Chapter 14

He almost reproached himself for not having brought Adrienne. She would have been so happy for this advanced spring day. She required so little to make her smile: mere crumbs of joy. She was better than he.

He excused himself by reflecting that he would not have been able to talk to Ramel.

And then it would have been necessary to talk to Adrienne, whereas the joy of the present moment was this solitary silence, the bath of warm air taken in the complete forgetfulness of the habitual existence.

The sight of the blue, gleaming lake before him, encircled with pines, like an artificial Swiss lake, compelled him to look out of the window.

The coachman slowly drove the carriage to the left in order to make the tour of the Lake.

Vaudrey looked at the sheet of water upon which the light played, and on which two or three skiffs glided noiselessly, even the sound of their oars not reaching his ears.

At the extremity of the alley, a carriage was standing, a hackney coach whose driver was peacefully sleeping in the sunshine, with his head leaning on his right shoulder, his broad-brimmed hat, bathed in the sunshine, serving him as a shade.

It was the only carriage there, and a few paces from the border of the water, standing out in dark relief against the violet-blue of the lake, a woman stood surrounded by a group of ducks of all shades, running after morsels of brown bread while uttering their hoarse cries.

Two white swans had remained in the water and looked at her with a dignified air, at a distance.

At the first glance at this woman, Sulpice felt a strange emotion. His legs trembled and his heart was agitated.

He could not be mistaken, he certainly recognized her. Either there was an extraordinary resemblance between them, or it was Mademoiselle Kayser herself.

Marianne? Marianne on the edge of this Lake at an hour when there was no one at the Bois? Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in predestination. Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary, but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path the being about whom one has just been thinking. He had frequently observed this fact. He had already descended from his carriage to go to her, taking a little pathway under the furze in order to reach the water's edge. There was no longer any doubt, it was she. Evidently he was to meet Mademoiselle Kayser some day. But how could chance will that he should desire to take that promenade to the Lake at the very hour that the young woman had driven there?

As he advanced, he thought how surprised Marianne would be. As he walked along, he looked at her.

She stood near a kind of wooden landing jutting out over the water. Over her black dress she had flung a short cloak of satin, embroidered with jet which sparkled in the sunlight. The light wind gently waved a black feather that hung from her hat, in which other feathers were entwined with a fringe of old gold bullion. Vaudrey noted every detail of this living statuette of a Parisian woman: between a little veil knotted behind her head and the lace ruching of her cloak, light, golden curls fell on her neck, and in that frame of light, this elegant woman, this silhouette standing out in full relief against the sky and the horizon line of the water, with a pencil of rays gilding her fair locks, seemed more exquisite and more the "woman" to Sulpice than in the décolleté of a ball costume.

When she heard the crushing of the sand by Sulpice's footsteps as he approached her with timid haste, she turned abruptly. Under her small black veil, drawn tightly over her face, and whose dots looked like so many patches on her face, Vaudrey at first observed Marianne's almost sickly paleness, then her suddenly joyous glance. A furtive blush mounted even to the young girl's cheek.

"You here?" she said--"you, Monsieur le Ministre?"

She had already imparted an entirely different tone to these questions. There was more abandon in the first, which seemed more like a cry, but the second betrayed a sudden politeness, perhaps a little affected.

Vaudrey replied by some commonplace remark. It was a fine day; he was tired; he wished to warm himself in this early sunshine. But she?--

"Oh! I--really I don't know why I am here. Ask the--my coachman. He has driven me where he pleased."

She spoke in a curt, irritated tone, under which either deception or grief was hidden.

She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks, white or gray, black, spotted, striped like tulips, marbled like Cordovan leather, with iridescent green or blue necks, whose tone suggested Venetian glassware, all of them hurrying, stretching their necks, opening their bills, or casting themselves at Marianne's feet, fighting, then almost choking themselves to swallow the enormous pieces of bread that were sold by a dealer close at hand.

"Ah! bless me! I did not think I should have the honor of meeting you here," she said.

"The honor?" said Vaudrey. "I, I should say the joy."

She looked straight into his eyes, frankly.

"I do not know what joy is, to-day," she said. "I come from the Continental Hotel, where I hoped to see--"

"What is that?"

"Nothing--"

"If it were nothing, you would not have frowned so."

"Oh! well! a friend--a friend whom I have again found--and who has disappeared. Just so,--abruptly--No matter, perhaps, after all! What happens, must happen. In short--and to continue my riddle, behold me feeding these ducks. God knows why! I detest the creatures. The state feeds them badly, Monsieur le Ministre, I tell you: they are famished. Well? well?" she said to a species of Indian duck, bolder than the others, who snapped at the hem of her skirt to attract attention and to demand fresh mouthfuls.

She commenced to laugh nervously, and said:

"That one isn't afraid."

She threw him a morsel that he swallowed with a greedy gulp.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Ministre, that the story of these ducks is that of the human species? There are some that have got nothing of all the bread that I have thrown them, and there are others who have gorged enough to kill them with indigestion. How would you classify that? Poor political economy."

"Oh, oh!" said Vaudrey. "You are wandering into the realms of lofty philosophy!--"

"Apropos of that, yes," said Marianne, as she pointed to the line of birds that hurried on all sides, left the water, waddled about, uttering their noisy cries. "You know that when one is sad, one philosophizes anent everything."

"And you are sad?" asked Sulpice, in a voice that certainly quivered slightly.

She threw away, without breaking it, the piece of bread that was left, brushed her gloved fingers, and, turning toward the minister, said with a smile that would make the flesh creep:

"Very sad. Oh! what would you have? The black butterflies, you know, the blue devils."

He saw her again, just as she had appeared before him yesterday, with arms and shoulders bare, lovely and seductive, and now, with her shoulders hidden under her cloak, her face half-veiled and quite pale, he thought her still more disquietingly charming. Moreover, the strangeness of the situation, the chance meeting, imparted something of mystery to their conversation and the attraction of an assignation.

Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois! It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each other, drawn on by the same sympathy.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously. "Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks? An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared--a quick plunge into such a sheet of water--very pure--quite tempting--Eh! well! it would end all."

Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying the utmost anxiety.

"Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better than the swans, there is no danger."

He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers.

"You are feverish," he said.

"I should be, at any rate."

Her voice was still harsh, as if she were distressed.

"The departure of--of that friend--has, then, caused you much suffering?"

"Suffering? No. Vexation, yes--You have built many castles of cards in your life--Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build many of them. Well! there it is, you see!"

She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey.

"I? I don't know."

He had made a movement.

"Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live. Fear nothing, I will go home, _parbleu_."

"Home?"

"Or to my uncle's."

"But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your Excellency."

"That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less anxiety about you than I have."

"Ah! bah!" said Marianne.

She had by this time got close to her hackney coach and looked at the coachman for a moment. "Don't you think it would be very wrong to waken him?" she said. "Will you accompany me for a moment, Monsieur le Ministre?"

Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive prospect.

Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.

They walked along slowly, followed by the coupé whose lengthened shadow was projected in front of them along the yellow pathway, moving beside the lake where the swans floated with their pure white wings extended and striking the water with their feet, raising all around them a white foam, like snow falling in flakes. The blue heavens were reflected in the water. The grass, of a burnt-green, almost gray color, looked like worn velvet here and there, showing the weft and spotted with earth.

Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.

"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with lowered voice and troubled heart.

A slight laugh from Marianne was her only reply, as she pointed with the tip of her finger to an inscription on a sign:

"_To Croix-Catelan!_" she said. "That end of the world is decidedly Parisian!"

"Nevertheless, see how isolated we are to-day."

It seemed as if she had divined his thought, for she took a path that skirted a road and there, in the narrowest strip of soft, fresh soil, on which the tiny heels of her boots made imprints like kisses upon a cheek, she walked in front of him, the shadows of the small branches dappling her black dress, while Vaudrey, deeply moved, still looked at her, framed as she was by trees with moss-covered trunks and surrounded with brambles, a medley of twisted branches.

And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.

To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. He approached her gently, walking by her side, at first not speaking, then little by little returning to that thought and almost whispering in her ear--that rosy ear that stood out against the paleness of her cheek:

"Is it possible to think of anything besides the opening spring, in this wood where everything is awakening to life? Is it really true, Marianne, that you really wished to die?"

He did not feel astonished at having dared to call her by name. It seemed as if he had known her for years. He forgot everything, as if the world was nothing but a dream and that this dream presented this woman's face.

"Yes," she replied. "Upon my honor, I was weary of life, but I see that most frequently at the very moment when one despairs--"

She stopped suddenly.

"Well?" he asked, as he waited for her to continue.

"Nothing. No, nothing!"

She commenced to laugh, calling his attention to the end of the path, to a broader alley which brought them back to the edge of the lake, whose blue line they saw in the distance.

"Blue on blue," she said, pointing to the sky and the water. "You reproach me for not liking blue, Monsieur le Ministre, see! I am taking an azure bath. This horizon is superb, is it not?"

Vaudrey debated with himself if she were jesting. Why should she give him that title which here and at such a moment, had such an out-of-place ring?

She glanced at him sidelong with a little droll expression, her pretty mouth yielding to a smile that enticed a kiss.

"We shall soon have returned to my carriage," she said. "Already!"

"That _already_ pleases me," said Sulpice.

"It is true. This short promenade is nothing, but it suffices to make one forget many things."

"Does it not?" exclaimed Vaudrey.

The shadow of his coupé was still projected between them along the ochre-colored road.

"Do you come to the Bois often?" asked the minister.

"No. Why?"

"Because I shall frequently return here," he said in a trembling voice.

"Really!--Then, oh! why then, it would be love-making?" said Marianne, who pierced him with her warm, tender glances.

He wished to seize this woman's hand and print a kiss thereon, or to press his lips upon her bare neck upon which the golden honey-colored ringlets danced in the bright sunlight.

"On these clear, fine days," she said in an odd tone, emphasizing every word, "it is very likely that I shall return frequently to visit this pathway. Eh! what is that?" she said, turning around.

She was dragging a dry bramble that had fastened its thorns to the folds of her satin skirt and she stopped to shake it off.

"Stop," said Sulpice.

He desired to tread on the russet-colored bramble.

"You will tear my gown," said Marianne. "The bramble clings too tightly."

Then he stooped, gently removed the thorn, and Marianne, her bosom turned toward him and half-stooping, looked at that man--a minister--almost kneeling before her in this wood.

He cast the bramble away from him.

"There," he said.

"Thanks."

As he rose, he felt Marianne's fresh breath on his forehead. It fell on his face, as sweet as new-mown hay. He became very pale and looked at her with so penetrating an expression that she blushed slightly--from pleasure, perhaps,--and until they reached the carriage where her coachman was still sleeping, they said nothing further, fearing that they had both said too much.

At the moment when she entered her carriage, Sulpice, suddenly, with an effort at boldness, said to her, as he leaned over the door:

"I must see you again, Marianne."

"What is the use?" she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his.

"Where shall I see you?" he asked, without replying to her question.

"I do not know--at my house--"

"At your house?"

"Wait," she added abruptly, "I will write to you."

"You promise me?"

"On my word of honor. At the ministry, _Personal_, isn't that so?"

"Yes!--Ah! you are very good!" he cried, without knowing what he was saying, while Marianne's coachman whipped his horses and the carriage disappeared in the direction of Paris.

It seemed to Vaudrey, who remained standing, that little gloved fingers appeared behind the window and that he caught glimpses of a face hidden under a black, dotted veil.

The carriage disappeared in the distance.

"To the ministry!" said the minister, as he got into his carriage.

He stretched himself out as if intoxicated. He looked at all the carriages along the drive of the Bois de Boulogne, the high life was already moving toward the Lake. In calèches, old ladies in mourning appeared with pale nuns, and old men with red decorations stretched out under lap-robes. Pretty girls with pale countenances pierced with bright eyes, like fragments of coal in flour, showed themselves at the doors of the coupés, close to the muzzles of pink-nosed, well-combed, white-haired little dogs. Vaudrey strove to find Marianne amid that throng, to see her again. She was far away.

He thought only of her, while his coupé went down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, bustling with noise and movement and flooded with light. The coachman took a side street and the carriage disappeared through an open gateway between two high posts surmounted by two lamps, in a passage leading to a huge white mansion whose slate roof was ablaze with sunlight. An infantry soldier in red trousers, with a shako on his head, mounted guard and stood motionless beside a brown-painted sentry-box that stood at the right. Above the gateways a new tricolor flag, in honor of the new ministry, waved in the sunshine.

Against the ministerial edifice were two gas fixtures bearing two huge capital letters: R.F., ready to be illuminated on important reception nights.

Two lackeys hastily opening the door, rushed up to the halted carriage and stood at its door.

"Adieu! Marianne," thought Sulpice, as he placed his foot in the antechamber of this vast mansion as cold as a tomb.

* * * * *

_She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks_ ...

VIII

Marianne Kayser was superstitious. She believed that in the case of compromised affairs, salvation appeared at the supreme moment of playing the very last stake. She had always rebounded, for her part,--like a rubber-ball, she said--at the moment that she found herself overthrown, and more than half conquered. Fate had given some cause for her superstitious ideas. She thought herself lost, and was weary of searching, of living, in fact, when suddenly Monsieur de Rosas reached Paris from the other end of the world. That was salvation.

The duke did not prove very difficult to ensnare. He had yielded like a child in Sabine's boudoir. Marianne left that soirée with unbounded delight. She had recovered all her hopes and regained her _luck_. The next day she would again see Rosas. She passed the night in dreams. Light and gold reigned upon her life. She was radiant on awaking.

Her uncle, on seeing her, found her looking younger and superb.

"You are as beautiful as a Correggio, who though a voluptuous painter, must have been talented. You ought to pose to me for a Saint Cecilia. It would be magnificent, with a nimbus--"

"Oh! let your saint come later," said Marianne, "I haven't time."

Simon Kayser did not ask the young woman, moreover, why "she had not time." Marianne was perfectly free. Each managed his affairs in his own way. Such, in fact, was one of the favorite axioms of this painter, a man of principle.

Marianne breakfasted quickly and early, and after dressing herself, during which she studied coquettish effects while standing before her mirror, she left the house, jumped into a cab and drove to the Hôtel Continental. With proud mien and tossing her head, she asked for the duke as if he belonged to her. She was almost inclined to exclaim before all the people: "I am his mistress!"

But she suddenly turned pale upon hearing that Monsieur de Rosas had left.

"What! gone?"

Gone thus, suddenly, unceremoniously, without notice, without a word? It was not possible.

They were obliged to confirm this news to her several times at the hotel office. Monsieur le duc had that very morning ordered a coupé to take him to catch a train for Calais. It was true that he had left some baggage behind, but at the same time he notified them that they would perhaps have to forward it to him in England later.

Marianne listened in stupid astonishment. She became livid under her little veil.

"Monsieur de Rosas did not receive a telegram?"

"Yes, madame."

"Ah!"

Something serious had, perhaps, suddenly intervened in the duke's life. Nevertheless, this abrupt departure without notification, following the exciting soirée of the previous day, greatly astonished this woman who but now believed herself securely possessed of José.

"Nonsense!" she thought. "He was afraid of me--Yes, that's it!--Of course, he was afraid of me. He loves me much, too much, and distrusts himself. He has gone away."

She commenced to laugh uneasily as she got into her carriage again.

"Assuredly, that is part of my fate. That stupid Guy leaves for Italy. Rosas leaves for England. Steam was invented to admit of escape from dangerous women. I did not follow Lissac. What if I followed the duke?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and gnawed her cambric handkerchief under her veil, her head resting on the back of the coach, while the driver waited, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, ignorant of the direction in which the young woman wished to go.

Marianne felt herself beaten. She was like a gambler who loses a decisive game. Evidently, Rosas only showed more clearly by the action he had taken, how much he was smitten; she measured his love by her own dismay; but what was the good of that love, if the duke escaped in a cowardly fashion?--But where could she find him? Where follow him? Where write to him?--A man who runs about as he does! A madman! Perhaps on arriving at Dover he had already re-embarked for Japan or Australia.

"Ah! the unexpected happens, it seems," thought Marianne, laughing maliciously, as she considered the ludicrousness of her failure.

"Madame, we are going--?" indifferently asked the coachman, who was tired of waiting.

"Where you please--to the Bois!"

"Very good, madame."

He looked at his huge aluminum watch, coolly remarking:

"It was a quarter of twelve when I took Madame--"

"Good! good!--to the Bois!"

The movement of the carriage, the sight of the passers-by, the sunlight playing on the fountains and the paving-stones of the Place de la Concorde fully occupied Marianne's mind, although irritating her at the same time. All the cheerfulness attending the awakening spring, delightful as it is in Paris, seemed irony to her. She felt again, but with increased bitterness, all the sentiments she experienced a few mornings previously when she called on Guy and told him of her burdensome weariness and distaste of life. Of what use was she now? She had just built so many fond dreams on hope! And all her edifices had crumbled.

"All has to be recommenced. To lead the stupid life of a needy, lost, harassed woman; no, that is too ridiculous, too sad! What then--" she said to herself, as with fixed eyes she gazed into the infinite and discovered no solution.

She was savagely annoyed at Rosas. She would have liked to tear him in pieces like the handkerchief that she shredded. Ah! if he should ever return to her after this flight!

But perhaps it was not a flight--who knows? The duke would write, would perhaps reappear.

"No," a secret voice whispered to Marianne. "The truth is that he is afraid of you! It is you, you, whom he flees from."