A Cruel Enigma

by Paul Bourget

"I am superstitious," she had said childishly; "and then, are you not my dear star?"

She would employ these sudden caresses in language which afterwards occupied Hubert's thoughts for an indefinite time. He was quite aware that she would not be waiting for him on the quay, and his eyes sought for her in spite of himself. But she had multiplied precautions even to arriving herself the evening before by Calais and Dover. The packet is still approaching. It is possible to distinguish the faces of some inhabitants of the town, whose only diversion consists in coming to the end of the pier in order to witness the arrival of the tidal boat. A few minutes more and Hubert will be beside Theresa. Ah, if she were to fail him at the rendezvous! What if she had been sick or overtaken, or if she had died on the way! The whole legion of foolish suppositions file before the thoughts of the restless lover.

The boat is in the harbour; the passengers land and hurry to the train. Hubert was almost the only one to halt in the little town. He allowed his trunk to go on to London, and took his seat with his portmanteau in one of the flies standing in front of the terminus. He had felt something like a touch of melancholy when speaking to the driver and thus ascertaining how correct and intelligible his English was, notwithstanding that it was his first journey to England. He recalled his childhood, his Yorkshire governess, his mother's care to make him speak every day. If this poor mother were to see him now! Then these memories were gradually effaced as the light vehicle, drawn by a pony at a trot, briskly climbed the rude ascent by which the upper part of the town is reached.

To the left of the young man stretched the wonderful landscape of the sea, an immense gulf of pale green, blending in its extreme line with a gulf of blue, and dotted all over with barques, schooners, and steamers. On the summit the road turned.

The carriage left the cliff, entered a street, then a second, and then a third, all lined with low houses, whose projecting windows showed rows of red geraniums and ferns behind their panes. At a turning Hubert perceived the door of a vast Gothic building and a black plate, the mere inscription on which, in its gilt letters, made his heart leap. He found himself in front of the Star Hotel. There was an interval for inquiring at the office whether Madame Sylvie had arrived—this was the name that Theresa had chosen to assume on account of the initials engraven on all her toilet articles, and she was to have been entered in the books as a dramatic artist; for ascending two storeys and passing down a long corridor; then the servant opened the door of a small apartment, and there, seated at a table in a drawing-room, the paleness of her face increased by deep emotion, and her form clad in a garment of a red silky material whose graceful folds outlined without accentuating her figure,—there was Theresa. The coal fire glowed in the fireplace, the inner sides of which were covered with coloured ware. A rotunda-like window, of the kind that the English call "bow windows," was at the end of the apartment, to which the furniture usual in such rooms in Great Britain gave an aspect of quiet homeliness.

"Ah! it is really you," said the young man, going up to Theresa, who was smiling at him, and he laid his hand upon his mistress's bosom as though to convince himself of her existence. This gentle pressure enabled him to feel beneath the slight material the passionate beatings of the happy woman's heart.

"Yes, it is really I," she replied, with more languor than usual.

He sat down beside her and their lips met. It was one of those kisses of supreme delight in which two lovers meeting after absence strive to impart, together with the tenderness of the present hour, all the unexpressed tendernesses of the hours that have been lost. A tap at the door separated them.

"It is for your luggage," said Theresa, pushing her lover away with a gesture of regret; then, with a subtle smile: "Would you like to see your room? I have been here since yesterday evening; I hope that you will be pleased with everything. I thought so much of you in getting the little room ready."

She drew him by the hand into an apartment which adjoined the drawing-room, and the window of which looked upon the garden of the hotel. The fire was lighted in the fireplace. Vases, gay with flowers, stood on the bracket and also on the table, over which Theresa, to give it a more homelike appearance, had spread a Japanese cloth which she had brought. On it she had placed three frames with those portraits of herself which the young man preferred. He turned to thank her, and he encountered one of those looks which make the heart quite faint, and with which an affectionate woman seems to thank him whom she loves for the pleasure which he has been pleased to receive from her. But the presence of the servant engaged in setting down and opening the portmanteau prevented him from replying to this look with a kiss.