The blood rushed to her cheeks, and a light cough parted her lips.
“Come now, come now,” said Prudence, who had taken off her hat and was smoothing her hair in front of the mirror. “You will get yourself into a state and hurt yourself. Let’s have our supper, that’s a better idea; and I’m dying of hunger.”
Marguerite rang the bell again, then sat down once more at the piano and began to faintly sing a bawdy song, whose accompaniment she did not muddle at all.
Gaston knew the song, and they turned it into a kind of duet.
“Don’t sing those bawdy tunes,” I said to Marguerite, familiarly, and with a supplicating air.
“Oh! How virtuous you are!” she said to me, smiling and extending her hand.
“It’s not for my sake; it’s for yours.”
Marguerite made a gesture that seemed to say, “Oh! I’ve been through with virtue for some time now.”
At this moment Nanine appeared.
“Is supper ready?” asked Marguerite.
“Yes, madam, in a moment.”
“Speaking of which,” said Prudence, “you haven’t seen the apartment. Come, I’ll give you a tour.”
You know, the living room was quite a marvel.
Marguerite went along with us for a bit, then she called to Gaston and went with him to the dining room to see if supper was ready.
“Goodness,” Prudence said loudly, looking at an étagère, and taking down a Saxon figurine, “I never knew you had this little fellow!”
“Which one?”
“A little shepherd holding a birdcage.”
“Take it if you like it.”
“Ah! But I’d hate to deprive you of it.”
“I was going to give it to my chambermaid. I think it’s hideous, but if you like it, take it.”
Prudence noticed only the fact of the gift, and not the manner in which it was given. She put her little fellow to the side, and led me into the dressing room, where, as she showed me two miniatures that hung there, she said, “So this is the Comte de G . . . , who was very in love with Marguerite; he’s the one who launched her career. Do you know him?”
“No. And this one?” I asked, pointing at another miniature.
“That’s the little Vicomte de L . . . . He was forced to leave town.”
“Why?”
“Because he was pretty much ruined. That’s another one who loved Marguerite!”
“And she doubtless loved him very much?”
“She’s such a queer girl, you never know what to make of her. On the evening of the day he left, she was at the theater as usual, and yet she cried at the time of his departure.”
At this moment Nanine appeared and announced that supper was served.
When we entered the dining room, Marguerite was leaning against the wall, and Gaston, holding her hands, was speaking to her softly.
“You’re crazy,” Marguerite was saying. “You know very well that I don’t want you in that way. You don’t spend two years getting to know a woman like me before asking to be her lover. Women like us give everything at once, or never. So gentlemen, suppertime.”
And, extricating her hands from Gaston’s, Marguerite seated him at her right, me at her left, then said to Nanine, “Before you sit down, tell the cook not to open the door if anyone rings.”
This instruction was given at one in the morning.
We laughed, we drank, and we ate much at this supper. Within moments the exuberance had reached the most outrageous levels, and the sort of witticisms that a certain segment of society finds charming but that always sully the mouth of the person who speaks them broke out again and again, to the cheers of Nanine, Prudence, and Marguerite. Gaston was enjoying himself hugely; he was a boy with a lot of heart, but his mind had apparently been a little warped by his early habits. At one moment I wanted to forget everything, close my heart and my mind to the spectacle that was before me, and take full part in the frivolity that seemed to be one of the courses of this meal; but little by little I withdrew myself from its noise, my glass remained full, and I became almost melancholy, watching this beautiful twenty-year-old creature drink, swear like a stevedore, and laugh louder the more scandalous the conversation became.
Although this gaiety and this manner of speaking and drinking seemed to me to be the natural result of debauchery, habit, or hardy constitution in the other revelers, in Marguerite, I felt it came from a need to forget, a fever, a nervous irritability. With each glass of champagne her cheeks were covered with a feverish blush, and a cough, mild at the beginning of the supper, eventually became strong enough to make her turn her head against the back of her chair and press her hands to her chest every time she coughed.
I suffered to think of the harm these daily excesses wrought on her frail organism.
Finally something happened that I had anticipated and had dreaded. Toward the end of supper Marguerite was overcome by a coughing fit that was stronger than all those she had endured while I was there. It was as if her chest were coming to pieces inside. The poor girl turned purple, closed her eyes from the pain, and brought her handkerchief to her lips; a drop of blood reddened it. She then rose and ran to her dressing room.
“What’s wrong with Marguerite?” asked Gaston.
“She laughed too much, and now she’s spitting blood,” said Prudence. “Oh! It’s nothing; it happens to her every day. She’ll come back. Leave her alone; she prefers it that way.”
As for me, I could not control myself, and to the great astonishment of Prudence and Nanine, who called out after me, I went to join Marguerite.
CHAPTER X
The room where she had taken refuge was lit by only a single candle, placed on a table. Fallen back on a long sofa, her dress undone, she held one hand to her heart and let the other one hang down. On the table was a silver basin half-full of water; the water was marbled with streaks of blood.
Marguerite, very pale, her mouth parted, tried to catch her breath. At moments her chest inflated with a long sigh that, upon exhalation, seemed to relieve her a little, and left her for a few seconds with a feeling of well-being.
I drew near to her without her making a movement, sat down, and took the hand she had draped on the sofa.
“Ah! It’s you?” she said with a smile.
I must have looked upset, because she added, “Are you sick too?”
“No, but you, are you still in pain?”
“Very little.” And with her handkerchief she wiped away the tears that the coughing had brought to her eyes. “I am used to it now.”
“You are going to kill yourself, madam,” I told her in a voice full of emotion. “I wish I were your friend, or a relative, so I could keep you from harming yourself in this way.”
“Ah! There’s really no point in your getting alarmed,” she replied in a bitter tone. “Just see if the others are worried about me—they know very well that there’s nothing to be done in my case.”
After saying this she rose, and taking the candle, set it on the mantel and looked at herself in the mirror.
“How pale I am!” she said, refastening her dress, and running her fingers through her disordered hair. “Ah! Bah! Let’s go back to the table. Are you coming?”
I remained seated, and did not move.
Understanding the emotion that this scene had provoked in me, she came up to me and, holding out her hand, said, “Now then, come.”
I took her hand; I raised it to my lips, dampening it, in spite of myself, with two long-suppressed tears.
“My goodness, but you are a child!” she said, sitting beside me. “You’re crying! What’s the matter with you?”
“I must seem quite ridiculous to you, but what I have just seen has caused me terrible pain.”
“You’re a funny one! What do you want? I can’t sleep; I have to distract myself
a little. And then, girls like me, one less or one more of us, what’s the difference? The doctors tell me the blood I spit comes from my lungs. I pretend I believe them; that’s all there is for me to do.”
“Listen, Marguerite,” I said, in an emphatic tone I could not restrain, “I do not know what impact you are to have on my life, but I know that, at this moment, there is nobody, not even my sister, in whom I take as great an interest as I do in you. It has been this way since the first time I saw you. In Heaven’s name, take better care of yourself, and don’t continue to live as you are doing.”
“If I take care of myself, I will die. What sustains me is the feverish life I lead. And then again, taking care of yourself is fine for society ladies who have family and friends; but women like me, once we are no longer able to feed the vanity or pleasure of our lovers, they abandon us, and long days are followed by long nights. I know it well. Come now, I spent two months confined to my bed; after three weeks, nobody came to see me anymore.”
“It’s true that I am nothing to you,” I went on, “but if you wished, I would look after you like a brother, I would not leave you, and I would make you better. So, when you regain your strength, you may resume the life you lead, if that’s what you would like; but I am sure you would prefer a tranquil existence that would make you happier and would preserve your beauty.”
“That’s how you think tonight, because the wine has made you melancholy, but you will find that you do not have the patience you pride yourself on.”
“Permit me to tell you, Marguerite, that you were ill for two months, and during those two months, I came every day to get news of you.”
“That’s true, but why didn’t you come up?”
“Because I did not know you then.”
“Why would anyone take pains with a girl like me?”
“Everyone takes pains with a girl; that’s my opinion, at least.”
“In that case, you will take care of me?”
“Yes.”
“You will stay beside me every day?”
“Yes.”
“And even all the nights?”
“All the time, as long as I don’t bore you.”
“What do you call that?”
“Devotion.”
“And where does this devotion come from?”
“From an irresistible affection I have for you.”
“So you are in love with me?” she said instantly. “That makes things easier.”
“It’s possible, but if I were to tell you about it someday, it would not be today.”
“You would do better to never tell me about it.”
“Why?”
“Because only two things could result from such a declaration.”
“Which are?”
“Either I would not accept you, in which case you would resent me, or I would accept you, in which case you would find yourself stuck with an unfortunate mistress—a neurotic woman who’s either ill and sad, or else is lighthearted with a lightheartedness that is sadder than heartbreak, a woman who spits blood and spends a hundred thousand francs a year. That’s just fine for a rich old man like the duke but it’s tiresome for a young man like you, and the proof of that is, all the young lovers I’ve had have left me quickly.”
I made no response; I listened. This frankness that amounted almost to confession, the reality of this painful life that I was able to glimpse beneath the golden veil that covered it, which the poor girl fled through decadence, drunkenness, and insomnia, all of it stirred me so profoundly that I could not speak a word.
“Let us go,” continued Marguerite. “We are speaking childishly. Give me your arm and let us return to the dining room. They must wonder what our absence means.”
“Return if you like, but I beg your permission to remain here.”
“Why?”
“Because your merriment pains me too much.”
“All right, I’ll be sad.”
“Listen, Marguerite, let me tell you something that has been said to you often, no doubt, and which the habit of hearing may keep you from taking seriously, but which is no less true for that, and which I will never say to you again.
“Which is . . . ?” she said, with the smile that young mothers put on when they listen to some nonsensical tale from a child.
“It is that ever since I saw you, I do not know how or why, you have occupied a place in my life. I have tried to chase the vision of you from my mind, but it has always come back to me, and it is only today, when I saw you again, after two years of not having seen you, that you took an even greater hold on my heart and spirit than before, and at last, now that you have invited me in, now that I know you, now that I know all that is strange about you, you have become indispensable to me, and I will go mad, not only if you do not love me, but if you do not permit me to love you.”
“Unfortunate though you are, I will tell you what Mme D . . . said: You must be rich! But you do not know that I spend six or seven thousand francs a month, and that this expense has become necessary to my life; you don’t know, my poor friend, that I would ruin you in next to no time, and that your family would disown you if you were to live with a creature like me. Like me as you would like a good friend, but in no other way. Come see me—we will laugh, we will talk, but do not exaggerate my worth to yourself, because I am not worth very much. You have a good heart, you need to be loved, you are too young and too sensitive to live in our world. Take a married woman for a lover. You see that I am a good-natured girl, and that I speak to you frankly.”
“Ah, what’s this! What in the devil are you doing?” cried Prudence, whom we had not heard enter, and who appeared on the threshold of the room with her hair half-undone and her dress unbuttoned. I recognized in this disorder the hand of Gaston.
“We are speaking sensibly,” Marguerite said. “Leave us for a little; we will rejoin you in a moment.”
“Fine, fine; talk, my children,” said Prudence, as she left and shut the door as if to reinforce the tone in which she had pronounced those last words.
“So, it’s agreed,” resumed Marguerite when we were alone. “You will not love me anymore.”
“I will leave.”
“Has it come to this?”
I had gone too far to take it back, and anyway, this girl overwhelmed me. Her mixture of lightheartedness, sadness, candor, prostitution, even her illness, which had heightened the sensitivity of her impressions as well as the irritability of her nerves, all gave me to understand that if, on this first occasion, I did not assert myself on this forgetful, light creature, she would be lost to me.
“Goodness, so what you were saying was serious!” she said.
“Very serious.”
“But why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“When would I have told you?”
“The day after you were introduced to me at the Opéra-Comique.”
“I think you would have received me impolitely if I had come to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because I had been stupid the night before.”
“That’s true. But nonetheless, you already loved me back then.”
“Yes.”
“Which did not prevent you from going to bed and sleeping tranquilly after the performance. We know what kind of great loves those are.”
“Actually, you are wrong. Do you know what I did the night of the Opéra-Comique?”
“No.”
“I waited for you on the doorstep of the Café Anglais. I followed the carriage that took you away, you and your three friends, and when I saw you get out of the carriage alone and go home alone to your place, I was very happy.”
Marguerite began to laugh.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, I beg you, or I will believe that yo
u are making fun of me again.”
“You won’t get angry?”
“What right would I have to get angry?”
“Well, there was a good reason why I went home alone.”
“What was it?”
“Someone was waiting for me here.”
She could have stabbed me and it couldn’t have hurt me more. I rose, and gave her my hand. “Good-bye,” I said.
“I knew you would get angry,” she said. “Men are so desperate to find things out that will only hurt them.”
“But I assure you,” I added coldly, as if I wanted to prove that I had been cured of my passion forever, “I assure you that I am not angry. It was quite natural that someone would have been waiting for you, just as it is quite natural that I would leave at three in the morning.”
“Do you also have someone waiting for you at home?”
“No, but I must go.”
“Good-bye, in that case.”
“You’re sending me away.”
“That’s the last thing in the world I would do.”
“Why do you hurt me?”
“How have I hurt you?”
“You tell me that someone was waiting for you.”
“I couldn’t help myself from laughing at the idea that you had been so happy to see me go home alone, when there’d been such a good reason for it.”
“A person often derives joy from a childish fancy, and it’s cruel to destroy that fancy when, by letting it linger, you could make the person who holds it happier.”
“But who do you think you’re dealing with? I am neither a virgin nor a duchess. I only met you today, and I am not accountable to you for my actions. In considering the possibility that one day I might become your mistress, you will need to know that I have had other lovers besides you. If you are already making jealous scenes beforehand, what might happen afterward—if an afterward were ever to exist! I’ve never come across a man like you.”
“That is because nobody has ever loved you as I love you.”
“Come now; frankly, you really love me?”
“As much as it is possible to love, I believe.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
The Lady of the Camellias Page 9