Cosmopolis Part 19

CHAPTER IX. LUCID ALBA

The doctor had diagnosed the case correctly. Dorsenne's ball had struck Gorka below the wrist. Two centimetres more to the right or to the left, and undoubtedly Boleslas would have been killed. He escaped with a fracture of the forearm, which would confine him for a few days to his room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the annoyance of a sling. When he was taken home and his personal physician, hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning. All parts of his soul, the n.o.blest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm. Was he satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of those who knew him as an extraordinary personage? He had hastened from Poland through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by missing his rival. Instead of provoking him immediately in the salon of Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to subst.i.tute himself for the one he had wished to chastise. The other, whose death would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure, Boleslas had scarcely touched. He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to execute at least one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with the most sacred of confidences. He had simply succeeded in giving that false friend occasion to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the question that he had rendered it impossible to fight again for many days. None of the persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his coa.r.s.e and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered. They were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who came to see him about five o'clock.

They came from the races of Tor di Quinto, which had taken place that day.

"All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that no one has talked....

I have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the witnesses and the coachman."

"Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?" interrupted Boleslas.

"Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.

"With whom?" asked the wounded man.

"Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas distinguished an intention to deceive him.

"And Madame Maitland?"

"She was there, too, with her husband," said Pietrapertosa, heedless of Cibo's warning glances, "and all Rome besides," adding: "Do you know the engagement of Ardea and little Hafner is public? They were all three there, the betrothed and the father, and so happy! I vow, it was fine.

Cardinal Guerillot baptized pretty f.a.n.n.y."

"And Dorsenne?" again questioned the invalid.

"He was there," said Cibo. "You will be vexed when I tell you of the reply he dared to make us. We asked him how he had managed--nervous as he is--to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling. For he did not tremble. And guess what he replied? That he thought of a recipe of Stendhal's--to recite from memory four Latin verses, before firing. 'And might one know what you chose?' I asked of him. Thereupon he repeated: 't.i.tyre, tu patulae recubens!"

"It is a case which recalls the word of Casal," interrupted Pietrapertosa, "when that sn.o.b of a Figon recommended to us at the club his varnish manufactured from a recipe of a valet of the Prince of Wales. If the young man is not settled by us, I shall be sorry for him."

Although the two 'confreres' had repeated that mediocre pleasantry a hundred times, they laughed at the top of their sonorous voices and succeeded in entirely unnerving the injured man. He gave as a pretext his need of rest to dismiss the fine fellows, of whose sympathy he was a.s.sured, whom he had just found loyal and devoted, but who caused him pain in conjuring up, in answer to his question, the images of all his enemies. When one is suffering from a certain sort of pain, remarks like those naively exchanged between the two Roman imitators of Casal are intolerable to the hearer. One desires to be alone to feed upon, at least in peace, the bitter food, the exasperating and inefficacious rancor against people and against fate, with which Gorka at that moment felt his heart to be so full. The presence of his former mistress at the races, and on that afternoon, wounded him more cruelly than the rest.

He did not doubt that she knew through Maitland, himself, certainly informed by Chap.r.o.n, of the two duels and of his injury. It was on her account that he had fought, and that very day she appeared in public, smiling, coquetting, as if two years of pa.s.sion had not united their lives, as if he were to her merely a social acquaintance, a guest at her dinners and her soirees. He knew her habits so well, and how eagerly, when she loved, she drank in the presence of him she loved. No doubt she had an appointment on the race-course with Maitland, as she had formerly had with him, and the painter had gone thither when he should have cared for his courageous, his n.o.ble brother-in-law, whom he had allowed to fight for him! What a worthy lover the selfish and brutal American was of that vile creature! The image of the happy couple tortured Boleslas with the bitterest jealousy intermingled with disgust, and, by contrast, he thought of his own wife, the proud and tender Maud whom he had lost.

He pictured to himself other illnesses when he had seen that beautiful nurse by his bedside. He saw again the true glance with which that wife, so shamefully betrayed, looked at him, the movements of her loyal hands, which yielded to no one the care of waiting upon him. To-day she had allowed him to go to a duel without seeing him. He had returned. She had not even inquired as to his wound. The doctor had dressed it without her presence, and all that he knew of her was what he learned from their child. For he sent for Luc. He explained to him his broken arm, as had been agreed upon with his friends, by a fall on the staircase, and little Luc replied:

"When will you join us, then? Mamma says we leave for England this evening or in the morning. All the trunks are almost ready."

That evening or to-morrow? So Maud was going to execute her threat. She was going away forever, and without an explanation. He could not even plead his cause once more to the woman who certainly would not respond to another appeal, since she had found, in her outraged pride, the strength to be severe, when he was in danger of death. In the face of that evidence of the desertion of all connected with him, Boleslas suffered one of those accesses of discouragement, deep, absolute, irremediable, in which one longs to sleep forever. He asked himself: "Were I to try one more step?" and he replied: "She will not!" when his valet entered with word that the Countess desired to speak with him.

His agitation was so extreme that, for a second, he fancied it was with regard to Madame Steno, and he was almost afraid to see his wife enter.

Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during the past few days had been very great. He had, however, experienced none more violent, even beneath the pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance to his bed the embodiment of his remorse. Maud's face, in which ordinarily glowed the beauty of a blood quickened by the English habits of fresh air and daily exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness, and of insomnia. The pallor of the cheeks, the dark circles beneath the eyes, the dryness of the lips and their bitter expression, the feverish glitter, above all, in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the terrible agony of which she was the victim. The past twenty-four hours had acted upon her like certain long illnesses, in which it seems that the very essence of the organism is altered. She was another person.

The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, caused Boleslas to forget his own anguish. He experienced nothing but one great regret when the woman, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and when he saw in her eyes the look of implacable coldness, even through the fever, before which he had recoiled the day before. But she was there, and her unhoped-for presence was to the young man, even under the circ.u.mstances, an infinite consolation. He, therefore, said, with an almost childish grace, which he could a.s.sume when he desired to please:

"You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel of you to go away without seeing me again. I should not have dared to ask it of you, and yet it was the only pleasure I could have.... I thank you for having given it to me."

"Do not thank me," replied Maud, shaking her head, "it is not on your account that I am here. It is from duty.... Let me speak," she continued, stopping by a gesture her husband's reply, "you can answer me afterward.... Had it only been a question of you and of me, I repeat, I should not have seen you again.... But, as I told you yesterday, we have a son."

"Ah!" exclaimed Boleslas, sadly. "It is to make me still more wretched that you have come.... You should remember, however, that I am in no condition to discuss with you so cruel a question.... I thought I had already said that I would not disregard your rights on condition that you did not disregard mine."

"It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of yours," interrupted Maud, "but of his, the only ones of importance. When I left you yesterday, I was suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain. It was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words repeated to me by my father: 'When one suffers, he should look his grief in the face, and it will always teach him something.' I was ashamed of my weakness, and I looked my grief in the face. It taught me, first, to accept it as a just punishment for having married against the advice and wishes of my father."

"Ah, do not abjure our past!" cried the young man; "the past which has remained so dear to me through all."

"No, I do not abjure it," replied Maud, "for it was on recurring to it--it was on returning to my early impressions--that I could find not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct. I remembered what you related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth, and how you had grown up between your father and your mother, pa.s.sing six months with one, six months with the other--not caring for, not being able to judge either of them--forced to hide from one your feelings for the other. I saw for the first time that your parents'

separation had the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch. It is that which perverted your character.... And I read in advance Luc's history in yours.... Listen, Boleslas! I speak to you as I would speak before G.o.d! My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my mind was not to resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth too bitter. No, it was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself.

He shall feel my influence alone. I saw you set out this morning--set out to insult me once more, to sacrifice me once more! If you had been truly repentant would you have offered me that last affront? And when you returned--when they informed me that you had a broken arm--I wished to tell the little one myself that you were ill.... I saw how much he loved you, I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart, and I comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it would, his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth."

"Then," she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through her pride, "I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep, the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have wronged me greatly. You have killed within me something that will never come to life again. I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as you have. But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had resolved is too perilous. I feel that I shall find in the certainty of avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common existence, and I will continue it. But human nature is human nature, and that strength I can have only on one condition."

"And that is?" asked Boleslas. Maud's speech, for it was a speech carefully reflected upon, every phrase of which had been weighed by that scrupulous conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning with the state of nervous excitement in which he had lived for several days.

He had been more pained by it than he would have been by pa.s.sionate reproaches. At the same time he had been moved by the reference to his son's love for him, and he felt that if he did not become reconciled with Maud at that moment his future domestic life would be ended. There was a little of each sentiment in the few words he added to the anxiety of his question. "Although you have spoken to me very severely, and although you might have said the same thing in other terms, although, above all, it is very painful to me to have you condemn my entire character on one single error, I love you, I love my son, and I agree in advance to your conditions. I esteem your character too much to doubt that they will be reconcilable with my dignity. As for the duel of this morning," he added, "you know very well that it was too late to withdraw without dishonor."

"I should like your promise, first of all," replied Madame Gorka, who did not answer his last remark, "that during the time in which you are obliged to keep your room no one shall be admitted.... I could not bear that creature in my house, nor any one who would speak to me or to you of her."

"I promise," said the young man, who felt a flood of warmth enter his soul at the first proof that the jealousy of the loving woman still existed beneath the indignation of the wife. And he added, with a smile, "That will not be a great sacrifice. And then?"

"Then?... That the doctor will permit us to go to England. We will leave orders for the management of things during our absence. We will go this winter wherever you like, but not to this house; never again to this city."

"That is a promise, too," said Boleslas, "and that will be no great sacrifice either; and then?"

"And then," said she in a low voice, as if ashamed of herself. "You must never write to her, you must never try to find out what has become of her."

"I give you my word," replied Boleslas, taking her hand, and adding: "And then?"

"There is no then," said she, withdrawing her hand, but gently. And she began to realize herself her promise of pardon, for she rearranged the pillows under the wounded man's head, while he resumed:

"Yes, my n.o.ble Maud, there is a then. It is that I shall prove to you how much truth there was in my words of yesterday, in my a.s.surance that I love you in spite of my faults. It is the mother who returns to me today. But I want my wife, my dear wife, and I shall win her back."

She made no reply. She experienced, on hearing him p.r.o.nounce those last words with a transfigured face, an emotion which did not vanish. She had acquired, beneath the shock of her great sorrow, an intuition too deep of her husband's nature, and that facility, which formerly charmed her by rendering her anxious, now inspired her with horror. That man with the mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself.

It sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation of years, and to respect himself for it--as if that was really sufficient--for the difficult task. At least during the eight days which lapsed between that conversation and their departure he strictly observed the promise he had given his wife. In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafner, Ardea try to see him. When the train which bore them away steamed out he asked his wife, with a pride that time justified by deeds:

"Are you satisfied with me?"

"I am satisfied that we have left Rome," said she, evasively, and it was true in two senses of the word:

First of all, because she did not delude herself with regard to the return of the moral energy of which Boleslas was so proud. She knew that his variable will was at the mercy of the first sensation. Then, what she had not confessed to her husband, the sorrow of a broken friendship was joined in her to the sorrows of a betrayed wife. The sudden discovery of the infamy of Alba's mother had not destroyed her strong affection for the young girl, and during the entire week, busy with her preparations for a final departure, she had not ceased to wonder anxiously: "What will she think of my silence?... What has her mother told her?... What has she divined?"

She had loved the "poor little soul," as she called the Contessina in her pretty English term. She had devoted to her the friendship peculiar to young women for young girls--a sentiment--very strong and yet very delicate, which resembles, in its tenderness, the devotion of an elder sister for a younger. There is in it a little naive protection and also a little romantic and gracious melancholy. The elder friend is severe and critical. She tries to a.s.suage, while envying them, the excessive enthusiasms of the younger. She receives, she provokes her confidence with the touching gravity of a counsellor. The younger friend is curious and admiring. She shows herself in all the truth of that graceful awakening of thoughts and emotions which precede her own period before marriage. And when there is, as was the case with Alba Steno, a certain discord of soul between that younger friend and her mother, the affection for the sister chosen becomes so deep that it can not be broken without wounds on both sides. It was for that reason that, on leaving Rome, faithful and n.o.ble Maud experienced at once a sense of relief and of pain--of relief, because she was no longer exposed to the danger of an explanation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter a thought for her that she could never justify her heart to her friend, could never aid her in emerging from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never love her openly as she had loved her secretly.

She said to herself as she saw the city disappear in the night with its curves and its lights:

"If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing! Who will now prevent her from yielding herself up to her sentiment for that dangerous and perfidious Dorsenne? Who will console her when she is sad? Who will defend her against her mother? I was perhaps wrong in writing to the woman, as I did, the letter, which might have been delivered to her in her daughter's presence.... Ah, poor little soul!... May G.o.d watch over her!"

She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she stroked, as if to exorcise, by the evidence of present duty, the nostalgia which possessed her at the thought of an affection sacrificed forever. Hers was a nature too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self-control to submit to the languor of vain emotions.

The two persons of whom her friendship, now impotent, had thought, were, for various reasons, the two fatal instruments of the fate of the "poor little soul," and the vague remorse which Maud herself felt with regard to the terrible note sent to Madame Steno in the presence of the young girl, was only too true. When the servant had given that letter to the Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself on account of indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse had been to enter her friend's room.

"I will go to embrace her and to see if she has need of anything," she said.

"Madame has forbidden any one to enter her room," replied the footman, with embarra.s.sment, and, at the same moment, Madame Steno, who had just opened the note, said, in a voice which struck the young girl by its change: