The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for morality"s sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be followed over corpses of the young student"s slaying.
Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly.
Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the shadow of the guillotine"s red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy.
Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband"s careful guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara--who sold her offspring to worse than death--was living--seemed eternal as evil itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led after a flight from her mother"s, and which she did not describe minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.
They made the journey to Paris without any stoppage. He had to visit M.
Ritz, for M. Rollinet was no longer there, having accepted a judgeship in Algeria. In the vehicle, carrying to a hotel where he purposed leaving her, Felix said, feelingly:
"I think I see why we were brought together. I am not to lead the life of an artist, lounging in galleries, sketching ruins and pretty girls, but one of expiation for my poor father"s crime."
"Perhaps. More surely," she replied with a smile which, on her peerless lips, seemed divine, "_I_ should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be forgotten."
They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the means had not occurred yet to either.
"Here we are," he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop.
He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady"s stay.
Returning, he came to help her out.
"My door will never be closed to you," she said, remembering how, in her story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother"s toils and her return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for her at all instants. "And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting again?"
"Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see nothing of the disgrace beyond."
"I do not care a fig for what people think or say," said the one-night _diva_, with a curl of the lip. "And I do not understand you fully."
"Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile, cousin--since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my liberty--I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France--my country!"
CHAPTER X.
THE FOX IN THE FOLD.
Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude, which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell, all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully.
Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.
His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution, was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated pa.s.sions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it muttered threats to kill its tyrant--meant so much that the Czar did not pa.s.s through a Polish town until the police and military had "ensured an enthusiastic reception." But in France, tyrants and love of country were mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular theatre.
Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the weaklings excluded as "finished" from these commonplace educational inst.i.tutions--schools called colleges and colleges called universities, resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man"s equality. He sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with "shallow-swells," more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a tempest.
He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the change of her unp.r.o.nounceable name, being euphonized as "Cesarine,"
smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius of the hearth when a mother.
But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.
But Cesarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society"s vital elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza"s career, she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Cesarine, whose flight from home at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
Cesarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family ties.
In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia"s chief towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coa.r.s.e as at Munich, was more diffused. Here she was a.s.sured that she could gratify her insatiable appet.i.te at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his devotion to art.
It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its death? She feared this pa.s.sionate man who, by strength of will, made himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying had condoned for his father"s blow at her ancestress, she tried to return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a rock.
Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when they fled from Von Sendlingen"s vengeance. He remained so strictly the husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her--not even a woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it--not even lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens the will and eats away the soul.
Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature"s secrets to benefit mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.
He resisted her till she grew mad.
The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply at the degree of pa.s.sion, she contemplated another crime.
She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and superst.i.tious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told and had never shaken off the bonds; these Cesarine took up and drove her by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.
Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have encouraged them; she would never have urged him to acc.u.mulate wealth to expend it in social diversions; while Cesarine fretted at her splendid voice going to waste in this solitude--the house in the suburbs where no company comes.
She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal, with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?
Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly a.s.sured that he was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife, and seeing that motherhood had not saved her--earthly redemption though it is of her s.e.x--he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many examples.
On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there, but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates, begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.
Since in Cesarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion, he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him--for his wife would have nothing to do with a beggar--and to cover the hospitality and soothe the Italian"s pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered a declaration of grat.i.tude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.
A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.
Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Cesarine should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.
Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she antic.i.p.ated, and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.
Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium of a country-house receiving all "the society that amuses," and rigidly restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is const.i.tuted, it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.
In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the "best people" in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who "ran down" from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the "at homes" were most respectable, and the music remained "cla.s.sical;" not an echo of Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.
Not all were old who came to the chateau, and the foreigners were numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.
It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o"clock tea, initiated from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a habitue, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood and early girlhood had pa.s.sed.
One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed his master"s imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason to complain.
"A fresh craze!" thought Cesarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.
Dull and decorous though the marchioness" salon was, it might be an ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.
The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Cesarine at Munich and was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a companionship had not been accepted. "All her pets had married well,"
she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.
Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the chateau; and, tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness conceitedly installed herself.