"Pshaw! she has seen many others. Ah! Madame Jenkins is going to sing."
There was a commotion in the salon, a stronger pressure in the crowd toward the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de Géry drew a long breath. The words he had just overheard had oppressed his heart. He felt as if he himself were spattered, sullied by the mud unsparingly thrown upon the ideal he had formed for himself of that glorious youth, ripened in the sun of art and endowed with such penetrating charm. He moved away a little, changed his position. He dreaded to hear some other calumny. Madame Jenkins' voice did him good, a voice famous in Parisian salons, a voice that, with all its brilliancy, was in no sense theatrical, but seemed like speech, thrilling with emotion, striking resonant, unfamiliar chords. The singer, a woman of from forty to forty-five years of age, had magnificent hair of the color of ashes, refined, somewhat weak features, and an expression of great amiability. Still beautiful, she was dressed with the costly taste of a woman who has not abandoned the idea of pleasing. Nor had she abandoned it; she and the doctor—she was then a widow—had been married some ten years, and they seemed still to be enjoying the first months of their joint happiness. While she sang a Russian folk-song, as wild and sweet as the smile of a Slav, Jenkins artlessly manifested his pride without attempt at concealment, his broad face beamed expansively; and she, every time that she leaned forward to take breath, turned in his direction a timid, loving glance which sought him out over the music she held in her hand. And when she had finished, amid a murmur of delight and admiration, it was touching to see her secretly press her husband's hand, as if to reserve for herself a little corner of private happiness amid that great triumph. Young de Géry was taking comfort in the sight of that happy couple, when suddenly a voice murmured by his side—it was not the same voice that had spoken just before:
"You know what people say—that the Jenkinses are not married."
"What nonsense!"
"True, I assure you—it seems that there's a genuine Madame Jenkins somewhere, but not this one who has been exhibited to us. By the way, have you noticed—"
The conversation continued in an undertone. Madame Jenkins approached, bowing and smiling, while the doctor, stopping a salver as it passed, brought her a glass of bordeaux with the zeal of a mother, an impresario, a lover. Slander, slander, ineffaceable stain! Now Jenkins' attentions seemed overdone to the provincial. He thought that there was something affected, studied in them, and at the same time he fancied that he noticed in the thanks she expressed to her husband in a low tone a dread, a submissiveness derogatory to the dignity of a lawful wife, happy and proud in an unassailable position. "Why, society is a hideous thing!" said de Géry to himself in dismay, his hands as cold as ice. The smiles that encompassed him seemed to him like mere grimacing. He was ashamed and disgusted. Then suddenly his soul rose in revolt: "Nonsense! it isn't possible!" And, as if in answer to that exclamation, the voice of slander behind him continued carelessly: "After all, you know, I am not sure. I simply repeat what I hear. Look, there's Baronne Hemerlingue. He has all Paris here, this Jenkins."
The baroness came forward on the doctor's arm; he had rushed forward to meet her, and, despite his perfect control over his features, he seemed a little perturbed and disconcerted. It had occurred to the excellent Jenkins to take advantage of his party to make peace between his friend Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, his two wealthiest patients, who embarrassed him seriously with their internecine warfare. The Nabob asked nothing better. He bore his former chum no malice. Their rupture had come about as a result of Hemerlingue's marriage with one of the favorites of the former bey. "A woman's row, in fact," said Jansoulet; and he would be very glad to see the end of it, for any sort of ill-feeling was burdensome to that exuberant nature. But it seemed that the baron was not anxious for a reconciliation; for, notwithstanding the promise he had given Jenkins, his wife appeared alone, to the Irishman's great chagrin.
She was a tall, thin, fragile personage, with eyebrows like a bird's feathers, a youthful, frightened manner, thirty years striving to seem twenty, with a head-dress of grasses and grain drooping over jet black hair thickly strewn with diamonds. With her long lashes falling over white cheeks of the wax-like tint of women who have lived long in the seclusion of a cloister, a little embarrassed in her Parisian garb, she bore less resemblance to a former occupant of a harem than to a nun who had renounced her vows and returned to the world. A touch of devotion, of sanctity in her carriage, a certain ecclesiastical trick of walking with downcast eyes, elbows close to the sides and hands folded, manners which she had acquired in the ultra-religious environment in which she had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed the resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and spectacles, Maître Le Merquier, Deputy for Lyon, Hemerlingue's man of business, who attended the baroness when the baron was "slightly indisposed," as upon this occasion.
When they entered the second salon, the Nabob walked forward to meet her, expecting to descry in her wake the bloated face of his old comrade, to whom it was agreed that he should offer his hand. The baroness saw him coming and became whiter than ever. A steely gleam shot from under her long lashes. Her nostrils dilated, rose and fell, and as Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her pace, holding her head erect and rigid, letting fall from her thin lips a word in Arabic which no one else could understand, but in which the poor Nabob, for his part, understood the bitter insult; for when he raised his head his swarthy face was of the color of terra-cotta when it comes from the oven. He stood for a moment speechless, his great fists clenched, his lips swollen with anger. Jenkins joined him, and de Géry, who had watched the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking earnestly together with a preoccupied air.
The attempt had miscarried. The reconciliation, so cleverly planned, would not take place. Hemerlingue did not want it. If only the duke did not break his word! It was getting late. La Wauters, who was to sing the "Night" aria from the Magic Flute, after the performance at her theatre, had just arrived all muffled up in her lace hood.