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A SAD COMEDY

 

 

            IT was four o’clock on a June afternoon in Paris. The trees were still fresh, as though they remembered the Spring. A leisurely air was over the Boulevards that converge towards the Gare St. Lazare. The Parisians were indoors finishing their day’s work or resting after it, or they had gone farther afield—to the grand Boulevard and the Bois. The English, as usual, were walking up and down the Rue de Rivoli, or staying to drink tea at the bun shop, and to imagine they were seeing French Life.

            On the Boulevard Haussmann, at the end nearest the Printemps, there is a print shop; by its side a wide entrance leading to the flats above. The concierge’s  little den is on the left. By her door stands a plaister figure holding up a lamp; on the right is the staircase covered with carpet and white druggeting that would be impossible in an English building inhabited by many tenants. Here and there is a corner of the staircase stands a palm, and half way up there is another figure holding a lamp.

            On the fourth floor there lived, five years ago, a woman. All Paris knew her name: for she was famous. The salon of her apartment looked out on to the Boulevards. The sound of cabs, of omnibuses, of all the happy Parisian life came in at the open window. The balcony, over which was stretched a red and white sunblind, was filled with flowers and tall green plants that made a mass of colour and tangle. On the threshold of the window, just inside the room, was a large white skin rug, and farther back two low wicker chairs covered with striped khas-khas grass, such as can be seen any day outside the shops in the Avenue de l’Opera. Between the chairs stood a little table on which was a volume of Alfred De Musset’s poems, and a black bowl filled with roses. In the room were picture and books, and bric-à-brac, and many fripperies that modern taste takes to be significant of refinement.

            The woman to whom the place belongs walked up and down quickly, as if she could not bear the agony of her own thoughts; and again slowly, as if the very intensity of the pain half lulled her. She was dark and slender, with a small well-poised head; her black hair dropped low over her forehead, and was gathered into a knot behind; her eyes were soft and dark; her mouth was tender, but it had a scornful curve, and over the whole face anguish and scorn seemed struggling to gain the mastery. She stopped by the window for a moment, but turned away quickly as if the sight of passing people tortured her: kneeling down by one of the wicker chairs she buried her face in the cushion that was tilted across its back. The sleeve of her gown was loose, she pushed it up and bit her arm to keep in the cries that were beating against her heart and struggling to escape from her lips.

            “It will kill me,” she said, “it must. If I could have seen him die, it would have been better—sorrow only breaks one’s heart, but scorn like this burns out one’s soul.”

            She got up and walked to and fro again.

            “He has been so cruel, so brutal,” she cried; “and he is afraid to face me, he has no courage, none—none; yet I love him, him—that man, whom I now see clearly. And oh, my God, how faithful I would have been to him. I could have faced anything in the world; I should have thought it joy to suffer because he loved me. But he, he does not know what courage means—when I die I will leave him my little finger. I cannot bear it, oh, dear God, I cannot—be merciful and do not make me—” the door was opened. She stifled a little cry and turned quickly.

            But there entered only a bonne—the traditional French servant, with the white strings of her cap resting flat on her back.

            “Madame,” she said, “I have a letter from my sister  at St. Cloud, the little son is very ill. If Madame does not want me this evening, might I go to see him? There would be time after Madame’s dinner to go and return before ten o’clock.”

            The woman listened and answered like one in a dream.

            “Yes, yes Catherine, you can go. I shall not want any dinner, but you can put it ready and go.”

            “Merci, Madame;” and having secured her point, she was adroitly vanishing. The woman called her back.

            “Catherine,” she said impatiently, as if she had remembered a necessary duty, and was in haste to perform it, “take the little one some chicken, and there are raspberries and cakes.”

            “Merci, merci. Madam is always good to the sick; but Madame is good to all the world,” the bonne said brightly, and waited for an acknowledgment of what was meant to be a pleasant remark. But the woman, trembling with eagerness to be alone, had hardly heard her.

            Suddenly there was the little ting of a bell. The woman’s hands locked themselves almost affrighted in each other, and she leant against a cabinet to steady herself.

            “Voilà Monsieur,” Catherine exclaimed with a smile and an air of certainly, as she hurried towards the door. “It is a long time since he has been to see Madame,” she muttered, “but that is surely his ring. I always know the manner of it.”

            In a moment she returned.

            “Monsieur Luard,” she announced, and shut the salon door. The sound of her footsteps grew fainter: the man and woman were alone.

            The man too was dark, tall, and fairly slight; young still, two or three and thirty, perhaps, not handsome, though his face arrested attention. Those who came in contact with him felt at once that he was a man worth considering, that he and the world would have much to do with each other, and especially that he would govern his surroundings, rather than he governed by them. A man who knew that he had a history awaiting him, and was impatient to begin it; but it lay outside the room in which he stood: that was as evident as his own consciousness of it. The woman gave a little gasp as he came forward, and passing him stood at the side of the room on which was the doorway, as if to prevent him from going till it pleased her to let him. The empty chairs before the window made, with their cushions, two patches of vivid colour, the stripes in the sunblind showed clearly, the flowers on the balcony beneath it, the sunshine beyond, the drowsy hush that belongs to summer, all seemed to intensify the hour through which the two people, who looked at each other, had to live ere all things between them came to an end.

            “Well,” he asked, “what is it?” She hardly seemed to hear him. She gave a long sigh, and said breathlessly, as if to herself:

            “You have come—” She was evidently struggling to control herself, and he saw it.

            “You insisted,” and he shrugged his shoulders after the fashion of the Englishman abroad.

            “Why did you not write? I sent you so many letters. A man usually answers—”

            “I had nothing to say.”

            “And silence is so valorous,” she said in a low voice. He pressed his lips together.

            “Did you send for me to have a final quarrel? It was hardly worth while.”

            “Oh, no,” she echoed, with a note of sadness, “hardly worth while. When do you go to England?”

            “To-night by the 9·50.”

            “And to St. Petersburg?”

            “In a month’s time.”

            She hesitated, then in the same low voice she asked:

            “Did you mean all the things you said the other night?” He nodded.

            “It is time it ended,” he said, “what would come of it if we went on?”

            “The future keeps its own counsel and we could wait on it.” But he was silent. “And the other things?” she asked.

            “What other things?”

            “The cruel, wicked ones—” she broke off and went on abruptly. “Ah, I remember when I saw you first—that day at Avignon, eight years ago, I thought you looked wicked, that your mouth was straight and cruel. When you were speaking the other night it all came back to me. Your face looked just as it did that first day of all, while we walked up and down by the river, and watched the peasants dance. Do you remember?”

            “Perfectly. It was a pity you did not betray your feelings at the time. You disguised them well.”

            “They were not feelings. It was a sudden impression flashed upon me and forgotten till the other night. Then, as I looked at your face again, I understood and stood aghast. It was like a revelation.”

            “And did you wish to tell me this? I am curious to know the reason of the interview. I suppose we shall arrive at it soon?” He was calm enough, but his face was white and hard.

            “No; but you force it from me. You are so speechless: you do not seem to care at all. You treat the past eight years—eight whole years, Norman—like a page in a book that is read. You want to turn to another.”

            “I do,” he answered doggedly. “It may be pleasanter than this one.” She clasped her hands in despair—white hands on which there was just one little ring, a gold circle with a moonstone in it.

            “Oh, my God,” she cried, “that I should have cared for you—that I should care still, and not loathe you. I could kill myself for the criminal deed of loving you.”

            “But why?” he asked. His tone had changed, but it had no effect upon her. “I have loved you, Madeline.”

            “You,” she said; “what you call love is not fit to stamp under my feet. Oh go, go—I cannot endure even the sight of you, it maddens me. Go to the women you are fit for—the women who will make you once of a series; as you, perhaps, have made me. Is there some one waiting for you in England?” she asked, mockingly, “or in St. Petersburg? if there is, go to her, go and say all the words you have said to me a thousand, thousand times,—there are no others left,—and remember that my burning scorn is with you while you say them; and with her too, poor fool, while she believes them.” He came forward a step.

            “I shall mean them,” he said, slowly.

            “Mean them,” she echoed scornfully, “oh yes, mean them if you can. Say them to some Englishwoman—they will satisfy her, no doubt.”

            “I am going to marry one,” he answered, and silence fell. Her lips turned white, her hands trembled, but still she struggled to be composed.

            “Ah,” she gasped, “at last you have found courage to tell the truth. It was very difficult, was it not? And soon? Is it to be soon?”

            “Yes.” He watched her critically, and half in fear; but even as he did so he was sensible of the sweetness of her voice, the perfect contour of her head.

            “That is why you are going to England?”

            “Yes.”

            “Is it to the one you told me of—your cousin, Mademoiselle Isabel?” He nodded.

            “I understand. You were always ambitious. You think she will be admired, that she will make a sensation at the Embassy. You are living already through your triumphant arrival at St. Petersburg.”

            “I have tasted success, and am like a tiger that has tasted blood. All things pall beside it. Now, may I be permitted to depart? There is nothing to be gained by prolonging this visit, I imagine?”

            She was silent for a moment. Then she went nearer and a little nearer till she was within a yard of him. Her voice softened, an entreaty seemed to be in the movement of her hands.

            “Don’t do it,” she said, as if the words were forced from her against her will, as words are forced from prisoners on the rack. “She will not love you as I have.”

            “It is too late—”

            “Ah, no!” she cried. It was like a cry of pain.

            It seemed to smite him. He looked almost afraid, as if he were at her mercy.

            “I wanted to marry you once,” he said, “and you refused.”

            “I know,” she answered, sadly, standing before him with her head bent. “I wanted to be famous; as you did, too. I thought some day, perhaps, you might be proud of me, and then—but it is our ambition that has divided us. My fame would only be a hindrance to you, and yours is not yet great enough to give me shelter.”

            “It is better, wiser, to part.”

            “No, no, that cannot be—it cannot be better to let life go for the cold reflection of it—” she swayed, as if from weakness, and, mechanically, as if to prevent her from falling, he put his arm round her.

            “Poetical, as usual, Madeline,” he said, half tenderly.

            “No,” she answered, and a little restfulness seemed to steal over her; “no, not that. Do you think,” she asked, “that any woman will ever love you as I have done?”

            “No, no woman will ever love me half so well.”

            “Other women’s love—”

            “There will be no other women. You do not comprehend, I am going to marry.” He spoke as though he had only to impress this fact upon her to make her see its reasonableness.

            “A lukewarm woman with grey eyes and fair hair?”

            “I love her,” he said, doggedly.

            “Love her,” she answered, in a low, scornful voice; “go on loving her, try your best: you will find that I have for ever raked the fire out of any love that is left in your heart to give.” She had raised herself and stood with her head thrown back looking at him while she spoke.

            “Madeline,” he urged, “be sensible. Nothing could come of this, it is better to end it. I would have married you once, as you know. I entreated you, and you refused. Now I am going to marry elsewhere. You said just now that one ambition had parted us. It has. We have both a chance of a career—yours is made already; but we should only wreck each other. There are many things in the world besides love. You used to protest that an intellectual life was so much to you.”

            “Oh yes. It has been much—”

            “Dreams and ideals and the rest of it.”

            “And from dreams one awakens; and ideals are often but commonplaces wrapt round with a cloud.”

            “You are getting better; this is like the old talk,” he said, with a sigh of relief. “Now, let me go, dear; it is better to get it over.”

            “No, I cannot. Oh, Norman, I cannot bear it; I shall die.” Her arms went round his neck and her hands clung to him. “I cannot let you go—oh, my life. I cannot bear it. Is success everything, is money so much, and reputation, which only lasts an hour—”

            “I hoe it will last longer,” he said grimly. “Money and success and reputation are the things men try for and value.”

            “When you are dying”—and her voice was low again— “it is my love that you will remember, my kisses you will linger over—not success or reputation or the money at your bank.”

            “You have been eager enough to gain your own success.”

            “Only that it might strengthen your love for me—might make my love seem more precious to you. When they have crowded to see me, and the place has rung with applause—you have been there and known”—and for a moment there was a ghost of triumph in her voice. “It has all seemed only like a wild accompaniment to a little secret song in my heart, that only you and I understood in all the world. And when I heard their shouts I only cared because I knew that you heard them too.” For a moment he was silent.

            “I have been an awful brute to you,” he said; “but, Madeline, I know what is best for us both.”

            “You said I should die on your shoulder,” and she touched it with her cheek. “If you had but kept that promise—”

            “One promise so much when one is in love.”

            “Now another woman will die there. I pray that Heaven may shut its gate on her.”

            He raised himself angrily, “You are going too far,” he said.

            “No,” she entreated, “forgive me, forgive me: remember that we shall never meet again. Norman,” she whispered suddenly, “come and dine with me this last night before you go.”

            “It is impossible.” She put her head once more on his shoulder with a long sigh of content, though she knew that the contentment was but for a moment.

            “My dear place,” she said, “my dear home. Come and dine with me this last night,” she whispered again. “Let us forget that it is the last—and then I will let you go.”

            “I cannot.”

            “Yes, just once more, for the last time in the world.”

            “It is impossible,” he repeated.

            “No, no, not impossible,” she said, quickly and eagerly. “I will not be cruel or cross; I will be your Madeline who has love you, and grown famous only for love of you. Will any other woman do that for you, dear life? No, no I think not. We will have a cosy dinner. I will wear my cream-coloured gown that you like, the one with the wide sleeves that fall back like these. I will do my hair up in a great loose knot. You said it suited me. I will put red roses at my waist and look my best, and we will talk of poetry and ideals”—and a little scoffing came into her voice as she said it—“and we will forget that it is the last time we may ever meet at all.”

            “I can’t. I have asked Campbell to dine with me.”

            “When—at what time?”

            “At 7·30, and then he is to see me off.” She was silent for a moment.

            “Come to me after your dinner.  7·30, and the train goes at 9·50. Tell him to meet you at the station, and come to me at 9, or soon after, and we will have a last few minutes. We will sit on those chairs in the twilight, as we have sat so often, and drink our coffee, and look at the flowers, and the lights as they come in the windows opposite. Yes, yes,” she went on, swiftly, “and then you shall go. I could not bear to part like this. You say I am poetic, let our parting be so—in the twilight, with the scent of the flowers, and the coffee on the little table just as in the old days, and I in a white dress. We will not say a single word to let ourselves know it is the last time—and you shall go before half-past nine. Oh! I swear to you, I will not say a single word that shall betray that you are not coming again to-morrow and to-morrow.”

            “You will really let me go?” he asked, relenting. “You will be sensible and calm?”

            “I will really let you go,” she repeated eagerly, “and he sensible and calm. Oh, I will be the wisest woman in France if you will humour me in this.”

            He looked down at her face for a moment and then answered slowly:

            “I will come, I will trust you—”

            “And you will take me in your arms for just one moment before you go, and kiss me and say ‘ I love you.’ Yes, yes; you have said it so often in years gone by and never will again in years to come.”

            “But—”

            “Only for this last time—you need not say good-bye—it shall be that instead, and then,” she added, with a sigh, “I will let you go and be content.”

            “Then it shall be so;” he answered, gently.

            “You will not fail me?” he answered, gently.

            “No. Look beautiful and let us forget that it is the end.”

            “I will;” she looked up at him with a smile, and spoke in the sweet voice that all Paris knew and loved to hear. “I will: for the last time, but we will forget it is the last.” Slowly she unclasped her hands and looked at him.

            “Well?” he asked inquiringly.

            She answered slowly, “May the woman you will hold dearest in your life, when mine is severed from it, be false and fail you in the hour you love her best if you fail me to-night.”

            “I will not fail you. I will come and trust to you to keep your word.”

            “I will keep it,” she answered. “Now go, and good-bye, since we are not to say it to-night. There shall not be one single parting word, I promise you; but you must say that you love me, remember. Adieu, adieu,” and she opened the door. “Stay, I forgot that Catherine is going to St. Cloud. I will give you a key, then you can let yourself in. I will be waiting for you there,” and she looked towards the window. “If anyone else rings I shall know that it is not you, and will not go to the door. Here it is. Ah, stay! yet one moment more,” she cried, suddenly; “let me look at you for the last time. To-night it may be dark—be growing dark; at nine it does, remember.” She put up her hands and held his face between them and scanned it eagerly. “Yes, yes, it is cruel perhaps, but I love it. Oh, my God! my God! I love it.” Her words rang with the agony of despair. “And your hands, dear hands that I love. Oh, my life, that is finished;” and she lifted up his hands and kissed them.

            “No,” he said, with a strange fear, “not finished?”

            “Finished as far as love is life, and it is all; what does the rest matter? But, there, go—go, it is better. Here is the key.” And she was calm again. “It was only for one moment, just for one moment that I forgot,” she explained, breathlessly: “now, see, I am quite brave, and will be so. I will sit and listen for your footsteps to-night. Adieu, adieu.”

            “I am so far out of it,” he said, as he stepped on to the boulevard. “Probably she will keep her word. She is a consummate actress, but I believe she loves me.” He walked on till, he hardly knew how, he found himself at the Rue Royale. He went along it, stood looking for a moment at the Place de la Concorde, and then turned up the Rue de Rivoli, just for a last time to see the familiar shops and faces, and the gold lines on the rails of the Tuileries Gardens. He looked at the people he passed with the odd consciousness that he could guess more of their lives and thoughts than they could possibly divine of his. They did not know who he was, or of the scene he had been going through; or of the meeting to-night; or that to-morrow he would be in England; that it was his marriage of which the papers would give long accounts in a month’s time. He was more and more satisfied at the prospect of the last. He loved his fiancée so far as he could; he liked her fair, cold beauty. It was a relief to think of her after Madeline Debray, with her white arms upraised, standing in the salon he had just left. Isabel, too, would help him in all his ambitions; the other would have been a millstone round his neck. Even Madeline’s fame would have been an embarrassment not only to him, but to those who were helping on his career, chiefly, perhaps, to verify their own predictions that he would prove a remarkable man. For he did not inspire men with affection; and with women his success was limited. His power was over whole groups of people. With these his influence was growing daily. A man who was useful to his party, a power to be reckoned with, one to whom appointments were thrown and rewards offered almost, as it seemed, involuntarily, and because it had to be so. But among those with whom he came into personal contact, there was always an uncertainty as to what he would do next, in some degree a fear of him, and an unconscious suspicion that he might not be over scrupulous.

            Madeline Debray loved him, and had trusted him as none beside in the world ever would. His cousin Isabel? Her feeling for him, and he knew it perfectly, was as yet an unanswered question. He loved her—curiously, as a mother does her unborn child, wondering how the world will seem when the new life awakes in it. She would awake when he had set out life before her, and had given her all things. He liked to think that he had the whole shaping of her future; he resented the power of a woman who could make a career unaided—unconsciously he resented Madeline’s having done so, as well as the manner in which she had done it.

            He hurried on, to make the last arrangement for his journey. There would be only just time to catch the train, after his interview with Madeline.

            “Have you finished packing, Charles?” he asked, as he entered his rooms.

            “Oui, Monsieur, but see this little silver box was nearly left; it had fallen behind the escritoire in the Monsieur’s room.” Luard looked at it almost angrily. Madeline had given it him three years ago. They had gone to St. Germain-en-Laye, and whiled away half-an-hour at one of the curiosity shops. He had bought her a quaint old fan—he remembered the skirts of the little Watteau dancers painted on it, and the pattern of the inlaid ivory sticks.

            “Stay,” she had said, “I will give you something too; this little antique box, it is the shape of a heart—of my heart that loves you,” she whispered. “You must keep your stamps in it. When you go to England you will need a great many, in order to write to me very often.”

            He could see the long terrace, and the forest, and the Château at its gates.

            He could hear Madeline’s talk again, of James II. who had died there, and Madame de Montespan, who had danced; of Marie Antoinette who had driven through the stony streets. While he listened he had dropped the box. “Ah, do not tread it under foot,” she had said, “remember it is my heart.”

            He hated sentiment, and women, and all things that appertained to them.

            “Give it to me, Charles,” and he went downstairs. “Madame,” he said to the manageress of the hotel, “accept my thanks for all your attentions. You have a little son; allow me to present him with this box. When he is a man you will have the wisdom of experience; endeavour to let my gift be a symbol of his heart,” and he opened it to show that it was hollow, “that is, so far as your charming sex is concerned—then his success in the world will be assured.”

            The friend invited to dine arrived punctually. He was a tall, fair young Englishman, who looked upon loafing, especially in Paris, as the most satisfactory mode of existence yet invented. He talked aimlessly on during dinner; it might have been from the other side of the universe, so little did his words affect Norman Luard.

            “There are lots of people in Paris just now,” he said, as he looked down on the passers-by from their table in the window at the restaurant. “I believe you are sorry to leave it, Luard, you are so silent.”

            “No, I shall be glad to get off.” Two people got up from the next table and went.

            “Rather a handsome woman,” Campbell said. “Looks as if she might have a temper; but, probably, he knows best about that.”

            “Yes,” Luard answered, absently, watching the waiter put down the chicken and the salad. Suddenly he turned round, almost savagely.

            “Campbell,” he said, “let me give you one piece of advice. Never fall in love with a Frenchwoman. It is the devil, and if she comes from Marseille, it is worse than the devil. I believe the women there are fed on lighted torches.” A gleam of lazy amusement came into Campbell’s eyes.

            “Badly hit?” he asked.

            “I have been. It ends in being badly bothered. There is no worry worse than a woman; she drags at you so.”

            “Well, you are going in for one on an a long lease.”

            “A wife—that’s different. A time comes when a man must marry. It’s part of his business.”

            “Not a great love affair then?”

            “Oh, yes, I am devoted to her; she is my cousin; I have known her all my life, and so on.”

            “Excellent reason for not being devoted, having known her all your life, I should have thought. But, all the same, I congratulate you. She is very beautiful.” Luard closed his lips with satisfaction.

            “I wish the journey to England were over,” he said.

            “The journey to St. Petersburg will be worse. Lucky beggar you were to get that appointment, Luard. It’s a sure stepping-stone.”

            “That’s why it exists, so far as I am concerned.”

            “You appear to have gone in for success with both hands and feet.”

            “It’s the only thing worth living for; everything else wears out—come to an end.”

            “I daresay. I never had any myself—never tried for it—don’t want it—it would bother me. But I like to look at others while they struggle after it.”

            “It comes, and is not struggled after.”

            “To you. But don’t you find things in general pretty played out,—or do you want to go on?”

            “I want to go on, don’t you?”

            “Well, yes, in a leisurely sort of way. Then, you see, I am not a player: I am a spectator.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Some men play the game of life and some look on. You play, I look on. Don’t want to be bothered to do more. Life is best taken easily.”

            “I wish women would recognize that.”

            “Women again; you have been badly hit somewhere.”

            “Don’t let us talk of it. By the way—” he put his hand in his pocket, but he drew it back with a start. He had touched Madeline’s door-key.

            “What’s the matter?” Campbell asked.

            He took no notice of the question.

            “What did you do on Wednesday after I left you?” he said, abruptly.

            “Went to the last night of Sardou’s play. Madeline Debray was superb. She is beaten at the end, you know, but gives in like an empress.”

            “Ah!” And Luard filled his glass with red wine, and looked at the people out of doors. “She is a good actress.”

            “I heard something curious about her the other day: that she goes in for nursing the poor, and all sorts of rum things.”

            Luard answered almost savagely again. “Mere thirst for emotion; women long for it, and will have it, of one sort if they can’t get another. The mere sight of pain is in a certain sense attractive to some women.”

            “I don’t  like that notion, it seems rough on them,” Campbell answered in a low voice. “They have an amazing power of putting themselves inside the lives of other for good or evil.”

            “Usually for evil,” Luard muttered, as they got up to leave the place.

            The clock pointed to ten minutes to nine.

            “Look here, Campbell, you had better meet me at the station. I have an appointment in a few minutes and must leave you.” He stood still for a moment on the pavement to see which way his friend went, so that he might go the other.

            Five minutes past nine.

            He was at the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann. The lights had not yet been put into the kiosks, for the long summer day seemed hardly at an end, though the first fold of twilight had fallen. He walked with lagging steps, which he vainly tried to make resolute. Do what he would he could not help thinking, not of Madeline, but of Isabel, with her blue eyes and soft fair hair, and he grimly hated the task before him. “Perhaps I am a fool to do it,” he muttered; “she may stab me or shoot me.” A little nearer, and he was before the house. In the print-shop window was a large glass magnifying a bunch of flowers; he stopped to look through it. Suddenly he raised his head, and turned quickly in at the entrance leading to the flats. the concierge did not see him; the lamp held up by the plaister figure was not yet lighted. He went up the white covered stairs, past the palms and the closed doors beneath Madeline’s.

            “It’s the last time,” he thought; “how odd it is to know that I shall never come up these stairs again.” He hesitated for a moment when he reached the fourth floor, and felt for the key. It turned easily, and he entered. Everything was absolutely silent; some undefined fear of trickery made him keenly alive. He stood still for a minute, looked round, and listened. Nothing. The salon door was opposite; he walked towards it; a second’s hesitation, and he turned the handle. The twilight had deepened in the last few minutes.

            “Madeline,” he said. There was a scent of flowers, a faint odour of coffee. The familiar objects of the room were growing indistinct with the coming night.

            “Madeline,” and he went forward. She was sitting by the window just as she had said, but she did not speak a word.

            “There is no time to lose. I have only ten minutes.” The window was wide open as usual, the flowers massed, the sunblind stretched over them, deepening the dimness of the room. Here and there the lights twinkled in the windows opposite. Her face was towards the balcony, her back towards him. She was leaning her head against the chair, her arms were thrown up over it. He could see plainly, even in the twilight, the whiteness of her clasped hands against the red cushion. He could see, too, that she wore the cream-coloured gown, the soft silk trailed round the side of the chair; he knew that her hair was coiled in the loose knot he had loved, that there were red flowers fastened at her waist.

            “Am I to sit down on the other side, and finish out our comedy?” he asked. The table was between the chairs, the bowl of roses stood on it still. He noticed a little heap of petals that had dropped, and the yellowness of the brass coffee-pot. He moved the chair a little aside to sit on it, and then for the first time he saw her face. Her eyes were staring with a startled look in them at the houses opposite, her mouth was a little open as if to give a cry of pain.

            “Madeline,” and he stepped over the white skin rug, round to the other side of her. “Are you ill—what is the matter?”

            There was no answer.

            “Madeline,” and he touched her shoulder; but there was no response. The latch-key dropped from his hand on to her lap. “For God’s sake speak, I am here, dear.” He said the last word as though he would bribe her back to life with it. But still she stared out at the windows opposite, and no cry of pain or word of joy came from her lips.

            “Madeline,” he said once more. “Good heavens, is she dead?” He knelt by her side, and looking at her face, gently put down her arms; her head fell sideways almost on to his shoulder. The memory of the promise that she should die on his shoulder flashed through him The movement had closed the mouth; he fancied that there was a little gasp—had the promise been kept? A half moment of thankfulness if it were so, and with a felling of superstitious horror he held back, so that he might not touch her face, and putting her head on the cushion again, stood up. Then as though the dumb lips had said them again, and say, ‘I love you;’ and may the woman you will hold dearest in your life when mine is severed from you be false and fail you in the hour you love her best, if you fail me.” He stood and listened to them; they seemed to be swept into his heart, to fasten round it. Shrinking and hesitating, he waited for a moment. He saw the mass of flowers on the balcony and the lights in the windows beyond; he heard the sound of wheels beneath; but before him and between them all sat the dead woman. A short breath—and slowly he stooped, and took her in his arms, and kissed her, and said, “I love you.” Then he drew back. As he did so, for a moment, all things seemed to vanish, and he thought of the day on which he saw her first, eight years before at Avignon, while the band played, and the peasants danced beside the river.

 

 

           

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