CHAPTER IX
THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSES
On the road to Rose Villa Jean breathed in the air of the loveliest of summer nights and tasted that joy which life gives when love comes to make it straight and whole, not to disturb and torture.
Jean reached his uncle’s house before he knew where he was.
“Already!” he cried. And he smiled as he noticed that all the windows of the little house were lighted up. “Is he having a party? That would be an unusual sight.”
He opened the gate and went up the little rose-bordered path which led in a straight line to the front door. Mechanically he stretched out his hand, as he often did, towards the slim bushes and in the darkness his fingers tried to gather a flower at haphazard; but they found only the leaves and the thorns.
“Some thief,” he thought, “has climbed the fence and stolen my uncle’s treasures! What a blow for the poor man!”
The door was still ajar. Jean pushed it open. It seemed as if he were walking in a field of roses. The invisible garden, under shadow of night, had apparently invaded the hall. Flowers lay in heaps, and the electric light of the ante-room revealed, on a green background of leaves, variegated patches of color—here in sharp contrast, there in insensible gradations of hue. Red roses, crimson red, poppy-red, carmine, nasturtium, flame-colored, copper, red of the dawn; white roses, dead-white, pure white, creamy white; roses of tender pink, peach-colored, bright pink; roses of pale yellow, straw-colored, canary-colored, nankin yellow, lemon yellow, sulphur, orange; all mingled their scents together.
Jean went forward stupefied. The doors of the dining-room and drawing-room, which communicated with each other and could be thrown into a single room, stood wide open and their thresholds strewn with flowering branches revealed the onward progress of the invading hordes. But after three or four steps, the young man stopped short. A voice penetrated distinctly to his ears. It was giving forth, with the monotonous regularity of a chamberlain, announcing the guests, the names of women, and at every name it sounded as if a branch were falling on the ground or as if silken stuffs were rustling.
“Madame Laurette de Messimy! Madame Jean Sisley! The Countess of Panisse! The Duchess of Edinburgh! The Duchess of Auerstädt! The Marquise de Vivens! Madame Hippolyte Jamain! Madame de Watteville! Mademoiselle Anne-Marie Cote! ...”
With a catch at his heart Jean thought, “Uncle has gone mad while I was away!”