Then the hullaballoo was doubled, making the floating establishment tremble. The men took off their hats, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and all voices, shrill or deep, together cried:
"Lesbos."
One would have said that these people, this collection of the corrupt, saluted a chief like the squadrons which fire guns when an admiral pa.s.ses along the line.
The numerous fleet of boats also acclaimed the women"s boat, which awoke from its sleepy motion to land rather farther off.
Mr. Paul, contrary to the others, had drawn a key from his pocket and whistled with all his might. His nervous mistress grew paler, caught him by the arm to cause him to be quiet, and upon this occasion she looked at him with fury in her eyes. But he appeared exasperated, as though borne away by jealousy of some man by deep anger, instinctive and ungovernable. He stammered, his lips quivering with indignation:
"It is shameful! They ought to be drowned like dogs with a stone about the neck."
But Madeleine instantly flew into a rage; her small and shrill voice became hissing, and she spoke volubly, as though pleading her own cause:
"And what has it to do with you--you indeed? Are they not at liberty to do what they wish since they owe n.o.body anything. A truce with your airs and mind your own business...."
But he cut her speech short:
"It is the police whom it concerns, and I will have them marched off to St. Lazare; so I will."
She gave a start:
"You?"
"Yes, I! And in the meantime I forbid you to speak to them, you understand, I forbid you to do so."
Then she shrugged her shoulders and grew calm in a moment:
"My friend, I shall do as I please; if you are not satisfied, be off, and instantly. I am not your wife, am I? Very well then, hold your tongue."
He made no reply and they stood face to face, their mouths tightly closed and their breathing rapid.
At the other end of the great cafe of wood the four women made their entry. The two in men"s costumes marched in front: the one thin like an oldish tomboy, with yellow lines on her temples; the other filled out her white flannel garments with her fat, swelling out her big trousers with her b.u.t.tocks; she swayed about like a fat goose with enormous legs and yielding knees. Their two friends followed them, and the crowd of boatmen thronged about to shake their hands.
They had all four hired a small cottage close to the water"s edge, and they lived there as two households would have lived.
Their vice was public, recognized, patent. People talked of it as a natural thing, which almost excited their sympathy, and whispered in very low tones strange stories of dramas begotten of furious feminine jealousies, of the stealthy visit of well-known women and of actresses to the little house close to the water"s edge.
A neighbor, horrified by these scandalous rumors, apprised the police, and the inspector, accompanied by a man, had come to make inquiry. The mission was a delicate one; it was impossible, in short, to reproach these women, who did not abandon themselves to prost.i.tution with anything. The inspector, very much puzzled, indeed, ignorant of the nature of the offenses suspected, had asked questions at random, and made a lofty report conclusive of their innocence.
They laughed about it all the way to St. Germain. They walked about La Grenonillere establishment with stately steps like queens; and seemed to glory in their fame, rejoicing in the gaze that was fixed on them, so superior to this crowd, to this mob, to these plebeians.
Madeleine and her lover watched them approach and in the girl"s eyes a fire lightened.
When the two first had reached the end of the table, Madeleine cried:
"Pauline!"
The large woman turned herself and stopped, continuing all the time to hold the arm of her feminine cabin boy:
"Good gracious, Madeleine.... Do come and talk to me, my dear."
Paul squeezed his fingers upon his mistress"s wrist; but she said to him, with such an air:
"You know, my fine fellow, you can be off;" he said nothing and remained alone.
Then they chatted in low voices, standing all three of them. Many pleasant jests pa.s.sed their lips, they spoke quickly; and Pauline looked now and then at Paul, by stealth, with a shrewd and malicious smile.
At last, putting up with it no longer, he suddenly raised himself and in a single bound was at their side, trembling in every limb. He seized Madeleine by the shoulders:
"Come. I wish it," said he. "I have forbidden you to speak to these scoundrels."
Whereupon Pauline raised her voice and set to work blackguarding him with her Billingsgate vocabulary. All the bystanders laughed; they drew near him; they raised themselves on tiptoe in order the better to see him. He remained dumbfounded under this downpour of filthy abuse. It appeared to him that these words, which came from that mouth and fell upon him, defiled him like dirt, and, in presence of the row which was beginning, he fell back, retraced his steps, and rested his elbows on the railing towards the river, turning his back upon the three victorious women.
There he stayed watching the water, and sometimes with rapid gesture as though he plucked it out, he removed with his sinewy fingers the tear which had formed in his eye.
The fact was that he was hopelessly in love, without knowing why, notwithstanding his refined instincts, in spite of his reason, in spite, indeed, of his will. He had fallen into this love as one falls into a sloughy hole. Of a tender and delicate disposition, he had dreamed of liaisons, exquisite, ideal and impa.s.sioned, and there that little bit of a woman, stupid like all girls, with an exasperating stupidity, not even pretty, thin and a spitfire, had taken him prisoner, possessing him from head to foot, body and soul. He underwent this feminine bewitchery, mysterious and all powerful, this unknown power, this prodigious domination, arising no one knows whence, from the demon of the flesh, which casts the most sensible man at the feet of some girl or other without there being anything in her to explain her fatal and sovereign power.
And there at his back he felt that some infamous thing was brewing.
Shouts of laughter cut him to the heart. What should he do? He knew well, but he could not do it.
He steadily watched an angler upon the bank opposite him, and his motionless line.
Suddenly, the worthy man jerked a little silver fish, which wriggled at the end of his line, out of the river. Then he endeavored to extract his hook, hoisted and turned it, but in vain. At last, losing patience, he commenced to pull it out, and all the bleeding gullet of the beast, with a portion of its intestines, came out. Paul shuddered, rent himself to his heart-strings. It seemed to him that the hook was his love and that if he should pluck it out, all that he had in his breast would come out in the same way at the end of a curved iron fixed in the depths of his being, of which Madeleine held the line.
A hand was placed upon his shoulder; he started and turned; his mistress was at his side. They did not speak to each other; and she rested, like him, with her elbows upon the railing, her eyes fixed upon the river.
He sought for what he ought to say to her and could find nothing. He did not even arrive at disentangling his own emotions; all that he was sensible of was joy at feeling her there close to him, come back again, and a shameful cowardice, a craving to pardon everything, to permit everything, provided she never left him.
At last, at the end of some minutes, he asked her in a very gentle voice:
"Do you wish that we should leave? It will be nicer in the boat."
She answered: "Yes, my puss."
And he a.s.sisted her into the skiff, pressing her hands, all softened, with some tears still in his eyes. Then she looked at him with a smile and they kissed each other anew.
They re-ascended the river very slowly, skirting the bank planted with willows, covered with gra.s.s, bathed and still in the afternoon warmth.
When they had returned to the Restaurant Grillon, it was barely six o"clock. Then leaving their boat they set off on foot on the island towards Bezons, across the fields and along the high poplars which bordered the river. The long gra.s.s ready to be mowed was full of flowers.
The sun, which was sinking, showed himself from beneath a sheet of red light, and in the tempered heat of the closing day the floating exhalations from the gra.s.s, mingled with the damp scents from the river, filled the air with a soft languor, with a happy light, as though with a vapor of well-being.
A soft weakness overtakes the heart, and a species of communion with this splendid calm of evening, with this vague and mysterious chilliness of outspread life, with the keen and melancholy poetry which seems to arise from flowers and things, develops itself revealed at this sweet and pensive time to the senses.
He felt all that; but she did not understand anything of it, for her part. They walked side by side; and, suddenly tired of being silent, she sang. She sang with her shrill and false voice, something which pervaded the streets, an air catching the memory, which rudely destroyed the profound and serene harmony of the evening.
Then he looked at her and he felt an unsurpa.s.sable abyss between them.
She beat the gra.s.s with her parasol, her head slightly inclined, contemplating her feet and singing, spinning out the notes, attempting trills, and venturing on shakes. Her smooth little brow, of which he was so fond, was at that time absolutely empty! empty! There was nothing therein but this music of a bird-organ; and the ideas which formed there by chance were like this music. She did not understand anything of him; they were now separated as if they did not live together. Did then his kisses never go any further than her lips?
Then she raised her eyes to him and laughed again. He was moved to the quick and, extending his arms in a paroxysm of love, he embraced her pa.s.sionately.