Part 8 (2/2)

Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that name? Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother, so long forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?

Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before. It seemed to her as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into life. Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more deep, more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt that thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk of falling into it. To whom now could she open her heart in confidence--that heart bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled one as if some one had crushed it? The thing that she now knew was not like her own little personal secrets, such as she had imprudently confided to Fraulein Schult. The words that she had overheard she could repeat to no one. She must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an arrow in a secret wound, where they would fester and grow more painful day by day.

”But, above all,” she said at length, rising from her knees, ”let me show proper pride.”

She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her mirror. As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left its visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her eyes that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair. She smiled at herself, to see whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which--whether she would or not--was now a.s.signed to her. What a sad smile it was!

”I have lost everything,” she said, ”I have lost everything!” And she remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been ”Shall I see him to-day?” Each day she pa.s.sed without seeing him had seemed to her a lost day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him, remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her. Of course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then, when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with such kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that kind were worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father now without a pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of that other in this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against herself. No!--no one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her.

She could hardly breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the gla.s.s which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the pity for herself into a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say: ”Yes, I am all alone--alone forever.” Then, in a spirit of revenge, she opened what seemed a safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any other emotion.

She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove, the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures at her hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy she had called her love. By a strange a.s.sociation of ideas, the famous composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she cried:

”Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!”

”If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His look was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day, all--all--were dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that pink which is now in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me I was more beautiful than was natural. Never have I been--never shall I be in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll.”

And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart.

But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers. She seemed to say to them all: ”Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be careful: keep it safely.” The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest on a velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed, with rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her girl-friends standing on her writing table in pretty frames of old-fas.h.i.+oned silk-all seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.

She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she could, some gayety. But the task before her was more difficult than she had expected. Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been kept to dinner. To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was more than she could bear. For one moment the earth seemed to sink under her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained her. She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly ”Good-evening!” and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.

Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face had not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: ”He sits there as if he had been put 'en penitence'.” No doubt he could not endure scenes, and the one he had just pa.s.sed through must have given him the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.

What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.

He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: ”I shall lose all my energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love, fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it pa.s.ses before my sight, which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself that I have acted like an honest man?”

This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at him with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he interpreted, though she knew it not: ”You have done me all the harm you can.”

M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going on just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.

Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks, said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table, something about the probability of his soon going to Italy.

”A pilgrimage of art to Florence!” cried the Baron, turning at once from politics. ”That's good. But wait a little--let it be after the rising of the Chamber. We will follow your steps. It has been the desire of my wife's life--a little jaunt to Italy. Has it not, Clotilde? So we will all go in September or October. What say you?”

”In September or October, whichever suits you,” said Marien, with despair.

Not one month of liberty! Why couldn't they leave him to his Savanarola!

Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?

Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile--the first smile she had given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.

”My wife has got over her displeasure,” he said to himself, delightedly.

Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken to her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added, in a tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas! she had believed serious: ”Suppose we go together!”

And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.

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