A Tragic Idyl

by Paul Bourget

Without doubt if poor Ely had not been the disabused nihilist who believed, as she once said energetically, that "there is only this world," all the obscure fatalities that were crushing her down would have been made clear with a blinding light. She would have recognized a mysterious justice, stronger than our intentions, more infallible than our calculations, in the encounter that made the punishment of her double adultery issue from the friendship of those who had been her guilty partners in her failings, and caused those same accomplices to be each a punishment to the other. But in the blow that overwhelmed her she saw only the base vengeance of a former lover. And such a form of suffering could only end in degrading her. All her virtues of generous indulgence, of tender goodness, of sentimental scrupulousness that her love, magnificent in its enthusiastic spontaneity, had awakened in her heart, had receded from her. And she felt that all the most hideous and all her worst instincts were taking their place at the idea that these two men, both of whom had possessed her, one of whom she loved to the verge of madness, despised her. And in imagination she again saw Pierre as he was there before her, only twenty-four hours before, so devoted, so noble, so happy!—Ah! Pierre!—All her bitterness melted into a flood of tears as she cried aloud the beloved name. Ah! to what good was it that she cried for him? The man for whom such passionate sighs were breathed would not even listen to them!

What an evening, what a night the unfortunate woman passed, locked in her room! What courage it needed not to remain there all the following day, with windows closed, curtains down! How she longed to flee the daylight, life, to flee from herself, plunged and engulfed in a night and silence as of death!—But she was the daughter of an officer and the wife of a prince. She had thus twice over the trait of a military education, an absolute exactitude in carrying out her promises, a trait that causes the disciplined will to rise superior to all events and to execute at the appointed time the duties imposed. She had promised the night before to intercede with Dickie Marsh in Chésy's favor, and she was to give his reply in the afternoon. Her lassitude was so great in the morning that she nearly wrote to Madame Chésy to postpone her visit and that to the American's yacht. Then she said, "No, that would be cowardly."—And at eleven o'clock in the morning, her face hidden by a white veil that prevented her reddened eyes and agitated features from being seen, she stepped from her carriage on to the little quay to which the Jenny was moored. When she saw the rigging of the yacht and her white hull outlined against the sky, pale with the presage of heat, she remembered her arrival upon the same sun-scorched stones of the little quay, in the same carriage, only a fortnight before, and the profound joy she felt when she saw Pierre's silhouette as he looked for her from the boat anxiously. Those two weeks had been long enough for her romantic and tender idyl to be transformed into a sinister tragedy. Where was the lover who was with her when they left for Genoa? Where was he trying to hide the awful pain caused by her and which she could not even console? Had he already left Cannes? Ever since the night before the idea that Pierre had left her forever had made her heart icy with cold terror. And yet she devoured with her eyes the yacht upon which she had been so happy.

She was now near enough to be able to count the portholes, of which the line appeared just above the rail of a cutter moored near the Jenny. The seventh was the one lighting her cabin, their cabin, the nuptial refuge where they had tasted the intoxicating joy of their first night of love. A sailor was seated upon a plank suspended from the rail washing the shell of the boat with a brush that he dipped from time to time in a big bucket. The triviality of the detail, of the work being done at that minute and at that place, completed the faintness of the young woman caused by the air of contrast. She was speechless with emotion when she stepped upon the gangway leading from the quay to the boat. Her agitation was so apparent that Dickie Marsh could not resist an inclination to question her, thus failing for once to observe the great Anglo-Saxon principle of avoiding personal remarks.

"It is nothing," she replied; "or rather nothing that concerns me."

Then, making his question an excuse for introducing the subject of her visit, she said:—

"I am all upset by the news I have just learned from Yvonne."

"Shall we go into the smoking-room?" asked the American, who had trembled at the sound of Madame de Chésy's name. "We shall be able to talk better there."

They were in the office where Marsh was busy when Ely arrived. The dry clicking of the typewriter under the fingers of a secretary had not stopped or even slackened a moment upon the entrance of the young woman. Another secretary went on telephoning to the telegraph office, and a third continued arranging documents. The intensity of their industry proved the importance and the pressing nature of the work being done. But the business man left his dictations and his calculations with as little compunction as an infant displays when he casts aside his hoop or ball, to question Yvonne's messenger with a veritable fever of anxiety.

"So the bolt has fallen! Are they ruined?" he asked, when they were alone. Then, in reply to Ely's affirmation, he went on: "Was I not right? I have not seen the Vicomtesse for some little time. I have not even tried to see her. I thought Brion was at the bottom of all. I was sure you would make me a sign at the right moment, unless—But no, there is no unless—I was sure the poor child would estimate that man for the abominable cad that he is, and that she would show him the door the first word he uttered."

"She came to see me," said Ely, "trembling, and revolted at the ignoble propositions the wretch made to her."