The bell sounded for breakfast. "I will show them how to die," she said.
She went downstairs with a firm step, with something of the resolution of the Christian martyrs going into the circus, where the lions awaited them.
She pressed their hands, smiling in an affable but rather haughty manner. Servigny asked her:
"Are you less cross to-day, Mam"zelle?"
She answered in a severe and peculiar tone: "Today, I am going to commit follies. I am in my Paris mood, look out!"
Then turning toward Monsieur de Belvigne, she said:
"You shall be my escort, my little Malmsey. I will take you all after breakfast to the fete at Marly."
There was, in fact, a fete at Marly. They introduced the two newcomers to her, the Comte de Tamine and the Marquis de Briquetot.
During the meal, she said nothing further, strengthening herself to be gay in the afternoon, so that no one should guess anything,--so that they should be all the more astonished, and should say: "Who would have thought it? She seemed so happy, so contented! What does take place in those heads?"
She forced herself not to think of the evening, the chosen hour, when they should all be upon the terrace. She drank as much wine as she could stand, to nerve herself, and two little gla.s.ses of brandy, and she was flushed as she left the table, a little bewildered, heated in body and mind. It seemed to her that she was strengthened now, and resolved for everything.
"Let us start!" she cried. She took Monsieur de Belvigne"s arm and set the pace for the others. "Come, you shall form my battalion, Servigny. I choose you as sergeant; you will keep outside the ranks, on the right. You will make the foreign guard march in front--the two exotics, the Prince, and the Chevalier--and in the rear the two recruits who have enlisted to-day. Come!"
They started. And Servigny began to imitate the trumpet, while the two newcomers made believe to beat the drum. Monsieur de Belvigne, a little confused, said in a low tone:
"Mademoiselle Yvette, be reasonable, you will compromise yourself."
She answered: "It is you whom I am compromising, Raisine. As for me, I don"t care much about it. To-morrow it will not occur. So much the worse for you: you ought not to go out with girls like me."
They went through Bougival to the amazement of the pa.s.sers-by. All turned to look at them; the citizens came to their doors; the travelers on the little railway which runs from Ruril to Marly jeered at them. The men on the platforms cried:
"To the water with them!"
Yvette marched with a military step, holding Belvigne by the arm, as a prisoner is led. She did not laugh; upon her features sat a pale seriousness, a sort of sinister calm. Servigny interrupted his trumpet blasts only to shout orders. The Prince and the Chevalier were greatly amused, finding all this very funny and in good taste.
The two recruits drummed away continually.
When they arrived at the fete, they made a sensation. Girls applauded; young men jeered, and a stout gentleman with his wife on his arm said enviously: "There are some people who are full of fun."
Yvette saw the wooden horses and compelled Belvigne to mount at her right, while her squad scrambled upon the whirling beasts behind.
When the time was up she refused to dismount, constraining her escort to take several more rides on the back of these children"s animals, to the great delight of the public, who shouted jokes at them. Monsieur de Belvigne was livid and dizzy when he got off.
Then she began to wander among the booths. She forced all her men to get weighed among a crowd of spectators. She made them buy ridiculous toys which they had to carry in their hands. The Prince and the Chevalier began to think the joke was being carried too far.
Servigny and the drummers, alone, did not seem to be discouraged.
They finally came to the end of the place. Then she gazed at her followers in a peculiar manner, with a shy and mischievous glance, and a strange fancy came to her mind. She drew them up on the bank of the river.
"Let the one who loves me the most jump into the water," she said.
n.o.body leaped. A mob gathered behind them. Women in white ap.r.o.ns looked on in stupor. Two troopers, in red breeches, laughed loudly.
She repeated: "Then there is not one of you capable of jumping into the water at my desire?"
Servigny murmured: "Oh, yes, there is," and leaped feet foremost into the river. His plunge cast a splash over as far as Yvette"s feet. A murmur of astonishment and gaiety arose in the crowd.
Then the young girl picked up from the ground a little piece of wood, and throwing it into the stream: "Fetch it," she cried.
The young man began to swim, and seizing the floating stick in his mouth, like a dog, he brought it ash.o.r.e, and then climbing the bank he kneeled on one knee to present it.
Yvette took it. "You are handsome," said she, and with a friendly stroke, she caressed his hair.
A stout woman indignantly exclaimed: "Are such things possible!"
Another woman said: "Can people amuse themselves like that!"
A man remarked: "I would not take a plunge for that sort of a girl."
She again took Belvigne"s arm, exclaiming in his face: "You are a goose, my friend; you don"t know what you missed."
They now returned. She cast vexed looks on the pa.s.sers-by. "How stupid all these people seem," she said. Then raising her eyes to the countenance of her companion, she added: "You, too, like all the rest."
M. de Belvigne bowed. Turning around she saw that the Prince and the Chevalier had disappeared. Servigny, dejected and dripping, ceased playing on the trumpet, and walked with a gloomy air at the side of the two wearied young men, who also had stopped the drum playing.
She began to laugh dryly, saying:
"You seem to have had enough; nevertheless, that is what you call having a good time, isn"t it? You came for that; I have given you your money"s worth."
Then she walked on, saying nothing further; and suddenly Belvigne perceived that she was weeping. Astounded, he inquired:
"What is the matter?"
She murmured: "Let me alone, it does not concern you."
But he insisted, like a fool: "Oh, Mademoiselle, come, what is the matter, has anyone annoyed you?"
She repeated impatiently: "Will you keep still?"
Then suddenly, no longer able to resist the despairing sorrow which drowned her heart, she began to sob so violently, that she could no longer walk. She covered her face with her hands, panting for breath, choked by the violence of her despair.
Belvigne stood still at her side, quite bewildered, repeating: "I don"t understand this at all."
But Servigny brusquely came forward: "Let us go home, Mam"zelle, so that people may not see you weeping in the street. Why do you perpetrate follies like that when they only make you sad?"
And taking her arm he drew her forward. But as soon as they reached the iron gate of the villa she began to run, crossed the garden, and went upstairs, and shut herself in her room. She did not appear again until the dinner hour, very pale and serious. Servigny had bought from a country storekeeper a workingman"s costume, with velvet pantaloons, a flowered waistcoat and a blouse, and he adopted the local dialect. Yvette was in a hurry for them to finish, feeling her courage ebbing. As soon as the coffee was served she went to her room again.
She heard the merry voices beneath her window. The Chevalier was making equivocal jokes, foreign witticisms, vulgar and clumsy. She listened, in despair. Servigny, just a bit tipsy, was imitating the common workingman, calling the Marquise "the Missus." And all of a sudden he said to Saval: "Well, Boss?" That caused a general laugh.
Then Yvette decided. She first took a sheet of paper and wrote:
"Bougival, Sunday, nine o"clock in the evening.
"I die so that I may not become a kept woman.
"YVETTE."