It was the day before the meeting. Early next morning the Chevalier de Méré was to call for her in his coach and drive her out to Conrart’s house. He was also taking that tiresome little Mademoiselle Boquet. That was a pity, but she was particularly pleased that the Chevalier himself was to be there, he always brought out her most brilliant qualities.
She was absolutely certain of success ... the real world seemed to have become the dream world ... she felt as if she had been turned into a creature of some light, unsubstantial substance living in an airless crystal ball.
That afternoon, being Thursday and a holiday, she went an excursion with Jacques to Chaillot, a little village up the Seine. She walked in a happy trance, and the fifteenth century Church, ornate and frivolous, dotted with its black Minims—‘les bons hommes de Chaillot’—and the coach of the exiled Queen-Mother of England’s gaily rattling down the cobbled street, seemed to her—safe inside her crystal ball—pretty and unreal and far-away, like Berthe’s stories of Lorraine.
Then they wandered into a little copse behind the village and lay there in the fantastic green shade, and Madeleine stroked and petted Jacques and laughed away his jealousy about the Chevalier, and promised that next week she would go with him to the notary and plight her troth.
Then they got up and she took his arm; on her face was a rapt smile, for she was dreaming particularly pleasant things about herself and Sappho.
Suddenly Jacques’s foot caught in a hidden root ... down he came, dragging Madeleine after him ... smash went the crystal ball, and once more she saw the world bright and hard and menacing and felt around her the rough, shrewd winds.
So Jacques had made her fall—just when she was having such pleasant dreams of Sappho!
Hylas, hélas! Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Birds thinking to fly through have dashed themselves against the wall. ’Tis as though the issue of his roman were tied in a strange knot with that of yours. I have been writing a little comedy on life instead of on foolscap. In the smithy of Vulcan are being forged weapons which will not tarry to smash your fragile world into a thousand fragments ... weapons? Perhaps one of them was ‘the scimitar of the Comic Muse’ (or was it the ‘symmetry’? It did not really matter which.)
Who was the mercer at the Fair? He had the same eyes as the nun at the Carmelites.... Her father, too, had a petite-oie ... he had put his faith in bravery. Perhaps Venus-Magdalen and the Comic Muse were one ... and their servant was Hylas the mocking shepherd. The wooden cubes on which God’s finger had cut a design ... generals and particulars. Have a care lest that scoundrel Jacques stick a disgrace upon you, as he has done to me! A comedy written upon life instead of upon foolscap.
In morbid moments she had often heard a whisper to which she had never permitted herself to listen. She heard the whisper now, louder and more insistent than ever before. To-day she could not choose but listen to it.
Her ‘roman’ had to follow the pattern of her father’s. Her father’s ‘roman,’ as slowly it unfolded, was nothing but a magical pre-doing of her own future, more potent than her dances. And God had deputed the making of it to—Jacques. He was the playwright, or the engraver, or the moulder of wax—it mattered little in what medium he wrought his sinister art.
There was still time to act. ‘She would do, she would do, she would do.’ Action is the only relief for a hag-ridden brain. An action that was ruthless and final—that would break his power and rid her of him for ever. That action should be consummated.
All the while that this train of fears and memories had been coursing through her brain, she had chattered to Jacques with hectic gaiety.
When they got home she ran to the kitchen to find Berthe.
‘Berthe, were you ever of opinion I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’
Berthe leered and winked. ‘Well, Mademoiselle,’ she said, ‘Love is one thing—marriage is another. Monsieur Jacques could not give Mademoiselle a coach and a fine hôtel in the Rue de Richelieu. I understand Mademoiselle exceeding well, in that we are not unlike in some matters,’ and she gave her grotesque grin. ‘As for me, I would never wed with a man except he could raise me to a better condition than mine own—else what would it profit one? But if some plump little tradesman were to come along——’
‘But did you hold that I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’ Madeleine persisted.
‘Well, if Mademoiselle did wed with him, she would doubtless be setting too low a price on herself, though he is a fine young gentleman and malin comme un singe; he is like Albert, nothing escapes him.’
‘Do you think the Saints like us to use each other unkindly?’
Berthe laughed enigmatically, ‘I think ’tis a matter of indifference to them, so long as they get the sous.’
‘But don’t you think it might accord well with their humour if they are as wicked as you say they are?’
Part of the truth suddenly flashed on Berthe, and she winked and chuckled violently. ‘Oh, Mademoiselle is sly!’ she cried admiringly. ‘I think it would please them not a little were Mademoiselle to jilt a poor man that she might wed with a rich one, for then there would be gold for them instead of copper!’
And Madeleine, having forced her oracle into giving her a more or less satisfactory answer, fled from the room in dread of Berthe mentioning the name of the Chevalier de Méré and thereby spoiling the oracular answer.
She called Jacques to her room at once, and found herself—she who had such a horror of hurting the feelings of her neighbours that she would let a thief cut her purse-strings rather than that he should know that she knew he was a thief—telling him without a tremor that his personality was obnoxious to her, his addresses still more so, and that she wanted to end their relationship once and for all. Jacques listened in perfect silence. At her first words he had gone white and then flushed the angry red of wounded vanity, and then once more had turned white. When she had finished, he said in a voice of icy coldness,—
‘Mademoiselle, you have an admirable clearness of exposition; rest assured I shall not again annoy you with my addresses—or my presence,’ and with his head very high he left the room.