Read Ebook: A Living Lie by Bourget Paul De Villiers J A J John Abraham Jacob Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 774 lines and 108001 words, and 16 pages

'It's a bad time of year for water-colours,' replied the latter; 'it gets dark so soon, and we are overwhelmed with work--but you shall have it. Why, what's the matter, Rosalie? You are quite white.'

The poor girl was indeed suffering tortures on finding that Ren? had left her without so much as a look or a word. A great lump rose in her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. She had strength enough, however, to repress her sobs and to reply that she was overcome by the heat of the stove. Her mother darted a look at Emilie containing such a direct reproach that Madame Fresneau turned away her eyes involuntarily. She, too, was deeply grieved; for, although she had always been opposed to this marriage, which was quite out of keeping with the ambitious plans she vaguely cherished for her brother, she loved Rosalie. When the mother and her two daughters had put on their bonnets and were at last ready to go, Emilie's feelings led her to embrace Rosalie more affectionately than was her wont. She was quite ready to pity the girl's sufferings, but that pity was not entirely devoid of a sad kind of satisfaction at seeing Ren?'s manifest indifference, and as the door closed behind her visitors she turned to Fran?oise with unalloyed joy in her honest brown eyes.

'You will take care not to make any noise in the morning, won't you?'

'No more than a mouse,' replied the girl.

'And you too, my big beauty,' she said to her husband, on entering the dining-room, where the professor was once more at his exercises. 'I have told Constant to get up and dress quietly,' adding, with a proud smile, 'what a triumph for Ren? to-night, provided that these grand folks don't turn up their noses at his verse! But I'm sure they'll not do that; his poetry is too good--almost as good as he is himself!'

'It is to be hoped that all these fine ladies will not spoil him as you do,' exclaimed Fresneau, 'for it would end by his losing his head. No, no,' he went on, in order to flatter his wife's feelings, 'it is a pleasure to see how modest he is, even in success.'

And Emilie kissed her husband tenderly for those words.

A LOVER AND A SNOB

The two young men got into the cab and were soon being rapidly driven along the Rue du Cherche-Midi in order to reach the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and so follow, by way of the Invalides, the long line of avenues that crosses the Seine by the Pont de l'Alma and leads almost direct to the Arc de Triomphe. At first both remained perfectly silent, Ren? amusing himself by watching for the well-known landmarks of a neighbourhood in which all the reminiscences of his childhood and youth were centred. The pane of glass through which he gazed was clouded with a thin vapour, a fitting symbol of the cloud that separated the world he had just left from that which lay before him. There was not an angle in the Rue du Cherche-Midi that was not as familiar to him as the walls of his own room--from the tall dark building of the military prison to the corner of the quiet Rue de Bagneux, where Rosalie dwelt. The remembrance of the charming girl whom he had so unceremoniously quitted that evening passed through his mind, but caused him no pain. The sensation he felt was like dreaming with open eyes, so little did the individual who had trodden these streets in his dreary and obscure youth resemble the rich and celebrated writer now seated next to Claude Larcher. Celebrated--for all Paris had flocked to see his piece; rich--for 'Le Sigisb?e,' first performed in September, had already brought him in twenty-five thousand francs by February. Nor was this source of revenue likely to be soon exhausted. 'Le Sigisb?e' had been put into the same bill with 'Le Jumeau,' a three-act comedy by a well-known author that would have a long run. The play, too, was selling well in book form, and the rights of translation and of representation in the provinces were being turned to good account. But all this was only a beginning, for Ren? had several other works in reserve--a volume of philosophical poems entitled 'On the Heights,' a drama in verse dealing with the Renaissance, to be called 'Savonarola,' and a half-finished story of deep passion for which the writer had as yet found no title.

'What has Colette been doing to-day?' asked Ren? quietly, a little put out by the asperity of his friend's words, though not laying much weight upon arguments applied with such evident rancour. These furious outbursts were nearly always caused, as he knew, by some coquetry on the part of the actress with whom Claude was madly in love, and who delighted in fooling him, though loving him in her way. It was one of those attachments, based on hatred and sensuality, which both torture and degrade the heart, and which transform their victim into a wild beast, one of the features peculiar to this sort of passion being the frequency with which it is liable to suffer crises as sharp and violent as the physical ideas on which it feeds.

'But were your suspicions correct?' asked Ren?.

'Were they correct?' re-echoed Claude, with that accent of cruel triumph affected by jealous lovers when their mad desire to know all has ended in proving their worst suspicions up to the hilt. 'Do you know what Salvaney's note contained? An appointment--and Colette's reply confirmed the appointment. I know this, for I had her followed. Yes, I stooped even to that. He met her coming from rehearsal, and they were together until eight o'clock.'

'And haven't you broken with her?' asked Vincy.

'It's all over,' replied Claude, 'and for good, I promise you. But I must tell her what I think of her, just for the last time. The wretch! You'll see how I'll treat her to-night.'

In telling his sad tale Claude had betrayed such intense grief that Ren?'s former feelings of joy were quite disturbed. Pity for the man to whom he was deeply attached by bonds of gratitude was mingled with disgust for Colette's shameless duplicity. For a moment he felt, too, some deep-lying remorse as he conjured up by way of contrast the pure soul that shone in Rosalie's honest eyes. But it was only a passing fancy, quickly dispelled by the sudden change in his companion. This demon of a man, who was one bundle of nerves, possessed the gift of changing his ideas and feelings with a rapidity that was perfectly inexplicable. He had just been speaking in despairing accents and in a voice broken with emotion, which his friend knew to be sincere. Snapping his fingers as if to get rid of his trouble, he muttered, 'Come, come,' and immediately brought the conversation round to literary topics, so that the two writers were discussing the last novel when the sudden stoppage of the vehicle as it fell in behind a long line of others told them that they had arrived.

'That's Madame Moraines,' said Claude, 'the daughter of Victor Bois-Dauffin, a Minister during the Empire.'

'The table went up, up, up,' she said, 'until our hands could scarcely follow it. The candles were blown out by invisible lips, and in the darkness I saw a hand pass up and down--an immense hand--it was that of Peter the Great!'

She had taken the young man's arm, and, although he was above the middle height, she was taller than he by half a head. Her tragic expression was not deceptive. She had really lived through what the strange look in her eyes and the determined set of her features led one to imagine. Her husband had been murdered almost at her feet, and she herself had killed the assassin. Ren? had heard the story from Claude, and he could see the scene before him--the Comte Komof, a distinguished diplomat, stabbed to the heart by a Nihilist in his study; the Comtesse entering at the moment and bringing down the murderer by a well-directed shot. While the young man reflected that those tapering fingers, resplendent with rings as they lay on his coat sleeve, had clutched the pistol, his partner had already commenced some fresh story with that savage energy of expression that in people of Slavonic race is not incompatible with the most refined and elegant manners.

THE 'SIGISB?E'

Two footmen in livery drew back the curtains from before the miniature stage. The scene being laid 'In a garden, in Venice,' nothing had been required in the way of scenery beyond a piece of cloth stretched across the back of the stage and a bank formed of plants selected from the hostess's famous conservatory. With the somewhat crude appearance of their foliage under the glare of the light these exotic shrubs made a setting very different to that which M. Perrin had arranged with so much taste at the Com?die Fran?aise. That model of a manager, if ever there was one, had hit upon the happy idea of placing before his audience one of the terraces on the lagoon that lead by a flight of marble steps down to the lapping waters, with the variegated fa?ades of the palaces standing out against the blue sky and the black gondolas flitting round the corners of the tortuous canals. The change from the usual scenery, the diminutive stage, the limited and eminently select audience, all contributed to increase Ren?'s feeling of uneasiness, and he again felt his heart beating as wildly as on the night of the first performance at the theatre.

Colette had already attacked the first lines of her part and Ren?'s anguish was at its highest pitch, while all around he heard the loud remarks which even well-bred people will make when an artiste appears on a drawing-room stage. 'She's very pretty. Do you think it's the same dress she wears at the theatre? She's a little too thin for my taste. What a sympathetic voice! No, she imitates Sarah Bernhardt too much. I'm in love with the piece, aren't you? To tell you the truth, poetry always sends me to sleep.' The poet's sharp ears caught all these exclamations and many more. They were, however, soon silenced by a loud 'hush!' that came from a knot of young men standing near Ren?, conspicuous among them being a bald-headed individual with rather a prominent nose and a very red face.

The Comtesse thanked him with a wave of her hand, and, turning to her partner, said: 'That's M. Salvaney; he is madly in love with Colette.' Silence was reestablished, a silence broken only by the rustle of dresses and the unfurling of fans.

If kisses for kisses the roses could pay When our lips o'er their petals in ecstasy stray; If the lilacs and tall slender lilies could guess How their sweet perfume fills us with sorrowfulness; If the motionless sky and the sea never still Could know how with joy at their beauties we thrill; If all that we love in this strange world below A soul in exchange on our souls could bestow: But the sea set around us, the sky set above, Lilacs, roses, and you, sweet, know nothing of love.

'That's the author! Where? That young man. So young! Do you know him? He's a good-looking fellow. Why does he wear his hair so long? I rather like to see it--it looks artistic. Well, a man may be clever, and still have his hair cut. But his play is charming. Charming! Charming! Who introduced him to the Comtesse? Claude Larcher. Poor Larcher! Look at him hanging round Colette. He and Salvaney will come to blows one of these days. So much the better; it will cool their blood. Are you going to stay to supper?'

These were a few of the snatches of conversation that reached the author's sensitive ears as he bowed and blushed under the weight of the compliments showered upon him by a woman who had carried him away from Madame Komof almost by force. She was a long, lean creature of about fifty, the widow of a M. de Sermoises, who, since his death, had been promoted to 'my poor Sermoises,' after having been, while alive, the laughing-stock of the clubs on account of his fair partner's behaviour. The lady, as she grew older, had transferred her attention from men to literature, but to literature of a serious and even devotional kind. She had heard from the Comtesse in a vague sort of way that the author of the 'Sigisb?e' was the nephew of a priest, and the air of romance that pervaded the little play gave her reason to think that the young writer had nothing in common with the literature of the day, the tendencies of which she held in virtuous execration. Turning to Ren? with the exaggerated tone of pomposity adopted by her in giving utterance to her poor, prudish ideas--a judge passing sentence of death could scarcely be more severe--she said: 'Ah, monsieur! what poetry! What divine grace! It is Watteau on paper. And what sentiment! This piece is epoch-making, sir--yes, epoch-making. We women are avenged by you upon those self-styled analysts who seem to write their books with a scalpel in a house of ill-fame.'

'Madame,' stammered the young man, taken off his feet by this astonishing phraseology.

'You must be very fond of Alfred de Musset, sir, remarked this lady. She was the wife of a Society man who, under the pseudonym of Florac, had written several plays that had fallen flat in spite of the untiring energy of Madame Hurault, who, for the past sixteen years, had not given a single dinner at which some critic, some manager, or some person connected with some critic or manager had not been present.

'Who is not fond of him at my age?' replied the young man.

'That is what I said to myself as I listened to your pretty verse,' continued Madame Hurault; 'it produced the same effect as music already heard.' Then, having launched her epigram, she remembered that in many a young poet there lurks a future critic, and tried to smooth down by an invitation the phrase that betrayed the cruel envy of a rival's wife. 'I hope you will come and see us; my husband is not here, but he will be glad to make your acquaintance. I am always at home on Thursdays from five till seven.'

'Madame Ethorel--Monsieur Vincy,' said Madame de Sermoises, again introducing Ren?, but this time to a very young and very pretty woman--a pale brunette, with large dreamy eyes and a delicacy of complexion that contrasted with her full, rich voice.

'Ah! monsieur,' she began, 'how you appeal to the heart! I love that sonnet which Lorenzo recites--let me see, how does it go?--

The spectre of a year long dead.'

'"The phantom of a day long dead,"' said Ren?, involuntarily correcting the line which the pretty lips had misquoted; and with unconscious pedantry he repressed a smile, for the passage in question, two verses of five lines each, presented not the slightest resemblance to a sonnet.

'That's it,' rejoined Madame Ethorel; 'divine, sir, divine! I am at home on Saturdays from five till seven. A very small set, I assure you, if you will do me the honour of calling.'

Ren? had no time to thank her, for Madame de Sermoises, a prey to that strange form of vanity that delights in reflected glory, and which inspires both men and women with an irresistible desire to constitute themselves the showman of any interesting personage, was already dragging him away to fresh introductions. In this way he had to bow first to Madame Abel Mos?, the celebrated Israelitish beauty, all in white; then to Madame de Suave all in pink, and to Madame Bernard all in blue. Then Madame de Komof once more took possession of him in order to present him to the Comtesse de Candale, the haughty descendant of the terrible marshal of the fifteenth century, and to her sister the Duchesse d'Arcole, these high-sounding French names being succeeded by others impossible to catch, and belonging to some of the hostess's relatives. Ren? was also called upon to shake hands with the men who were in attendance on these ladies, and thus made the acquaintance of the Marquis de H?re, the most careful man in town, who with an income of twenty thousand francs lived as though he had fifty; of the Vicomte de Br?ves, doing his best to ruin himself for the third time; of Cruc?, the collector; of San Giobbe, the famous Italian shot, and of three or four Russians.

She met Ren? with a smile that showed real pleasure in finding one of her own set, and breaking off her conversation with the owner of a terra-cotta complexion, who could be no other than Claude's rival, Salvaney, she cried, 'Ah! here is my author!--Well,' she added, shaking hands with the poet, 'I suppose you are quite satisfied? How well everything has gone off! Come, Salvaney, compliment Monsieur Vincy, even if you don't understand anything about it. And your friend Larcher,' she went on, 'has he disappeared? Tell him for me that he nearly made me die of laughing on the stage. He was wearing a love-lock and his weeping-willow air. For whom was he acting his Antony?'

A cruel look came into her greenish eyes, and in the curl of her lips there was an expression of hatred called forth by the fact that the unhappy Claude had gone without bidding her good night. Though she deceived and tortured him, she loved him in her way, and loved above all to bring him to her feet. She experienced a keen delight in making a fool of him before Salvaney, and in thinking that the simple Ren? would repeat all her words to his friend.

'Why do you say such things?' replied the young man in an undertone while Colette's partner was shaking hands with a friend; 'you know very well that he loves you.'

'I know all about that,' said the actress with a harsh laugh. 'You swallow all he tells you--I know the story. I am his evil genius, his fatal woman, his Delilah. I have quite a heap of letters in which he treats me to a lot of that kind of thing. That does not prevent him from getting as drunk as a lord, under pretence of escaping from me. I suppose it's my fault, too, that he gambles and drinks and uses morphia? Get out!' And, shrugging her pretty shoulders, she added more gaily: 'The Comtesse is making signs for us to go down to supper. . . . Salvaney, your arm!'

In this frame of mind Ren? began to look at his fair neighbour, whose charms had made such an impression upon him during their momentary encounter in the hall. He had not been mistaken in judging her at the first glance as a creature of thoroughly aristocratic appearance. Everything about her, from her delicately-cut features to her slim waist and slender wrists, had an air of distinction and of almost excessive grace. Her hands seemed fragile, so dainty were her fingers and so transparent. The fault of such kind of beauty lies in the very qualities that constitute its charm. Its exceeding daintiness is frequently too pronounced, and what might really be graceful becomes peculiar. Closer study of Madame Moraines showed that this ethereal beauty encased a being of strength, and that beneath all this exquisite grace was hidden a woman who lived well, and whose sound health was revealed in many ways. Her shapely head was gracefully poised on a full neck, while her well-rounded shoulders were not disfigured by a single angle. When she smiled she showed a set of sharp white teeth, and the way in which she did honour to the supper testified that her digestion had withstood the innumerable dangers with which fashionable women are beset--from the pressure of corsets to late suppers, to say nothing of the daily habit of dining out. Her eyes, of a soft, pale blue, would remind a dreamer of Ophelia and Desdemona, but possessed that perfect, humid setting in which the physiognomists of yore saw signs of a full enjoyment of life, the freshness of her eyelids telling of happy slumbers that recruit the whole constitution, whilst her lovely complexion showed her rich blood to be free of any taint of anaemia.

Opoponax then sang, 'neath shades so sweet, The story of those lips that never meet.

Once more, but more strongly than ever, there sprang up within him, the simple wish he had expressed to Claude Larcher in the carriage that evening--to be loved by a woman like the one whose sweet laughter was that instant ringing in his ear. Dreams--idle dreams! That hour would pass without his having even exchanged a word with this dreamlike creature, as far from him here as if a thousand miles had lain between them. Did she even know that he existed? But just as he was sadly asking himself this question he felt his heart begin to beat more quickly. Madame Komof, having by this time recovered from her excitement, had no doubt perceived the distress depicted on the young man's face, and from her place at the end of the table said to the Vicomte de Br?ves: 'Will you be good enough to introduce Monsieur Vincy to his neighbour?'

Ren? saw the glorious blue eyes turn towards him, the fair head bend slightly forward, and a sympathetic smile come to those lips which he had just mentally compared to a flower, so fresh, pure, and red were they. He expected to hear from Madame Moraines one of the commonplace compliments that had exasperated him all the evening, and he was surprised to find that, instead of at once speaking of his play, she simply continued the topic upon which she had been conversing with her neighbour.

'Monsieur Cruc? and I were talking about the talent displayed by Monsieur Perrin in putting plays on the stage. Do you remember the scenery of the "Sphinx"?'

She spoke in a low, sweet voice that matched her style of beauty, and gave her that additional and indefinable attraction which helps to render a woman's charms irresistible to those who come under their spell. Ren? felt that this voice was as intoxicating as the scent, which now grew stronger as she turned towards him. He had to make an effort to reply, so keen was the sensation that overpowered him. Did Madame Moraines perceive his agitation? Was she flattered by it, as every woman is flattered by receiving the homage of unconquerable timidity? However that might be, she was such an adept in the art of opening a conversation--no easy matter between a Society belle and a timid admirer--that, before ten minutes were over, Ren? was talking to her almost confidentially, and expressing his own ideas on stage matters with a certain amount of natural eloquence, growing quite enthusiastic in his praise of the performances at Bayreuth, as described to him by his friends. Madame Moraines sat and listened, putting on that peculiar air worn by these thoroughbred hypocrites when they are looking at the man they have determined to ensnare. Had anyone told Ren? that this ideal woman cared as much about Wagner or music as about her first frock, and that she really enjoyed only light operettas, he would have looked as blank as if the boisterous mirth going on around him had suddenly changed into cries of terror.

'Ah! madame,' he replied; 'if you only knew--'and in obedience to the irresistible power this woman already exercised over him, he added: 'You will think me very ungrateful. I cannot explain to you why, but their compliments seemed to freeze me.'

'Therefore I didn't pay you any,' she said, adding in a negligent tone, 'You don't go out much, I suppose?' 'You must not make fun of me,' he replied with that natural grace that constituted his chief charm; 'this is my first appearance in Society. Before this evening,' he went on, seeing a look of curiosity come into the woman's eyes, 'I had only read of it in novels. I am a real savage, you see.'

'But,' she asked, 'how do you spend your evenings?'

'I have worked very hard until lately,' he replied; 'I live with my sister, and I know almost no one.'

'Who introduced you to the Comtesse?' inquired Madame Moraines.

'One of my friends, whom I dare say you know--Claude Larcher.'

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet