Part 30 (1/2)
With brazen front, Kayser's niece struck her bosom, looking at the same time at the reflection of her fine bust and pale face in the mirror.
The next day she went straight to the former danseuse's.
Claire Dujarrier lived in that long Rue La Fontaine at Auteuil which partook of the characteristics of a suburban main street and a provincial faubourg, with its summer villas, its little cottages enclosed within gloomy little gardens, railed-off flower-beds, boarding-schools for young people, and elbowing each other as in some village pa.s.sage, the butcher's store, the pharmacy, the wine-dealer's shop, the baker's establishment,--a kind of little summer resort with a forlorn look in February, the kiosks and cottages half decayed, the gardens full of faded, dreary-looking leaves. Marianne looked about, seeking the little Claire house. She had visited it formerly. A policeman wandered along sadly,--as if to remind one of the town,--and on one side, a gardener pa.s.sed scuffling his wooden shoes, as if to recall the village.
However, here it was that the formerly celebrated girl, who awoke storms of applause when she danced beside Cerrito at the Opera, now lived buried in silence,--a cab going to the Villa Montmorency seemed an event in her eyes,--forgotten, her windows shut, and as a diversion looking through the shutters at the high chimneys of some factory in the neighboring Rue Gras that belched forth their ruddy or bluish fumes, or yellow like sulphuric acid, or again red like the reflection of fire.
Marianne rang several times when she arrived at the garden railing of the little house. The bells sounded as if they were coated with rust. An ancient maid-servant, astonished and morose, came to open the door.
She conducted the young woman into the salon where Claire Dujarrier sat alone, eating cakes, with her terrier on her lap.
The dog almost leaped at Marianne's throat while Claire, rising, threw herself on her neck.
”Ah! dear little one!--How pleased I am! What chance brings you?”
Marianne looked at the Dujarrier. She might still be called almost lovely, although she was a little painted and her eyes were swollen, and her cheeks withered; but she knew so perfectly well all the secrets for rejuvenating, the eyebrow preparation, the l.a.b.i.al wash, that she was a walking pharmaceutical painting done on finely sculptured features. The statue, although burdened with fat, was still superb.
She listened to Marianne, smiled, frowned and, love-broker and advisory courtesan that she was, ended by saying to the ”little one” that she had a devilish good chance and that she had arrived like March in Lent.
”It is true, it has purposely happened. Vanda, you know her well?”
”No!” answered Marianne.
”What! Vanda, whom that big viper Guy called the Walking Rain?”
”I do not remember--”
”Well! Vanda has gone to Russia, she left a month ago. She will be there all the winter and summer, and part of next winter. Her _general_ requires her. He is appointed to keep an eye on the Nihilists. So she wishes to rent her house in Rue p.r.o.ny. That is very natural. A charming house. Very _chic_. In admirable taste. You have the chance. And not dear.”
”Too dear for me, who have nothing!”
”Little silly! You have yourself,” said Claire Dujarrier. ”Then you have me, I have always liked you. I will lend you the ready cash to set yourself up, you can give me bills of exchange, little doc.u.ments that your minister--pest! you are going on well, you are, ministers!--that His Excellency will endorse. Vanda will not expect anything after the first quarter. Provided that her house is well-rented to someone who does not spoil it, she will be satisfied. If she should claim all, why, at a pinch I can make up the amount. But, my dear,”--and the old woman lowered her voice,--”on no account say anything to Adolphe.”
”Adolphe?”
”Yes, my _husband_. You do not know him?”
She took from the table a photograph enclosed in a photograph-case of sky-blue plush, in which Marianne recognized a swaggering fellow with flat face, large hands, fierce, bushy moustache, who leaned on a cane, swelling out his huge chest in outline against a mean, gray-tinted garden ornamented with Medicis vases.
”A handsome fellow, isn't he? Quite young!--and he loves me--I adore him, too!”
The tumid eyes of Claire Dujarrier resembled lighted coals. She pressed kiss after kiss of her painted lips on the photograph and reverently laid it on the table.
Marianne almost pitied this half-senile love, the courtesan's terrifying, last love.
She was, however, too content either to trouble herself, or even to reflect upon it. She was wild with joy. It seemed to her that a sudden rift had opened before her and a gloriously sunny future pictured itself to her mind. What an inspiration it was to think of Claire Dujarrier!
She would sign everything she wished, acknowledge the sums lent, with any interest that might be demanded. Much she cared about that, indeed!--She was sure now to free herself and to _succeed_.