'You still love him, do you?'
'I – am fond of him, more than that, I admire him with all my heart.'
'But the child? Was the child too a snare and a delusion?'
'No. It was the one tie which bound us together irrevocably. Perhaps, after all, it is better so, for him at any rate. For me, it complicates matters considerably… Prince Sant'Anna—' Marianne broke off suddenly and said impatiently: 'But if you have been coming here every day, you must have seen Arcadius?'
'Of course.'
'Then do not tell me he has told you nothing? Surely he has told you all about my marriage.'
'Yes, he has,' Jason agreed placidly, 'but I wished to hear it from your own lips. The first thing he told me was that there was a letter waiting for me with Patterson in Nantes – where I did not put in because I was being chased by an English privateer and was obliged to run to avoid a fight.'
'You! Avoid a fight?'
'The United States are not at war with England. But I'm sorry now I didn't go about and sink that Englishman and then put in to Nantes. It would have made a world of difference. I'm regretting my law-abiding impulse more than you can think.'
He turned and, like Fortunée a little while before, walked slowly over to the window. His broad shoulders and clear-cut profile were etched against the green, leafy garden outside. Marianne held her breath, overwhelmed by a delicious anguish at the real anger she now heard in his voice.
'You are sorry you did not receive the letter? Does – does that mean you would have done what I asked of you?'
In three steps he was at her side, on his knees by her bed, her two hands locked fast in his.
'And you?' he asked eagerly. 'Would you have honoured your pledge to me? Would you have gone with me? Left everything? You would really have become my wife, meaning it, with no regrets?'
Marianne gazed wonderingly into his eyes, searching for confirmation of the truth of what she already knew yet scarcely dared to believe.
'With no regrets, Jason. With a happiness I have only been fully aware of myself for a little while. You will never know how I waited for you… to the last moment, Jason, to the very last moment. And when it was too late—'
'Stop!'
His face was buried in the white sheets and Marianne felt his lips warm on her hand. Gently, half-tremblingly, she laid her free hand on the mariner's thick, black hair, lightly caressing the unruly curls and happy in this sudden display of weakness in him, the iron man, happier still in the knowledge that his confusion was as great as her own.
'You see now,' she said softly, 'why it was I wished to die the other night. When I saw you with—Oh, Jason! Jason! Why did you marry?'
As abruptly as he had come to her, he rose and tore himself away, not looking at her.
'I believed that I had lost you for ever,' he said grimly. 'There is no opposing Napoleon, least of all when he loves. And I knew that he did love you. As for Pilar… she needed my help. Her life was in danger. Her father, Don Agostino, made no secret of his American sympathies. When he died, some weeks ago, the Spanish governor of Fernandina immediately turned on Pilar who was his sole heiress. He sequestrated her lands and she was on the point of being thrown into prison with little hope of release. The one way to save her and to keep her safe was to make her an American citizen. I married her.'
'Was it necessary for you to go to such lengths? Surely you could have taken her to your own country and established her respectably there, under your eye?'
Jason shrugged. 'She is a Spaniard. Things would have been rather more awkward than that. And I owed a great deal to her father. When my own parents died, Don Agostino was the one person who came to my assistance. I have known Pilar all her life.'
'And, naturally, she has loved you all her life?'
'I think so… yes.'
Marianne was silent. Dazzled by the revelation of her own love, she was only just beginning to discover that she knew hardly anything of Jason Beaufort's life before that autumn afternoon when he had walked into the drawing-room at Selton Hall. He had lived so many years without her, unaware of her very existence! Until that moment, she had thought of Jason only in relation to herself, to the part he played in her own life but before that, away in that distant, vast and, to Marianne, mysterious and vaguely frightening country of his, he had formed other ties of his own and beaten out a path for himself. His memory was full of scenes in which she, Marianne, had never figured, of faces she had never seen yet which aroused in Jason feelings that might vary from hatred to love. That world, or some of it, was Pilar's also. To her, it was familiar, she was at home there and their common experience must have woven between her and Jason one of those bonds which, derived from the same tastes and the same memories, often proved stronger and more enduring than the flamboyant chains of passion. All these thoughts were in Marianne's mind as she said in a small, unhappy voice: 'I love you, yet I do not know you at all.'
'I feel as if I had known you always,' he answered quickly, devouring her with haggard eyes. 'But what is the use? We let go the moment when fate decreed our paths should cross. Now it is too late.'
'Why should it be too late?' Rebellion jerked Marianne out of her natural reserve. 'You do not love this Pilar. You said so.'
'No more than you love the man whose name you have taken, but the fact remains: you bear his name, just as Pilar bears mine. I am no moralist, God knows, and I must be the last person on earth to preach morality to you, but, Marianne, we have no choice. We cannot abandon those who have trusted us. We have no right to make them suffer.'
'I see,' Marianne said. 'She is jealous…'
'She is a Spaniard. She knows I am not in love with her but she does expect respect, some affection, that I will preserve at least the outward appearance of a contented, if not a loving marriage.'
There was silence again, a silence occupied by Marianne in examining what Jason had just said. Her joy of a moment before evaporated before harsh reality. An adventurer Jason might be, equal to any risks, bold enough for anything, but one thing he would not do, and Marianne knew it: he would never deal dishonestly with himself, and he would expect the woman he loved to show the same strength. There was no arguing with such determination. Marianne sighed:
'I see. Then you have come to say good-bye. I suppose you are leaving. Your wife did not appear to care for it here.'
A glint of laughter shone briefly in the American's eyes. 'She finds the women too pretty and too bold. She trusts me, naturally, but when I am not with her, she would rather have me at sea than in a salon. We remain for another fortnight. A friend of my father's, Baguenault, the banker, has offered us the use of a place at Passy – a charming house in the rue de Seine set in extensive grounds. It belonged once to a friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Pilar is happy enough there so long as she need not go out and I still have some business to settle. Then we return to America. My ship is waiting at Morlaix…'
His tone had resumed its ordinary, conversational level and Marianne, sinking back in her lacy nest, gave a small, regretful sigh. The passionate outburst of a moment ago had been suppressed by the iron force of Jason's will, most probably never to be reborn. That will divided them as surely as all the width of the vast ocean which would soon lie between them. The vessel which had sometimes haunted her dreams would sail with another woman on board. Something was coming to an end before it had even begun and Marianne knew suddenly that she could not long hold back her tears. She closed her eyes for an instant and gritted her teeth, then she took a deep breath and said at last: 'Well then… let us say good-bye now, Jason. I wish you… every happiness.'
He had risen but still stood, staring fixedly at the floor, without looking at her.
'I do not ask for that,' he said, more harshly than perhaps he meant. 'Wish me peace of mind, that will do very well. And for you—'
'No. For pity's sake wish me nothing.'
He turned and walked to the door. Marianne's eyes followed his tall figure helplessly
. He was going, going out of her life, back to the world of Pilar, when the sum of their common memories was still so slight. She was seized by a kind of panic and as he laid his hand on the door handle was powerless to stop herself crying out:
'Jason!'
Slowly, very slowly, the blue eyes came back to her, filled with such weariness that Marianne was deeply shaken. At that moment, Jason seemed to have grown much older.
'Yes?' he said in a controlled voice.
'Won't you – we shall not meet again – won't you kiss me before you go?'
She thought he would have sprung towards her. The impulse was written so clearly, almost palpably on his face. But he controlled himself with an effort which whitened the knuckles of the brown hand still holding the ivory door knob and brought a sudden flash of anger into his eyes.
'Can't you understand?' he said, through clenched teeth. 'What do you think would happen at this moment if I were to lay so much as a finger on you? In another moment, we should be lovers and how could I tear myself away from you then? Before I left this room, I should have lost all respect for myself – and for you, too, perhaps. I should have become your slave… and for that I should not forgive you.'
Marianne had raised herself to hold out her hands to him, but now she sank back, defeated, on her pillows:
'Go, then… Go, quickly! Because I am going to cry and I would not have you see my tears.'
She looked so piteous, so defenceless, that even as she begged him to go Jason turned and, with the irrationality of love, would have gone back to her.
'Marianne—'
'No! If you have any love for me at all, please go! Can't you see that I can't bear any more? I was stupid, I see that now. I should have realized sooner, I should have understood my own feelings, but since it is all lost now, irrecoverably, it is best to end it quickly. Go back to your wife, since you believe you must be faithful to her, and leave me alone…'
And as Jason still hesitated at the door, torn by the misery and anger in her voice, she cried fiercely: 'Go away! What are you waiting for? Do you want me to make a complete fool of myself?'
He did go then, without pausing even to close the door behind him. Marianne heard his boots clatter on the stairs, then die away, and, with a gasp of misery, she closed her eyes and let the tears she had been holding back so desperately, stream down her face. Yet even in her wretchedness she was conscious of a feeling of absurdity which shocked and frightened her a little. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit that the elevated moral plane on which Jason appeared to exist seemed to her rather too high. For herself, she would have felt neither shame nor remorse in giving herself to him. Surely, it was absurd to be saying eternal farewells at the very moment they had realized their love for one another? That was how Fortunée would look at it, certainly. To one with her compliant moral code and declared belief in the precept of 'all for love', such a scene as had just taken place between Marianne and Jason would appear the height of the ridiculous. Goodness, how she would laugh, and what mockery she would heap on Marianne! And Marianne could not find it in her heart to blame her. It was this which frightened her, her own instinctive, shameful wish that Jason had united them in body as they were already in their hearts, that he had not chosen flight, however glorious and however much in keeping with his Huguenot blood and American upbringing, in preference to the joys beyond all price two lovers find in each other's arms. Had she, all unknowing, so far adopted Fortunée's outlook on life? Or was she, Marianne, one of those women, so infinitely less complex than she had ever realized, for whom to love a man and to belong to him was one and the same, utterly simple and natural thing?
No doubt it was highly complimentary to be placed on a pedestal in the most secret corner of a man's heart in the enviable position of an untouchable divinity, but Marianne thought she would have preferred rather less worship and more passion. Remembering her abortive wedding night, she told herself that Jason had changed a great deal. At Selton, he had been perfectly willing to make love to a young woman who had been married only hours before, even to take her husband's place in the bridal chamber. What had brought about this extraordinary access of puritanism? It was certainly ill-timed, to say the least. Supposing, as Napoleon was in the habit of claiming, that love's greatest triumph lay in flight, then Jason had indubitably won all along the line but Marianne could have wished that this model victory had not left her with such a dismal feeling of defeat. She found herself wondering if he had fled in order to sublimate his love – or prompted by the instinctive longing of every married man for peace and quiet at home, safe alike from passion and domestic strife. That Pilar was evidently as jealous as a cat and rather than cross her Jason seemed prepared to abandon, like an unwanted parcel, the woman he claimed to adore. And she, Marianne, had accepted it! She had even, for an instant, admired him for his lofty sentiments! She had even allowed him to reject her innocently offered kiss with as much evidence of loathing as if it had been the most insidious of love potions! What did he expect her to do now? Sink back into her pillows and wait for death to earn her a place among the legendary heroines who died for love and a less lasting memorial, like the faint scent of faded flowers, in Jason's own memory? Oh no, it would be too stupid, too—
At this point in her reflections, she was prevented from lashing herself into a further fury by the lighthearted entrance of Madame Hamelin. The Creole smiled coaxingly: 'Well? Happy?'
It was not the most felicitous of words. Marianne scowled: 'No. He loves me too much to deceive his wife! So we said goodbye for ever!'
There was a moment's astonished silence, then Fortunée reacted precisely as Marianne had foreseen she would. She let out a hysterical wail of laughter and collapsed heavily on to a small sofa which groaned under the shock. She went on laughing so helplessly and for so long that in the end Marianne began to feel that she was rather overdoing things.
'You think it's funny?' she said in an aggrieved voice. 'Oh! Oh, my goodness, yes!… Oh, dear!… It's priceless!… And perfectly ridiculous!'
'Ridiculous?'
'Yes, indeed. Quite ridiculous!' Fortunée's hilarity gave way abruptly to the most earnest indignation. 'It's more than ridiculous. It's farcical, grotesque! What are you made of, the two of you? Here is a splendid, charming, fascinating man (and I am allowed to be a judge!) for whom, by all accounts, you represent the One and Only Woman with a capital W, and who longs for you all the more fiercely because he can't bring himself to speak… And here are you, head over ears in love with him – for you do love him, don't you?'
'I have only just found it out,' Marianne confessed, 'but it is true. I do love him – more than anything in the world!'
'I could have sworn you did, though it has taken you long enough to discover it! Very well, you love him… and all the pair of you can find to do about it is to say – what was your absurd phrase? – Good-bye for Ever! Wasn't that it?'
That was it.'
Well, the answer's fairly obvious. Either you aren't so passionately in love as you like to think, or neither of you deserves to live!'
'He has a wife… and I have a husband!'
'Well, as to that, so have I a husband. Not much of a one, it's true, but I have. Somewhere, there is a Hamelin, just as somewhere there is a Prince Sant'Anna. But if you—'
'Fortunée, you don't understand. It's not the same thing at all.'
'And why isn't it the same thing?' Fortunée inquired, with deceptive sweetness. 'You think, don't you, that because when I want a man I take him, without any question, I must be a lightskirt, a loose woman? Well, I don't deceive myself and I'm not ashamed of it.' Her expression grew suddenly grave. 'You see, Marianne, youth is a great gift, too wonderful and too short for us to waste it. Love, too, the real, true love that everyone hopes for and yet no one dares to believe in, a love like that is worth something more than just sitting on opposite sides of the ocean dreaming regretfully of what might have been. When we are old, it will be better, believe
me, to have memories to live on rather than regrets. And don't tell me you don't agree with me,' Fortunée concluded briskly. 'Your regrets are written all over your face!'
'You're quite right,' Marianne acknowledged honestly. 'Just now, I asked him to kiss me before he went. He would not, because… because he believed he could not control himself if he touched me. And it's true, I did regret it, and I still do because in my heart I don't care in the least about Pilar or Sant'Anna. It's him I love and him I want. No one else… not even the Emperor. And yet… in a fortnight, Jason will be gone. He will have left France with his wife, perhaps for ever.'
'If you go about it the right way, he may still leave but he'll be back… and fast! As soon as he's taken his lady wife home, I daresay.'
Marianne shook her head dubiously:
'Jason is not like that. He is sterner, more unbending than I ever thought. And—'
'Love moves mountains, and can turn the wisest heads.'
'What can I do?'
'Get up, for a start!'
Fortunée put out her hand and gave the bell an energetic tug. When Agathe appeared in answer to the summons, she demanded to know if everything was ready. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, she gave the order to 'bring it up immediately'. Then she turned back to Marianne.
'First,' she said firmly, 'you have to get back your strength. And downstairs is just the very thing for you. Talleyrand has seen to that, bless him!'
Before Marianne could open her mouth to ask any questions, a strange procession entered the room. It was led by Agathe, who flung wide the double doors. She was followed by Jeremy, the butler, looking every bit as gloomy as if he were presiding at a funeral, although he was succeeded by nothing more alarming than a pair of footmen bearing between them a large silver tray surmounted by a formidable array of pots, jars and cups, after whom came a third footman carrying a small, portable stove. After these again, came two under cooks upholding with a more than religious reverence a small, silver-gilt saucepan which was apparently extremely hot. Finally, bringing up the rear with all the majestic gravity of a priest approaching the altar to perform a more than usually sacred rite, appeared the celebrated Antonin Carême, the Prince of Benevento's own cook, and the genius whose services half Europe, including the Emperor, envied him.
[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer Page 6