“No, mademoiselle.... Shall I tell him that mademoiselle....”
“Thank you, Pageot.... You will please tell him that I am waiting for him outside, near the gate....”
“Very well, mademoiselle!” and the usher ran to open the door for her. “Do you know who she is?” he added mysteriously, as he turned back to Mme. Chambannes. “You do know?... It is Mlle. Thérèse Raindal, M. Rainda daughter!”
Outside, Mlle. Raindal began to pace back and forth in front of the ancient gate, walking briskly up and down the pavement, her neck shrunk in her shoulders and her shoulders hunched forward like those of a sentry struggling against the cold. At intervals she would stop and throw a searching glance towards the steps at the end of the courtyard. Through the window could be seen the meditative face of Pageot, which had at that distance and in the thick ochreous air of that dark November afternoon, almost the complexion of a yellow-fever patient. But as M. Raindal was not yet in sight, Thérèse took up her sentry walk again, her elbows close to her body, her hands crossed inside her plush muff.
Gradually, as she paced back and forth, the line of her lips, almost as thin as a thread of rose silk, paled and all but vanished in a pouting expression. She was thinking of the approaching evening ordeal, the forced introduction which had been arranged for her at the house of M. Lemeunier de Saulvard, of the Department of Moral Sciences,—an introduction to an unknown man who would be presented to her at a dance, a “possible husband,” the man who would have a right to her kisses, to her flesh, and would thereafter spend all his nights beside her. One more to reject! The ninth one in ten years! “A young savant of the greatest merit,” Saulvard had written; “one of our rising hopes in Assyriology, M. Pierre Boerzell....” M. Boerzell! M. Boerzell! She repeated the harsh, barbarous name. Well, that “hope” would be no less sadly handicapped in the matter of good looks than the others before him! Probably something like the podgy little man carrying a barriste case who was coming in her direction on the other side of the street! Instinctively she stopped to take a good look at the passer-by, her lips wickedly pursed and her eye aflame as at the sight of prey. Then, with lips relaxed in a disdainful smile, she turned about, and shrugging her shoulders, murmured:
“Yes, probably one of that type!”
She was suffering. As the wind bit her face, it seemed to her that something icy was gripping her heart. She remembered that other one—the man she had once lost—the runaway and defaulting fiancé, Albert Dastarac. Ten years had passed since then, but there were still nights when, in her maidenly dreams, she fancied that she felt his maddening embraces and the lingering fragrance of his lips.
Who could have foreseen that the young agrégé of history would prove so perfidious? That wheedling southerner, that seductive Albârt, as his deep bass voice sounded his name! He was so caressing, so passionate; the director of the Normal School had praised him so much! Even now while she waited outside the gate in that icy mist, Thérèse Raindal could not believe in the actuality of that past betrayal; she could not explain it to herself or even understand it. Images, daily called back to her memory, were so familiar and recent! She fancied she was beside Albârt in her fathe drawing-room in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Once more she saw his impudent profile, like that of a classical bandit, his splendid frame, his straight legs, his huge brown eyes with scarcely any white to be seen, and the fine black mustache which he curled with his tapering fingers, coppered by the use of tobacco. How he had made love to her during those eight days of their engagement!
She was flat-chested; her mouth was bloodless, small, and narrowed as if drawn together by a cord; her complexion was dulled by that greenish tan which one acquires when shut away from the sun, amidst dusty books, in over-heated libraries or in the feverish air of lecture halls. Albârt seemed to notice none of all those defects of which she was more conscious than anyone else and which often made her secretly unhappy. He saw nothing but her charms. He was always enraptured with her pale, straight nose chiselled like an antique, with her fierce gray eyes crowned with black velvet,—like those of Minerva, he would say,—with the massive coils of her brown hair, which he wanted to take down and bathe his face in. And the tenderness of his words matched his ability to flatter.
Ceaselessly, ardently, and without reason, he called her, as in an invocation or a prayer, “Oh, ma Theresoun! Oh, ma chato!” For her he sang slow Provençal songs, mournful as the tunes played by distant hunting-horns, which Mme. Raindal, who was also from the South, accompanied as best she could on the piano, quiveringly singing the chorus with him. Or, when he was alone with the young girl, he would sit at her feet on a stool of blue satin while she talked about the future,—how she would regulate the hours of his work, help him in his career, and push him on to the highest attainments. Then suddenly, wildly, he would throw himself upon her and press her in his arms murmuring, “Ma Theresoun!” The stone-like biceps of his arm would roll against her flesh, his scented mustache would be close to her face, his fragrant lips meet hers, and she would throw back her head, her eyelids closed, with a longing to yield, to let the sweet balm of his kisses permeate all her being.