even consented to play tennis with her, one afternoon, for fear of disappointing her. Zozé was on one side, M. Raindal and Aunt Panhias together on the other. Rather because he was all out of breath than for fear of compromising his own dignity, the master gave it up after a few minutes. His success in that game had been mediocre. Moved by a feeling of self-denial, Zozé did not repeat the attempt.
She also meant to show solicitude. She was sorry for poor M. Rainda family worries, of which he had given her a few significant illustrations. Whenever the master opened a letter from Langrune in front of her, she never failed to inquire whether his ladies showed less malice.
“Phew!... Icy.... Always ice-like!... Inquiriesas to my health.... News of their own.... Compliments for you.... Kisses.... Hardly ten lines.... Read for yourself!”
She scanned the page, remembering Geral letters—notes whose laconism hardly exceeded that of the maste relatives.
“Yes, dear master!” she sighed.... “As you say, humanity is very stupid!”
On such days, out of pity for his sorrows which were so similar to her own, she was less rigorous towards the furtive kisses with which M. Raindal sought out her hands, gloved or bare, on every possible occasion. She racked her brains to order delicate dishes which she knew would please him. Then, the dinner ended, if he did not fall asleep, she read to him in the drawing-room—a newspaper or a volume of history. She read timidly, doing her best, with incorrect intonations, little gir errors which almost melted the maste heart. Or else—height of delights—she accepted his arm for a walk in the garden, along the lawn, in front of the terrace. When the sky was cloudy, M. Raindal, under the veil of obscurity, daringly kissed the young woma hand. Once he almost risked a nearer kiss, on her neck, taking advantage of the half-décolleté evening dress which Mme. Chambannes wore. But, on the verge of executing the movement, he was seized with such a fear that he stopped dead on the spot.
“Are you ill, dear master?” Zozé asked.
“No!” he replied, starting again. “I was listening to the wind in the branches!”
When he reached his room after these nocturnal frolics, he had difficulty in going to sleep. Reflections bubbled in him in foaming cascades. He counted up the number of kisses Mme. Chambannes had tolerated since the morning: one in the Verneuil wood, another in the park before lunch, another in the afternoon, in Zoz own room, where he had gone on the pretext of asking for a book, a fifth and even a sixth one in the evening, below the terrace.... He modestly admitted to himself that these were childish calculations and not devoid of vanity!
But what weight have metaphysical considerations against the overwhelming reality of our joys? The latter know no other limit than the variations of our feelings. If they reach exaltation, we should not dismiss their enthusiasm with contempt; if they fall or diminish, what philosophy can lift them up again? Thus M. Raindal meditated, with a growing scorn for speculative pleasures.
He often reached a state of extreme frankness, in the course of those solemn examinations, when his naked soul spoke to his mind, as a wife to her husband. It was quite true! M. Raindal did not attempt to deny it; he was slightly in love with his pretty little pupil. At her approach, he felt himself blush; he felt those emotions and internal flutterings which, according to general opinion, are signs of infatuation. To be sure, it was a harmless love, a flame thatcould not scorch, the last radiation of his heart! What danger did he run in rejoicing at those crepuscular lights which life, in a last act of kindness, sometimes kindles again on the road that leads to the grave? What wrong did he do when he drew from those illicit kisses a sensation of renewed youth, a continuous denial given to the fatal decline of his years?
These grave thoughts saddened him. He deplored being so old; he regretted that he had not known his dear friend Mme. Chambannes sooner. Again, not to mention the forthcoming departure which would separate him from the young woman, how many hours near her had Fate in store for him?... Under a rush of bitterness, he would sit down to write to Thérèse, to attempt a new project. August was drawing to an end. M. Raindal, from words Mme. Chambannes let fall, was inclined to conclude that a prolongation of his visit would please his hostess. In the course of many chats, she had seemed to indicate that the arrival of the two ladies in September would not be unwelcome to her. What did these latter say to that? Would they join the master, instead of returning to Paris, during those “days of intense heat” which threatened to persist? M. Raindal did not intend to force their hands. Nevertheless, he was of the opinion that their ill-humor had lasted too long, and it did not seem right that they should a second time refuse such cordial advances.
He went to bed revived by the hope one acquiresthrough the mere voicing of on desires. And, the next day, when he saw Zozé again, all smiling and fresh in a light morning gown, like a nymph of dawn, the last vapors of his melancholy fled away.
“Where are you going, dear master?” she cried merrily from her window.
He looked up and made friendly signals to her with his hand.
“I am going to the stables to take some sugar to Notpou.... After that I shall go to the post-office to mail a letter to my family!”
“Hurry up, dear master! I shall be ready in half an hour.”
He looked back, five steps away, placing his hands above his eyes. She was still smiling, leaning on the balcony. The wide sleeves of her gown had slipped apart and showed the white flesh of her arm, folded on the balustrade.
“If only those women agree to come!” thought M. Raindal, as he walked towards the stables.
One morning, as he returned from mailing the fourth letter to them in one week—three having been left unanswered—he caught up with the village postman on whose route the château was.
“A letter for you, monsieur!” the man said as he saluted.
The master slowed down. It was a letter from Langrune. The Raindal ladies admitted that he was right in his remarks concerning the heat. Consequently, they would delay their departure and notreturn to Paris until about September 15th. Of Les Frettes, of Mme. Chambannes, not a word was said.
“Fools!” the master murmured with disappointment.
But his satisfaction was stronger. After all, this gave him the desired postponement, the right to remain at Les Frettes. Who knew but that the two women, had they been coming, would have made him uncomfortable with their humiliating surveillance! As to their coldness, their hidden enmity, he would see them on his return, and subdue them, cost what it might!
He walked so fast that he met the postman coming out of the door of the château.
In the middle of the terrace, the stone balustrade of which ran all round the house, Zozé sat dreaming in a wicker armchair. In front of her some opened letters lay on a little table beside the tea tray.
“Anything new, dear master?” she asked. “The postman told me he had given you a letter.... Was it from your family?”
M. Raindal stammered confused explanations.
“Well, then, when will you be leaving?” asked Zozé calmly.
He looked at her with a somewhat disappointed expression.
“Eh! I am not going,mon amie.... Since you are willing, I shall be happy to stay.”
He glanced to the left, then to the right, and seized Zoz hand, bending over her.
“I, too, have some great news now!” the youngwoman declared, suppressing a gesture of enervation while M. Raindal completed a heavy kiss. “First of all, I have a telegram from George. He is coming back on September 1st, Monday ... in three days!”
“Ah!” M. Raindal said carelessly. “Good! How is he!”
“Very well! You may read his telegram.... And then....”
“And then?” the master repeated, oppressed with anxiety.
“Then? Well, I have received a letter from the Messrs. de Meuze who inform me that they are coming to spend a week at Les Frettes.”
M. Rainda lips twisted. He attempted an emphatic objection:
“But you assured me....”
“Yes, that they would open the shooting season.... They are going to do that, in the Poitou, where it does open until the 12th.”
“That is different!” murmured the master in a tone of defeat. “When do they arrive?”
“Monday, also!”
The master drew in his breath and asked, in a firmer voice:
“The same day as your husband?”
“Yes!” Zozé replied, watching him from the corner of one eye. “That is to say, George will arrive at nine. Uncle Panhias will meet him at the Gare du Nord, and he cannot be here before eleven. TheMessrs. de Meuze arrive in the afternoon.... After all, George will be here a few hours later!”
“Tha right; a few hours later!” M. Raindal repeated, at all hazard.
He laid a hand upon his forehead, complaining of a sudden headache. The sun, no doubt ... or his haste in returning.
“With your permission, I shall not go out this morning!” he said. “I prefer to rest.”
Smiling, Mme. Chambannes watched him depart. Then a sudden sulkiness brought down the corners of her lips. After all, there was nothing for her to laugh at. Everything was taking an ugly turn. The master had taken seriously her banal words of courtesy to him and the regrets which, in a moment of anger, she had formulated concerning Gerald. Old Raindal was going to “stick to” Les Frettes for another fortnight! Thereupon, George was coming back from Bosnia! The marquis and his son arriving at the same time—as agreed. She had no hope that Raldo would agree to hurry their arrival! Barely one evening to see each other again, find each other again! And this, besides, would have to be before old Raindal, who was already sulky and would keep his eye on them! What ill-luck, what complications and difficulties!
During the three days that followed, Mme. Chambannes apologized for being in a sad mood. She did not feel very well and her nerves ached.
M. Raindal affected to be sorry and full of goodwill. He, at most, risked a kiss or two, to keep himselfin countenance. But he was not feeling very gay himself. Courteously, Uncle Panhias accused him of that fact. The master feigned surprise. No, really, he had no reason whatsoever for being sad; and to prove his care-free state, he chuckled, beating his chest:
“Ha ha! I not gay! Ha ha! Why should I not feel gay? Ha!”
Geral image passed, more clearly, before his mind; the maste little laugh stopped dead, as if broken in two by a sudden shock.