VI
In the pretty little Japanese salon, with its panels of sky-blue satin, framed with gilded bamboo, Marianne was seated on the divan, half-facing the duke as if to penetrate his inward thoughts, and she seemed to the Castilian as she did to Vaudrey, to be a most charming creature amid all those surroundings that might have been made expressly to match her fair beauty. Moreover, with Rosas, her freedom of manner was entirely different from that which she manifested to Sulpice, and she embraced the young man with a passionate, fervent glance.
José felt himself grow pale in the presence of this exquisite creature whose image, treasured in the depths of his heart, he had borne with him wherever his fancy had led him to travel. He gazed at her as a man looks at a woman whom he has long desired, but whom some urgent necessity has kept out of his way, and who by chance is suddenly brought near him, fate putting within our reach the dream—
She was prettier than ever, graceful and blooming, "more matured," like a fruit whose color is more tempting to the appetite. Sabine had just before very naturally brought these two together and instinctively, as if they had to exchange many confidences, they had immediately sought a retired spot away from that crowd and were seated there in that salon where Vaudrey, already half-jealous, guessed that Marianne would be.
Yes, indeed, she had many confidences to impart to that man who had suddenly entered the sphere of her life and had suddenly disappeared, remaining during several years as if dead to her. It seemed to her as they sat face to face that this flight of wasted time had made her still younger, and Rosas, notwithstanding his cold demeanor, allowed his former passion to be divined: the women one loves unmask one's secret before a man can himself explain what he feels.
She felt a profound, sincere joy. She recalled a similar conversation with José in his studio, that Oriental corner hidden in the Rue de Laval. The Japanese satin enhanced the illusion.
"Do you know that it seems to me," she said, "that I have been dreaming, and that I am not a whit older?"
"You are not altered, in fact," said Rosas. "I am mistaken—"
"Yes, I know. I have grown lovelier. That is a compliment that I am used to—Lissac has told me that already, only the other morning."
She bit her lips almost imperceptibly, as if to blame herself for her imprudence, but had she mentioned Guy's name designedly, she could not have been better satisfied with the result. Monsieur de Rosas, usually very pale, became pallid, and a slight curl of his lip, although immediately suppressed, gave an upward turn to his reddish moustache.
"Ah!" he said, "You still see Guy."
"I!—I had not spoken a single word to him until I asked him to have an invitation sent me for this soirée, and then it was merely because I knew you would be here."
"Ah!" said José again, without adding a word.
Marianne was satisfied. She knew now that the duke still loved her, since the mention of Lissac's name had made him tremble. Well! she had shrewdly understood her Rosas.
"And what have you been doing, my dear duke, for such an age?" she said.
She looked at him as she had looked at Vaudrey, with her sweet and shrewd smile, which moved him profoundly, and her glance penetrated to the inmost depths of his being.
"You know the old saying: 'I have lived.' It is great folly, perhaps, but it is the truth."
"And I wager," boldly said Marianne, "that you have never thought of me."
"Of you?"
"Of me. Of that mad Marianne, who is the maddest creature of all those you have met in your travels from the North Pole to Cambodia, but who has by no means a wicked heart, although a sufficiently unhappy one, and that has never ceased to beat a little too rapidly at certain reminiscences which you do not recall, perhaps—who knows?"
"I remember everything," replied the duke in a grave voice.
Marianne looked at him and commenced to laugh.
"Oh! how you say that, mon Dieu! Do you remember I used to call you Don Carlos? Well, you have just reminded me of Philip II. 'I remember everything!' B-r-r! what a funereal tone. Our reminiscences are not, however, very dramatic."
"That depends on the good or ill effects that they cause," said Rosas very seriously.
"Ah! God forgive me if I have ever willingly done you the least harm, my dear Rosas. Give me your hand. I have always loved you dearly, my friend."
She drew him gently toward her, half bending her face under the cold glance of the young man:
"Look at me closely and see if I lie."
The duke actually endeavored to read the gray-blue eyes of Marianne; but so strange a flash darted from them, that he recoiled, withdrawing his hands from the pressure of those fingers.
"Come, come!" she said, "I see that my cat-like eyes still make you afraid. Are they, then, very dreadful?"
She changed their expression to one of sweetness, humility, timidity and winsomeness.
"After all, that is something to be proud of, my dear duke. It is very flattering to make a man tremble who has killed tigers as our sportsmen kill partridges."
"You know very well why I am still sufficiently a child to tremble before you, Marianne," murmured José. "At my age, it is folly; but I am as superstitious as gamblers—or sailors, those other gamblers, who stake their lives, and I have never met you without feeling that I was about to suffer."
"To suffer from what?"
"To suffer through you," said the duke. "Do you know that if I had never met you, it is probable that I should never have seen all those countries of which I spoke just now, and that I should have been married long ago, at Madrid or at Toledo?"
"And I prevented you?—"
Rosas interrupted Marianne, saying abruptly, and smiling almost sadly:
"Ah! my dear one, if you only knew—you have prevented many things."
"If I have prevented you from being unhappy, I am delighted. Besides, it is evident that you have never had a very determined inclination for marriage, seeing that you have preferred to trot around the world."
"Like Don Quixote, eh? Do you know, moreover, since we are talking of all these things, that you have saved me from dying in the corner like an abandoned dog?"
"I?" said Marianne.
"You or your songs, as you please. Yes, in Egypt I suffered from fever something like typhus. They left me for dead, as after a battle, in the most wretched and frightful of native villages. No doctors, who might, perhaps, have cured me, not a bed, not even a mattress. My servants, believing me past hope, abandoned me—or rather, for I prefer your Parisian word—cast me adrift—there is no other expression. There I was, stretched out on a heap of damp straw—in short, on a dunghill—"
"You, Rosas?"
"In all conscience, I correctly portrayed Job there; lean, with a three months' old beard, and with the death-rattle in my throat; in the open air—don't alarm yourself, the nights were warm. In the evening the fellah-women gathered round me, while I watched the sun that tinted their cheeks with bronze—there were some pretty ones among them, I have painted them in water-colors from memory—they poured out their insults upon me in guttural tones, which I unfortunately understood, as I am an Orientalist,"—he smiled—"and in addition to those insults they threw mud at me, a fetid mass of filth. The women were charming, although they took part in it. These people did not like the roumi, the shivering Christian. Besides, women do not like men who have fallen. They do not like feeble creatures.—"
"Bah!—and where were the hospitals, the Sisters of Charity?"
"Are you quite sure that the Sisters of Charity are women, my dear Marianne?—In a word, I swear that I asked only one thing, as I lay on that devilish, poisonous dunghill, and that was, to end the matter in the quickest possible way, that I might be no longer thought of, when—don't know why, or, rather, I know very well—in my fever, a certain voice reached me—whence?—from far away it commenced humming,—I should proclaim it yours among a thousand—a ridiculously absurd refrain that we heard together one evening at the Variétés, at an anniversary celebration. And this Boulevard chant recurred to me there in the heart of that desert, and transported me at a single bound to Paris, and I saw you again and these fair locks that I now look at, I saw them, too, casting upon your forehead the light shadow that they do now. I heard your laugh. I actually felt that I had you beside me in one of the stage-boxes at the theatre, listening to the now forgotten singer humming the refrain that had so highly amused you, Guy and myself—"
It seemed to Marianne that the duke hesitated for a moment before pronouncing Guy's name. It was an almost imperceptible hesitation, rather felt than seen.
Rosas quickly recovered:
"On my word, you will see directly that the Boulevard lounger was hidden under your gloomy Castilian,—that refrain took such a hold on my poor wandering brain, such an entire possession, that I clung to it when the fever was at its height—I hummed it again and again, and on my honor, it banished the fever, perhaps by some homeopathic process, for at any other time, this deuced refrain would have aroused a fever in me."
"Why?—Because it was I who formerly hummed it?"
"Yes," said Rosas in a lowered tone. "Well! yes, just for that reason!—"
He drew closer to her on the divan, and she said to him, laughingly:
"How fortunate it is that Faure is singing yonder! He attracts everybody and so leaves us quite alone in this salon. It is very pleasant. Would you like to go and applaud Faure? It is some years since I heard him."
"You are very malicious, Marianne," said the duke. "Let me steal this happy, fleeting hour. I am very happy."
"You are happy?"
"Profoundly happy, and simply because I am near you, listening to you and looking at you—"
"My poor Job," she said, still laughing, "would you like me to sing you the refrain that we heard at the Variétés?"
De Rosas did not reply, but simply looked at her.
He felt as if he were surrounded with all the perfume of youth. On a console beside Marianne, stood a vase of inlaid enamel containing sprigs of white lilacs which as she leaned forward, surrounded her fair head as with an aureole of spring. Her locks were encircled with milk-white flowers and bright green leaves, transparent and clear, like the limpid green of water; and at times these sprigs were gently shaken, dropping a white bud on Marianne's hair, that looked like a drop of milk amid a heap of ruddy gold.
Ah! how at this moment, all the poetry, all the past with its unacknowledged love swelled Rosas's heart and rushed to his lips. In this brilliantly-lighted salon, under the blaze of the lights, amid the shimmering reflections of the satin draperies, he forgot everything in his rapture at the presence of this woman, lovely to adoration, whose glance penetrated his very veins and filled him with restless thoughts.
The distant music, gentle, penetrating and languishing, some soothing air from Gounod, reached them like a gentle breeze wafted into the room.
José believed himself to be in a dream.
"Ah! if you only knew, madame," he said, becoming more passionate with each word that he spoke, as if he had been gulping down some liqueur, "if you only knew how you have travelled with me everywhere, in thought, there, carried with me like a scapular—"
"My portrait?" said Marianne. "I remember it. I was very slender then, prettier, a young girl, in fact."
"No! no! not your portrait. I tore that up in a fit of frenzy."
"Tore it up?"
"Yes, as I thought that those eyes, those lips and that brow belonged to another."
Marianne's cheeks became pallid.
"But I have taken with me something better than that portrait: I preserved you, you were always present, and pretty, so pretty—as you are now, Marianne—Look at yourself! No one could be lovelier!"
"And why," she said slowly, speaking in a deep, endearing tone, "why did you not speak to me thus, of old?"
"Ah! of old!" said the duke angrily.
She allowed her head to fall on the back of the divan; looking at this man as she well knew how, and insensibly creeping closer to him, she breathed in his ears these burning words:
"Formerly, one who was your friend was beside me, is that not so?"
"Do not speak to me of him," José said abruptly.
"On the contrary, I am determined to tell you that even if I had loved him, I should not have hesitated for a moment to leave him and follow you. But I did not love him."
"Marianne!"
"You won't believe me? I never loved him. I have never been his mistress."
"I do not ask your secret. I do not speak of him," said the duke, who had now become deadly pale.
"And I am determined to speak to you of him. Never, you understand, never was Guy de Lissac my lover. No, in spite of appearances; he has never even kissed my lips. I thought I loved him, but before yielding, I had time to discover that I did not love him! And I waited, I swear to you, expecting that you would say to me: 'I love you!'"
"I?"
"You," said Marianne, in a feeble tone. "You never guessed then?"
And she crept with an exquisitely undulating movement still closer to Rosas, who, as if drawn by some magnetic fluid, surrendered his face to this woman with the wandering eyes, half-open lips, from which a gentle sigh escaped and died away in the duke's hair.
He said nothing, but hastily seizing Marianne's hand, he drew her face close to his lips, her pink nostrils dilated as if the better to breathe the incense of love; and wild, distracted, intoxicated, he pressed his feverish, burning lips upon that fresh mouth that he felt exhaled the perfume of a flower that opens to the morning dew.
"I love you now, I loved you then!—" Marianne said to him, after that kiss that paled his cheeks.
Rosas had risen: a thunder of applause greeted the termination of a song in the other salon and the throng was pouring into the smaller salon. Marianne saw Uncle Kayser, who was arguing with Ramel, whose kindly, lean face wore an expression of weariness. She also rose, grasped the duke's hands with a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him:
"There is my uncle. We shall see each other again, shall we not?"
She crushed Rosas with her electric glance.
Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm, leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl without any position.
Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece.
"Let us go!" she said to him.
"What! leave? Why, there is to be a supper."
"Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will discuss the morality of art."
She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss.
"Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way. "Since you wish it—what a funny idea!—Ramel," he said, extending his hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like to show you some canvases."
"I go out so rarely," said Ramel.
"Huron!" said the painter.
"Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel.
Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost identical confessions?" While she was recalling that passionate moment, the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling her—
But what had he to tell her?
He had said everything. He had entirely surrendered, had opened his soul, as transparent as crystal. And this notwithstanding that he had vowed in past days that he would keep his secret locked within him. He had smothered his love under his frigid Castilian demeanor. And now, suddenly, like a child, on the first chance meeting with that woman, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a confession that he had been rigidly withholding!
Ah! it was because he loved her, and had always loved her. There was only one woman in the whole world for him,—this one. He did not lie. Marianne's smile haunted him, wherever he was. In her glance was a poison that he had drunk, which set his blood on fire. He was hers. Except for the image of Lissac, he would most certainly have returned long since to Paris to seek Mademoiselle Kayser.
But Lissac was there. He recalled how much Guy had loved her. He had more than once made the third in their company. He had often accompanied Lissac to Marianne's door. How then had she dared to say just now that she had never been his mistress?
But how was he to believe her?
And why, after all, should she have lied? What interest had she?—
In proportion as Rosas considered the matter, he grew more angry with himself, and in the very midst of the crowd, he was seized with a violent attack of frenzy, such as at times suddenly determined him to seek absolute solitude. He was eager to escape.
In order to avoid Madame Marsy, who was perhaps seeking him, he slipped through the groups of people and reached the door without being seen, leaving without formal salutation, as the English do.
He was in the hall, putting on his overcoat, while a servant turned up its otter-fur collar, when he heard Guy say:
"You are going, my dear duke? Shall we bear each other company?"
The idea was not distasteful to Rosas. Involuntarily, perhaps, he thought that a conversation with Lissac was, in some way, a chat with Marianne. These two beings were coupled in his recollections and preoccupations; besides, he really liked Guy. The Parisian was the complement of the Castilian. They had so many reminiscences in common: fêtes, suppers, sorrows, Parisian sadnesses, girls who sobbed to the measure of a waltz. Then they had not seen each other for so long.
Rosas experienced a certain degree of pleasure in finding himself once more on the boulevard with Guy. It made him feel young again. Every whiff of smoke that ascended from his cigar in the fresh air, seemed to breathe so many exhalations of youth. They had formerly ground out so many paradoxes as they strolled thus arm in arm, taking their recreation through Paris.
In a very little time, and after the exchange of a few words, they had bridged the long gap of years, of travel and separation. They expressed so much in so few words. Rosas, as if invincibly attracted by the name of Marianne, was the first to pronounce it, while Guy listened with an impassive air to the duke's interrogations.
In this way they went toward the boulevard, along which the rows of gas-jets flamed like some grand illumination.
"Paris!" said Rosas, "has a singular effect on one. It resumes its dominion over one at once on seeing it again, and it seems as if one had never left it. I have hardly unpacked my trunks, and here I am again transformed into a Parisian."
"Paris is like absinthe!" said Guy. "As soon as one uncorks the bottle, one commences to drink it again."
"Absinthe! there you are indeed, you Frenchmen, who everlastingly calumniate your country. What an idea, comparing Paris with absinthe!"
"A Parisian's idea, parbleu! You have not been here two days and you are already intoxicated with Parisine, you said so yourself. The hasheesh of the boulevard."
"Perhaps it is not Parisine only that has, in fact, affected my brain," said Rosas.
"No doubt, it is also the Parisienne. Madame Marsy is very pretty."
"Charming," said Rosas coldly.
"Less charming than Mademoiselle Kayser!"
Guy sent a whiff of smoke from his cigar floating on the night breeze, while awaiting the duke's reply; but José pursued his way beside his friend, without uttering a word, as if he were suddenly absorbed, and Lissac, who had allowed the conversation to lapse, sought to reopen it: "Then," he said suddenly,—dropping the name of Mademoiselle Kayser:—"You will be in Paris for some time, Rosas?"
"I do not in the least know."
"You will not, I hope, set out again for the East?"
"Oh! you know what a strange fellow I am. It won't do to challenge me to!"
"I don't challenge you at all, I only ask you not to leave the fortifications hereafter. We shall gain everything. You are not a Spaniard, you are a born Parisian, as I have already told you a hundred times. If I were in your place, I would set myself up here and stick to Paris. Since it is the best place in the world, why look for another?"
"My dear Guy," interrupted the duke, who had not listened, "will you promise to answer me, with all frankness, a delicate, an absurd question, if you will, one of those questions that is not generally put, but which I am going to ask you, nevertheless, without preface, point-blank?"
"To it and to any others that you put me, my dear duke, I will answer as an honest man and a friend should."
"Have you been much in love with Mademoiselle Kayser?"
"Very much."
"And has she loved you—a little?"
"Not at all."
"That is not what she has just told me."
"Ah!" said Lissac, as he threw away his cigar. "You spoke of me, then?"
"She told me that she believed she loved you sincerely."
"That is just what I had the pleasure of telling you."
"Marianne?" repeated Lissac, who perfectly understood the question from De Rosas's hesitation.
"My dear friend, when a man feels sufficiently anxious, or sufficiently weak, or sufficiently smitten, whichever you please, to stake his life on the throw of the dice, he is permitted to put one of those misplaced questions to which I have just referred. Well! you can tell me what, perhaps, none other than I would dare to ask you: Have you been Marianne's lover?"
Before replying, Guy took the arm of the duke in a friendly way, and, leaning upon it, felt that it trembled nervously. Then, touching his hand by chance, he observed that Rosas was in a burning fever.
"My dear fellow, it is the everlasting question of honor between men and of duty to a woman that you put before me. Had I been Marianne's lover, I should be bound to tell you that Marianne had never been my mistress. These falsehoods are necessary. No; I have not been Marianne's lover, but I advise you, if you do not wish to be perfectly miserable, not to seek to become so. You are one of those men who throw their hearts open as wide as a gateway. She is a calculating creature, who pursues, madly enough I admit, without consistency or constancy in her ideas, any plan that she may have in view. She might be flattered to have you as a suitor, as I was, or as a lover, as I have been assured others were. I do not affirm this, remember; but she will never be moved by your affection. She is a pure Parisian, and is incapable of loving you as you deserve, but you could not deceive her, as they say she has been."
"Deceived?" asked Rosas, in a tone of pity that struck Lissac.
"Deceived! yes! deceit is the complementary school of love."
"Then—if I loved Marianne?" asked Rosas.
"I would advise you to tell it to her at first, and prove it afterward, and finally to catalogue it in that album whose ashes are sprinkled at the bottom of the marriage gifts."
"You speak of Mademoiselle Kayser as you would speak of a courtesan," said the duke, in a choking voice.
"Ah! I give you my word," said Lissac, "that I should speak very differently of Mademoiselle Alice Aubry, or of Mademoiselle Cora Touchard. I would say to you quite frankly: They are pretty creatures; there is no danger."
"And Marianne, on the contrary, is dangerous."
"Oh! perfectly, for you."
"And why is she not dangerous for you?"
"Why, simply, my dear duke, because I am satisfied to love her as you have hitherto done and because I had, as I told you, the good fortune not to be her lover."
"But you brought her to Madame Marsy's this evening?"
"Oh! her uncle accompanied us, but I was there."
"You offer your arm then to a woman whom, as you have just told me, you consider dangerous?"
"Not for Sabine!—and then, that is a drop of the absinthe, a little of the hasheesh of which I spoke to you. One sees only concessions in Paris, and even when one is dead, one needs a further concession, but in perpetuity. One only becomes one's self"—and Guy's jesting tone became serious,—"when a worthy fellow like you puts one a question that seems terribly like asking advice. Then one answers him, as I have just answered you, and cries out to him: 'Beware!'"
"I thank you," said Rosas, suddenly stopping short on the pavement. "You treat me like a true friend."
"And if I seem to you to be too severe," added Lissac, smiling, "charge that to the account of bitterness. A man that has loved a woman is never altogether just toward her. If he has ceased to love her, he slights her, if he still loves her, he slanders her. I have perhaps, traduced Marianne, but I have not slighted you, that is certain. Now, take advantage of this gossip. But when?"
"I don't know," replied the duke. "I will write you. I shall perhaps leave Paris!"
"What is that?"
"Just what I say."
"The deuce!" said Lissac. "Do you know that if you were to fly from the danger in question, I should be very uneasy? It would be very serious."
"That would not be a flight. At the most, a caprice," the duke replied.
They separated, less pleased with each other than they were at the commencement of their interview. Lissac felt that in some fashion or other, he had wounded Rosas even in adopting the flippant tone of the lounger, without any malice, and the Spaniard with his somewhat morose nature, retired within himself, almost gloomy, and reproached Guy for the first time for smiling or jesting on so serious a matter.
Discontented with himself, he entered his house. His servant was waiting for him. He brought him a blue envelope on a card-tray.
"A telegram for monsieur le duc."
Rosas tore it open in a mechanical way. It was from one of his London friends, Lord Lindsay, who having learned of Rosas's return, sent him a pressing invitation. If he did not hasten to Paris to welcome him, it was simply because grave political affairs demanded his presence in London.
The duke, while taking off his gloves, looked at the crumpled despatch lying under the lamp. He was, like most travellers, superstitious. Perhaps this despatch had arrived in the nick of time to prevent him from committing some act of folly.
But what folly?
He still felt Marianne's kiss on his lips, burning like ice. To-morrow,—in a few hours,—his first thought, his only thought would be to find that woman again, to experience that voluptuous impression, that dream that had penetrated his heart. A danger, Lissac had said. The feline eyes of Marianne had a dangerous ardor; but it was their charm, their strength and their adorable seductiveness, that filtered like a flame through her long, fair lashes.
He closed his eyes to picture Mademoiselle Kayser, to inhale the atmosphere, to enjoy something of the perfume surrounding her.
A danger!
Guy was perhaps right. The best love is that which is never gathered, which remains immature, like a blossom in spring that never becomes a fruit. Lord Lindsay's despatch arrived seasonably. It was a chance or a warning.
In any case, what would Rosas risk by passing a few days in London, and losing the burning of that kiss? The sea-breezes would perhaps efface it.
"I am certainly feverish," the duke thought. "It was assuredly necessary to speak to Lissac. It was also necessary to speak to her," he added, in a dissatisfied, anxious, almost angry tone.
A danger!
Lissac had acted imprudently in uttering that word, which addressed to such a man as Rosas, had something alluring about it. What irritated the duke was Guy's reply, asserting that he had not been Marianne's lover, but that Marianne had had other lovers. Others? What did Lissac know of this? A species of jealous frenzy was blended with the feverish desire that Marianne's kiss had injected into Rosas's veins. He would have liked to know the truth, to see Marianne again, to urge Guy to further confidences. And, then, he felt that he would rather not have come, not have seen her again, not have gone to Sabine's.
"Well, so be it! Lord Lindsay is right, I will go."
The following morning, Guy de Lissac found in his mail a brief note, sealed with the arms of the duke, with the motto: Hasta la muerte.
José wrote to him as he was leaving Paris:
"You are perhaps right. I am a little intoxicated with Parisine. I am going to London to visit a friend and if I ever recount my voyages there, it will only be to the serious-minded members of the Geographical Society. There, at least, there is no 'danger.' With many thanks and until we meet again.
"Your friend,
"J. DE R——"
"Plague on it," said Lissac, who read the letter three times, "but our dear duke is badly bitten! Ohimé! Marianne Kayser has had a firm and sure tooth this time!—We shall see!—" he added, as he broke the seal of another letter, containing a request for a loan on the part of someone richer than himself.