The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel

  CHAPTER XV.

  "AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE."

  The two men separated at the Porte Maillot, Radwalader strolling away inthe direction of the Metropolitain entrance with a readily fabricatedexcuse about a card engagement. He understood to perfection the actionof moral leaven--that, once introduced as an ingredient, it must not beunduly stirred, but left, with the fair white cloth of unconcern drawnsmoothly over it, to work its will at ease. To a greater extent eventhan Mrs. Carnby, he possessed the instinct for not saying too much. Heleft Andrew to reflect upon what had passed between them, confident ofits effect.

  Andrew paused at the junction of the Avenues de Malakoff and de laGrande Armee, the confusion and glare of the great thoroughfares smitingfretfully upon his instant need of reflection, and then returned uponhis tracks, seeking the cool quiet of the Bois. After a short walk pastthe brightly lighted Chalet du Touring Club, a by-path tempted him, andhe turned aside. At once the forest closed in upon him, and the scene ofa half-hour before became more than ever like a phase in some fantasticand uneasy dream. At Armenonville there had been a blaze of light and aripple of laughter, which barred out the stars of heaven as if they hadnever been: here was a world of stillness and of shadow, broken only bythe distant music of the tziganes, and, through the interstices oftree-trunks and foliage, the intermittent gleam of bicycle andautomobile lanterns on the Route de la Porte des Sablons. The faintlypungent odour of moss rose to his nostrils, as in some deep,undiscovered retreat in a provincial preserve. The small, sweet twitterof a restless bird pricked the delicious silence like the sound of a ripin thin linen. The tziganes at Armenonville were playing the "ValseBleue." The air, pulsing softly through the gloom, seemed almost tospeak the words:

  "_Pourquoi ne pas m'aimer, p'isqu' tu sais que je t'ai--ai--me?_"

  "Margery!" said Andrew slowly, to himself. "Margery--Margery!"

  In the three weeks just past, he had been building a new world, a worldfrom which his former ideals had been deliberately banished, and whereinnew standards of conduct had been set. Pride, recklessness, andresentment had been the triumvirate by which this moral state wasgoverned, and he had obeyed their dictates blindly, without caring, ashe had told Radwalader, to think. Left to itself, this might haveendured indefinitely, even as the larger world, with all its codes andcreeds, established by the limited experience of the men inhabiting it.But what would be effected by the abrupt entrance into society of amessenger from another planet, infinitely wiser, infinitely moreadvanced, was brought to pass by Radwalader's words. The _status quod_reeled on its foundations. The alternative which Andrew had accepted,and which had dulled, if not actually done away with, the acuteness ofhis disappointment, now appeared in its true light as the veriest sham,a sedative worse than useless--enervating--stupefying--poisonous. Thebare suggestion was enough. Not for a moment did he doubt thesignificance of this message which had never reached him. It could meanbut one thing--forgiveness and recall. All there had been to say uponthe other count, had been said in that half-hour in the arbour. Her handhad been stretched out to stay him from the precipice down which he hadplunged--stretched out too late! The knowledge tore in an instant themask from his vanity, and he stood confessed--a coward. What was it shehad said? "A fancy so trivial and so idle that it could not even holdyou back from transgression." And he had resented that, resented it onlyto furnish proof, when the actual temptation came, that it was true!

  He knew himself now for what he was. How scornful he had been of theseaccusations, how certain of himself, how small in that great loyalty ofhis which stood for nothing, how ready to believe himself infallible!The merest profligate of those whose follies he had despised in otherdays, was no weaker, in the end, than he. He looked up blindly to wherethe stars winked faintly through the lace-like foliage, and cursed thedistant roar of Paris which came dully to his ears. Paris--Circe! and heno better than the transformed comrades of Ulysses! He was a coward--afraud--a sham; he found himself, in this moment of bitter self-reproach,untrue even to the flimsy conception of duty which, when it put him tothe test, he had debauched. He thought of Mirabelle, and in thinkinghated her! With all her beauty, all her perfect mimicry of breeding, allthe little significant hints of colour and perfume with which she soskilfully clothed with charm whatever pertained to her, she had neverstruck below his ready appreciation of whatever was suggestive ofrefinement and eloquent of femininity. It was her novelty which hadprincipally charmed him, but novelty is the butterfly of thesensations--the most brilliant, the shortest-lived of these emotionalephemera. Mrs. Carnby had struck the key-note in her cool analysis ofthe _demi-monde_: "These women don't wear. They seem to be only platedwith fascination, and in time the plating wears off, and you come backto the kind with the hall-mark."

  Now the scales fell from Andrew's eyes, and he knew that what she hadsaid was true. Compared to Margery--the Margery he had loved and lost,what was this Mirabelle to whom he had yielded her place? Beautiful,yes! But the perception of beauty, like beauty's self, lies onlyskin-deep. Now, with Radwalader's suggestion that the way of retreat layopen, came the reaction, inevitable in such a nature as Andrew Vane's,from an emotion purely extrinsic. He was tired of her. The plating hadworn off.

  Suddenly he remembered that he had promised to see her that night, and,with an abrupt perception of the opportunity thus offered, he pulledhimself together, and swung off rapidly toward the Porte Dauphine. As hewalked, inhaling the fragrance of the evening air, a new sanity seemedto descend on him. He promised himself that this should be the end.However the effect was to be accomplished, he was determined to breakthe relation, kindly but firmly, and at whatever risk to regain, if nothis self-esteem, at least his freedom. As to what should follow, he didnot care--or dare--to ask. The unknown significance of the lost messagesoothed him like an irrational caress. Was it too late? Is it _ever_"too late to mend"? He neither knew nor cared. Given his freedom, hewould chance the rest. Fate was hard. A thought checked him. "Fate ishard--cash!"

  "Whatever I believe," he told himself, "I don't believe that." And then,in the illogical manner of man, added: "I don't care what it costsme--this is the end!"

  He found Mirabelle in a corner of her great divan, and the room softlyillumined. She wore a bewitchingly dainty lounging-gown of iridescentsilk, in the folds of which peacock-blues and greens played and rippledinto each other in constant com-minglings.

  "_Embrasse-moi_," she said, looking up at him.

  She glanced at him curiously as he straightened himself again anddropped upon the cushions at her feet. In a woman, the manner of a kissperforms the midwife's office to the beginnings of clairvoyance.

  "I wonder," said Andrew presently, "if you know that people are talkingabout us, _ma chere_?"

  Mirabelle commented upon this intelligence with a tilt of her eyebrows.

  "Yes," continued Andrew, "it seems that our doings are become publicproperty, and our reputations are in jeopardy."

  "Yours, perhaps," remarked the girl. "As for mine, _mon ami, ca n'existepas_."

  "_Don't!_" said Andrew suddenly. "Please don't!"

  "After all," said Mirabelle, "what difference? They talk, these goodpeople, whether things are so or not. It's the women, of course. If myclothes were not _d'un chic_, they would pass me over as unworthy ofconsideration."

  "This time," said Andrew, "it seems the ground of complaint is notclothes alone. I'm told that I'm _affiche_."

  "So you are, I suppose. You were that from the moment I took your arm atAuteuil, that first afternoon. Do you object? There are many who wouldbe glad to say as much."

  Andrew bit his lip. It was going to be harder than he had thought. Hehad come to say--he could not have told exactly what. His whole relationwith Mirabelle had come so stealthily into being, and had beendistinguished by a novelty, a _gout piquant_ so subtle and alluring,that he had hardly been conscious of its development into somethingdefinite and established, until the thing was done. His thoughts wentback to tha
t afternoon, in his own apartment, three weeks before, whenfirst he had kissed her. That had been the turning-point--the crisiswhen the whole wide world tipped upside down. His entire point of viewhad undergone an instantaneous readjustment as his lips met hers, andbefore him had opened the gate of a new world--a garden lavish ofunfamiliar fruits and strange flowers, breathing a heavy, languid,deadening sweetness. He had entered, as one turns aside from the beatenroad to explore some little vista of unprecedented beauty, with a vagueconvincement at the back of his brain, that the divergence was for amoment only, and that, so soon as his curiosity should be satisfied, hewould turn back to the highway and go forward again, richer by anexperience which it was not necessary to mention, and which would be asimmaterial in its bearing upon the main issues of life, as a flowerplucked and tossed aside in passing, or a tune whistled in a moment oflightheartedness.

  Now--it was singularly hard to cut to the pith of the sensation--thegate which had opened so invitingly seemed to have closed behind him.What was still more curious, he found, of a sudden, that these fruitsand flowers which had tempted him by reason of their novelty, were nowas familiar, as seemingly essential, as if they had always been featuresof his environment. The garden itself was no longer a place wherein hewalked as a transient visitor, idly inspecting, but one in which hestood as proprietor. The tendrils had climbed and clung about his feet.The moment for retreat had come, and lo! he could not move!

  As they talked, he grew still more conscious of the fact that this taskof disentanglement which he had planned, was one beset with unexpecteddifficulties. Mirabelle had practically disregarded the inclined planeof suggestion by which he had sought to lead up to the main issue, and,with a little air of proprietorship, had begun to map out her plans forthe coming week--plans in which Andrew figured as naturally, as much asa matter of course, as did her carriage or her meals or her gowns. Forthe first time, he realized to what an extent she had a claim upon him.For the first time, the curb replaced the snaffle. For the first time,the bit made its presence fully felt. Andrew stirred uneasily.

  "_M'amie_," he said, "we've been much in each other's company oflate--more, perhaps, than is best for either of us."

  "How can that be?" asked Mirabelle, with a little laugh. "We love eachother--_ca suffit_. It's impossible to be too much together."

  Her voice was quite even, but that was not to say that she did not scentthe approaching issue.

  "But people say--" began Andrew.

  "Oh, lala! _People say!_ What _don't_ they say, my poor friend? Whatwon't they continue to say, however you choose to live, and whatever youchoose to do? That's Paris, and that's the smallest village in Brittany,and everything in between, into the bargain. Nowadays, one must do asone sees fit, and have the courage of one's convictions. We've chosenour way. It's too late to think of what people say. After all, it'sgossip, all this, and gossip is a snake. One kills it if one can; but,in the long run, it's better to step over it and forget. What doesgossip amount to? If you're seen always with your wife, it's because youcan't trust her alone; if you're never seen with her, it's becauseyou've interests elsewhere. If you spend your nights in public, you're aprofligate; and if you spend them at home, you're a secret drinker.'People say'! Let them say, Andrew. It can't make any difference."

  "Our--our friendship is the talk of the American Colony," said Andrew,almost savagely.

  Mirabelle looked at him suddenly, with a curious crinkling of herforehead. The issue now lay clear before her.

  "And you are ashamed of _that_?" she asked.

  She leaned back wearily, closing her eyes.

  "Yes, of course you are," she added. "I wonder why it is that we--_nousautres_--never seem to realize what it means, all this. A littlelaughter, a kiss or two, and the rest, a '_je t'aime_' which meanssomething less than nothing, and then--They speak of the women whom menabuse! What is that to being _used_--and flung aside?"

  "Mirabelle!"

  "Ah, don't speak to me! I know all that you're going to say--I've heardit all before! I knew it, back there a minute, when you kissed me,thinking of another woman! It's the old story--a little harder to bearthis time, perhaps, because I've cared very much for you. Somehow, youseemed different from other men. You were young, you were gentle, youwere respectful, _mon Dieu!_--respectful! I thought that it was for _me_you cared--_me_, as you saw me here, loving and needing to be loved--notthe Mirabelle Tremonceau who is dressed like a doll by Paquin andLouise--the Mirabelle Tremonceau of the Acacias, and the Palais deGlace, and the Cafe de Paris. I said to myself that it had not all beenin vain--the training, the care, the painstaking which have made me whatI am. Long since, I'd come to loathe all these, my surroundings, but,for the first time, it seemed to me that perhaps they were not a shamand an imitation and a mockery. You were a gentleman--not a _rasta_,like the others. I thought your instincts couldn't play you false, andthat I saw that they prompted you to regard me, here in my own home, asa woman and a friend, not merely as a mistress and a toy. From thefirst, you never presumed, you never let the thought of what, at worst,I might have been to you, come forward to shame the thought of what Iwas, at best! I said to myself that you cared for _me_--for my mind--myheart--and that what was most to others was nothing to you. When youkissed me first--that afternoon--ah, _mon Dieu_! I thought it was notthe kiss of passion, but the kiss of love! At that moment you knew fullywhat I was--if you'd not guessed it before, but you asked for--nothing!Instead you played, and your soul was in the music. I've never heardsuch playing. It was pure--pure--_pure!_ Ah!--"

  She opened her eyes slowly, without looking at him.

  "And I was happy--happier than I've ever been: because, I said, theremust still be a little something in me of all I thought I'd lost. I'dnot loved you before that day. It was while we were there together thatit came. I would to God you'd let me go then--let me go with the memoryof a look which I'd never seen in a man's eyes before--the look whichsaid 'Respect.'"

  For a moment there was silence, and then Mirabelle laughed shortly.

  "That was what I was fool enough to think--all that! _Quelle idiote!Nous voila, cher ami_, at the end of the chapter. Your glove is worn:you must replace it. Your flower is wilted: you must have another foryour lapel!"

  Now she looked full at him, her lip curling.

  "It is like the Moulin," she added. "_Combien est-ce que tu me donnes,beau brun?_"

  Andrew swung himself to a kneeling posture.

  "What are you saying?" he demanded hotly. "My God! Does what has beenbetween us mean nothing to you? Have I ever suggested--have I ever saida word to justify such a monstrous thing? I--"

  "Just now you kissed me, thinking of another woman!" exclaimedMirabelle. "Did you suppose I didn't know? Why, I've _loved_ you--that'show I knew! Do you realize what all this meant? You could have made megood again. I would have left all this--forgotten it--blotted it out! Icould have gone away quietly into the country, and lived my life out,without a regret. I could almost have been content never to see youagain--never to hear from you, if I could have remembered--what once wastrue--that you respected me! Forgive what I said just now. It wascoarse--unworthy of all that has been. But you don't understand. I wishI'd not said what I did; and yet, at times, I feel that way--I mean, asif it were all the same--at the Moulin Rouge or here--they for an hour,I for a month, but each flung away presently, like the dregs of wine.I've laughed at the knowledge that that is how it is; alwayslaughed--until the shadow of the thought fell on you!"

  She slid her cool fingers into the hand he started to raise in protest,and held it close against her cheek.

  "Then it maddened me. You see, everything has been different with youfrom what it was with the others. I'd never have believed that I couldcare for any man as I have for you--and perhaps I shouldn't have caredfor you as I have, if you'd come into my life in any other way. But youasked to be presented to me, and waited for Radwalader to get mypermission; you talked to me as to a young girl of your own _monde_; andif at first I didn't under
stand what that meant, I soon saw that it wasbecause _you didn't know_! Is it any wonder that I came to loveyou?--you who alone of all men yielded me the exquisite homage ofrespect? I dreaded the moment when the change must come--when thatdeference which intoxicated me like a new wine should be touched with agrowing spirit of license, which from you would have been intolerable!From day to day I watched you, but even when I knew that you suspectedwhat I was, my eyes--_mon Dieu_, how keen they were!--could see nochange in you--and that was the greatest surprise of all. And when, inthat moment of madness, I as much as told you, and you were gentle withme, what had been love for your treatment of me became, all at once,love for just--_you_!"

  With an almost imperceptible pressure she drew him closer to her. As shewent on speaking, her fingers touched his temples and his hair in asuccession of tiny, soft caresses which were like the embryos of spokenendearments.

  "_Mon bien aime!_ Never will you be able to comprehend what you thuscame to mean to me. I have always been vain, lazy, passionately desirousof all that is softest, sweetest, most palatable in life; and thesethings I have had--but at what a price! Then _you_ came, and with you aflash of hope! I made myself believe, I don't know what! Marriage? Yes,there was even that in my mind; and there was, as well, the idea ofgoing away, as I've said, into the country, and letting the four windsand the sunlight of heaven wash and wash and wash me, through all theyears of my life, until I should go out of this world as white as I camein! Ah! I don't know what it was, that little flash of hope, except thatit seemed to say that escape was possible, and it was to _your_ hand Iclung, seeking the outlet. But that was only for one night--for justthat one night! With the next day, with all the sights and sounds towhich I am accustomed--the Allee at noon, Armenonville at tea-time,Paillard's at midnight--I saw what the end must be; and, since then,I've watched, as only a woman watches, for that first little hint of itscoming which only a woman sees! Ah, _mon cheri_, it has come, it hascome indeed! For a moment I cried out in my agony against the fate whichis separating us. You must forgive me that. Six weeks--a little slice ofspring--and already you are tired of me. _Mon amour--mon amour!_"

  Andrew turned, and, with his forehead on her knees and his lips againsther fingers, battled silently against the swelling in his throat and thehot moisture stinging his inner lids. In the warm, perfume-ladensilence, both the man and the girl went back in thought to theirindividual as well as their associated past. For the end of eachsuccessive stage of life has this in common with the concluding momentsof the whole: as with a drowning person, all preceding incidents andemotions start up in orderly array, intensified and in their properlight.

  So Andrew, reviewing the past three weeks, was prey to a passionateregret. In this there was censure, not so much of his own weakness, asof the test which had laid it bare. In youth, reaction carries with amerciless arraignment of all which has made possible disloyalty tostandard; with age, men learn to blame themselves, their own folly andfrailty. In his heart of hearts, Andrew impugned the girl; and when,under the impetus of her resentment, she had voiced that scathing sneer,he had almost welcomed it, as an excuse for the course he was determinedto pursue. For an instant, pity and regret were swallowed up in aprofound sense of indignity. In its essentials, her speech seemed nobetter than a touch of the brutal vulgarity which, with deliberation, hehad avoided all his life. It had that very element of the sordid whichhad held him aloof from the student excursions from Cambridge intoBoston--excursions so apt to end in brawls, drunken clamour, tears, andmaudlin reconciliations. It was of a piece with a dispute over thefinish of a game of cards, with the recriminations of an aggrievedsupper companion, with the abuse of an exasperated bartender. It cut himto the quick, and, for the moment, seemed to place Mirabelle on a levelwith the women with whom she desperately classed herself. "It is likethe Moulin!" As she said the words, it was as if the wand of a harlequinhad touched the scene. The faint perfume of the Gloire de Dijon roseswhich he himself had sent her turned suddenly to the stale smell of thetobacco smoke which hung densely over the dancers in the Red Mill ofMontmartre; and Mirabelle herself, with her angry eyes, was at one withthe painted, powdered, and bedizened monstrosity whom Radwalader hadsnubbed one evening as she paused at the table where he and Andrew weresampling an atrocious _liqueur_ and watching an unlovely quadrille. Butthe impression passed as it had come. She was herself again, supremelybeautiful, and supremely appealing in her avowal of devotion; and theelement of romance which, in his mind, had always characterized theirrelation was intensified rather than diminished by this touch oftragedy.

  Mirabelle rose suddenly, looking down upon him.

  "I understand," she said; "but there is one thing I would like to askyou. This other woman--do you love her? Will all this procure you whatyou want?"

  "I don't know," faltered Andrew. "Perhaps not."

  "Then why--"

  "Oh, how can I explain to you?" he exclaimed, rising in his turn. "It'sjust this--I _must_ make another try, and to do that I _must_ be free!You have the right to ask--what _haven't_ you the right to ask! I'lltell you the truth--that's all I can do now. The girl I asked to marryme flung me off because--because--"

  "Because of _me_?"

  She bent forward, staring at him, as if she would wring the truth fromhis hesitation.

  "Yes--because of you."

  "And when was this? When _was_ it, I ask you? Was it--_before_?"

  "Yes."

  "Then she had no grounds for what she said? She was wrong--she misjudgedyou--and then you came back to me!"

  "Yes."

  "Why--_why_?"

  "I don't know," said Andrew miserably. "I owed you something. I couldn'thear you accused like that when there was no reason. You were myfriend."

  "And so--you gave up the woman you--loved? Ah, _mon Dieu_!"

  She paused, and then her eyes blazed suddenly with such a light as hehad never seen in them, and her hands went to her temples with abewildered flutter.

  "It was for me," she said, "for me! And to-morrow it is to be _adieu_?"

  "To-morrow?"

  Briefly they searched each other's eyes.

  "I mean to-night, of course," said Mirabelle evenly. "Andrew--there isone thing I would like to ask of you, before you go. Will you--will youkiss me once--not as you have ever kissed me?" Her fingers touched herforehead. "Will you kiss me--here?"

  He advanced a step and did as she had asked, then fell back.

  "Mirabelle--Mirabelle!"

  "Ah, don't think of me, my friend. I don't mean to be cruel--but Ihave--other interests. Let us say good-by, and part--friends. I trustyou may be happy."

  "Mirabelle!"

  Andrew's voice broke suddenly.

  "Then it's good-by?"

  "Yes," said Mirabelle; and, with a little sob, he bent and kissed herhand.

  When he had gone, she stood irresolutely, her lips parted and her eyesvery bright. Then she wheeled and walked slowly toward the mantel. Aphotograph of Thomas Radwalader leaned there against a slender vase. Asit met her eyes, she snatched abruptly at it, tore it into twentypieces, and scattered the fragments in the air.