Part 6 (2/2)
What a rich old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke, with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table, littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly restored in cement by the gardener.
I had settled myself in a chintz-covered chair and was idly turning the pages of one of the latest of the Parisian comedies when I heard the swish of a gown and the patter of two small slippered feet hurrying across the hall. I rose to regard my hostess with a feeling of tender curiosity mingled with resentment over her treatment of my old friend, when the portiere was lifted and Alice came toward me with both white arms outstretched in welcome. She was so pale in her dinner gown of black tulle that all the blood seemed to have taken refuge in her lips--so pale that the single camellia thrust in her corsage was less waxen in its whiteness than her neck.
I caught her hands and she stood close to me, smiling bravely, the tips of her fingers trembling in my own.
”You are ill!” I exclaimed, now thoroughly alarmed. ”You must go straight to bed.”
”No, no,” she replied, with an effort. ”Only tired, very tired.”
”You should not have let me come,” I protested.
She smiled and smoothed back a wave of her glossy black hair and I saw the old mischievous gleam flash in her dark eyes.
”Come,” she whispered, leading me to the door of the dining room. ”It is a secret,” she confided, with a forced little laugh. ”Look!” And she pinched my arm.
I glanced within--the table with its lace and silver under the glow of the red candle-shades was laid for two.
”It was nice of you,” I said.
”We shall dine alone, you and I,” she murmured. ”I am so tired of company.”
I was on the point of impulsively mentioning poor Tanrade's absence, but the subtle look in her eyes checked me. During dinner we should have our serious little talk, I said to myself as we returned to the library table.
”It's so amusing, that little comedy of Flandrean's,” laughed Alice, picking up the volume I had been scanning. ”The second act is a jewel with its delicious situation in which Francois Villers, the husband, and Therese, his wife, divorce in order to carry out between them a secret love-affair--a series of mysterious rendezvous that terminate in an amusing elopement. _Tres chic_, Flandrean's comedy. It should have a _succes fou_ at the Palais Royal.”
”Madame is served,” gravely announced Henri.
Not once during dinner was Alice serious. Over the soup--an excellent bisque of _ecrevisses_--she bubbled over with the latest Parisian gossip, the new play at the Odeon, the fas.h.i.+on in hats. With the fish she prattled on over the limitations of the new directoire gowns and the scandal involving a certain tenor and a d.u.c.h.ess. Tanrade's defence, which I had so carefully thought out and rehea.r.s.ed in my garden, seemed doomed to remain unheard, for her cleverness in evading the subject, her sudden change to the merriest of moods, and her quick wit left me helpless. Neither did I make any better progress during the pheasant and the salad, and as she sipped but twice the Pommard and scarcely moistened her lips with the champagne my case seemed hopeless. Henri finally left us alone over our coffee and cigarettes. I had become desperate.
”Alice,” I said bluntly, ”we are old friends. I have some things to say to you of--of the utmost importance. You will listen, my friend, will you not, until I am quite through, for I shall not mention it again?”
She leaned forward with a little start and gazed at me suddenly, with dilated eyes--eyes that were the next minute lowered in painful submission, the corners of her mouth contracting nervously.
”_Mon Dieu!_” she murmured, looking up. ”_Mon Dieu!_ But you are cruel!”
”No,” I replied calmly. ”It is you who are cruel.”
”No, no, you shall not!” she exclaimed, raising both ringless hands in protest, her breath coming quick. ”I--I know what you are going to say.
No, my dear friend--I beg of you--we are good comrades. Is it not so?
Let us remain so.”
”Listen,” I implored.
”Ah, you men with your idea of marriage!” she continued. ”The wedding, the aunts, the cousins, who come staring at you for a day and giving you advice for years. A solemn apartment near the Etoile--madame with her afternoons--monsieur with his club, his maitresse, his gambling and his debts--the children with their English governess. A villa by the sea, tennis, infants and sand-forts. The annual stupid _voyage en Suisse_.
The inane slavery of it all. _You_ who are a bohemian, you who _live_--with all your freedom--all my freedom! _Non, merci!_ I have seen all that! Bah! You are as crazy as Tanrade.”