Chapter 24

The letter that she had torn up had been written by Rosas, and received by Uncle Kayser at his studio, whence he had forwarded it to his niece. The duke informed Marianne that he would wait for her at five o'clock at Avenue Montaigne. He had something to say to her. He had passed the entire night reflecting and dreaming. She remembered her own wild dreams. Had Rosas then caught her thought floating like an atom on the night wind?

At five o'clock! She would be punctual. But how escape Vaudrey? She could not now feign sickness since she had received him! Moreover, he would instal himself near her and bombard her with his attentions. Was there any possible pretext, any way of getting out now? Her lover had the devoted, radiant look of a loved man who relied on enjoying a long interview with his mistress. He looked at her with a tender glance.

"The fool--The sticker!" thought Marianne. "He will not leave!"

The best course was to go out. She would lose him on the way.

"What time have you, my dear minister?"

"One o'clock!"

"Then I have time!" she said.

Vaudrey seemed surprised. Marianne unceremoniously informed him, in fact, that she had some calls to make, to secure some purchases.

"How disagreeable!"

"Yes, for me!"

"I beg your pardon," said Sulpice, correcting himself.

She sent for a coupé and damp and keen as the weather was, she substituted for the glorious day of snug, intimate joy that Vaudrey had promised himself, a succession of weary hours passed in the draught caused by badly-fitting windows, while making a series of trips hither and thither, Marianne meantime cudgelling her brains to find a way to leave her lover on the way, or at least to notify Rosas.

But above all to notify Lissac! It was Lissac whom she was determined to see. Yes, absolutely, and at once. The more she considered the matter, the more dangerous it appeared to her.

Sulpice had not given her a moment of freedom at her house, in which to write a few lines. He might have questioned her and that would be imprudent.

"I wish, however, to tell Guy to expect me!--Where? Rue Cuvier? He would not go there!--No, at his house!"

On the way she found the means.

Vaudrey evidently was at liberty for the day and, master of his time, he would not leave her. This he repeated at every turn of the wheel. She ordered the driver to take her to _The Louvre_.

"I have purchases to make!"

Sulpice could not accompany her, so he waited for her at the entrance on Place du Palais-Royal, nestled in a corner of the carriage, the blinds of which were lowered in order that he might not be seen. He felt very cold.

Marianne slowly crossed between the stalls on the ground floor, hardly looking at the counters bearing the Japanese goods, the gloves and the artificial flowers. She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the _drawing-room_ of a hotel. At a large round table, old ladies and young girls sat looking at the pictures in _Illustration_, the caricatures in the _Journal Amusant_, and the sketches in _La Vie Parisienne_. Others, at the second table, were reading the daily papers, some of which were rolled about their holders like a flag around its staff, or the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Further on, at a red-covered table furnished with leather-bound blotters and round, glass inkstands in which the ink danced with a purple reflection, people were writing, seated on chairs covered in worn, garnet-colored velvet, with mahogany frames. This gloomy apartment was brightened by broad-leaved green plants, and was lighted from the roof by means of a flat skylight.

Marianne walked direct to the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes bearing the address of the establishment on the corners. As she looked around for a pen, Marianne could not refrain from smiling, she thought of that poor Sulpice down there, waiting in the carriage and probably shivering in the draughts issuing from the disjointed doors. And he a minister!

"Such is adultery in Paris!" she said to herself, happy to make him suffer.

She did not hurry. She was amused by her surroundings. A uniformed man promenaded the salon, watching the stationery in the cases and replacing it as it was used. If required, he sold stamps to any one present. A letter-box was attached near the tall chimney, bearing the hours of collection.

Beside Marianne, elbow to elbow, and before her, were principally women, some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled in a low tone and passed them one to the other, say-to each other, as they chewed their plaid penholders:

"It is somewhat cold, eh! He will say: _Eh, well, it is true then!_"

The two pretty, cheerful girls before her were doubtless breaking in this way some liaison, amusing themselves by sending an unexpected blow to some poor fellow, and enjoying themselves by spoiling paper; the one writing, the other reading over her companion's shoulder and giving vent to merry laughter under her Hungarian toque, a huge Quaker-collar almost covering her shoulders and her little jacket with its large steel buttons.

This feminine head-gear made Marianne think of Guy. Her eyes, catlike in expression, gleamed maliciously.

She took some paper and essayed to frame some tempting, tender phrases, something nebulous and exciting, but she could not.

"What I would like to write him is that he is a wretch and that I hate him!" she thought.

Then she stopped and looked about her, altogether forgetting Vaudrey.

The contrast between that silent reading-room and the many-colored crowd in that Oriental bazaar, whose murmurs reached her ears like the roaring of a distant sea, and of which she could see only the corner clearly defined by the framework of the doors, amused Marianne, who with a smile on her lips, enjoyed the mischievous delight of fooling a President of the Council.

"At least that avenges me for the cowardice that the _other_ forced me to commit!"

Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these _docks_, that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the heaping,--all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian, but American and up-to-date.

"Oh! decidedly up-to-date!--And so convenient!" she said, as she heard the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.

Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought. She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas did not receive the letter in time, it mattered little! To Lissac,--and this was the main consideration,--she intimated that she would call on him the next morning at ten o'clock.

"Rendezvous box!" she said, as she slipped her two letters into the letter-box. "This extreme comfort is very ironical."

She smiled as she thought how long it would take to count the number of the little hands, some trembling, some bold, that had slipped into the rectilinear mouth of the letter-box some little missive that was either the foretaste or the postscript of adultery.

Then she went downstairs and rejoined Vaudrey, who was impatiently tapping the floor of the carriage with his foot.

"I was a long time there, I ask your pardon," said Marianne.

"At any rate, I hope you have bought something that suited you?" asked Vaudrey, who seemed to have caught a cold.

"Nothing at all. There is nothing in that store!"

Vaudrey was alarmed. Were they to visit one after the other all the fancy goods stores?

Marianne took pity on him.

"Let us return, shall we?" she asked.

She called to the coachman: "Rue Prony!" while Sulpice, whom she unwillingly took with her, though he wearily yawned, seized her hand and said as he sneezed:

"Ah! how kind you are!"

The next day, Marianne rang the bell of Lissac's house in Rue d'Aumale, a little before the appointed hour.

"Punctual as a creditor!" she thought.

She reached Guy's, ready for anything. She was very pale and charming in her light costume, and she entered as one would go into a fray with head high. She would not leave the place until she had recovered her letters.

It was only for those scraps of paper that she again, as it were, bound and tied herself to her past; she wished to cut herself away from it and to tear them to pieces with her teeth. But what if Guy should refuse to give them up to her? That could not be possible, although he was sincerely attached to Rosas. Still, between gratitude to a woman and duty to a friend, a man might hesitate, when he is a corrupted Parisian like Lissac.

"His affection for José will not carry him to the length of forgetting all that I have given him of myself!" Marianne thought.

Then shrugging her shoulders:

"After all, these men have such a freemasonry between them, as _he_ said!--And they speak of our fraternity, we women!--It is nothing compared with theirs!"

Guy did not show any displeasure on hearing Mademoiselle Kayser announced. He was waiting for her. As Marianne could not feel free so long as he held the proof of her imprudence, some day or other she must inevitably seek him to supplicate or threaten him. The letter received overnight had apprised him that that moment had arrived.

He had just finished dressing when she entered. His suède gloves were laid out flat on a little table beside his hat, his stick and a small antique cloisonné vase into which were thrown the many-colored rosettes of his foreign decorations, some of them red, amid which a little gold cross glistened like some brilliant beetle settled on a deep-hued rose.

"I wager that you are going out!" Marianne remarked abruptly. "Clearly, you did not expect me!--Haven't you received my letter?"

"My dear Marianne," he replied, as he slowly finished adjusting the knot of his cravat, "that is the very remark you made when you condescended to reappear at my house after a lapse of some years. You have too modest a way of announcing yourself; I assure you that, for my part, I always expect you--and that with impatience. But to-day, more than on any other occasion, because of your charming note."

She knew Guy well enough to perceive that his exquisite politeness only concealed a warlike irony. She did not reply, but stood smiling in front of the fireplace and warmed her toes at the light flames that leapt about the logs.

"You are exceedingly polite," she said at last. "On honor, I like you very much--you laugh? I say very much--Yes, in spite--In no case, have you had aught to complain of me."

She half turned, resting her left hand on the edge of the velvet-covered mantel, and cast a furtive, gentle glance at Lissac that recalled a multitude of happy incidents.

"I have never complained," said the young man, "and I have frequently expressed my thanks!"

Marianne laughed at the discreet manner so ceremoniously adopted by Lissac.

"You are silly, come!--We have a great liking for each other, and it is in the name of that affection that I come to ask a service."

"You have only to speak, my dear Marianne," Lissac answered, as if he had not noticed the intimacy her words expressed.

He affected a cold politeness; Marianne replied to him with apparent renewed tenderness. She looked at him for some time as if she hesitated and feared, her glance penetrating Lissac's, and begging with a tearful petition that wished to kindle a flame in his eyes.

"What I have to say to you will take some time. I am afraid--"

"Of what?" he asked.

"I don't know. You are in a hurry? I interfere with you, perhaps!"

"Not the least in the world. I breakfast at the Club, take a turn in the Bois, and drop in at the _Mirlitons_ to see the opening. You see that I should be entitled to very little merit in sacrificing to you a perfectly wasted day."

"Is the present Exposition of the _Mirlitons_ well spoken of?" asked Marianne, indifferently.

"Very. It is a collection of things that are to be sold for the benefit of a deceased artist. Would you like to go there at four o'clock?"

"No, thanks!--And I repeat, my dear Guy, that I will not hinder you, you know, if I have been indiscreet in giving you an appointment!--"

She seemed to be mechanically toying with the silk rosettes in the little vase; she picked them up and let them drop from her fingers like grains.

"These are yours?" she asked.--"Come near that I may put them on!"

She went to Guy, smilingly, and resting her body against his for its entire length, she paused for a moment while she held the lapel of his jacket, and from head to foot she gazed at him with a look that seemed to impregnate him with odor and turned him pale.

"What an idea, Marianne! I do not wear these ribbons now."

"A childish one. I remember that I was the first to place in this buttonhole some foreign decoration that Monsieur de Rosas brought you--"

She pronounced this name boldly, as if she would bring on the battle.

"That suits you well," she continued. "Orders on your coat are like diamonds in our ears--they are of no use, but they are pretty."

She had passed a red rosette through the buttonhole, and lowering his head, Guy saw her fair brow, her blond locks within reach of his lips. They exhaled a perfume--the odor of hay, that he liked so well--and those woman's fingers on his breast, the fingers of the woman whom he had mocked the previous night at the theatre, caused him a disturbing sensation. He gently disengaged himself, while Marianne repeated: "That suits you well--" Then her hand fell on his and she pressed his fingers in her burning and soft palm and said, as she half lowered her head toward him:

"Do you know why I have come? You know that I am silly. Well, naughty one, the other evening in that box when you punished me with your irony, all my love for you returned!--Ah! how foolish we are, we women! Tell me, Guy, do you recall the glorious days we have spent? Those recollections retain their place in the heart! Has the idea of living again as in the past never occurred to you? It was so sweet!"

Lissac laughed a little nervously and trembled slightly, trying to joke but feeling himself suddenly weakening in the presence of this woman whose wrath or contemptuous smile he preferred.

He recognized all the vanished perfumes. The sensation of trembling delight that years had borne away now returned to him. The silent pressure of the hands recalled nights of distraction. He half shut his eyes, a sudden madness overcame him, although he was sufficiently calm to say to himself that she had an end in view, this woman's coming to him, loveless, to speak of love to him, herself unmoved by the senses, to awaken vanished feelings, to offer herself with the irresistible skill of desire: a dead passion born of caprice.

"Nevertheless, it is you who left me, satiated after taking from me all that you were capable of loving," she said. "Do you know one thing, however, Guy? There is more than one woman in a woman. There are as many as she possesses of passions or joys, and the Marianne of to-day is so different from the one who was your mistress formerly!--You would never leave me, if you were my lover now!"

She tempted this man whose curiosity was aroused, accustomed as he was to casual and easy love adventures. He foresaw danger, but there within reach of his lips were experienced kisses, an ardent supplicant, a proffered delight, full of burning promise. In a sort of anger, he seized the woman who recalled all the past joys, uttered the well-known cries, and who suddenly, as in a nervous attack, deliriously plucked the covering from her bosom, and bared with the boldness of beauty that knows itself to be irresistible, her white arms, her brilliant, untrammeled breasts, the sparkling splendor of her flesh, with her golden hair unfastened, as she used to appear lying on a pillow of fair silk, almost faint and between her kisses, that were as fierce as bites, uttering: "I love you--you--I adore you--" And the lovely, imperious girl again became, almost without a word having been exchanged, the submissive woman carried away by lascivious ardor; and Guy, confused and speechless, no longer reasoning, was unable to say whether Marianne belonged to him, or he to the mistress of former days, become the mistress of to-day.

He held her clasped to him, his hand raising her pale, languishing face about which her fair hair fell loosely; to him she looked like one asleep, her pink nostrils still dilating with a spasmodic movement, and it seemed to him that he had just suffered from the perturbing contact of a courtesan in the depths of some luxurious den.

It was an immediate reawakening, enervating but furious. She had given herself impulsively. He recovered himself similarly. The sudden contact of two bodies resulted in the immediate recoil of two beings.

With more bitter shame, he had had similar morose awakenings after a dissipated night, his heart, his brave heart thumping against the passionate form, often lean and sallow, of some satiated girl, fearfully weary.

What cowardice! Was it Vaudrey's mistress or the future wife of Rosas who had clung to his lips?

He felt disgusted at heart.

Yet she was adorable, this still young and lovely Marianne.

With cruel perspicacity, he already foresaw that he would be guilty of cowardly conduct in yielding to this sudden weakness, and ashamed of himself he disengaged himself from her hysterical embrace, while Marianne squatted on his bed, throwing back her hair from her face, still smiling as she looked at him and asked:

"Well--what? What is the matter with you, then?"

She rose slowly, slipping upon the carpet while he went to the window to look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell, when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be paid for.

Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from them.

"Guy," she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make endearing, "promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask you."

"I promise."

They now quite naturally substituted for the "thou" of affectionate address, the more formal "you," secretly realizing that after the intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of all surprises or sensual appetite, would find themselves face to face.

"I could wish that our affection--and it is profound, is it not, Guy?--dated only from the moment that we have just passed."

"I do not regret the past," he said.

"Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it--yes, by a single stroke!"

She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them into the clear flame, she said:

"See! to burn it like that!--_Pft!_--"

"Burn it?" Lissac repeated.

He had left the window, returned to Marianne and smiling in his turn, he said:

"Why burn it?--Because it is tiresome or because it is dangerous?"

"Both!" she replied.

She paused for a moment before continuing, drew up over her arms the lace of her chemisette, then half bending her head, and looking at Guy like a creditor of love she said:

"You still have my letters, my dear?"

"Your letters?"

"Those of the old days?"

"That is so," he said. "The past."

He understood everything now.

"You came to ask me to return them?"

"I have been, you must admit, very considerate, not to have claimed them--before!"

"You have been--generous!" answered Lissac, with a gracious smile.

He opened his secrétaire, one of the drawers of which contained little packages folded and tied with bands of silk ribbon, that slept the sleep of forgotten things.

"There are your letters, my dear Marianne! But you have nothing to fear; they have never left this spot."

The eyes of the young woman sparkled with a joyous light. Slowly as if afraid that Guy would not give them to her, she extended her bare arm toward the packet of letters and snatched it suddenly.

"My letters!"

"It is an entire romance," said Lissac.

"Less the epilogue!" she said, still enveloping him with her intense look.

She placed the packet on the velvet-covered mantelpiece and hastily finished dressing. Then taking between her fingers those little letters in their old-fashioned envelopes bearing her monogram, and that still bore traces of a woman's perfume, she looked at them for a moment and said to Lissac:

"You have read them occasionally?"

"I know them by heart!"

"My poor letters!--I was quite sincere, you know, when I wrote you them!--They must be very artless! Yours, that I have burned, were too clever. I remember that one day you wrote me from Holland: 'I pass my life among chefs-d'oeuvre, but my mind is far away from them. I have Rembrandt and Ruysdaël; but the smallest millet seed would be more to my liking: millet is _fair!_' Well, that was very pretty, but much too refined. True love has no wit.--All this is to convey to you that literature will not lose much by the disappearance of my disconnected scrawls."

She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection on Marianne's face. Little by little all disappeared save a patch of black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:--the dust of dead love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crêpe.

Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant joy gleamed in her eyes.

When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently:

"_Requiescat!_ See how everything ends! It is a long time since lovers who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is new under the sun!"

She was no longer the same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong, without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that she now had to say.

It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return of letters. Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in connection with women.

"Now, my dear," said Marianne, "I hope that you will do me the kindness of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose."