He contested this observation, and became entangled in the dates and happenings and in the sequence of the notes. She at length lost the thread of his remarks. The situation was so ridiculous that both were silent. Then she sat down and burst out laughing.
Her strident, shrill laugh, revealing magnificent, but short and pointed teeth, in a mocking mouth, vexed him.
"She has been playing with me," he said to himself, and dissatisfied with the turn the conversation had taken, and furious at seeing this woman so calm, so different from her burning letters, he asked, in a tone of irritation, "Am I to know why you laugh?"
"Pardon me. It's a trick my nerves play on me, sometimes in public places. But never mind. Let us be reasonable and talk things over. You tell me you love me-"
"And I mean it."
"Well, admitting that I too am not indifferent, where is this going to lead us? Oh, you know so well, you poor dear, that you refused, right at first, the meeting which I asked in a moment of madness-and you gave well-thought-out reasons for refusing."
"But I refused because I did not know then that you were the women in the case! I have told you that it was several days later that Des Hermies unwittingly revealed your identity to me. Did I hesitate as soon as I knew? No! I immediately implored you to come."
"That may be, but you admit that I'm right when I claim that you wrote your first letters to another and not me."
She was pensive for a moment. Durtal began to be prodigiously bored by this discussion. He thought it more prudent not to answer, and was seeking a change of subject that would put an end to the deadlock.
She herself got him out of his difficulty. "Let us not discuss it any more," she said, smiling, "we shall not get anywhere. You see, this is the situation: I am married to a very nice man who loves me and whose only crime is that he represents the rather insipid happiness which one has right at hand. I started this correspondence with you, so I am to blame, and believe me, on his account I suffer. You have work to do, beautiful books to write. You don't need to have a crazy woman come walking into your life. So, you see, the best thing is for us to remain friends, but true friends, and go no further."
"And it is the woman who wrote me such vivid letters, who now speaks to me of reason, good sense, and God knows what!"
"But be frank, now. You don't love me."
"I don't?"
He took her hands, gently. She made no resistance, but looking at him squarely she said, "Listen. If you had loved me you would have come to see me; and yet for months you haven't tried to find out whether I was alive or dead."
"But you understand that I could not hope to be welcomed by you on the terms we now are on, and too, in your parlour there are guests, your husband-I have never had you even a little bit to myself at your home."
He pressed her hands more tightly and came closer to her. She regarded him with her smoky eyes, in which he now saw that dolent, almost dolorous expression which had captivated him. He completely lost control of himself before this voluptuous and plaintive face, but with a firm gesture she freed her hands.
"Enough. Sit down, now, and let's talk of something else. Do you know your apartment is charming? Which saint is that?" she asked, examining the picture, over the mantel, of the monk on his knees beside a cardinal's hat and cloak.
"I do not know."
"I will find out for you. I have the lives of all the saints at home. It ought to be easy to find out about a cardinal who renounced the purple to go live in a hut. Wait. I think Saint Peter Damian did, but I am not sure. I have such a poor memory. Help me think."
"But I don't know who he is!"
She came closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you angry at me?"
"I should say I am! When I desire you frantically, when I've been dreaming for a whole week about this meeting, you come here and tell me that all is over between us, that you do not love me-"
She became demure. "But if I did not love you, would I have come to you? Understand, then, that reality kills a dream; that it is better for us not to expose ourselves to fearful regrets. We are not children, you see. No! Let me go. Do not squeeze me like that!" Very pale, she struggled in his embrace. "I swear to you that I will go away and that you shall never see me again if you do not let me loose." Her voice became hard. She was almost hissing her words. He let go of her. "Sit down there behind the table. Do that for me." And tapping the floor with her heel, she said, in a tone of melancholy, "Then it is impossible to be friends, only friends, with a man. But it would be very nice to come and see you without having evil thoughts to fear, wouldn't it?" She was silent. Then she added, "Yes, just to see each other-and if we did not have any sublime things to say to each other, it is also very nice to sit and say nothing!"
Then she said, "My time is up. I must go home."
"And leave me with no hope?" he exclaimed, kissing her gloved hands.
She did not answer, but gently shook her head, then, as he looked pleadingly at her, she said, "Listen. If you will promise to make no demands on me and to be good, I will come here night after next at nine o'clock."
He promised whatever she wished. And as he raised his head from her hands and as his lips brushed lightly over her breast, which seemed to tighten, she disengaged her hands, caught his nervously, and, clenching her teeth, offered her neck to his lips. Then she fled.
"Oof!" he said, closing the door after her. He was at the same time satisfied and vexed.
Satisfied, because he found her enigmatic, changeful, charming. Now that he was alone he recalled her to memory. He remembered her tight black dress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as he was covering her neck with kisses. He remembered that she wore no jewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops. He remembered the wayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter hat. Holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact of her long, fawn-coloured suède gloves, and he saw again her moist, rodent teeth, her thin, bitten lips, and her troubled eyes, of a grey and opaque lustre which could suddenly be transfigured with radiance. "Oh, night after next it will be great to kiss all that!"
Vexed also, both with himself and with her. He reproached himself with having been brusque and reserved. He ought to have shown himself more expansive and less restrained. But it was her fault, for she had abashed him! The incongruity between the woman who cried with voluptuous suffering in her letters and the woman he had seen, so thoroughly mistress of herself in her coquetries, was truly too much!
"However you look at them, these women are astonishing creatures," he thought. "Here is one who accomplishes the most difficult thing you can imagine: coming to a man's room after having written him excessive letters. I, I act like a goose. I stand there ill at ease. She, in a second, has the self-assurance of a person in her own home, or visiting in a drawing-room. No awkwardness, pretty gestures, a few words, and eyes which supply everything! She isn't very agreeable," he thought, reminded of the curt tone she had used when disengaging herself, "and yet she has her tender spots," he continued dreamily, remembering not so much her words as certain inflections of her voice and a certain bewildered look in her eyes. "I must go about it prudently that night," he concluded, addressing his cat, which, never having seen a woman before, had fled at the arrival of Mme. Chantelouve and taken refuge under the bed, but had now advanced almost grovelling, to sniff the chair where she had sat.
"Come to think of it, she is an old hand, Mme. Hyacinthe! She would not have a meeting in a café nor in the street. She scented from afar the assignation house or the hotel. And though, from the mere fact of my not inviting her here, she could not doubt that I did not want to introduce her to my lodging, she came here deliberately. Then, this first denial, come to think of it, is only a fine farce. If she were not seeking a liaison she would not have visited me. No, she wanted me to beg her to do what she wanted to do.
Like all women, she wanted me to offer her what she desired. I have been rolled. Her arrival has knocked the props out from under my whole method. But what does it matter? She is no less desirable," he concluded, happy to get rid of disagreeable reflections and plunge back into the delirious vision which he retained of her. "That night won't be exactly dreary," he thought, seeing again her eyes, imagining them in surrender, deceptive and plaintive, as he would disrobe her and make a body white and slender, warm and supple, emerge from her tight skirt. "She has no children. That is an earnest promise that her flesh is quite firm, even at thirty!"
A whole draft of youth intoxicated him. Durtal, astonished, took a look at himself in the mirror. His tired eyes brightened, his face seemed more youthful, less worn. "Lucky I had just shaved," he said to himself. But gradually, as he mused, he saw in this mirror, which he was so little in the habit of consulting, his features droop and his eyes lose their sparkle. His stature, which had seemed to increase in this spiritual upheaval, diminished again. Sadness returned to his thoughtful mien. "I haven't what you would call the physique of a lady's man," he concluded. "What does she see in me? for she could very easily find someone else with whom to be unfaithful to her husband. Enough of these rambling thoughts. Let's cease to think them. To sum up the situation: I love her with my head and not my heart. That's the important thing. Under such conditions, whatever happens, a love affair is brief, and I am almost certain to get out of it without committing any follies."
CHAPTER IX
The next morning he woke, thinking of her, just as he had been doing when he went to sleep. He tried to rationalize the episode and revolved his conjectures over and over. Once again he put himself this question: "Why, when I went to her house, did she not let me see that I pleased her? Never a look, never a word to encourage me. Why this correspondence, when it was so easy to insist on having me to dine, so simple to prepare an occasion which would bring us together, either at her home or elsewhere?" And he answered himself, "It would have been usual and not at all diverting. She is perhaps skilled in these matters. She knows that the unknown frightens a man's reason away, that the unembodied puts the soul in ferment, and she wished to give me a fever before trying an attack-to call her advances by their right name.
"It must be admitted that if my conjectures are correct she is strangely astute. At heart she is, perhaps, quite simply a crazy romantic or a comedian. It amuses her to manufacture little adventures, to throw tantalizing obstacles in the way of the realization of a vulgar desire. And Chantelouve? He is probably aware of his wife's goings on, which perhaps facilitate his career. Otherwise, how could she arrange to come here at nine o'clock at night, instead of the morning or afternoon on pretence of going shopping?"
To this new question there could be no answer, and little by little he ceased to interrogate himself on the point. He began to be obsessed by the real woman as he had been by the imaginary creature. The latter had completely vanished. He did not even remember her physiognomy now. Mme. Chantelouve, just as she was in reality, without borrowing the other's features, had complete possession of him and fired his brain and senses to white heat. He began to desire her madly and to wish furiously for tomorrow night. And if she did not come? He felt cold in the small of his back at the idea that she might be unable to get away from home or that she might wilfully stay away.
"High time it was over and done with," he said, for this Saint Vitus' dance went on not without certain diminution of force, which disturbed him. In fact he feared, after the febrile agitation of his nights, to reveal himself as a sorry paladin when the time came. "But why bother?" he rejoined, as he started toward Carhaix's, where he was to dine with the astrologer Gévingey and Des Hermies.
"I shall be rid of my obsession awhile," he murmured, groping along in the darkness of the tower.
Des Hermies, hearing him come up the stair, opened the door, casting a shaft of light into the spiral. Durtal, reaching the landing, saw his friend in shirt sleeves and enveloped in an apron.
"I am, as you see, in the heat of composition," and upon a stew-pan boiling on the stove Des Hermies cast that brief and sure look which a mechanic gives his machine, then he consulted, as if it were a manometer, his watch, hanging to a nail. "Look," he said, raising the pot lid.
Durtal bent over and through a cloud of vapour he saw a coiled napkin rising and falling with the little billows. "Where is the leg of mutton?"
"It, my friend, is sewn into that cloth so tightly that the air cannot enter. It is cooking in this pretty, singing sauce, into which I have thrown a handful of hay, some pods of garlic and slices of carrot and onion, some grated nutmeg, and laurel and thyme. You will have many compliments to make me if Gévingey doesn't keep us waiting too long, because a gigot à l'Anglaise won't stand being cooked to shreds."
Carhaix's wife looked in.
"Come in," she said. "My husband is here."
Durtal found him dusting the books. They shook hands. Durtal, at random, looked over some of the dusted books lying on the table.
"Are these," he asked, "technical works about metals and bell-founding or are they about the liturgy of bells?"
"They are not about founding, though there is sometimes reference to the founders, the 'sainterers' as they were called in the good old days. You will discover here and there some details about alloys of red copper and fine tin. You will even find, I believe, that the art of the 'sainterer' has been in decline for three centuries, probably due to the fact that the faithful no longer melt down their ornaments of precious metals, thus modifying the alloy. Or is it because the founders no longer invoke Saint Anthony the Eremite when the bronze is boiling in the furnace? I do not know. It is true, at any rate, that bells are now made in carload lots. Their voices are without personality. They are all the same. They're like docile and indifferent hired girls when formerly they were like those aged servants who became part of the family whose joys and griefs they have shared. But what difference does that make to the clergy and the congregation? At present these auxiliaries devoted to the cult do not represent any symbol. And that explains the whole difficulty.
"You asked me, a few seconds ago, whether these books treated of bells from the liturgical point of view. Yes, most of them give tabulated explanations of the significance of the various component parts. The interpretations are simple and offer little variety."
"What are a few of them?"
"I can sum them all up for you in a very few words. According to the Rational of Guillaume Durand, the hardness of the metal signifies the force of the preacher. The percussion of the clapper on the sides expresses the idea that the preacher must first scourge himself to correct himself of his own vices before reproaching the vices of others. The wooden frame represents the cross of Christ, and the cord, which formerly served to set the bell swinging, allegorizes the science of the Scriptures which flows from the mystery of the Cross itself.
"The most ancient liturgists expound practically the same symbols. Jean Beleth, who lived in 1200, declares also that the bell is the image of the preacher, but adds that its motion to and fro, when it is set swinging, teaches that the preacher must by turns elevate his language and bring it down within reach of the crowd. For Hugo of Saint Victor the clapper is the tongue of the officiating priest, which strikes the two sides of the vase and announces thus, at the same time, the truth of the two Testaments. Finally, if we consult Fortunatus Amalarius, perhaps the most ancient of the liturgists, we find simply that the body of the bell denotes the mouth of the preacher and the hammer his tongue."
"But," said Durtal, somewhat disappointed, "it isn't-what shall I say?-very profound."
The door opened.
"Why, how are you!" said Carhaix, shaking hands with Gévingey, and then introducing him to Durtal.
While the bell-ringer's wife finished setting the table, Durtal examined the newcomer. He was a little man, wearing a soft black felt hat and wrapped up like an omnibus conductor in a cape with a military collar of b
lue cloth.
His head was like an egg with the hollow downward. The skull, waxed as if with siccatif, seemed to have grown up out of the hair, which was hard and like filaments of dried coconut and hung down over his neck. The nose was bony, and the nostrils opened like two hatchways, over a toothless mouth which was hidden by a moustache grizzled like the goatee springing from the short chin. At first glance one would have taken him for an art-worker, a wood engraver or a glider of saints' images, but on looking at him more closely, observing the eyes, round and grey, set close to the nose, almost crossed, and studying his solemn voice and obsequious manners, one asked oneself from what quite special kind of sacristy the man had issued.
He took off his things and appeared in a black frock coat of square, boxlike cut. A fine gold chain, passed about his neck, lost itself in the bulging pocket of an old vest. Durtal gasped when Gévingey, as soon as he had seated himself, complacently put his hands on exhibition, resting them on his knees. Enormous, freckled with blotches of orange, and terminating in milk-white nails cut to the quick, the fingers were covered with huge rings, the sets of which formed a phalanx.
Seeing Durtal's gaze fixed on his fingers, he smiled. "You examine my valuables, monsieur. They are of three metals, gold, platinum, and silver. This ring bears a scorpion, the sign under which I was born. That with its two accoupled triangles, one pointing downward and the other upward, reproduces the image of the macrocosm, the seal of Solomon, the grand pantacle. As for the little one you see here," he went on, showing a lady's ring set with a tiny sapphire between two roses, "that is a present from a person whose horoscope I was good enough to cast."
"Ah!" said Durtal, somewhat surprised at the man's self-satisfaction.
"Dinner is ready," said the bell-ringer's wife.
Des Hermies, doffing his apron, appeared in his tight cheviot garments. He was not so pale as usual, his cheeks being red from the heat of the stove. He set the chairs around.
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