Nasenberg sniggered. “Dragging you can’t have been very difficult...”
Rozal did not reply immediately. Complex sentiments of two kinds were battling within him that he could not and did not want to analyze. He seemed depressed, dolorous and irresolute—and Nasenberg, seeing him in that state, never ceased to smile. The banker’s smile began to exasperate him, for he sensed the money man’s gaze penetrate the utmost depths of his inner being, violating his secrets, his love.
Then, in a fit of excitement that was periodically attenuated by regret and shame, he said: “Well, yes, I’ve come, because it was impossible for me not to come. Oh, I’ve struggled, resisted, but my insensate heart has triumphed over my reason. I’ve come to see Her, to fill my eyes with Her dear and splendid image, and perhaps to hear Her charming voice, which causes me to vibrate, to quiver with emotion, dread and happiness! There! Are you content, now?”
“Yes, I’m content. You’re a brave fellow whom I like, and I hope that I shall make you happy, but giving you to the woman who adores you.”
“But I don’t want that! Oh yes, I’m in love with Nelly Mackay. I love her ardently, passionately, in a sort of delirium, as can only be experienced by a man who has never loved anything other than his dream, his science, the impossible ideal. But you know that I won’t marry her in the conditions you’ve imposed on me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I can no longer live without intoxicating myself with the sight of her, the winning grace to which I am enslaved. Several days ago, I thought I had finally found the solution to the problem for which I had been searching for such a long time. One more small effort, I said to myself, a few slight, insignificant improvements, and the marvelous discovery will be realized...”
“Well?”
“I haven’t taken another step! I stamp my feet, I wander around, I can no longer get over paltry obstacles that seemingly ought not to count for anything. It’s because I no longer have my mind on my invention, my work. If I set out to make calculations of paper, I find myself scribbling the amount of her formidable dowry; all my equations are resolved by the number of her millions! It’s monstrous, but that’s the way it is. If I design the wing of a monoplane, a propeller, a diagram of any apparatus whatsoever, my pencil always sketches her lovely silhouette, the profile of her beloved face...
“But there’s better, or worse. Yesterday, flying over the aerodrome in the airplane fitted with the new propellers that allow me to reach fantastic speeds, I suddenly forgot where I was and what I was doing; when I hit a sudden patch of turbulence I hadn’t got the requisite presence of mind or the necessary reflexes; I nearly pirouetted for 700 meters and crashed into the ground. Fortunately, I was at a good height; I was able to right my apparatus thirty meters above the roof of my hangar!”
“You’re right, my friend—it’s getting serious. It’s time to put a little order in the sentimental disarray in which you’re languishing. The remedy is here, and I congratulate myself for that. Otherwise...”
“The remedy!” murmured Henri Rozal. “That’s the solution to my problem—the capture of my chimera. I’d be rich, at a stroke. I could reimburse you, buy your accursed piece of paper and then marry, of my own accord, someone…to whom I could speak on equal terms…but what you’re offering me is just a business deal. Mingled with my sincere love, it’s an ignominy.”
Growing impatient, Nasenberg replied: “Words! Always words! The stupid words of an innocent! While you’re battling thus, stupidly and futilely, with your refractory conscience, someone else, more practical, will steal the object of your adoration.”
“Someone else?” he stammered. “Someone else?”
Suddenly inspired by this awakening of jealousy, the banker spoke emphatically “Yes, someone else, and if you want me to tell you what I think, that eventuality will transpire sooner than you suppose, and I won’t be at all surprised...”
Rozal straightened up, pale and wild eyed. “How do you know?”
“I’ve unleashed two less scrupulous stallions on the heiress.”
“Scoundrel!”
Nasenberg sensed that he had gone too far. He was confronted by an overexcited man who was beside himself, capable of the worst violence.
Threateningly, Rozal growled: “Yes, scoundrel! What avid need for money, what monstrous appetites, drives you to auction off a creature of beauty, tenderness and love? And you think that I will let you do it, to go to the very end...”
The banker faced him boldly, for he was not a coward. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell Miss Nelly everything! Doubtless I shall lose her, but at least another shall not have her!”
“If you commit that folly, I’ll show her your written promise, signed by you…and when she knows the manner in which you have thought of her, you’ll be judged. Then, regulating my accounts with you conclusively, I’ll ruin you completely...”
Rozal was overwhelmed. He understood, in a second, that Nasenberg had him over a barrel, and that there was no use in resisting him. Then a reaction set in, his anger was transformed into despair, and he said: “Why have you done that? I love Miss Nelly. Another will only love her millions...”
“Marry her. I’d like nothing better.”
“Give me back the document.”
“Nothing doing!”
“I beg you! Listen to me. You trust me. You’ve supported that trust with considerable financial aid. I recognize that. No one has understood better than you what I can and must realize, one day. Well, I swear to you that, free of my anguish, I can put the anticipated invention on a sound footing. I’m sure of it. And yet, I’ll give you, by virtue of an authentic contract, the entire ownership of my share in the business you’ve backed. It’s worth a good 500,000 francs. I’ll keep nothing for myself, whatever the future profits might be…but please give me back that document!”
Nasenberg hesitated momentarily. If he ever finds the turbine engine, he thought, I’ll have made the worst deal of my life by turning him down. But if he fails, I’ll have lost a million and a half, plus my previous outlay.
The decision was quickly taken. “A man like me can’t be paid with promises. Fulfill your contract, and I’ll serve you devotedly—I’ve already forgotten your insults—with cordiality. If you won’t do it, good night, my friend! I’ll talk to Miss Nelly about the qualities of my other candidates. You’re not only in my hothouse, my lad, you’re in my clutches.21
He waited momentarily for Rizal to make up his mind—but then, judging that action would more easily overcome his implausible obstinacy, he returned to his guests and left Rozal in the hothouse, beneath the large fan-like leaves of a Latania palm.
XIV. The Golden Maid
Nasenberg had not lied in telling Rozal that he had launched two other hunters after the prey of choice: the Golden Maid. Around Miss Nelly two elegantly-equipped men were disposing their artillery. They were Duc Jean de Créqui22 and Maurice Lamentin. One was the last scion of a line illustrated by François Champsaur de Lesdiguières, the friend of Henri IV and last Constable of France;23 the other, of plebeian origin, was aiming for the highest destined in politics. By different entitlements, they emerged from the common run and had chances of impressing an intelligent and romantic young woman who had declared, more than once, that she did not want to marry a banal gentleman. Also, in spite of the failure of an initial attempt, the banker—who had mentioned no names on that occasion—had maintained the unsuspected candidatures of his two protégés.
Lamentin and Créqui, however, were boring the young woman. She had noticed Rozal’s arrival, and had also received the homages of Turner, who had made a point of informing her of it. She knew that the engineer was present, and she hoped, in her natural frankness and calm American audacity, to talk to him at length. When she deemed that she had been sufficiently polite and amiable with the duc and the deputé, whose designs she had seen through immediately, she excused herself, saying that she was goi
ng to rejoin Mrs. Flower. That was only a pretext, for she soon quit her aunt in order to appeal to Turner.
“Would you care, my dear, to accompany me into our host’s gallery, where the marvelous paintings about which all Paris is talking are located? I’m sure that you’ll be a good guide?”
She had become very friendly with the aviator, having met him several times at Edmund Russell’s house—and Turner, charmed by her grace and her intelligence, had very quickly come to love her as a friend, because he found her very frank and very straightforward, and she had allowed him to suspect the love she experienced for his comrade-in-arms Henri Rozal.
As soon as they were in the art gallery, slightly apart from the noisy guests, she lost her cheerful expression. “Monsieur Turner,” she said, gravely, and a trifle sadly, “why do we not see your friend?”
“I imagine, since Nasenberg has dragged him away, that he and our host are discussing technical questions—but he’ll surely come back.”
“Oh—so much the better. I want so much to talk to him. It’s so exciting, what he’s doing. Oh, how glad I’d be to visit his factory! Alas, I’m told that’s forbidden.”
“Henri doesn’t like curious strangers wasting his time, but I’m sure that, for you...”
“Oh, go on! For me it would be the same as for others.”
Her voice had become somber again, and Turner was touched sincerely in sensing the chagrin of the young heiress, around whom so many suitors fluttered, but whom a proud man, exceedingly poor but rich in divine determination, did not want to love because an error of dubious morality risked casting a shadow, one day, over her sentiment and her happiness. Oh, how he would have liked to tell the young woman the whole story! But he was sure that Rozal would be hurt, and perhaps insulted, by that. He did not know, either, how Miss Nelly would take the revelation. It was a dangerous game to play…and Nasenberg was an adversary with who one could not permit oneself hesitant rashness.
As he reflected, Nelly took his silence for approval of the doubt she had expressed.
“Yes, for him, I’m a woman like the others, a frivolous doll. I’m the daughter of an inventor, though, who started from nothing and created an industry, then machines and more industry, to use his new machines! From his imagination and determination astonishing and useful productions emerged! And he built factories so numerous that they formed, with their armies of workers, immense cities of labor! How can you expect, having grown up in an atmosphere of intense effort and discovery, that I wouldn’t be interested, this evening, in the only man in this society who has devoted himself to a sublime task: the definitive conquest of the air! Certainly, others before him have succeeded in the first steps…but he wants to make a giant leap, and I admire that, I admire him! In advance… I...”
She stopped, red-faced and confused, and concluded: “Why is your friend avoiding me?”
This time, the question was direct and precise; it was necessary to answer it. And her frankness appealed to frankness. He reflected momentarily, and ventured: “Are you sure that Rozal is avoiding meting you?”
“Yes. I’m passionate about his work. The goal he’s pursuing—inventing an engine that will permit him to travel from Paris New York non-stop—haunts me to the point at which I want to hear about his work from his own lips, but every time I arrive at an aerodrome in an automobile where he’s carrying out his trials, the wild bird, having caught a glimpse of me, flies away into the sky. He’s so frightened of me that he takes refuge in the clouds—and I know that he’s gone to land elsewhere, in order that I can’t catch up with him.”
“Then he really is frightened—and when a man is frightened of a pretty girl, it’s because he loves her, and is afraid of loving her too much, or without result. I beg your pardon.”
“No, I’m American, and you can speak to me frankly, as a friend, Monsieur Turner, in order to tell me that.”
“I was wrong, I’ve been stupid…and you’ll get me into trouble with my best friend.”
He made as if to leave, but she held him back. Now she was blushing and quivering, breathing hard. A radiant happiness illuminated her pupils, but her voice was tremulous: “I knew it,” she murmured. “My heart was not mistaken...”
Georges Turner was heartsick and delighted at the same time. He did not know what would happen, but he was sure that some event would occur during the soirée. Anxious as he was, he implored: “Please, Mademoiselle, forget that I’ve betrayed my best friend.”
She smiled, appearing even more beautiful; transfigured by a sudden happiness that lit up her face, she held her arms out to him. “Thank you. If I am ever as happy as I wish to be, I shall not forget that I owe it to you.”
Stupefied, he went pale and stammered: “But what are you going to do?”
“Ask him to marry me!”
He was so absolutely stunned that he stood there, stupidly, rooted to the spot—and she burst out laughing.
“Yes, I know,” she said, “that’s not how marriages are made in your country—but I, my dear, am American, of age and free. I only follow my own advice. As for Monsieur Rozal, to judge by his way of life and his character, I imagine that he doesn’t much resemble the young men who have been boring me since my arrival in France, whose prolonged and sterile flirting is not his way. So?”
Turner lowered his head.
She smiled, mockingly. “You’re very contrite now, my dear. What a responsibility, eh? Come on, don’t torment yourself any more—I’ll answer for everything.”
“Oh, if only you could succeed!”
“That would please you?”
“Oh yes!”
Happily, she held out her hands to him again. “Well, so much the better! If you’re with me, everything will work out. Accomplices, then?”
Nelly smiled, and her entire face lit up, young and rosy, in which large eyes were sparkling, from which all sadness had fled.
“Yes, accomplices,” he said, won over by her charm. The happiness that had already changed her gave her an even more winning grace, the mysterious radiance of women in love, whose flesh is unquiet, awakened by a thrill.
“Monsieur Turner,” she went on, “have you noticed the solitude of this gallery? Over there, in the drawing-rooms, people are dancing and flirting. Well, since my audacious designs don’t frighten you, go find your friend. Tell his that there is, in this gallery, a curious trinket that he ought to see, to know…I permit you to say ‘a pretty trinket.’”
“Oh, I’ll find something better than that!”
“I don’t forbid you to do that. I haven’t sent you, of course. Hazard alone will bring us together.”
Turner could not help smiling. He bowed before the Golden Maid.
XV. The Wheel of Fortune
As soon as she was alone, her face changed. In front of Turner, she had been spirited, in the American fashion, bluffing slightly, by virtue of her heredity and personality. Now that she sensed the imminence of the decisive and courageous moment, she was no longer anything more than a young woman in love, like other young women, and she was oppressed by a veritable anguish.
She was about to find herself face to face with the man she loved, whose inexplicable resistance she sensed obscurely—and that doubt made her tremble slightly, disturbing her and causing her heart to ache. She had never taken account, until that moment, of the immensity of the love she had for Rozal. She had known him for such a short while, and yet, it seemed to her—the miraculous illusion of a being who gives herself entirely in the first surge of a new soul—that she had been his all her life, and would be for all time.
Now, she was afraid. Again, her features expressed anxiety; it was as if her large dark eyes were filled with the dread of a spoiled little girl who senses the approach of her first disappointment. A surprising gravity made her very pale—she whose cheeks were so rosy. Her lips were no longer smiling.
Suddenly, she shivered, becoming paler still, stiffening herself against an ancient piece of furniture with a scul
pted patina. It seemed to her that her courage was fleeing, and that her blood was hurriedly flowing away from her heart. Henri Rozal had just come in.
The aeronaut’s first impulse was to beat a retreat—but he saw the large, dark, desperate eyes fixed upon him. Momentarily, he hesitated, seemingly asking himself how this freak of chance, this coup de théâtre had come about. And Nelly Mackay, having regained her self-control while he was trying to understand, advanced toward him.
“Would you care to talk to me for a little while?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, “it would be better not to…but it isn’t possible for me to disobey you.”
“Why are you avoiding me?”
“Because I need to devote myself entirely to the work to which I am married. I don’t have the right to detach myself from that and think of anything other than its realization.”
“Your work interests me passionately. Instead of distracting you from it, I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“Ah!”
The stood there face to face, anxious, emotional and embarrassed, no longer knowing what to say.
She was the one who, abruptly, had the courage of an attitude worthy of her. She looked him straight in the eyes. “No,” she said, “Let’s not play this comedy. People like us shouldn’t waste time with preliminaries and detours. I love you, Monsieur Rozal, and you love me!”
He started, and went pale. The thrust struck him full in the heart, and he stood there, stunned, invaded by an immense joy and dolor.
The American went on: “When our gazes met, the first time, did you not have the impression that we were two souls that had been in search of one another forever, who had finally met?”
“If, at this moment, I made a similar confession to you, how could you recognize its sincerity? I’m poor and you, I’ve been told, since then, have forty million?”
“That’s nothing in America, my love. I’ve always divined in men a lust for money, or a desire for beauty—for I’m pretty—but in your eyes alone have I discovered love, and only love.”
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