Part 32 (1/2)
”Thanks!--But in life there are troubles so commonplace that one could only acknowledge them to the most intimate friends.”
”You have no more devoted friend than I am,” replied Vaudrey, in a tone that conveyed unmistakable conviction.
She knew it positively. She could read that heart like an open page.
”When one meets friends like you, one is the more solicitous to keep them and to avoid saddening them with stupid affairs.”
”But why?” asked Vaudrey, drawing close to Marianne. ”What troubles you?
I beseech you to tell me!”
He gazed earnestly at her eyes, seeking in the depths of their blue pupils a secret or a confession that evaded him, and with an instinctive movement he seized Marianne's hands which she abandoned to him; they were quite cold. As he bent toward her to plead with her to speak, he felt her gentle breath, inhaled the perfume of her delicate, fair skin, and saw the exquisite curves of her body outlined beneath the black folds of her satin peignoir. Marianne's knee gently pressed his own while her heavy eyelids fell like veils over the young woman's eyes, in which Vaudrey thought he observed tears.
”Marianne, I entreat you, if you have any sorrow whatever, that I can a.s.suage, I pray you, tell me of it!”
”Eh! if it were a sorrow!--” she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand from Sulpice's warm grasp. ”But it is worse: it is a financial worry, yes, financial,” she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face depicted astonishment.
She seized the handful of papers that she had thrown into the work-basket, and said in a tone that was expressive of mingled wrath and disgust:
”There now, you see that? They are bills for this house: the accounts of clamorous creditors, upholsterers, locksmiths, builders and I don't know what besides!”
”What! your house?”
”You thought that I had paid for it? It is a rented one and nothing in it is paid for. I owe for all, and to a hungry pack.”
She began to laugh.
”Do you imagine then that old Kayser's niece could lead this life in which you see her? Without a sou, should I possess all that you see here?--No!--I have perpetrated the folly of ordering all these things for which I am now indebted and which must be paid for at once, and now I am about to be sued. There! you were determined to urge me to confess all that--Such are my worries and they are not yours, so I ask your pardon, my dear Vaudrey: so let us talk of something else. Well! how did the Fraynais interpellation turn out?--What has taken place in the Chamber?”
”Let us speak only of you, Marianne,” said the minister, who looked at the young woman with a sort of frank compa.s.sion as a friendly physician looks at a sick person.
She nervously snapped her fingers and with her feet crossed, beat the little feverish march that she had previously done.
He drew still closer to her, trying to calm her and to obtain some explanation, some information from her; and Marianne, as if she had already yielded in at once confiding her secret unreflectingly, refused at present to accord him the full measure of her confidence. She repeated that nothing that could be a source of annoyance or sordid, ought to sadden her friends. Besides, one ought to draw the line at one's life-secret. She was ent.i.tled, in fact, to maintain silence. That Vaudrey should question her so, caused her horrible suffering.
”And you, Marianne,” he said, ”you torture me much more by not replying to me, to whom the least detail of your life is interesting. To me who see you preoccupied and distressed, when I wish, I swear to you, to banish all your sadness.”
She turned toward him with an abrupt movement and with her gray, gold-speckled eyes flas.h.i.+ng, she seemed to yield to a violent, sudden and almost involuntary decision and said to Sulpice:
”Then you wish to know even the wretchedness of my life? So be it! But I warn you that it is not very cheerful. For,” said she, after a moment's silence,--Sulpice shuddered under her glance,--”it is better to be frank, and if you love me as you say you do, you should know me thoroughly; you can then decide what course to take. For myself, I am accustomed to deception.”
Ah! although this woman were ready to tell him everything, Vaudrey felt sure that her confidence could only intensify the love that he felt. She had risen, her arms were crossed over her black gown whose red velvet tr.i.m.m.i.n.g suggested open wounds, her ardent eyes were in strong contrast with her pale face, her lips of unusually heightened color expressed a strange sensuality that invited a kiss, while her nostrils dilated under the impulse of bitter anger--standing thus, she began to narrate her life to Vaudrey who was seated in front of her, looking up to her--as if at her knees. Her story was a sad one of a wicked childhood, ignorant youth, wasted early years, melancholy, sins, outbursts of faith, falls, returns of love, pride, virtue, rest.i.tution through repentance, scourged hopes, dead confidences, the entire heartrending existence of a woman who had left more of her heart than of the flesh of her body clinging to the nails of her calvaries:--all, though ordinary and commonplace, was so cruel in its truth that it appealed at once to Sulpice's heart, a heart bursting with pity, to that credulous man who was attracted by all that seemed to him so exquisitely painful and new about this woman.
”Perhaps I am worrying you?” she asked abruptly.
”You!” said he.
He looked at her with a tear in his eye.
Marianne's eyes gleamed with a sudden light.
”Well!” she said, ”such is my life! I have loved, I have been betrayed.