He blushed and was silent, then stammered, “Well . . . your mother has already defended that opinion a hundred times with me.”
His eloquence was spent; he no longer knew what to say, and he was afraid now, incomprehensibly afraid of this little girl.
“Here comes Maman,” she said.
She had heard the door open in the first drawing room, and Olivier, apprehensive as if he had been discovered in some indiscretion, explained how he had suddenly remembered his promise and had come after them both to go to the jeweler’s.
“I have a coupé,” he said. “I’ll sit on the bracket seat.”
They started out, and a few moments later they went into Montara.
Having spent his whole life in the intimacy, observation, study, and affection of women, having always occupied himself about them, having had to sound and discover their tastes, be acquainted, like them, with questions of dress and of fashion, all the minute details of their private life, he had reached a point that enabled him often to share some of their sensations, and whenever he entered the shops where the charming and delicate accessories of their beauty are to be found, he experienced a thrill of pleasure almost equal to that which animated them. He was interested as they were in those coquettish trifles with which they adorn themselves; the stuffs pleased his eyes; the laces attracted his hands; the most insignificant, elegant gewgaws riveted his attention. In jewelers’ establishments he felt for the showcases a shade of religious respect, as before the sanctuaries of opulent seduction; and the desk, covered with dark cloth upon which the supple fingers of the goldsmith rolls the jewels with their precious reflections, inspired him with a certain esteem.
When he had placed the countess and her daughter before this severe piece of furniture on which, by an instinctive motion, both placed a hand, he stated his desire, and was shown models of little flowers.
Then sapphires were spread out before them, four of which had to be chosen. It took a long while. The two women turned them over on the cloth with the tips of their fingers, then took them cautiously, looked through them, studying them with learned and passionate attention. When those they selected had been laid aside, they needed three emeralds for the leaves, then a little bit of a diamond that would tremble in the center like a drop of dew.
Then Olivier, who was intoxicated with the pleasure of giving, said to the countess, “Will you do me the favor to choose two rings?”
“I?”
“Yes, one for you, one for Annette. Let me present you with these little gifts in memory of the two days spent at Roncières.”
She refused. He insisted. A long discussion followed, a fight of words, and arguments that ended, not without difficulty, however, in his triumph.
The rings were brought, the rarest separately in special cases; others, grouped by classes, were ordered according to the fancifulness of their settings upon the velvet cloth. The painter was seated between the two women, and began with the same honest curiosity to pick up the gold rings, one by one from the narrow slits that held them. He then deposited them before him on the desk cloth, where they were piled up in two heaps, one containing those that were discarded at first sight, the second those from which they would choose.
Time was passing in this pretty work of selection, more captivating than all the pleasures of the world, distracting and valid as a play, stirring also, almost sensuous, an exquisite enjoyment of women’s hearts.
Then they compared, grew animated, and the choice of the three judges settled upon a little golden serpent holding a beautiful ruby between his thin mouth and his twisted tail as the design for the rings.
Olivier was beaming. Rising, he said, “I leave you my carriage. I have some business to attend to. I am going.”
But Annette begged her mother to return home on foot in this beautiful weather.
The countess consented and, having thanked Bertin, went out into the street with her daughter. They walked for some time in silence, in the sweet enjoyment of accepted gifts; then they began to speak of all the jewels they had seen and handled. Their minds were still filled with a sort of glittering, a sort of jingling, a sort of elation.
They walked rapidly through the crowd that at five o’clock follows the summer evenings. Men turned around to look at Annette and whispered indistinct words of admiration as they passed. It was the first time since her mourning, since black was adding that brilliancy to her daughter’s beauty, that the countess had gone out with her in Paris, and the sensation of that street success, that roused attention, those whispered compliments, that little eddy of flattering emotion which the passing of a pretty woman leaves in a crowd of men, oppressed her heart little by little with the same painful shrinking she had experienced the other evening in her drawing room, when the young girl was being compared to her own portrait. In spite of herself she was watching for those glances of which Annette was the attraction; she felt them coming from afar, glance off her face without stopping, suddenly arrested by the fair face at her side. She guessed, she saw in the eyes the rapid and silent homage to this blooming youth, to the attractive charm of that freshness, and she thought, “I looked as well as she, if not better.” Suddenly the thought of Olivier shot through her brain, and she was seized, as she had been at Roncières, with an irresistible desire to run away.
She did not wish to feel herself any longer in this light, in this stream of people, seen by all these men who were not looking at her.
Those days were far away, yet quite recent, when she sought, provoked, a comparison with her daughter. Who today, among those passersby, thought of comparing them? One only had, perhaps, thought of it, just now, in the jeweler’s shop? He? Oh! What suffering! Was it possible that his mind wasn’t ceaselessly beset with that comparison? Surely he could not see them together without thinking of it, and remembering the time when she used to enter his house, so fresh, so pretty, so sure of being loved!
“I feel ill,” she said. “We’ll take a cab, my child.”
Annette, alarmed, asked, “What’s the matter, Maman?”
“It’s nothing. You know, since your grandmother’s death I often have this faintness.”
5
FIXED ideas have the gnawing tenacity of incurable diseases. Once within a soul they devour it, not granting the freedom of imagining, of taking interest, of caring. The countess, whatever she did, at home or in company, alone or surrounded by others, could no longer dismiss that imprisoning reflection which had seized her now that her daughter had resumed living with her: Was it not likely that Olivier, seeing the countess almost daily side by side with her daughter, would be obsessed with the temptation to compare them? Surely he must do so in spite of himself, haunted by a resemblance which could not be ignored for a moment and which was further accentuated by the imitation of gestures and intonations so recently pursued. Every time he came in, the countess immediately thought of that comparison, guessed its nature, and speculated on it in her heart and in her mind, inevitably tortured by a desire to hide, to disappear, to stop showing herself beside her daughter.
Moreover she was suffering in the worst possible way by no longer feeling at home in her own house. The sense of dispossession she had experienced that first evening when all eyes were fixed on Annette beneath her mother’s portrait continued, increased, occasionally tormented her. She constantly reproached herself for that inner want of deliverance, that unavoidable craving to send her daughter away as if she were some sort of troublesome and obstinate guest, and she struggled against this obsession with unconscious skill, struggling at the same time to retain at all cost the man she loved.
Unable to hasten Annette’s marriage, which had been slightly delayed by her own family’s mourning, she feared in a confused and apprehensive way that some untoward event might cancel the whole project, and she tried, in spite of herself, to kindle a further tenderness for the marquis in her daughter’s heart.
All the duplicity she had so long employed in order to make peace with Olivi
er now assumed a new form, more refined, more secret, straining to create an affection between the two young people and to keep the two men from even meeting.
Since the painter, systematic in his work habits, seldom took his luncheon away from home and usually reserved his evenings for his friends, the countess diligently invited the marquis to breakfast. He would arrive spreading around him the exhilaration of his ride, a sort of matutinal breath of air, and talked gaily on all those worldly subjects that every morning seemed to float upon the autumnal awakening of brilliant, horse-fancying Paris in the avenues of the Bois. Annette took an interest in listening to him and was acquiring a taste for those topics of the day which he brought to her quite fresh and varnished with chic. A youthful intimacy was developing between them, an affectionate companionship that a shared and passionate taste for horses naturally cemented. When the marquis left, the countess would skillfully sing his praises, saying what needed to be said for the young girl to understand that it depended wholly upon herself to marry him if she wanted him.
The girl had understood very quickly, however, and reasoning ingenuously, thought it very natural to take for a husband such a fine-looking fellow who would give her, besides other satisfactions, the one she preferred above all others: a gallop on a thoroughbred every morning at his side, also on a thoroughbred.
It seemed quite proper that one day or another they would be betrothed after a smile and a handshake, and already their marriage was discussed as a thing long since decided upon. The marquis began bringing gifts, and the duchess treated “her” Annette as her own daughter. The whole affair had been brewed by common accord for the calm hours of the day, the marquis having so many occupations and connections, so many obligations and duties, that he seldom appeared of an evening.
Now it was Olivier’s turn: He dined regularly every week at his friends’ and continued appearing for an unexpected cup of tea between ten o’clock and midnight.
As soon as Olivier came in, the countess began watching him, possessed by the desire to know what went on in his heart. She immediately interpreted every glance, every gesture, and was tormented by a single thought, “It’s impossible for him to not love her, seeing us side by side.”
He too came bearing gifts. No week passed when he failed to appear carrying two little packages, offering one to the mother and one to the daughter; and the countess, opening the presents that often contained articles of value, felt her heart sink. She well understood the desire to give, which as a young woman she had never been able to satisfy, the desire to contribute something, to afford pleasure, to purchase something, to find in the right shops the trifle that will please.
Once before, the painter had gone through such a crisis, and she had seen him enter a room many times with that same smile, that same gesture, a little package in his hand. Then it had abated, and now it was beginning again. For whom? She had no doubt it was not for her.
He had a wearied look, he was thinner. She concluded he was suffering. She compared his entrances, his manners, his deportment with the attitude of the marquis, who was also beginning to be moved by Annette’s grace. It was not the same thing: Monsieur de Farandal was smitten, Olivier Bertin loved. At least so she believed during her hours of torture; during her moments of calm, she still hoped she might be mistaken.
She was frequently on the point of questioning him when they were alone, beseeching him to speak to her, to confess all, to conceal nothing. She preferred to know and weep in certainty rather than to suffer in doubt and to be unable to read that closed heart, wherein she felt another love was growing.
The heart which she valued more than her life, which she had watched over, warmed, animated with her love for twelve years, of which she felt sure, which she had hoped was unalterably won, conquered, submitted, passionately devoted for the rest of their lives—lo, that heart was escaping her by an inconceivable, horrible, monstrous fatality. Yes, it had suddenly closed, burying a secret. She could no longer open its gates with a familiar word, convey her affection within it as in a sure retreat, available to herself alone. What use is it to love, to give yourself without reserve, if suddenly the man to whom you’ve offered your whole being, your entire existence, everything you possess in the world escapes because another face has pleased him and so he has become, in the lapse of days, a stranger.
A stranger! He himself! Olivier! He spoke to her as formerly, with the same words, the same voice, the same tones. And yet there was something new between them now, something inexplicable, intangible, invincible, almost nothing, that “almost nothing” which causes a sail to drift away when the wind changes.
He was actually drifting away, drifting away from her a little more every day with all the glances he bestowed on Annette. He himself made no effort to see clearly into his heart. He felt quite plainly that fermentation of love, that irresistible attraction, but he refused to understand; he trusted to events, to the unforeseen hazards of life.
He no longer had any care except for his dinners or his evenings spent between those two women, separated by their mourning from the entire fashionable world. Meeting at their house only faces indifferent to him such as those of the Corbelles and most often that of Musadieu, he thought of himself as almost alone in the world with them, and as he now seldom saw the duchess and the marquis, for whom mornings and middays were reserved elsewhere, he wished to forget them, suspecting that the marriage had been postponed to some indeterminate period.
Moreover Annette never spoke of the Marquis de Farandal in the painter’s presence. Was it from instinctive modesty, or perhaps one of those secret intuitions of the feminine heart that enables women to foresee what they cannot know?
Weeks followed weeks bringing no change in this life, and with autumn came the chambers again, earlier than usual on account of the world’s threatening political aspect.
On reopening day, Count de Guilleroy had invited the duchess, her nephew the Marquis de Farandal, and Annette, after breakfasting with him, to the opening parliamentary sessions. The countess, alone now, isolated in her ever-increasing sorrows, had announced her intention of remaining at home.
They had left the table and were drinking coffee quite gaily in the large drawing room. The count, delighted by the resumption of parliamentary duties, his only pleasure, spoke excitedly of the present situation and the difficulties of the Republic; the marquis, decidedly in love, responded with animation while staring at Annette the while; and the duchess was almost as gratified by her nephew’s emotion as by the government’s distress. The air of the drawing room was warm with that first concentrated heat of newly lit furnaces and the warmth of hangings, carpets, and the walls within which the perfume of asphyxiated flowers was rapidly evaporating. There had been an atmosphere of intimacy and relaxed satisfaction in the closed room filled with the aroma of coffee, when the door was suddenly opened to admit Olivier Bertin.
He stopped on the threshold, so surprised that he hesitated to enter, surprised like a deceived husband discovering his wife’s betrayal. In his confused anger, an emotion that almost suffocated him, he recognized his heart worm-eaten with love. All that had been concealed from him and all that he had concealed from himself was present to him now that he perceived the marquis installed in this house like a bridegroom. Startled and exasperated, he now clearly understood all he would have preferred not to know and all they had not dared to tell him. He did not ask himself why these wedding preparations had been concealed from him. He guessed why as his hardened eyes met those of the blushing countess. For once they understood each other.
After he found himself a chair there was silence for a few moments, his unexpected entrance having checked everyone’s mounting spirits; then the duchess began speaking to him and he answered sharply, in a strange metallic tone. He looked around at these people chattering once again, and said to himself, “They’ve made a fool of me. They’ll pay for it.” He was especially incensed with the countess and Annette, whose innocent dissembling he sudden
ly understood.
The count, glancing at the clock, exclaimed, “Oh! It’s time to leave,” and then, turning toward the painter, said, “We’re going to the opening of the parliamentary sessions. Only my wife is staying home. Will you accompany us? I should be delighted if you came.”
In a dry tone Olivier answered, “No, thanks. Your chamber is no temptation to me.”
Then Annette came toward him, using her most playful manner. “Oh! Do come with us, dear master. I’m sure you’ll amuse us much more than any or all of the deputies.”
“No, indeed. You’ll be very well amused without me.”
Guessing that he was discontented and sad, she insisted, eager to show her loving kindness. “Oh please, do come, monsieur le peintre. I assure you that, as for me, I cannot get along without you.”
His words now escaped him so impulsively that he could neither stop them on his lips nor modify their tone. “Bah! You get along without me like everybody else.”
Somewhat surprised by his manner, she exclaimed once again, “Well, now! Soon he’ll be dropping his tu when he speaks to me.”
His lips shaped themselves into one of those bitter smiles that indicate a soul in suffering, and with a slight bow he added, “I’ll have to get used to it one of these days.”
“Why so?”
“Because you’ll marry, and because your husband, whoever he may be, would be entitled to find such familiarity on my part rather out of place.”
The countess hastened to say, “There’ll be time enough to deal with that later. Though I hope Annette won’t marry someone so sensitive as to take exception to such familiarity from an old friend.”
The count was calling, “Come along, everyone! We must leave now or we’ll be late.”
And those who would accompany him, having risen, followed him out, after the usual kisses and handshakes exchanged by the duchess, the countess, and her daughter at every meeting and every parting.