Part 26 (1/2)
”Yes, I do,” said Lisbeth. ”The unexpressed factor is part of my revenge; what can I do? I am working it out.”
”I love Wenceslas so that I am positively growing thin, and I can never see him,” said Valerie, throwing up her arms. ”Hulot asks him to dinner, and my artist declines. He does not know that I idolize him, the wretch!
What is his wife after all? Fine fles.h.!.+ Yes, she is handsome, but I--I know myself--I am worse!”
”Be quite easy, my child, he will come,” said Lisbeth, in the tone of a nurse to an impatient child. ”He shall.”
”But when?”
”This week perhaps.”
”Give me a kiss.”
As may be seen, these two women were but one. Everything Valerie did, even her most reckless actions, her pleasures, her little sulks, were decided on after serious deliberation between them.
Lisbeth, strangely excited by this harlot existence, advised Valerie on every step, and pursued her course of revenge with pitiless logic. She really adored Valerie; she had taken her to be her child, her friend, her love; she found her docile, as Creoles are, yielding from voluptuous indolence; she chattered with her morning after morning with more pleasure than with Wenceslas; they could laugh together over the mischief they plotted, and over the folly of men, and count up the swelling interest on their respective savings.
Indeed, in this new enterprise and new affection, Lisbeth had found food for her activity that was far more satisfying than her insane pa.s.sion for Wenceslas. The joys of gratified hatred are the fiercest and strongest the heart can know. Love is the gold, hatred the iron of the mine of feeling that lies buried in us. And then, Valerie was, to Lisbeth, Beauty in all its glory--the beauty she wors.h.i.+ped, as we wors.h.i.+p what we have not, beauty far more plastic to her hand than that of Wenceslas, who had always been cold to her and distant.
At the end of nearly three years, Lisbeth was beginning to perceive the progress of the underground mine on which she was expending her life and concentrating her mind. Lisbeth planned, Madame Marneffe acted. Madame Marneffe was the axe, Lisbeth was the hand the wielded it, and that hand was rapidly demolis.h.i.+ng the family which was every day more odious to her; for we can hate more and more, just as, when we love, we love better every day.
Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves; but of the two, hatred has the longer vitality. Love is restricted within limits of power; it derives its energies from life and from lavishness. Hatred is like death, like avarice; it is, so to speak, an active abstraction, above beings and things.
Lisbeth, embarked on the existence that was natural to her, expended in it all her faculties; governing, like the Jesuits, by occult influences.
The regeneration of her person was equally complete; her face was radiant. Lisbeth dreamed of becoming Madame la Marechale Hulot.
This little scene, in which the two friends had bluntly uttered their ideas without any circ.u.mlocution in expressing them, took place immediately on Lisbeth's return from market, whither she had been to procure the materials for an elegant dinner. Marneffe, who hoped to get Coquet's place, was to entertain him and the virtuous Madame Coquet, and Valerie hoped to persuade Hulot, that very evening, to consider the head-clerk's resignation.
Lisbeth dressed to go to the Baroness, with whom she was to dine.
”You will come back in time to make tea for us, my Betty?” said Valerie.
”I hope so.”
”You hope so--why? Have you come to sleeping with Adeline to drink her tears while she is asleep?”
”If only I could!” said Lisbeth, laughing. ”I would not refuse. She is expiating her happiness--and I am glad, for I remember our young days.
It is my turn now. She will be in the mire, and I shall be Comtesse de Forzheim!”
Lisbeth set out for the Rue Plumet, where she now went as to the theatre--to indulge her emotions.
The residence Hulot had found for his wife consisted of a large, bare entrance-room, a drawing-room, and a bed and dressing-room. The dining-room was next the drawing-room on one side. Two servants' rooms and a kitchen on the third floor completed the accommodation, which was not unworthy of a Councillor of State, high up in the War Office. The house, the court-yard, and the stairs were extremely handsome.
The Baroness, who had to furnish her drawing-room, bed-room, and dining-room with the relics of her splendor, had brought away the best of the remains from the house in the Rue de l'Universite. Indeed, the poor woman was attached to these mute witnesses of her happier life; to her they had an almost consoling eloquence. In memory she saw her flowers, as in the carpets she could trace patterns hardly visible now to other eyes.
On going into the s.p.a.cious anteroom, where twelve chairs, a barometer, a large stove, and long, white cotton curtains, bordered with red, suggested the dreadful waiting-room of a Government office, the visitor felt oppressed, conscious at once of the isolation in which the mistress lived. Grief, like pleasure, infects the atmosphere. A first glance into any home is enough to tell you whether love or despair reigns there.
Adeline would be found sitting in an immense bedroom with beautiful furniture by Jacob Desmalters, of mahogany finished in the Empire style with ormolu, which looks even less inviting than the bra.s.s-work of Louis XVI.! It gave one a s.h.i.+ver to see this lonely woman sitting on a Roman chair, a work-table with sphinxes before her, colorless, affecting false cheerfulness, but preserving her imperial air, as she had preserved the blue velvet gown she always wore in the house. Her proud spirit sustained her strength and preserved her beauty.