CHAPTER XI
BETWEEN TWO TRAGEDIES
Ely awaited Pierre's reply to her letter without apprehension. Immediately Olivier had left she wrote, impelled by an instinctive, an irresistible desire to refresh and purify herself in Hautefeuille's loyal, devoted tenderness, after the cruel scene from which she issued broken, humiliated, and soiled. Not for a single minute did she do Olivier the injustice of suspecting that he would, even though possessed by the most hateful love, try to destroy the image that Pierre had of her—an image that bore no resemblance to her in the past, but now so true—so true to the inner nature of her present being.
She said nothing in this letter to her lover that she had not told him twenty times before—that she loved him, then again that she loved him, and, finally, that she loved him. She was sure that he would also reply with words of love, already read and re-read a score of times, but always new and welcome as an untasted happiness. When she received the envelope upon which Pierre had written her address, she weighed it in her hands, with the joy of a child. "How good he is to send me such a long letter!" And she tore it open in an ecstasy of love that was at once changed to terror. She looked first at her own letter with the seal unbroken and then again at the envelope bearing her name. Was it possible that such an insult had really been paid her by "her sweet," as she called her lover, with the affectation common to all sentiments? Could such an insult really have come from Pierre, who that very night had clasped her to his bosom with so much respect, mingled with his idolatry, with piety almost in his passion?
Alas, doubt was not possible! The address was in the young man's handwriting. It was certainly he who returned the letter to his mistress without even opening it. Following the terrible scene of a short time before, this refusal to hear from her, this return of her letter, signified a rupture. The motive of it was indicated to Ely's terrified eyes with hideous plainness. It was impossible for her to guess the exact truth. She could not divine that it had been brought about by Berthe du Prat's jealousy,—a jealousy awakened by so many suspicions which started the long-continued inner tragedy and ended in the irresistible impulse which drove the young wife to make the most desperate appeal to the most intimate friend of her husband, to make an appeal that revealed all to him. It was a succession of chances that nothing could have foretold.
On the other hand, a voluntary indiscretion on the part of Olivier appeared so probable, so conformable to the habitual meanness of wounded masculine pride! Ely never thought of any other cause, never sought any other motive for the crushing revolution wrought in Pierre's soul, of which she had before her a mute proof, more indisputable, more convincing than any phrase. The details of the catastrophe appeared before her simply and logically. Olivier had left her frantic with anger and desire, with jealousy and humiliated pride. In an excess of semi-madness he had failed of his honor. He had spoken! What had he said? All?—
At the mere idea the blood froze in the poor woman's veins. From the minute when, upon the quay of the old port at Genoa, Hautefeuille had held out to her the despatch announcing Olivier's return, she had traversed so many horrible hours that it appeared as though in her thoughts she must have become accustomed to the danger, that she must have admitted the possibility of this event. But, when in love, the heart possesses such stores of confidence, united to a keen power of self-deception, that she came face to face with the actuality as unprepared, unresigned, as unwittingly as we all meet death.—Ah! if she could only see Pierre at once. If she could only be alone with him, could only talk to him, could only plead her cause, defend herself, explain to him all she once had been and why, show him what she had now become and the reason, tell him of her struggles, of her longing to unbosom herself to him at the beginning, and that she had only kept silence through fear of losing him, through a trembling terror of wounding him in his tenderest feelings! If she could only see him to show him that love had caused it all, that it was love!—
Yes, see him! But where? When? How? At the hotel? He would not receive her. Olivier was there watching, guarding him. See him at her own villa? He would not come there again. Make a rendezvous with him? She could not. He would not even open her letter! She felt in the depths of her nature, which had remained so primitive and unrestrained, all the savage spirit of her Black Mountain ancestors rebelling against the bonds that tied her. With all her wretchedness she could not keep down a movement of reckless violence. Her powerless rage found vent—it was the only outlet possible—in a letter written to her cowardly denunciator, Olivier. She despised him at this moment for all the faith that she had felt in his loyalty. She loathed him with the same energy that she loved Pierre.
This second letter was useless and unworthy of herself. But to give free course to her rage against Olivier was to give relief to her passion for his friend. Besides—for in stirring up the depths of our nature suffering arouses that vague foundation of hope that remains with us in spite of the deepest despair—was it not possible that Olivier, when he once saw how infamously he had acted, would go to his friend and say: "It was not true; I lied when I told you she had been my mistress"?
This whirlwind of mad ideas, vain rage, and senseless hypotheses was shattered and driven away by an event as brutal as the first. Ely sent the letter to Olivier by one of her footmen about seven o'clock. Half an hour later, when she was finishing her toilet in a fever of anxiety, the man brought back the reply. It was a large sealed envelope with her address written in Olivier's handwriting. Inside was her letter unopened.
The two friends had thus made a compact. They both insulted her in the same way! It was as plain to her as though she had seen them take each other's hand and swear a pact of alliance against her in the name of their friendship.
For the first time this woman, usually superior to all the pettiness of her sex, felt against their friendship all the unreasoning hate that the ordinary mistress has for even the simple companionships of her lover. She felt that instinctive impulse of feminine antipathy for sentiments purely masculine, and from which the woman feels excluded forever. During the hours following the double insult, Ely was not only a woman in love repulsed and disdained, a woman who loses with him she loves all joy in life, a woman who will die of the effect of her loss. She was not only this, she also suffered all the pangs of a devouring jealousy. She was jealous of Olivier, jealous of the affection he inspired in Pierre and that Pierre returned. In the despair that the certainty of the cruel desertion caused her, she felt mingled an additional pang of suffering at the idea that these two men were happy in the triumph of their fraternal tenderness, that they dwelt under the same roof, that they could talk with each other, that they esteemed each other, loved each other.
True, such impressions were out of conformity with her innate magnanimity. But extreme sufferings have one trait in common: they distort the natural feelings and sentiments. The most delicate nature becomes brutal, the most confiding loses the noble power of expansion, the most loving becomes misanthropic when in the grasp of a great grief. There is no more ill-founded prejudice than the one echoed in the famous line—
"Man is an apprentice; suffering, his master."
It may be a master, but it is a degrading, depraving master. Not to be corrupted by suffering one must accept the trial as a punishment and a redemption. And then it is not the suffering that ameliorates one, but faith!
Without doubt if poor Ely had not been the disabused nihilist who believed, as she once said energetically, that "there is only this world," all the obscure fatalities that were crushing her down would have been made clear with a blinding light. She would have recognized a mysterious justice, stronger than our intentions, more infallible than our calculations, in the encounter that made the punishment of her double adultery issue from the friendship of those who had been her guilty partners in her failings, and caused those same accomplices to be each a punishment to the other. But in the blow that overwhelmed her she saw only the base vengeance of a former lover. And such a form of suffering could only end in degrading her. All her virtues of generous indulgence, of tender goodness, of sentimental scrupulousness that her love, magnificent in its enthusiastic spontaneity, had awakened in her heart, had receded from her. And she felt that all the most hideous and all her worst instincts were taking their place at the idea that these two men, both of whom had possessed her, one of whom she loved to the verge of madness, despised her. And in imagination she again saw Pierre as he was there before her, only twenty-four hours before, so devoted, so noble, so happy!—Ah! Pierre!—All her bitterness melted into a flood of tears as she cried aloud the beloved name. Ah! to what good was it that she cried for him? The man for whom such passionate sighs were breathed would not even listen to them!
What an evening, what a night the unfortunate woman passed, locked in her room! What courage it needed not to remain there all the following day, with windows closed, curtains down! How she longed to flee the daylight, life, to flee from herself, plunged and engulfed in a night and silence as of death!—But she was the daughter of an officer and the wife of a prince. She had thus twice over the trait of a military education, an absolute exactitude in carrying out her promises, a trait that causes the disciplined will to rise superior to all events and to execute at the appointed time the duties imposed. She had promised the night before to intercede with Dickie Marsh in Chésy's favor, and she was to give his reply in the afternoon. Her lassitude was so great in the morning that she nearly wrote to Madame Chésy to postpone her visit and that to the American's yacht. Then she said, "No, that would be cowardly."—And at eleven o'clock in the morning, her face hidden by a white veil that prevented her reddened eyes and agitated features from being seen, she stepped from her carriage on to the little quay to which the Jenny was moored. When she saw the rigging of the yacht and her white hull outlined against the sky, pale with the presage of heat, she remembered her arrival upon the same sun-scorched stones of the little quay, in the same carriage, only a fortnight before, and the profound joy she felt when she saw Pierre's silhouette as he looked for her from the boat anxiously. Those two weeks had been long enough for her romantic and tender idyl to be transformed into a sinister tragedy. Where was the lover who was with her when they left for Genoa? Where was he trying to hide the awful pain caused by her and which she could not even console? Had he already left Cannes? Ever since the night before the idea that Pierre had left her forever had made her heart icy with cold terror. And yet she devoured with her eyes the yacht upon which she had been so happy.
She was now near enough to be able to count the portholes, of which the line appeared just above the rail of a cutter moored near the Jenny. The seventh was the one lighting her cabin, their cabin, the nuptial refuge where they had tasted the intoxicating joy of their first night of love. A sailor was seated upon a plank suspended from the rail washing the shell of the boat with a brush that he dipped from time to time in a big bucket. The triviality of the detail, of the work being done at that minute and at that place, completed the faintness of the young woman caused by the air of contrast. She was speechless with emotion when she stepped upon the gangway leading from the quay to the boat. Her agitation was so apparent that Dickie Marsh could not resist an inclination to question her, thus failing for once to observe the great Anglo-Saxon principle of avoiding personal remarks.
"It is nothing," she replied; "or rather nothing that concerns me."
Then, making his question an excuse for introducing the subject of her visit, she said:—
"I am all upset by the news I have just learned from Yvonne."
"Shall we go into the smoking-room?" asked the American, who had trembled at the sound of Madame de Chésy's name. "We shall be able to talk better there."
They were in the office where Marsh was busy when Ely arrived. The dry clicking of the typewriter under the fingers of a secretary had not stopped or even slackened a moment upon the entrance of the young woman. Another secretary went on telephoning to the telegraph office, and a third continued arranging documents. The intensity of their industry proved the importance and the pressing nature of the work being done. But the business man left his dictations and his calculations with as little compunction as an infant displays when he casts aside his hoop or ball, to question Yvonne's messenger with a veritable fever of anxiety.
"So the bolt has fallen! Are they ruined?" he asked, when they were alone. Then, in reply to Ely's affirmation, he went on: "Was I not right? I have not seen the Vicomtesse for some little time. I have not even tried to see her. I thought Brion was at the bottom of all. I was sure you would make me a sign at the right moment, unless—But no, there is no unless—I was sure the poor child would estimate that man for the abominable cad that he is, and that she would show him the door the first word he uttered."
"She came to see me," said Ely, "trembling, and revolted at the ignoble propositions the wretch made to her."
"Ah, what 'punishment' he merits!" said Marsh, with an expressive gesture that accentuated the energetic boxing term. "Did you tell her to apply to me? Is her husband willing to work?"
"She came to see me to ask for a place for Gontran as superintendent on the Archduke's estate," replied Ely.
"No, no!" interrupted Dickie Marsh. "I have the very thing for him. It is better for me even than for him, for I have a principle that all services ought to be of some use to him that renders them. In that way, if the man you oblige proves ungrateful, you are paid in advance.—This is the affair. Since we were in Genoa we have done a lot of work. We have founded in Marionville—by we I mean myself and three others, the 'big four,' as we are called—a society for working a score of ruined ranches we have bought in North Dakota. We have thus miles and miles of prairies upon which we want to raise not cattle, but horses.—Why horses? For this reason: In the States a horse is worth nothing. My countrymen have done away with them, and with that useless thing, the carriage. Railways, electric tramways, and cable cars are quite sufficient for every need. In Europe, with your standing armies, things are different. In another five years you will not be able to find horses for your cavalry. Now follow me closely. We are going to buy in the horses in America by the thousand for a song. We shall restore them to the prairies. We shall cross them with Syrian stallions. I have just bought five hundred from the Sultan by telegraph."
Excited by the huge perspective of his enterprise, he left the "we" to use the more emphatic "I."
"I am going to create a new breed, one that will be superb for light cavalry. I will supply a mount for every hussar, uhlan, and chasseur in Europe. I have calculated that. I can deliver the animals in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna at a fourth less than the State pays in France, Germany, Italy, and in your country. But I must have some competent and trustworthy man to look after my breeding stables. I want Chésy to take this place. I will give him $115,000 per year, all his travelling expenses paid, and a percentage upon the profits. You will perhaps say that when you want to make wealth by the plough you must put your hand to it.—That is true. But with the cable I am at hand if only my man does not rob me. Now, Chésy is honest. He understands horses like any jockey. He will save for me what a rascally employee would steal and all that an incompetent one would waste. In ten years he can return to Europe richer than he would ever have been by following Brion's advice and without owing me anything.—But will he accept?"
"I can answer for that," replied Ely. "I have an appointment with Yvonne this afternoon. She will write to you."
"In that case," Marsh continued, "I will cable instructions for the furnishing of their residences in Marionville and Silver City to be hurried on. They will have two houses at the society's expense. I shall go to the States to start him upon his duties. They can be there for June.—And if they accept will you tell the Vicomtesse that we start for Beyrout the day after to-morrow on the Jenny? I want them to go along with me. Chésy could begin his work straight away. He will prevent the Bedouins selling me a lot of old nags in the batch. I will write to him, however, more at length upon the matter."
There was a short silence. Then he said:—
"There is some one I should like to take with them."
"Who is that?" asked Ely.
The contrast was a very striking one between the sentiment of silent misery, of despairing prostration, of the uselessness of everything that prostrated her, and the almost boundless energy of the Yankee business man. In addition to her sorrow she felt a sort of bewilderment, and she forgot all about Marsh's intention in regard to his niece's marriage.
"Who?" echoed the American, "why Verdier, naturally. I have also my secret service bureau," he went on. This time there was even more energy in his manner. Admiration and covetousness were visible in all his being as he sounded the praises of the Prince's assistant and of his inventions. "I know that he has solved his problem. Has he not spoken to you about it? Well, it is a marvel! You will realize that in a minute.—You know that aluminum is the lightest of metals. It has only one fault; it costs too much. Now, in the first place, Verdier has discovered a process of making it by electrolysis, without the need of any chemical transformations. He can thus get it very cheap. Then, with his aluminum, he has invented a new kind of electric accumulator. It is fifteen times more powerful according to its weight than the accumulators at present in use.—In other words, the electric railway is an assured fact. The secret is discovered!—I want to take Verdier with me to the States, and with the help of his invention we shall wreck the tramway companies in Marionville and Cleveland and Buffalo. It means the death of Jim Davis; it means his end, his destruction, his complete ruin!—You don't know Davis. He is my enemy. You know what it is to have an enemy, to have some one in the world with whom you have been fighting for years; all your life, in fact? Well, in my case that some one is Jim Davis. His affairs are shaky just now. If I can get Verdier's invention, I can crush him into pieces and utterly smash up the Republican party in Ohio at the same time."
"Still," said Madame de Carlsberg, interrupting him, "I cannot go to the laboratory to ask him for his invention."
In spite of her trouble she could not help smiling at the flood of half-political, half-financial confidences that issued pell-mell from Marsh. With his strange mixture of self-possession and excitability, he did not lose sight of his objects for a single moment. He had just rendered a service to the Baroness Ely. His motto was, give and take. It was now her turn to serve him.
"No," he replied eagerly, "but you can find out what the young man has against Flossie. You know that I planned their marriage. Did she not tell you? It is a very good match for both—for all. To him it means a fortune, to her it means happiness, to me, a useful instrument. Ah! what a superb one this genius will be in my hands!" he cried, closing his hands nervously like a workman seizing the levers of an engine that he is starting in motion. "Everything seemed to be going on all right when, suddenly—bang! All came to grief. About five or six days ago I noticed that the girl was very silent, almost sad. I asked her point-blank, 'Are you engaged, Flossie?' 'No, uncle,' she replied, 'and I never shall be.' I talked with her and drew her out—not too much, simply enough to know that some lovers' quarrel is at the bottom of it all. If you would talk to her, Baroness, she would tell you more than she will me, and you can also talk to Verdier. There is no sense in letting the affair drag on in this way when they love each other as they do. For I know that they are both in love. I met Mrs. Marsh—she was then Miss Potts—one Thursday at a bazaar. On the following Saturday we were engaged. There is no time to lose, not a day, not an hour or minute ought to be thrown away. We shall waste enough when we are dead!"
"So you would like me to learn from Florence why she is so sad and why the affair is broken off? I will find out. And I will rearrange the whole thing if you like."
"That's it, Baroness," said Marsh, adding simply, "Ah! if my niece were only like you! I would make you a partner in all my business affairs. You are so intelligent, so quick and matter of fact when it is necessary. You will find Flossie in her room. As to Chésy, it is an understood thing. If you like, I will cable for them."
"Do so," said Ely, as she walked away toward Miss Marsh's cabin.
She had to pass the door of the one she had occupied on that never-to-be-forgotten night. She pushed open the door with a frightful feeling of melancholy. The little cabin, now unoccupied, was so blank, seemed so ready to welcome any passing guest, to afford a refuge for other happiness, other sorrows, other dreams, or other regrets! Was it possible that the joy felt in this place had disappeared forever? Whether it was Marsh's conversation which had communicated some of his energy and confidence to the young woman or that, like the instinct to struggle to the last that animates a drowning man, the soul is moved by a vital energy at a certain point of discouragement, whether it were one or the other motive it is hard to say, but Ely replied, No! to her own question. Standing upon the threshold of the narrow cell that had been for her an hour's paradise, she vowed that she would not surrender, that she would fight for her happiness, that she would again recover it. It was only a minute's respite, but it sufficed to give her courage to compose her features so that Miss Marsh, a keener observer than her uncle, did not notice the marks of a deep sadness imprinted too plainly upon her face. The young American girl was painting. She was copying a magnificent bunch of pinks and roses, of yellow, almost golden pinks, and of blood-red, purple roses, whose deep tints seemed almost black. The harmonious combination of yellow and red had attracted her eye, always sensible to bright colors. Her unskilful brush laid coats of harsh color upon the canvas, but she stuck to her task with an obstinacy and energy and patience equal to that displayed by her uncle in his business. And yet she was a true woman, in spite of all her decision and firm manner. Her emotion upon Ely's entrance was only too visible. She divined that the Baroness, whose villa she had avoided for several days, was going to talk to her about Verdier. She did not employ any artifice with her friend. At her first allusion she replied:—
"I know it is my uncle who has sent you as intermediary. He was quite right. What I would not tell him, what, in fact, I could not tell him, I can tell you. It is quite true, I have quarrelled with Monsieur Verdier. He believed some wicked calumnies that he heard about me. That is all."
"In other words you mean that it is the Archduke who has slandered you, do you not?" asked Madame de Carlsberg, after a short silence.
"Everything appeared to condemn me," replied Florence, ignoring the Baroness's remark, "but when there is faith there can be no question of trusting to appearances. Do you not think so?"
"I think that Verdier loves you," said Ely, in reply, "and that in love there is jealousy. But what was the matter?"
"There can be no love where there is no esteem," said the young girl, angrily, "and you cannot esteem a woman whom you think capable of certain things. You know," she went on, her anger increasing in a way that proved how keenly she felt the outrage, "you know that Andryana and her husband hired a villa at Golfe Juan. I went there several times with Andryana, and Monsieur Verdier knew about it. How I do not know, and yet it does not astonish me, for once or twice as we went there about tea-time I thought I saw Monsieur von Laubach prowling about. And what do you think Monsieur Verdier dared to think of me,—of me, an American? What do you think he dared to reproach me with? That I was chaperoning an intrigue between Andryana and Corancez, that I was cognizant of one of those horrible things you call a liaison."
"But it was the simplest thing in the world to clear yourself," said Ely.
"I could not betray Andryana's secret," replied Florence. "I had promised to keep it sacred, and I would not ask her permission to speak; in the first place, because I had no right to do so, and in the second," and her physiognomy betrayed all her wounded pride and sensation of honor, "in the second because I would not stoop to defend myself against suspicion. I told Monsieur Verdier that he was mistaken. He did not believe me, and all is over between us."
"So that you accept the idea of not marrying him," said Ely, "simply through pride or bitterness rather than make a very simple explanation!—But suppose he came here, here upon your uncle's boat, to beg you to forgive him for his unjust suspicions, or rather for what he believed himself justified in thinking? Suppose he did better still; suppose he asks for your hand, that he asks you to marry him, will you say him nay? Will all be over between you?"
"He will not come," said Florence. "He has not written or taken a step for the last week. Why do you speak to me in that way? You are taking away all my courage, and, believe me, I have need of it all."
"What a child you are, Flossie!" said Ely, kissing her. "You will realize some day that we women have no courage to withstand those we love and those that love us. Let me follow my idea. You will be engaged before this evening is over."
She spoke the last words of exhortation and hope with a bitter tone that Florence did not recognize. As she listened to the young girl telling of the little misunderstanding that separated her and Verdier, she had a keen sensation of her own misery. This lovers' quarrel was only a dispute between a child—as she had called Miss Marsh—and another child. She thought of her rupture with Pierre. She thought of all the bitterness and vileness and inexpiable offence that there was between them. Face to face with the pretty American's pride before an unjust suspicion, she felt more vividly the horror of being justly accused and of being obliged either to lie or to own her shame while asking for pity. At the same time she was overwhelmed with a flood of indignation at the thought of the odious means employed by the Archduke to keep Verdier with him. She found in it the same sentiment that had aroused her hatred against Olivier the night before: the attachment of man for man, the friendship that is jealous of love, that is hostile to woman, that pursues and tracks her in order to preserve the friend. True, the sentiment of the Prince for his coadjutor was not precisely the same that Pierre felt for Olivier and that Olivier felt for Pierre. It was the affection of a scientist for his companion of the laboratory, of a master for his disciple, almost of a father for a son.
But this friendship, intellectual though it might be, was not the less intense after its kind. Madame de Carlsberg, therefore, felt a personal satisfaction as though she were avenging herself in taking steps to thwart the Prince's schemes as soon as she had left the Jenny. It was a poor revenge. It did not prevent her feeling that her heart was broken by the despair caused by her vanished love, even amid all the intrigues necessary to protect another's happiness.
Her first step after her conversation with Florence was to go to the villa that Andryana occupied on the road to Fréjus, at the other end of Cannes. She had no need to ask anything of the generous Italian. No sooner had she heard of the misunderstanding that separated Verdier and Miss Marsh, than she cried:—
"But why did she not speak? Poor, dear girl! I felt sure something was the matter these last few days. And that was it? But I will go straight away and see Verdier, see the Prince and tell them all the truth. They must know that Florence would never countenance any evil. Besides, I have had enough of living in hiding. I have had enough of being obliged to lie. I mean to disclose the fact of my marriage to-day. I only awaited some reason for deciding Corancez, and here it is."
"How about your brother?" asked Ely.
"What? My brother? My brother?" repeated the Venetian.
The rich blood swept to her cheeks in a flood of warm color at this allusion and then fled, leaving her pale. It was plain that a last combat was taking place in the nature so long downtrodden. The remains of her terror fought with her moral courage and was finally conquered. She had two powerful motives for being brave,—her love, strengthened by her happiness and rapture, and then a dawning hope of having a child to love. She told it to Ely with the magnificent daring that is almost pride of a loving wife.
"Besides," she added, "I shall not have any choice for very much longer. I think I am about to become a mother. But let us send for Corancez at once. Whatever you advise, he will do. I do not understand why he hesitates. If I had not perfect confidence in him, I should think he already regretted being bound to me."
Contrary to Andryana's sentimental fears, the Southerner did not raise any objection when Madame de Carlsberg asked him to reveal the mystery or comedy of the matrimonio segreto to the Archduke and his assistant. The occasion would have furnished his father with an opportunity of once more using his favorite dictum, "Marius is a cunning blade," if he had been able to see the condescending way with which he accorded the permission that brought to a culminating-point the desires of the cunning intriguer. There is both Greek and Tuscan in the Southerners from the neighborhood of Marseilles, and they appear to have written in their hearts the maxim which contains all Italian or Levantine philosophy: "Chi ha pazienza, ha gloria." He had expected to make his marriage public the instant there was a chance that he was to become a father. But he had never hoped for an opportunity of appearing both magnanimous and practical, such as was afforded him by consenting to the announcement upon the request of the Baroness Ely, and that out of chivalrous pity for a girl who had been calumniat