XIX.
THE OBSEQUIES.
"Don't weep, my fairy; you take away all my courage. Come, you will be much happier when you no longer have your horrible demon. You are going back to Fontainebleau to tend your hens. Brahim's ten thousand francs will be enough to give you a start. And after that have no fear; when I am once there, I'll send you money. As this bey wants some of my sculpture, I shall make him pay well for it, be sure of that. I shall return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana?"
"Yes, you will be a sultana,—but I shall be dead, and I shall never see you again."
And honest Crenmitz in her despair huddled in a corner of the cab, so that her companion might not see her weep.
Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible melancholy, the ominous heart-sickness in which Mora's death had plunged her. What a terrible blow for the haughty girl! Ennui, spite had driven her into that man's arms; pride, modesty, she had given all to him, and now he had carried it all away, leaving her withered for life, a widow without tears, without mourning, without dignity. Two or three visits to Saint-James, a few evenings in the back of a box at some small theatre, behind the grating where forbidden, shamefaced pleasure conceals itself,—those were the only memories bequeathed to her by that liaison of two weeks, that loveless sin, wherein not even her pride had succeeded in satisfying itself by the notoriety of a scandal in high life. The fruitless, ineffaceable stain, the senseless fall into the gutter of a woman who cannot walk, and upon whom the ironical pity of the passers-by weighs heavily when she tries to rise.
For a moment she contemplated suicide, but was deterred by the thought that it might be attributed to despairing love. She saw in anticipation the sentimental emotion of the salons, the absurd figure that her supposed passion would cut amid the duke's innumerable conquests, and upon her grave, dug so near the other, the Parma violets, stripped of their petals by the dandified Moëssards of journalism. There remained the resource of travel, one of those journeys to countries so distant that they expatriate even the thoughts. Unluckily, she lacked money. Thereupon she remembered that, on the day following her success at the Salon, old Brahim Bey had come to see her, to make magnificent proposals to her in his master's name for divers great works to be executed at Tunis. She had said no at the moment, refusing to be tempted by Oriental prices, by a munificent hospitality, by the promise of the finest courtyard on the Bardo for a studio, surrounded by arches carved like exquisite lace. But now she was willing to accept. She had but to make a sign, the bargain was concluded at once, and after an exchange of despatches, a hasty packing-up, and closing the house, she started for the railway-station as if she were going away for a week, surprised herself by her prompt decision, pleased in all the adventurous and artistic portions of her nature by the prospect of a new life in a strange land.
The bey's pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and, closing her eyes in the cab, she saw in anticipation the white stones of an Italian harbor enclosing an iridescent sea, where the sunlight had a gleam of the Orient, where everything sang joyously, even to the swelling sails upon the deep. It so happened that on that day Paris was muddy and murky, drowned by one of those continuous downpours of rain which seem to have been made for it alone, to have ascended in clouds from its river, its steam, its monster breath, only to descend again in streams from its roofs, its gutters, the innumerable windows of its attics. Felicia was in haste to escape from that depressing Paris, and her feverish impatience vented itself upon the driver for not driving faster, upon the horses,—two genuine broken-down cab-horses,—and upon an inexplicable multitude of carriages and omnibuses jammed together at the approaches to Pont de la Concorde.
"I can't, Madame,—it's the funeral."