Rozal was dumbstruck. He had foreseen everything, except this assault.
Nelly Mackay studied the young man to whom she had just made a profound confession, abdicating all vanity, all pride, and he did not seem to comprehend!
She went on: “Oh, I know, in Europe, it isn’t customary for young women to take the first step of their own accord...”
Rozal no longer knew what attitude to strike. Someone had talked to him about love, to him who was in love, whose entire existence had been turned upside down—and he had to affect coldness. He was being offered Paradise—and it was necessary to look as if he were being crucified! But he had a mad desire to take the young woman in his arms, who was exciting herself with her own words, and whom his obscure resistance was irritating. He longed to declare his passion, further exasperated by the confession that had been made to him—but an imperious necessity nailed his lips shut, and in order not to burst into sobs, he tried to get out of it.
“Forgive me, Mademoiselle…I can’t listen to you any longer. It’s not solely a matter of love. Other, more serious reasons, may guide our actions. It hardly matters that I love you so much that I might die of it, if insurmountable obstacles prevent me from confessing it! Permit me to bid you farewell.”
A sudden blush colored the young woman’s cheeks. Her voice trembled with ager and shame. “Nothing is more serious than love. You’re causing me, Monsieur, a humiliation of which I did not believe you capable. You love me, though, I’m sure of it! If you don’t want me for your wife, then, do you deem me unworthy?”
“Oh!” He put his hands together before her, as if before a madonna, and his eyes contained such a sincere ecstasy and pain that she was suddenly seized by an immense pity for him.
“It’s an adverse force that’s holding you back, then?”
He nodded affirmatively—and she remained sad and pensive as she looked at him, searching his obstinately-sealed lips for the words that would tell her the truth.
With difficulty, she asked: “Another woman?”
“No. Don’t interrogate me any further; I can’t answer you. What I have deiced must remain a secret in my heart.”
“You refuse, then? You don’t want me to be your wife?”
“I can’t. In future, yes—in future!”
Nelly clenched her fists, shivering—and her eyes clouded over. Her voice was hoarse and choked. “Why in future? What does that mean? What past do you have to liquidate?”
“None. But there’s the present, my poverty, as well as the humiliation of not having yet realized what I’ve been seeking to do for years.”
At that avowal, Nelly’s face recovered the radiant happiness that made her so beautiful. A sigh liberated her from the anguish that had been strangling her.
“Oh, that’s nothing!”
“That’s everything.”
“No, not when I’ve declared my opinion on the subject. A long time ago, I took the decision only to marry according to my fantasy—which means, with love. Why renounce my liberty for any other reason? For a title? To be the Duchesse de Créqui, or a Princess, like the daughter of the leather king and the daughter of the metallurgy king? I certainly wouldn’t have any lack of choice; your old Europe is full of blazons in need of regilding. As for grafting my millions to another capital sum: a wretched and uninteresting business. No, I shall only belong to a man who pleases me absolutely, of whom I could believe that he would have married me even if I were poor. Undoubtedly, he might be noble and rich, but he might also be neither. What I want most of all is that he should be, or could become, someone.”
“A great artist, a great poet, an inventor or leader of crowds?”
“No matter! Someone. And I know a man who will soon impose himself on the world, by the audacity of his genius.”
“Even so, in time, you would despise him, for, such is the barbarity of money that even genius does not seem to be its equal. Yes, there are men who dream of fabulous realizations, formidable feats, by which humankind will be modified. But if one of them were to find a Providence, a woman like you, helping him to overcome every obstacle, he would have the means to realizing his ambition—his utopia, as the impotent say. Then, sooner or later, in spite of everything and in spite of herself, she would have the cruelty to regard him as her debtor. She would never be able to forget that, without her fortune, his genius would have remained in limbo—yes, that without the effort and support of her money, he would be nothing. And considering, some years later, the man she had distinguished, with whom she had associated her life, perhaps she would estimate that she had not been fully repaid.”
“You’re mistaken. To that man, I am ready to give my hand, proud in advance, if he succeeds, of sharing in his glory, but resolved, if he fails, to live with him the gray days of failure—which have their compensations. For him, I would be the intelligent collaborator and ever-reliable friend. I he becomes very great…well, I would owe him an eternal gratitude for having accepted the instrument of which he has made use. He would not be obligated to me. I’m the one who would owe him the joy of having raised me to glory...” Her hands sketched what was almost a gesture of supplication. “You lack a means of execution to complete your work. Outside of your love, in the name of humankind, do you have the right to refuse, if I offer it to you?”
“You cannot, being so rich, be my wife, so long as I have done nothing! There would be no equality; we would not be happy. Oh, not to have done anything yet! Not to be able to do anything...”
His expression was so desperate that she looked at him with eyes full of passion. Shivering, she asked: “You regret that?”
“Oh, yes…oh yes!”
“Ah! I can see that you really love me! My darling, don’t deny yourself because of a vain prejudice! Why get stupid money mixed up in our love? It only becomes intelligent in the way one makes use of it.”
“You know that I want to accomplish and audacious feat that would prove the value of the invention I seek. But what if I don’t succeed? What would I be, in your eyes, if, by chance, I were not dead, crashed who knows where in the immense Ocean? Less than the duc or the prince that you rejected just now. Now, I’m a proletarian, I’m poor—if, therefore, I fail in future, what link would bind us together then?”
“Love! What does it matter, anyway? My father was a working man. Like you, he had nothing. His hard work and his intelligence, a determination stronger than the opposing hazards, built the fortune that I’m offering you. Oh, I don’t count for much in this discussion. I’d like to suggest in advance that my person, my being, my blonde hair, my dark eyes and my impatient mouth might inspire you…but that, I can see, scarcely interests you, since you bring everything back to wretched pride and money, since your vanity alone troubles you, and I’m reduced to imagining the desire that you have for me…oh, it’s not stronger than everything. And you don’t love me!” She raised her hands to her eyes. “No, you don’t love me! You remain calm enough, after my confession, to debate the objections that pose an obstacle to our union, to remain master of your thoughts, to reason as to the eventual consequences of our love. So far as I can see, you’re totally indifferent to me, to Nelly, pretty Nelly!”
She stared at him, with eyes widened by amazement and anger. Undoubtedly, nothing had ever contradicted that daughter of an American king, and this unexpected resistance had distressed her cruelly.
As Rozal, in torment, said nothing, she took a step backwards, dissolved in tears, and fled.
At that precise moment, he had an implacable divination that he would be lost forever. It tore him in two, and he cried: “Nelly, my Nelly…!”
But she kept running. With one bound, he caught up with her, and put his arms around her. Gently, he parted the hands that hid her tearful eyes, and, with his mouth almost upon hers, he confessed: “I adore you! Oh, I could do no more! You have put me to a proof stronger than my will, than my resolution. Let matters take their course! I can no longer know but one thing: I love you! I love y
ou! My Nelly, I adore you!”
And he too, in a sudden release, started weeping gently on her shoulder. Then, their lips met, espousing one another ardently, and their entwined fingers clenched.
She pulled away.
“Let me go, and don’t return to the ball for a few moments. Come to our house tomorrow, to talk to my aunt.”
Already, she had disappeared, and he was still standing there, utterly confused and absent-minded, when a voice caused him to shiver.
“My compliments. You’ve handled the affair like a master. Oh, you’ll go far! All the same, your tactics were risky...”
Rozal strode toward Nasenberg, his fists clenched. “You were here, hidden? You heard?”
“Yes, behind that door. I congratulate you.”
The engineer took one more step. His eyes were so fiery that the banker recoiled instinctively. However, a group of black-coated gentlemen and diamond-encrusted ladies with low-cut dresses invaded the gallery. Rozal, face to face with his adversary, muttered menacingly through gritted teeth: “You’re at home, this evening, and I can’t create a scandal in front of these people—but we’ll see one another again, Monsieur.”
“Yes, my lad—when the payment is due.”
XVI. A Newsworthy Betrothal
The world was very interested in the event. The general public and the newspapers were in favor of the young couple. They sensed that love had forged the engagement, and the simplistic good wishes of the masses went out to the patient and courageous engineer, the aviator seeking the possibility of crossing the Atlantic—in its full extent, non-stop—and to the pretty, overly rich young woman who was marrying him, poor but with sublime prospects.
The clans of high society were disappointed. It had been hoped that the American heiress would chose a representative of the old aristocracy, and set forth on a life of frantic luxury, whose repercussions they would enjoy. And now, so much beauty and wealth would go to an unknown, a petty engineer whose obscure works had not, until his engagement, generated any publicity. The clans of high society judged that the heiress had allowed herself to be seduced by a proud and robust fellow with broad and symmetrical shoulders. In the salons, someone remarked: “Miss Mackay’s fiancé want to attempt an Atlantic crossing by air. He’s in no danger of drowning; it seems that he swims like a fish.”
The remark was a great success. So was the aviator.
Meanwhile, Henri Rozal, in spite of the confession he had made after the scene at Nasenberg’s, had tried to get a grip on himself. In vain! He was caught, in such a fashion that from that day on, he was no longer capable of continuing the work that had previously been his passion, and which a slight effort would have brought to its conclusion, with the dream realized. No, he was in love, like a schoolboy. But he was suffering terribly, like a man.
For more than a week he had been running around the bankers, money-lenders and usurer, trying to obtain, with an ingenuousness that gave rise to secret smiles on the part of those he asked to advance him, against the future profits of his patents, the million and a half necessary to buy back the contract he had signed.
Nelly Mackay came to the aerodrome or the factory almost every day, and every time, her grace and her smile drove Rozal a little crazier. Then, after an alternation of happiness and discouragement, he acquired, unconsciously, the habit of no longer thinking about Nasenberg. He abandoned himself, without any further reflection or resistance, to tender amour.
When he and his fiancée fixed a date for the marriage, debating one last time with himself, by virtue of a supreme scruple, agonizing his conscience, he observed that no more scope for hesitation was left to him; all sorts of peremptory arguments had got the better of his reason.
In good faith, he had ended up agreeing that the imaginary obstacle was not serious. Fundamentally, Nasenberg was a businessman; he had played the role that his profession required. He could not hold that against him; he was even obliged to recognize that, when the banker had proposed the marriage, it was in order to save him. Since then, hazard had got mixed up in it, in complicity with sentiment, but the resident alien was not responsible for that. It was only just that he should be paid—and if Rozal did not go so far as to make excuses for him, it was out of dignity.
He would pay him. But it would not, of course, be with his wife’s money. Thanks to the means that his young wife put into his hands, he would soon realize his hopes, superbly. Was he not already on the brink of reaching his goal? The turbine, out there in the factory, where he was no longer working, was half-assembled. Theoretically, he knew that it would spin: a few modifications, improvements, trials—and the goal would be attained! The ideal high-speed engine, its silent rotation obtained by the expansive force of a gaseous mixture; once that was found, there would be no more to do than fit it to the special apparatus already constructed, and then depart, after the marriage, for the assault on the clouds and the air above the Atlantic.
Why, then, embarrass himself with prejudices and depressing anxieties? Would he not have what he needed to pay Nasenberg from his own profits? Having commenced in tumult, the debate with his conscience ended in absolute moral peace—and such was Rozal’s serenity that when, sixteen days before the marriage, the banker had presented himself at his home in the morning, in his cordial fashion—forgetful, as the strong are, of insults as negligible in business as the whistle-blasts of a locomotive moving off—he had received him and listened to him, even though that astonishing man had come to make him an extraordinary proposition.
Extraordinary, but very simple.
The two eliminated candidates, the Duc de Créqui and the deputé Lamentin, were threatening, Nasenberg claimed to kick up a scandal—to tell Rozal’s fiancée how he married off the young American women he chaperoned, if they were not given some compensation.
Was the blackmail genuine? Before asking himself that, Rozal replied: “Well, if they have a right to compensation, give it to them.”
“From what?”
“From your commission. It’s large enough, I believe.”
Nasenberg had smiled. “You’re joking, my dear boy. It’s not me who’s getting married, and if anyone has injured the two candidates…your happiness is ruining their hopes. Besides, what good does it do to argue? I’ve promised each of them, in your name, 250,000 francs.”
“What? Another 500,000 francs?”
“You can add. So be it—two million in total. You’ll still have so many more! And who knows how many your engine will bring in? You’ve already conquered an American multimillionaires, while America awaits. It’s a good omen. Like you, I believe in the human arrow.”
Nasenberg’s remarks were, like his tone, slightly ironic, but Rozal, being in a good mood, very happy and content, marching in a lively manner toward his starry dream—the stars of the flag of the United States—thought too much of his future to doubt, for a single moment, its miraculous materialization. He made a grand gesture.
“So be it!” he said. “I’m too happy to want others to suffer from the repercussions of my good fortune. Even though they’re threatening to denounce our dealings to Miss Mackay, I’ll indemnify these master blackmailers. I’ll pay the Duc de Créqui and...”
Swiftly, Nasenberg corrected him: “No, it’s me, I beg you, that you’ll pay. Here’s a power of attorney, legally formulated, and the engagement that you need to sign.”
Henri Rozal was astonished. “Why do you get the money?”
“But my dear friend, I don’t want to make a gift of the advances I’ve agreed to the Duc de Créqui and the ex-Undersecretary of State at the Merchant Marine. I’ll collect them myself—that’s safer. Then I’ll pay them the balance, if there is any. Besides, you don’t know them. So we’re in agreement, this time?”
“Yes—how can I refuse to understand you again?”
“Oh! I was wrong to make you accept the incredible windfall that fell upon you from the skies!”
Thoughtfully, Henri Rozal murmured: “I shall make a n
ew start with her.”
(The windfall, or Miss Mackay? The two were confused.)24
XVII. The Departure into the Blue
Henri Rozal and Nelly Mackay were married on the morning of November 13, 1913, at ten o’clock. The weather was ideal, the sky as clear and blue as on a spring day. Doubtless more fortunate than others—for they were superior individuals capable of appreciating the immensity and the fragility of human joys—they united their destinies very simply in the Rue de la Pompe, at the town hall of the 16th arrondissement and the young woman’s local parish church, before a select group of close friends. They had both wanted to avoid a big wedding at all costs.
The summer had been atrocious that year: continual rain, perpetually morose skies, in which a wan and miserable sun had rarely appeared, as if ashamed, between clouds formed of cold mist, had spoiled the season. The autumn, however, having seemed to continue the odious spectacle of damp grayness, he suddenly decided to caress the melancholy Earth with its final delight; the second fortnight of October and the first days of November were an enchantment.
After a lunch served at midday, in the house in the Avenue d’Iéna after the religious ceremony in the church in the Place Victor Hugo, the young couple finally began to feel the joy of being completely united, of having combined their destinies for life. After the mass, still trembling with the new and profoundly-felt emotion of that kind of solemn ballet and the nuptial blessings, with the sumptuous rites of the Catholic religion—to which she, a Protestant, had converted—she had said to him in the sacristy, as the guests filed out: “The surprise you mentioned to me, my darling—are you going to tell me what it is now?”
“Yes. At Villacoublay, I’ve had a beautiful fast monoplane prepared, as white as a seagull. On its robust wings, I want to carry you away into the blue, into the dream, to a bed of roses in Turbie, on the sunny Côte d’Azur. Does that honeymoon please you?”
The Human Arrow Page 12