And having got out of it with his honor, the old diplomat
beat a clever retreat. He took his glass, gave a little nod of benevolence.
"Come! Come! I shall leave you, you must have serious business to settle together. I long ago gave full power to Madame Donalger in matters concerning her niece."
When he had left, Leon, completely suffocated, raised his arms.
"The devil take it if I grasped what he meant, the old fool!"
Eliante was bursting with laughter. The Creole, with a supple movement, threw herself onto the drawing-room carpet, where she leapt like a panther in gaiety. l
"Ah! it's so funny! Drama yesterday, vaudeville today! I knew, really I did, that one doesn't die of love nor of jealousy, on the contrary, one could be happy if one wanted to become simple, and it would be so good after having suffered. Leon, I can't help it, I'm bursting!"
"Would you like me to help you!" murmured Leon, vexed. "Only I don't understand, and this misunderstanding must not continue." (He added, his eyes troubled:) "I see only one way left." (He looked at her sitting at his feet, in the mauve flood of her dress, quite small, her knees folded against her chest, her arms crossed around her knees, her hands clasped and something terrifying in the depths of her pupils, something green, sparkling like the rays flashed by the black Eros in her bedroom.)
"Madame Eliante," he said, leaning over her shoulders, "it wouldn't be fair, neither for you nor her and, since someone must do something silly . . . it's normal it should be me. . . . What is your name . . . Madame Donalger . . . your . . . maiden name!"
Eliante stood up, more serious.
"Come here," she said, taking his wrists, and she led him to a piece of furniture, a large cupboard of red wood, at the
other end of the drawing-room, "you, you want to see my birth certificate?"
"Yes," said Leon Reille brutally, "I want to know who you are, Madam Juggler? Well, husbands or lovers, that doesn't count for a lawyer . . . it's the maiden name which is always the real one." 2
"Oh!" she sighed, "you men are cowards . . . you have no faith . . . the great faith which saves and moves mountains! You aren't concerned about knowing my real name . . . it's my age you want to verify legally."
Leon felt a chill in his heart.
She had guessed. He wanted equally some details about this mysterious woman who seemed to come to him from further away than . . . solid ground.
"So much the worse for you, Madam Juggler! You only had to not juggle to the bitter end, I want to kill the woman of yesterday so that she never returns."
"She will return in five years, Leon!"
"Five years! That's eternity in love."
"You think so?" sighed Eliante, painfully surprised.
She opened the red wood cupboard, looked there for a paper which she unfolded, a paper covered with a yellowed writing, all covered with stamps and giving off a peculiar smell of vetiver and island fruit.
Madame Donalger smoothed out this paper, placed it quite flat in the middle of the pedestal table where a large spray of white lilac was blooming.
The paper seemed yellower under the snowy flowers.
She put her index finger on one line.
"Born in 1862, 3 and since we are in 1897 . . . can you count?"
Bent over, Leon read attentively.
He had in front of him the proof that she had indeed told
the truth; curiously, that gave him the same chill in his heart as if he had confirmed the formidable forty years.
Then, brusquely, he shivered:
"Eh? What? . . . Blanche-Eliante, born of a legitimate father: Charles-Edmond, Marquis de Massoubre. 4 Ah! That's all we needed."
He took a step back pensively.
"That's what I was afraid of," he growled, forcing himself to be bantering, "you are the daughter of aristocrats, and, in my opinion, there are no opportunists worse than the toffs. They seem born to torture the poor world by their always hazardous expeditions. I, the son of their former scriveners, isn't it very fitting that I should remain the prey of their daughter?" (He added, darkly:) "Madam Marquise, the bride is decidedly too beautiful . . . I'm not failing for it, have to seduce me first, without that I'll never have the courage to give you my name."
She smiled sadly:
"How silly you are, little one, if you say what you think. Whoever I love is of my race."
"Yes ... for the space of a kiss."
"Darling, that's called ... an encounter."
"Hm! for dogs!"
Standing now, one in front of the other and looking each other up and down, their ripostes were flying in spite of them, as if they had picked up too nervously two old swords on the pretext of examining the rust on them. The parchment was between them, unfolded, keeping a sullen appearance, and it remained hostile to the one and to the other.
"Well, tell me then, you, the descendent of notaries," exclaimed Eliante hitting the table with her clenched fist, she so soft and so tempting, a moment ago, "you don't intend to make me atone for my ancestors? It's not a crime to be the daughter of a marquis, and, give me this credit, I had never
mentioned it to you so as not to frighten you."
"And you acted well, madam, for I would never have set foot in your house again. Only, one could feel it! You like adventures too much and . . . the old races can only end badly."
"Churl!" cried Eliante, her pupils on fire.
"There!" said Leon Reille whose ears were burning in their turn. "It's starting! A sample of the day after our wedding!" (He crossed his arms like an irreverent student, very marquis in the manner of Voltaire, because the bourgeois from the provinces still read Voltaire.) "And I was going to ask you for her in marriage to settle things! Yes, a proud stupidity! I'm twenty-three years old, with a tender soul, no acceptable social position and ... I would marry a daughter of the de Mas-soubre? Was he in the slave trade, your papa, my beautiful friend, that you absolutely insist on buying me like a slave, one minute to set me up with an errand girl, the next to have my skin legitimately? Yes, I'm a rustic, yes, I'm ferocious, but it's your fault, I suffered yesterday for a whole lifetime in hell, you hear? Now your turn, that's the rule. We're alone here, quite alone, aren't we? You'll only have me illegitimately at first, I tell you! We'll see afterwards! Keep that to yourself, I want to stay free. Enough ridiculous compromises! If I have the misfortune to love you, it's my only cerebral illness. I'm in fine form aside from my love. You'll spoil, by your own folly, my heart and my body as much as you please. As for my honor, my beauty, you won't touch it, no!"
Eliante, her eyelids suddenly closed, resumed her ivory mask.
"My dear child," she murmured, "we're exchanging big useless words. I want neither to marry you nor to treat you . . . as a slave, my entire conduct is there to prove it to you. I have no more need of you than you of me. I also love you, you seem to have forgotten it, but . . . maternally." (She gave a
heroic smile.) "I meant: as a . . . noble mother, like yesterday! And really, if I had belonged to you a bit longer than the space of an engagement kiss, I think you would already be dead, I'm so . . . surprised by your upbringing. I think I hear Missie."
"... Already dead? That's a good joke! Another big word. So send me Monsieur Donalger's demands. With a pistol, one must be able to fight a deaf man, eh?"
Eliante replied gently.
"No need for my brother-in-law, my servants would be enough. They love me without question."
"You see," bellowed Leon Reille, getting completely carried away and throwing himself on her in a mad leap, "you put me on the level of your servants? Eliante, you're nothing but a . . . wretched woman!"
"You said it, sir."
There was a big silence.
Mademoiselle Marie Chamerot entered dressed in an ideal cycling outfit for the modern fiancee. Warned by her dear uncle that the handsome young man was there, she had proceeded to a toilette more befitting the occasion, that is to say that she had added primrose flowers to
her bodice, in memory of the famous ball. She was wearing loose pants in white English wool, a white bolero over a white satin blouse cinched at the waist by a belt of white leather with a mother-of-pearl buckle, and on her disheveled head coquettishly, on the left, a jaunty little white felt hat decorated with a silk cord.
She walked like a baker's boy bringing the basket, the good basket filled with cakes for the rowdy children.
Leon, red with anger, turned to her and got this bowl of milk full in the face.
He was showered, fortunately, at the moment he was going mad.
"Mademoiselle!" he said, bowing very low, a little confused by his disordered gestures with regard to Eliante.
"Sir!" said Marie Chamerot, terrorized by the idea that her aunt could humiliate her in front of him.
And she modestly contemplated her bicycling shoes, shoes too large, of white skin.
Was her fate finally going to be decided?
The daughter of the Marquis de Massoubre took her hands affectionately.
"You're charming, Marie, ever since you became a bit more womanly! Don't torment yourself about the future. If the gentleman isn't yet your official fiance ... he has received permission to court . . . he'll do it, he's a gallant man I can answer for, since ... he owes it to me to merit my confidence. Don't offend each other with useless proposals, and when love comes to you, the great love which is always very noble, don't scare it away with speeches; love seldom likes phrases. Don't hesitate to take advantage of your beautiful youth; me, I'm for the crossing of new races . . . happiness . . . that never waits."
Eliante was smiling, perfectly calm.
Missie burst out sobbing, since a great joy always overflows in tears. Leon, in despair, startled, watched her cry. He would have preferred a duel.
"Oh! aunt, my good dear aunt? . . . You really want me to marry him?"
"Actresses don't come any better!" growled Leon between his enraged teeth.
Eliante removes the last branch of tuberoses remaining in her hair.
"Here, my little girl, the flowers of illusion, try to keep them a bit longer than I did and don't forget that love goes before pride in real women." (She turned to Leon.) "Aren't I pretty as a noble mother? . . . Goodbye, sir."
And she ran away, for she was suffocating.
The young people contemplated each other, sadly embarrassed.
"Mademoiselle," began Leon hoarsely, "I have just offended your aunt, and she's right to punish me; however, the punishment must not affect you, you're beyond, this time, all these worldly complications. Go and find Madame Donalger quickly, I beg you, calm her down! and let's try to explain ourselves better the three of us. I've never thought to ask either for her hand or yours. I wouldn't dare. All that, it's a never-ending comedy! Go and find her, I beg you."
"I understand fully, sir! You still love her?"
She maintained a soft, resigned little expression. She let out a deep sigh, examined once again her cycling shoes.
"I'll wait . . . since I'm smitten, too."
Leon could not help laughing, while she dabbed her tears with a naive gesture.
"Come on, Missie," he said very quietly, "you're exaggerating, and everyone exaggerates in this house. Marie, you do me a harm, no an honor that I don't deserve! Think, I can't marry you, I've already told you that I possess neither fortune nor position. It would be necessary at least to wait until my parents ..."
"We'll wait!" sighed Marie, whose pride was not her main shortcoming.
And they both sat down at opposite ends of a couch, putting their chins on their palms. Then, mechanically, seeing that Eliante was not coming back, they each lit a cigarette:
"Would you care for a light?" asked Leon politely.
"Willingly!" replied Marie.
. . . Because, in students or in errand girls, bad habits are above all circumstances.
M
Y beloved,
"The love letter which must fall into the water, it is one of my manias, you see, and I'm writing to you because women write at certain turning points in their existence like they cry, without knowing why. Besides, I never cry in front of someone, and when I write . . . it is in order to be alone!
"You are very kind both of you to have insisted, the other day. While you were knocking on my door, I was in the process of picking up the pieces of my black Eros, the little marble statue which collapsed in my room—perhaps I must have pushed it without noticing—and it smashed.
"Faithful to my philosophy of fatalistic Creole who knows that a statue, or a slave, can be found again, I threw the remains of it to one side, and I am trying to not think about it any more.
"But I am thinking about you, I am thinking about you. l Good Lord, how late it was when you came to my door! What on earth were you doing?
"... Yes, you came very late to my house, my poor empty house, sir and dear lover! Just think that I had been
waiting since dawn, my body bent out of the window, looking hand at those who came, those who went, saying to myself with each new passerby: 'That's not him, for he doesn't have the wings of Etos, I don't know him, me, the priestess of Eros he hasn't given me the mysterious sign!' And evening came after the young men, the passersby thinned out, a bitter smell came up from the valley, right up to me, the smell of green spaces that curl up and give up their soul in the agony of the day, the dusk enveloped the hills with a veil of blue . . . violet . . . black . . . the night!
"So, as the first star came out like the eye of Eros, soft and cruel, with a moonlight which pierces, you finally arrived, walking in the direction of my house quite by chance. Whether it was the glow of the star or my fatigue with living in a house which was filling up with shadows, I thought that I had seen the envoy of Eros, the envoy of God! You were raising your head to my window and you had made the sign.
"I went downstairs like a madwoman . . . but not fast enough. Lazy and still coiled up like a snake in the warmth of the temples, I amused myself by making the pearls of my dress click and by shaking my scarf so that the noise of the jewels, the intoxicating scent of the perfumes, should let you know who I was before showing you the whiteness of my arms.
"Quite mad is the woman who amuses herself with her beauty before laying her body at the knees of her master!
"Outside, it was nighttime. I could no longer find you. You had crossed the threshold of my house, however; but, unable to see clearly, its shadow had seemed formidable to you, full of ambushes, and you had left.
"I ran ... I went madly right into the middle of the road, and I met another man, almost your brother, who said to me: 'Are you really looking for someone?' 'I'm looking for the love of my life or the life of my love,' I answered. 'I know it's necessary to wait a lot to be happy. I would never dare to
give myself to the first one I met fot fear it not be him. If I make a mistake by taking you home, would I not be obliged to kill you so that Eros should receive your blood in reparation for the injury done to his priestess! What I respect the most in myself is my god!' 'Woman,' he said laughing, 'we don't speak the same language, as for me, I don't have time to linger over these trifles which attach or exasperate with no profit for human joy!' 'But,' I added timidly, 'perhaps I'll teach you divine joy!' I saw clearly, in the way he got angry, that indeed we were not speaking the same language. I was mad. He was reasonable.
"That made two different races.
"And I returned home slowly, where I remained alone, having always been alone, despite my beauty, but much more alone now, for I felt that the envoy of Eros would no longer pass in front of my dark house.
"It was too late!
"... Come along! Do not read that seriously! I am no longer crying, am I, I am writing love letters which fall into the water. You know full well, my dear little friend? So do what you want with your life, you are free, and come and see us from time to time, girls who hope must not be left to grow sad. Marie will perhaps do like me, she will console herself.
"I no longer hold your har
d words against you. Have I not said worse things? They came out of our inner depths, and it is the voice of our fathers that spoke them, in spite of our loving lips! You wanted very sincerely to marry me, to regularize love. . . . You spoke for three minutes like a notary checking dates and ascertaining the authenticity of the titles, and I, who have never much known my family, I had the reaction of the light Marquis de Massoubre, with the heavy name, always ready, it seems, to pick a quarrel with people.
"And from that our beautiful love died. (I mean: the antique Eros.)
"I beg you to come and see us . . .
J 7 '° The Juggler
"Do not answer me anything cruel. Me, I am quite comfortable being a beggar of love . . . since I am not your mistress. So I have every right, and my father can forbid me nothing, in a loud voice, in the inner depths of my heart. I do not give a hoot about my respected father, for I too am the Marquis de Massoubre, and alone, today, I am responsible for
Eliante Donalger"
"P.S.—By the way: do not bring my letters back under pretext of . . . propriety, I have never been able to take back that which I have once given freely."
E.D.
(Telegram)
"Ah! I can breathe! I will go to see you, my Eliante. Bring your letters back? I had thought of it, but I will return them to you when you become my wife, and, I shall wait five years to marry you. I shall be the hero, not having been able to be the man, if there really is heroism in marrying on the same day all the women in love in one madwoman; we shall see who proves to be the more of a marquis If I am not noble, I am very stubborn, and stubbornness, it is the nobility of notaries, of that of doctors."
The juggler Page 15