The clock struck three, and the journalist arose.
"Come often," said Madame de Marelle, "and we will chat as we have done to-day; it will always give me pleasure. But how is it one no longer sees you at the Forestiers?" He replied: "Oh! for no reason. I have been very busy. I hope to meet you there again one of these days."
He went out, his heart full of hope, though without knowing why.
He did not speak to Forestier of this visit. But he retained the recollection of it the following days, and more than the recollection--a sensation of the unreal yet persistent presence of this woman. It seemed to him that he had carried away something of her, the reflection of her form in his eyes, and the smack of her moral self in his heart. He remained under the haunted influence of her image, as it happens sometimes when we have pa.s.sed pleasant hours with some one.
He paid a second visit a few days later.
The maid ushered him into the drawing-room, and Laurine at once appeared. She held out no longer her hand, but her forehead, and said: "Mamma has told me to request you to wait for her. She will be a quarter-of-an-hour, because she is not dressed yet. I will keep you company."
Duroy, who was amused by the ceremonious manners of the little girl, replied: "Certainly, Mademoiselle. I shall be delighted to pa.s.s a quarter-of-an-hour with you, but I warn you that for my part I am not at all serious, and that I play all day long, so I suggest a game at touch."
The girl was astonished; then she smiled as a woman would have done at this idea, which shocked her a little as well as astonished her, and murmured: "Rooms are not meant to be played in."
He said: "It is all the same to me. I play everywhere. Come, catch me."
And he began to go round the table, exciting her to pursue him, while she came after him, smiling with a species of polite condescension, and sometimes extending her hand to touch him, but without ever giving way so far as to run. He stopped, stooped down, and when she drew near with her little hesitating steps, sprung up in the air like a jack-in-the-box, and then bounded with a single stride to the other end of the dining-room. She thought it funny, ended by laughing, and becoming aroused, began to trot after him, giving little gleeful yet timid cries when she thought she had him. He shifted the chairs and used them as obstacles, forcing her to go round and round one of them for a minute at a time, and then leaving that one to seize upon another.
Laurine ran now, giving herself wholly up to the charm of this new game, and with flushed face, rushed forward with the bound of a delighted child at each of the flights, the tricks, the feints of her companion.
Suddenly, just as she thought she had got him, he seized her in his arms, and lifting her to the ceiling, exclaimed: "Touch."
The delighted girl wriggled her legs to escape, and laughed with all her heart.
Madame de Marelle came in at that moment, and was amazed. "What, Laurine, Laurine, playing! You are a sorcerer, sir."
He put down the little girl, kissed her mother"s hand, and they sat down with the child between them. They began to chat, but Laurine, usually so silent, kept talking all the while, and had to be sent to her room. She obeyed without a word, but with tears in her eyes.
As soon as they were alone, Madame de Marelle lowered her voice. "You do not know, but I have a grand scheme, and I have thought of you. This is it. As I dine every week at the Forestiers, I return their hospitality from time to time at some restaurant. I do not like to entertain company at home, my household is not arranged for that, and besides, I do not understand anything about domestic affairs, anything about the kitchen, anything at all. I like to live anyhow. So I entertain them now and then at a restaurant, but it is not very lively when there are only three, and my own acquaintances scarcely go well with them. I tell you all this in order to explain a somewhat irregular invitation. You understand, do you not, that I want you to make one of us on Sat.u.r.day at the Cafe Riche, at half-past seven. You know the place?"
He accepted with pleasure, and she went on: "There will be only us four.
These little outings are very amusing to us women who are not accustomed to them."
She was wearing a dark brown dress, which showed off the lines of her waist, her hips, her bosom, and her arm in a coquettishly provocative way. Duroy felt confusedly astonished at the lack of harmony between this carefully refined elegance and her evident carelessness as regarded her dwelling. All that clothed her body, all that closely and directly touched her flesh was fine and delicate, but that which surrounded her did not matter to her.
He left her, retaining, as before, the sense of her continued presence in species of hallucination of the senses. And he awaited the day of the dinner with growing impatience.
Having hired, for the second time, a dress suit--his funds not yet allowing him to buy one--he arrived first at the rendezvous, a few minutes before the time. He was ushered up to the second story, and into a small private dining-room hung with red and white, its single window opening into the boulevard. A square table, laid for four, displaying its white cloth, so shining that it seemed to be varnished, and the gla.s.ses and the silver glittered brightly in the light of the twelve candles of two tall candelabra. Without was a broad patch of light green, due to the leaves of a tree lit up by the bright light from the dining-rooms.
Duroy sat down in a low armchair, upholstered in red to match the hangings on the walls. The worn springs yielding beneath him caused him to feel as though sinking into a hole. He heard throughout the huge house a confused murmur, the murmur of a large restaurant, made up of the clattering of gla.s.s and silver, the hurried steps of the waiters, deadened by the carpets in the pa.s.sages, and the opening of doors letting out the sound of voices from the numerous private rooms in which people were dining. Forestier came in and shook hands with him, with a cordial familiarity which he never displayed at the offices of the _Vie Francaise_.
"The ladies are coming together," said he; "these little dinners are very pleasant."
Then he glanced at the table, turned a gas jet that was feebly burning completely off, closed one sash of the window on account of the draught, and chose a sheltered place for himself, with a remark: "I must be careful; I have been better for a month, and now I am queer again these last few days. I must have caught cold on Tuesday, coming out of the theater."
The door was opened, and, followed by a waiter, the two ladies appeared, veiled, m.u.f.fled, reserved, with that charmingly mysterious bearing they a.s.sume in such places, where the surroundings are suspicious.
As Duroy bowed to Madame Forestier she scolded him for not having come to see her again; then she added with a smile, in the direction of her friend: "I know what it is; you prefer Madame de Marelle, you can find time to visit her."
They sat down to table, and the waiter having handed the wine card to Forestier, Madame de Marelle exclaimed: "Give these gentlemen whatever they like, but for us iced champagne, the best, sweet champagne, mind--nothing else." And the man having withdrawn, she added with an excited laugh: "I am going to get tipsy this evening; we will have a spree--a regular spree."
Forestier, who did not seem to have heard, said: "Would you mind the window being closed? My chest has been rather queer the last few days."
"No, not at all."
He pushed too the sash left open, and returned to his place with a rea.s.sured and tranquil countenance. His wife said nothing. Seemingly lost in thought, and with her eyes lowered towards the table, she smiled
at the gla.s.ses with that vague smile which seemed always to promise and never to grant.
The Ostend oysters were brought in, tiny and plump like little ears enclosed in sh.e.l.ls, and melting between the tongue and the palate like salt bon-bons. Then, after the soup, was served a trout as rose-tinted as a young girl, and the guests began to talk.
They spoke at first of a current scandal; the story of a lady of position, surprised by one of her husband"s friends supping in a private room with a foreign prince. Forestier laughed a great deal at the adventure; the two ladies declared that the indiscreet gossip was nothing less than a blackguard and a coward. Duroy was of their opinion, and loudly proclaimed that it is the duty of a man in these matters, whether he be actor, confidant, or simple spectator, to be silent as the grave. He added: "How full life would be of pleasant things if we could reckon upon the absolute discretion of one another. That which often, almost always, checks women is the fear of the secret being revealed.
Come, is it not true?" he continued. "How many are there who would yield to a sudden desire, the caprice of an hour, a pa.s.sing fancy, did they not fear to pay for a short-lived and fleeting pleasure by an irremediable scandal and painful tears?"
He spoke with catching conviction, as though pleading a cause, his own cause, as though he had said: "It is not with me that one would have to dread such dangers. Try me and see."
They both looked at him approvingly, holding that he spoke rightly and justly, confessing by their friendly silence that their flexible morality as Parisians would not have held out long before the certainty of secrecy. And Forestier, leaning back in his place on the divan, one leg bent under him, and his napkin thrust into his waistcoat, suddenly said with the satisfied laugh of a skeptic: "The deuce! yes, they would all go in for it if they were certain of silence. Poor husbands!"
And they began to talk of love. Without admitting it to be eternal, Duroy understood it as lasting, creating a bond, a tender friendship, a confidence. The union of the senses was only a seal to the union of hearts. But he was angry at the outrageous jealousies, melodramatic scenes, and unpleasantness which almost always accompany ruptures.
When he ceased speaking, Madame de Marelle replied: "Yes, it is the only pleasant thing in life, and we often spoil it by preposterous unreasonableness."
Madame Forestier, who was toying with her knife, added: "Yes--yes--it is pleasant to be loved."
And she seemed to be carrying her dream further, to be thinking things that she dared not give words to.
As the first _entree_ was slow in coming, they sipped from time to time a mouthful of champagne, and nibbled bits of crust. And the idea of love, entering into them, slowly intoxicated their souls, as the bright wine, rolling drop by drop down their throats, fired their blood and perturbed their minds.
The waiter brought in some lamb cutlets, delicate and tender, upon a thick bed of asparagus tips.
"Ah! this is good," exclaimed Forestier; and they ate slowly, savoring the delicate meat and vegetables as smooth as cream.
Duroy resumed: "For my part, when I love a woman everything else in the world disappears." He said this in a tone of conviction.
Madame Forestier murmured, with her let-me-alone air:
"There is no happiness comparable to that of the first hand-clasp, when the one asks, "Do you love me?" and the other replies, "Yes.""
Madame de Marelle, who had just tossed a fresh gla.s.s of champagne off at a draught, said gayly, as she put down her gla.s.s: "For my part, I am not so Platonic."
And all began to smile with kindling eyes at these words.
Forestier, stretched out in his seat on the divan, opened his arms, rested them on the cushions, and said in a serious tone: "This frankness does you honor, and proves that you are a practical woman. But may one ask you what is the opinion of Monsieur de Marelle?"
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, with infinite and prolonged disdain; and then in a decided tone remarked: "Monsieur de Marelle has no opinions on this point. He only has--abstentions."
And the conversation, descending from the elevated theories, concerning love, strayed into the flowery garden of polished blackguardism. It was the moment of clever double meanings; veils raised by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language; clever disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases; which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eye and the mind, and allow the well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocation of secret, shameful, and longed-for pleasures. The roast, consisting of partridges flanked by quails, had been served; then a dish of green peas, and then a terrine of foie gras, accompanied by a curly-leaved salad, filling a salad bowl as though with green foam. They had partaken of all these things without tasting them, without knowing, solely taken up by what they were talking of, plunged as it were in a bath of love.