The juggler

by Rachilde, 1860-1953

  She could not have said more proudly: this is my house.

  "Madam," murmured Leon turning his head away so as to no longer confront the presence of the stranger and hoping still in the sound of her voice, its inflections ordinarily so caressing, "I beg your pardon. I, too, have suffered, and I didn't go to you to air my troubles in your home, guessing that you would be inexorable. So, what do you want from me, now? Me, I'll not marry anyone, since I detest mystifications, and it seems to me simpler to declare that to you right away."

  "Two betrayals . . . that's a lot for just one man who is still a child!" uttered Madame Donalger mockingly, with the ease of a society woman practicing the boldness of language mitigated by the accent.

  "Two betrayals? You dumbfound me, dear madam."

  "Well, we must clarify these questions and as the daylight of your fifth floor lends itself to it, we're going to throw them one after the other out onto your carpet."

  She gave a heroic smile.

  "Where they'll turn black from dust, I'm afraid," murmured the irascible Leon. "They forgot to sweep my rooms, this morning."

  Ah! He had had a beautiful inspiration to lure her into what he thought to be an amorous trap.

  He could have hit himself and would willingly have hit her.

  "Missie," explained Eliante, "has taken to you not to juggle with, but to marry. It's very serious. She's even talking about cohabitation, a system of which these ladies recognize the usefulness, between the founding of two public nurseries. And since she claims that ... I am pushing you away ... I came to ask you if she really has any claims on . . . your affection, why you have forgotten the way to get to our house. We haven't run into you anywhere for a month now."

  Leon went straight to the point.

  "You admit then, madam, that someone juggled ..."

  "Yes, you with Missie."

  "What? Me! That's too much! Madam, I have patience . . . but ..."

  He walked around his room rapidly and came and planted himself in front of the window panes, and drummed.

  "Leon," declared Madame Donalger, dryly, serenely, "you told Missie that people don't marry forty-year-old women, but girls who resemble her, and she got permission to believe in a declaration. Your absence, involuntary or premeditated, added to the pain. From her head, it went down into her heart. That happens so fast in modern women! I, her adoptive mother, I don't intend to see her suffer uselessly. The first time she be-believed in love, she didn't love. Today, it's different. I authorized her to write to you since she felt strengthened by your

  permission*. She refused, she is . . . young and didn't dare, I think."

  Leon had turned round gradually. At the last words, he leaped toward Eliante, stopped, his face convulsed.

  "She lied, lied, lied," he cried, beside himself, losing all restraint, "yes, lied shamelessly, like the most shameless errand girl, you hear me! It's she who invented the story about forty-year-olds , it's she who tortured me horribly with her chambermaid's tales! And that, that's what you want me to marry? Are you mad, or do you want me to throw you out, all woman of the best society that you are? Do you think I don't suffer enough?"

  And he too, because he was very young, scalding tears rose from his heart to his eyes.

  Madame Donalger got up from her armchair, appearing paler than the palest ivory, and her pupils became phosphorescent.

  "Would she have lied . . . that much?" she said musing aloud.

  "Oh! Eliante," said Leon, sobbing into his closed fists and going to throw himself on his bed. "Oh! Eliante, what did you come here for, my God! It's true then, that you are forty? I love you so much, I do, in spite of everything."

  The actress, or the woman, understood that she had played her part too well to cure him or cure herself, and that this time she had lost the game.

  The age of a creature like Eliante was of little importance, in reality, but what was to count eternally, were the appearances it pleased her to assume.

  She remained immobile, upright, solemn, without a movement of love. Not a muscle of her severe physiognomy moved, and her eyes were extinguished.

  She was experienced, she knew that in the costume of that role she could do nothing either for him or for herself, that she would be ridiculous. And it was perhaps the most beautiful

  sacrifice that she offered the young man, this affected indifference, for Leon's despair could change into revolt and bring irreparable mockery.

  What she wanted, above all, was to flee.

  "Leon," she murmured gently, when he had calmed down a little, "Leon, my dear child, I really regret taking this step. Missies wrongs are not serious. In a word, she has been jealous, and she has exaggerated. The memory which caresses an already distant phrase makes it sometimes more sonorous. Don't take a dislike to her. She is soured. Think of what she owes me. It's always so bitter to be in a state of dependence. . . . Don't come back . . . moreover, you're cured, that's the essential thing."

  She headed for the door.

  Leon Reille raised himself a little to see her leave.

  "That's all," he stammered, "it's over already? You're leaving me on that note . . . and you believe in my cure, Madame Eliante?"

  "Before answering you, sir, I must see Marie again, I must collect myself, I'm overwhelmed, because I feel myself in the presence of hatred."

  "Not on my part, at least, surely?" he stammered, making himself very gentle, like a little boy who expects someone to wipe his face with a perfumed handkerchief.

  She did not turn her head.

  She felt a terrible desire to shout at him:

  "Of course not, I can't give you the answer, I'm forty years old!"

  And she thought:

  "What's the use of denying it, since I look it, and moreover I will be in five years ... a small thing for my love which dreams of eternity."

  She died a little crossing the threshold of his door, but she took this formidable step courageously.

  "Eliante!" cried Leon, hurrying after her.

  She was already on the third floor when he leaned over the bannister.

  He watched her descend, unable to guess the real reason for her fearful flight.

  "She doesn't love me," he said going back in. "She's a businesswoman, who wants to marry her niece!"

  He contemplated very painfully the extravagant little bonnet with silver bells, the cotillion accessory, which decorated the mirror over the fireplace.

  "That's all I'll have left of her . . . and I still didn't get her to dance, take advantage of a waltz . . . like a man of the world."

  His eyes fell, dejected.

  They noticed, curled up in the corner of the fireplace, like a shivery little animal rolled into a ball, a black muff lined with white satin.

  He let out a cry, the cry of an urchin who discovers a new toy.

  She had forgotten her muff.

  He sat down and brought it up onto his knees cautiously.

  "Ah! my fellow! I've got you! It's clear it won't be to keep you here! In fact . . . she's going to come back ..." (He rushed to the window and opened it.) "No . . . she's really left. The carriage, down there, is the coupe I know only too well! It's strange, she forgot something of the decor, in her life! . . . She loves me perhaps a little. . . . Just enough to make a muff for her pretty hands, a tiny corner of warmth. That damned statue of a lover! How stupid I was to cry in front of her. That won't happen to me a second time. . . . Without counting that she's going to go and tell it to that other goose, the educated errand-girll If ever I meet her in a bedroom, that one, I. . . . Well, one thing's for sure, tomorrow, even though it's not her day, I'm returning the muff."

  fliante Donalger, meanwhile, was hurrying her driver:

  "Faster, faster! I'm ill, Jean!"

  She had, indeed, totally forgotten her muff, and yet it was because of that detail that the great passionate juggler had, at the moment of decisive choice, to abandon the present game in order to play the eternal one, by elevating her art to an apot
heosis!

  Eliante returned home via the garden of her house. She did not intend to encounter her niece, for she was suffering too much, and her niece would not have recognized her in the outfit of a devoted little widow returning from church.

  She shut herself in her room, undressed, put on one of her favorite dresses again, a drapery of white velvet ruched with reddish lace. The dress of the Christmas engagement! She passed the voluptuousness of swan powder puffs over her face ravaged by sorrow and made herself beautiful once again with a new hope; but she was wounded in the chest, feeling her blood leaving her heart, which was beating fit to choke her.

  When she had dreamed for an hour, her eyes closed, on a lounge chair, Eliante got up and rang.

  "Have Mademoiselle Marie come down," she said to the maid who peeked through the doors.

  Missie found, upon descending to her room, a calm woman, almost smiling.

  "My dear girl, you exaggerated, and you put me, you put us, in a very false position both of us. I have just seen your fiance. He protests."

  Missie was rather pale, in an elegant outfit, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.

  She began to cry, because everyone was crying, that day, except the main interested party.

  She furiously bit her little handkerchief, not answering.

  "Yes, I went to pay an ill-timed visit to this young man," said Eliante in a light tone, "my thirty-five years permit it, I think, and, if I'm not yet forty, I was able to figure out that

  I've acquired that age, in the space of a day. That, really, quite sufficed to cure me of the boredom of ever being that age in front of your lovers."

  "And what did you say to him?"

  "But, the truth. I always tell the truth, even when juggling for little children who are sometimes men! I don't believe in hatred. I feel myself capable of intelligent cruelty, I don't know stupid or petty malice; so I walk calmly on dagger blades, it's my job. You called me a circus tumbler, one day, because I knew how to dance a Spanish step according to the sacred rituals, today you declare I'm forty, and you add things that someone had the delicacy not to repeat to me fortunately. I had to discover the crime. And what is more serious for you, for me, this young man doesn't love you, Missie. He may never love you."

  Missie was standing, perplexed. The school teacher, strong with her liberated girl's new knowledge, sought an exposition of theories where the famous struggle for existence could get the upper hand again. It was the errand girl who triumphed. She remembered only the handsome young man whose discreet looks had conquered her. She forgot all philosophy, all spirit of revolt against the law of the strongest and, spontaneously repentant, she threw herself at the feet of Madame Donalger, sobbing for real.

  "Oh! Eliante, forgive me," she cried in a broken tone, "forgive me! I didn't know the harm I was doing! / thought he loved you or that you loved him So, I went mad with jealousy, and, with the help of the champagne, I said ridiculous things. No, Leon Reille had not promised to marry me, he told me, simply, that, if he pleased me, he considered that an honor. Me, well, I thought he preferred me or that he was courting me. He really did squeeze my arm very tight, and he smiled at me as he bent over my ear to tell me that white suited me better than other girls, because I had a warm complexion. In

  a word, since he left us, I see him all the time: his eyes, his mouth, his way of laughing, a little inside himself, and that gteat air of teserve he has, I thought: He is poot, too bad! We'll wotk, and you're so good, you would have given me a dowry just the same! Ah! don't tell me again, will you, that he's not coming back? The other one, I couldn't care less. But this one, he's stealing my heart."

  "He's stealing her heart. . . . And my love? What are they doing to it both of them? Ah! he squeezed her arm hard! She's not lying any more now!" mused Eliante, her beautiful eyes staring at the ceiling of her room whence there fell on her a veil of shadows.

  She smiled.

  "Little one," she said in a dull voice, "I forgive you in the name of passion. You are suffering. Let's not talk about it any more. All is not yet lost. If he comes back this week, we'll try to repair our mistakes. If he hasn't come back by tomorrow, the god of love will judge between us! I myself shall go and fetch him."

  The black Eros seemed to flash his emerald pupils at her.

  Eliante took the young woman by the waist and kissed her.

  "Oh! aunt," stammered Marie, almost pretty in a grand gesture of hope, "if you really wanted it, he'd come back . . . he'd come back, // only for you, and since, all the same, you cannot marry him, he'd end up marrying me, because I love him enough to try to correct my shortcomings."

  "And if he forgot ... to come back," questioned Eliante, whose beautiful impassive mask did not flinch.

  "Then, we would leave France both of us, we'd go to those warm countries you miss, seek out the poor Ninaude to whom you were so attached, and whom my uncle sent back to Martinique to die."

  "You have only today understood then that I was deeply

  saddened by the departure of Ninaude, who wanted to die in my house, and whom you treated roughly because she was feeble?"

  "Yes," breathed Marie, "I see now that, my Uncle Don-alger and I, we must hurt you very often, for . . . we aren't your family. Ninaude, dirty and superstitious, was nevertheless much closer to you than me, Eliante; she loved you without disputing you, without seeking to understand you. Either one has to become your equal, or one must remain your slave. That makes people detest you ... or love you too much."

  Eliante, still impassive, closed her eyes.

  Love, everywhere love! and she, the great actress, or the great victim of her own juggling, perhaps still did not know exactly what it was, humanly speaking. Vibrant and above the earth like a flaming torch consuming itself, she kept it all and yet dreamed of giving it all. She had the real knowledge, she had learned, to her cost, that love can spring from the source of the worst moral or physical pain, and she had wanted to drag through the mire the one who would become the elect! Why? With what right? For that obscure idea that it would not last} She had just taken the great desperate step, she had cried all her tears, during cruel nights in her mysterious bed, her bed of pleasure. She was made only to preach in the middle of the deserted temple, and tomorrow, if she became his mistress, she would be like the others, a very humble little errand girl trotting behind the triumphant master, and in exchange for her divine pride, she would not even bring happiness. She had the naivete of Ninaude because she was from a land of dreams. She crossed herself gravely:

  "It's my fault, it's my very great fault!" she thought, while Missie got up, sighing:

  "Poor Ninaude! She really was dirty, all the same."

  The next day, Leon Reille presented himself at Madame Donalger's. On the off chance, hoping to find her even though it was not her day, he had placed some tuberoses inside the

  muff, which he carried like a little cat, by its skin, with an awkward air, the ait of someone who would very much like to throw an animal in the river.

  Eliante was alone opposite the deaf diplomat, making him a complicated drink, one of those nun's recipes of which she possessed the secret. She was wearing, that day, a light-colored dress, an ample robe of floating mauve crepe, attached at the neck by an enormous amethyst. And she was beautiful with the beauty of a young wife who awaits the return of the husband.

  The two men greeted each other ceremoniously.

  "Oh! thank you, sir," said Eliante, frankly and simply moved, "I'm so happy to have forgotten it!"

  "Perhaps I was wrong to come, madam? Isn't your brother-in-law going to imagine things . . . about the muff?" he added in a low voice.

  "That's of no importance!" (She tapped her forehead gaily.) "The thing is there's a small formality to be taken care of. You're going to have to ask for someone in marriage ..."

  He was not listening to her at all, contemplating her silently, quite happy, he was, to rediscover her his Eliante of love.

  "God!" he said fin
ally, "you're beautiful today. It's beyond belief! But what shall I say about the muff . . . the one belonging to the forty-year-old woman?"

  And he winked, half dazzled, half mocking.

  "Uncle," cried Eliante at the top of her singing voice, "the gentleman, whom I went to see yesterday about you know what, is bringing me back my muff, and is coming to ask you, no doubt, permission to . . . come courting, for, after all, you are the head of the family."

  Leon came out of his ecstasy, frowned.

  "Eh? What is this new drawing-room juggling?"

  "She naturally has told the same stories to her dear uncle," murmured Eliante, lowering her voice and shrugging

  her shoulders imperceptibly. "What do you expect, Leon, I can't do anything about it . . . we re the victims of fate . . . and since he's formalistic, he's capable of calling on you ... to decide. Missie is out cycling. . . . When she returns ... it will be necessary . . . unless she comes back with the whole gang, as usual!"

  Leon Reille was a reserved man, a violent man, little used to worldly hypocrisy. He turned to the old man, who was drinking his aromatic drink while smoothing his side whiskers to give himself a dignified appearance and seeking to grasp some very diplomatic nuances.

  "Monsieur Donalger," said Leon point-blank, "I'm here to pay court to Madame Eliante, and I hope that you will see no objection to it? She is free!"

  Eliante burst out laughing. She would have watched the house blow up without displeasure that day. She felt free because she felt beautiful.

  In front of a mirror, she slid the tuberoses into the helmet of her black hair, as a warrior's crest. Ah! it would be audacious, but it would be fair, since he loved her enough for that.

  The dear uncle tugged his whiskers majestically, caressed his glass, his face anxious, following his fixed idea.

  He replied, weighing his words, having heard nothing:

  "Young man ... I find you a bit . . . of a newcomer to our house, and, although your request honors me infinitely, I want to think about it. You are twenty-three years old, I believe, our little Marie is in no hurry on her side. On the other hand, I don't know your situation, but since you please my sister-in-law, I must admit to you that . . . you have a chance. . . . There remains the request of your family. I'm waiting for it. . . . Which Eliante will decide in the last resort. . . . We shall be sorry to be separated from Marie . . . as late as possible ..."