[Ill.u.s.tration: p179-190]
When I found that I loved her, my first, my only idea was to ask her in marriage. Someone spoke on my behalf. She simply replied that she would never marry again. Henceforth I avoided meeting her; and as my thoughts were too wholly absorbed and occupied by her to allow me to work, I determined to travel. I was busily engaged in preparations for my departure, when one morning, in my own apartment, in the midst of all the litter of opened drawers and scattered trunks, to my great surprise, I saw Madame Deloche enter.
"Why are you leaving?" she said softly. "Because you love me? I also love. I love you. Only (and here her voice shook a little) only, I am married." And she told me her history.
It was a romance of love and desertion. Her husband drank, struck her!
At the end of three years they had separated Her family, of whom she seemed very proud, held a high position in Paris, but ever since her marriage had refused to receive her. She was the niece of the Chief Rabbi. Her sister, the widow of a superior officer, had married for the second time a Chief Ranger of the woods and forests of Saint-Germain. As for her, ruined by her husband, she had fortunately had a very thorough education and possessed some accomplishments, by which she was able to augment her resources. She gave music lessons in various rich houses of the Chaussee d"Antin and Faubourg Saint Honore, and gained an ample livelihood.
The story was touching, although somewhat lengthy, full of the pretty repet.i.tions, the interminable incidents that entangle feminine discourse.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p181-192]
Indeed she took several days to relate it. I had hired for us two, a little house in the Avenue de l"Imperatrice, standing between the silent streets and peaceful lawns. I could have spent a year listening to and looking at her, without a thought for my work. She was the first to send me back to my studio, and I could not prevent her from again taking up her lessons. I was touched by her concern for the dignity of her life.
I admired the proud spirit, notwithstanding that I could not help being rather humiliated at her expressed determination to owe nothing save to her own exertions. We were therefore separated all day long, and only met in the evening in our little house.
With what joy did I not return home, what impatience I felt when she was late, and how happy I was when I found her there before me! She would bring me back bouquets and choice flowers from her journeys to Paris.
Often I pressed upon her some present, but she laughingly said she was richer than I; and in truth her lessons must have been very well paid, for she always dressed in an expensively elegant manner, and the black dresses which, with coquettish care for her complexion and style of beauty she preferred, had the dull softness of velvet, the brilliancy of satin and jet, a confusion of silken lace, which revealed to the astonished eye, under an apparent simplicity, a world of feminine elegance in the thousand shades contained in a single colour.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p183-194]
Moreover her occupation was by no means laborious, she said. All her pupils, daughters of bankers or stock brokers, loved and respected her; and many a time she would show me a bracelet or a ring, that had been presented as a mark of grat.i.tude for her care. Except for our work, we never left one another, and we went nowhere. Only on Sundays she went off to Saint-Germain to see her sister, the wife of the Chief Ranger, with whom she was now reconciled. I would accompany her to the station.
She would return the same evening, and often in the long summer days, we would agree to meet at some station on the way, by the riverside or in the woods. She would tell me about her visit, the children"s good looks, the air of happiness that reigned in the household. My heart bled for her, deprived of the pleasures of family life as she was doomed to be; and my tenderness increased tenfold in order to make her forget the falseness of her position, so painful to a woman of her character.
What a happy time of perfect confidence, and how well I worked! I suspected nothing. All she said seemed so true, so natural. I could only reproach her with one thing. When talking of the houses she frequented, and the different families of her pupils, she would indulge in a superabundance of imaginary details and fancied intrigues, which she invented without any _apropos_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p185-196]
Calm herself, she was ever conjuring up romances around her, and her life was spent in composing dramatic situations. These idle fancies disturbed my happiness. I, who longed to leave the world and society, in order to devote myself exclusively to her, found her too much taken up by indifferent subjects. However, I could easily excuse this defect in a young and unhappy woman, whose life had been hitherto a sad romance, the issue of which could not be foreseen.
Once only did a suspicion or rather a presentiment cross my mind. One Sunday evening she failed to return home. I was in despair. What could I do? Go to Saint-Germain? I might compromise her. Nevertheless, after a dreadful night of anguish, I had decided on starting, when she arrived, looking pale and worried. Her sister was ill, she had been obliged to stay and nurse her. I believed all she told me, not distrusting the overflow of words called forth by the slightest question, which swamped the princ.i.p.al matter in a deluge of idle details: such as the hour of arrival, the rudeness of a guard, the lateness of the train. Twice or three times in the same week, she returned to Saint-Germain and slept there; then, her sister"s illness over, she resumed her regular and peaceful existence.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p187-198]
Unfortunately, shortly after this, she in her turn fell ill. She came back one day from her lessons, shivering, wet, and fevered. Inflammation of the lungs set in; from the first her case was serious, and soon--the doctor told me--hopeless. My despair was maddening. Then I thought only of soothing her last moments. The family she loved so well, of which she was so proud, I would bring to her deathbed. Without letting her know, I first wrote to her sister at Saint-Germain, and I went off at once myself to her uncle, the Chief Rabbi. I hardly remember at what unreasonable hour I reached his house. Great catastrophes throw such a confusion into life and upset every detail. I fancy the good Rabbi was dining. He came out into the hall, wondering and amazed, to speak to me.
"Monsieur," I said to him, "there are moments when all hatred must cease."
He turned his venerable face towards me with a bewildered look.
I resumed:
"Your niece is dying!"
"My niece! But I have no niece; you are mistaken."
"Oh, Sir! I implore you, lay aside all foolish family rancour. I am speaking of Madame Deloche, the wife of Captain----"
"I do not know Madame Deloche. You are mistaken, my son, I a.s.sure you."
And he gently pushed me toward the door, taking me for a hoaxer or a madman. I must in fact have appeared very odd. What I heard was so unexpected, so terrible. She had lied to me then. Wherefore?
Suddenly an idea flashed across me. I directed the cabman to drive me to the address of one of those pupils of whom she had so often spoken to me, the daughter of a well-known banker.
I inquired of the servant: "Madame Deloche?"
"There is no one here of that name."
"Yes, I know that. It is a lady who gives music lessons to your young ladies."
"We have no young ladies here, not even a piano. I don"t know what you mean."
And he angrily shut the door in my face.
I made no further inquiries. I felt sure of meeting with the same answer, the same disappointment. On my return to our little house, they gave me a letter with the postmark of Saint-Germain. I opened it, instinctively guessing the contents. The Chief Ranger also had no knowledge of Madame Deloche. Moreover he had neither wife nor child.
This was the last blow. Thus for five years each of her words had been a lie. A thousand jealous thoughts took possession of me, and madly, hardly knowing what I was about, I entered the room in which she was dying. All the questions that were torturing me burst forth over that bed of suffering: "Why did you go to Saint-Germain on Sundays? Where did you spend your days? Where did you spend that night? Come, answer me." And I bent over her, seeking in the depths of her still proud and beautiful eyes answers that I awaited with anguish; but she remained mute and impa.s.sive.
I resumed, trembling with rage: "You never gave any lessons. I have been everywhere. n.o.body knows you. Whence came that money, those laces, those jewels?" She threw me a glance full of despairing sadness, and that was all. In truth, I ought to have spared her, and allowed her to die in peace. But I had loved her too well. My jealousy was stronger than my pity. I continued: "For five years you have deceived me, lying to me every day, every hour. You knew my whole life, and I knew nothing of yours. Nothing, not even your name. For it is not yours, is it, the name you bear? Ah liar! liar! What, she is going to die, and I do not even know by what name to call her! Come, tell me who you are? Whence come you? Why did you intrude into my life? Speak! Tell me something!"
Vain efforts! Instead of answering, she with difficulty turned her face to the wall, as though she feared that her last glance might betray her secret. And thus the unhappy creature died! Died without a word, liar to the last.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p191-202]
[Ill.u.s.tration: p195-206]
THE COMTESSE IRMA.
"_M. Charles d"Athis, literary man, has the honour to inform you of the birth of his son Robert._
"_The child is doing well._"
Some dozen years ago, all literary and artistic Paris received this little note on the glossiest of paper, embossed with the arms of the Counts of d"Athis-Mons, of whom the last Charles d"Athis had--while still young--succeeded in making for himself a genuine reputation as a poet.
"The child is doing well." And the mother? Of her there was no mention in the note. Every one knew her but too well. She was the daughter of an old poacher of Seine et Oise; a quondam model, named Irma Salle, whose portrait had figured in every exhibition, as the original had in every studio. Her low forehead, lip curled like an antique, this chance return of the peasant"s face to primitive lines--a turkey herd with Greek features--the slightly tanned skin common to all whose childhood is spent in the open air, giving to fair hair reflections of pale silkiness, adorned this minx with a kind of wild originality, completed by a pair of magnificently green eyes, burning beneath heavy eyebrows.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p196-207]
One night, on leaving a _bal de l"Opera_, d"Athis had taken her to sup with him, and though this was two years ago, the supper still continued.
But, whereas Irma had become completely a part of the poet"s life, this intimation of the child"s birth, curt and haughty as it was, sufficiently indicated how little she was considered by him. And in truth, in this temporary household, the woman was scarcely more than a housekeeper, showing in the management of the gentleman-poet"s house the hard shrewdness of her dual nature of peasant and courtesan; and endeavouring, at no matter what price, to render herself indispensable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: p197-208]
Too rustic, and too stupid to understand anything of d"Athis" genius, of those fine verses, fashionable and refined, which made of him a sort of Parisian Tennyson, she nevertheless understood how to bend to all his whims, and be silent under his contempt; as if in the depths of that peasant nature lurked something of the boor"s humble admiration for his lord. The birth of the child only served to accentuate her unimportance in the house.
When the dowager Comtesse d"Athis-Mons, the mother of the poet, a distinguished and very great lady, learned that a grandson was born to her, a sweet little Vicomte, duly recognized and authenticated by the author of his being,* she was seized with a wish to see and kiss the child. It was, to be sure, a rather bitter reflection for the former reader to Queen Marie-Amelie to think that the heir of such a great name should have such a mother; but, keeping strictly to the terms of the _billets de faire pari_ the venerable lady could forget that the creature existed.