“Outside already, my darling?”
She turned round, surprised. “It’s so beautiful, the morning.”
His face darkened then. “It’s nearly five months, Nelly, that we’ve been in this eternal spring.”
“Do you regret it?”
His troubled expression, his clouded eyes did not deceive her. She thought: I’ve been expecting this moment...it was inevitable…we’ll have to leave soon...
She had an imperious desire to weep, which she suppressed. And because her expression was so sad and, without being aware of it, she had just dropped her armful of irises, he—who wanted to hurry things along—dared not say any more. He picked up the irises, looking at her, timid and upset, without any longer having the courage to cause her chagrin.
Tenderly, he put his arm around her supple waist and drew her further on, near to the lilacs in flower, and at her down on a bench in the shade of a large eucalyptus. She sensed that he had something serious to say, and, certain in advance that they would cause her grief, looked at him with the fearful eyes of a little girl about to be sent to boarding-school. There was such anguish and such love in that gaze; everything in her spoke so clear of troubled happiness, a soul in desperation, that he suddenly pulled her to him and covered her with kisses.
“My wife…my dear little wife!”
Radiant now, but nevertheless very anxious about the threatened moment, she nestled in his arms, making herself very small and coaxing.
“Yes, your wife, my love. Your wife, who lives only through you and for you. Swear to her, my Henri, that whatever happens, you will always love her, without weakness, and that her love will never let you go...”
He smiled palely. He was thinking about Nasenberg. “And you, whatever happens, will you always love me as you do today?”
“I’m your slave, you’ve conquered me so completely.”
She was sincere, and she was really his. He felt better-armed. Immediately, he took advantage of it to prepare what he had to say. “Do you know what I think, sometimes, my darling?”
“There are moments when you aren’t thinking about me?”
He closed her mouth with a kiss, and went on: “All my thoughts are connected to our love. And that’s exactly what I want to confess to you. Doesn’t it seem to you that we’re living a little like savages here, in this retreat in Turbie?”
“Oh!” she said. “Savages with an automobile, five minutes from Monte Carlo?”
“You’re joking, Nelly—but I’m forced to be serous for both of us.”
“Forced? Who’s obliging you to be serious?”
“Don’t you see that we’re being frightfully selfish?”
“I’ve loved you; I’ve married you. You love me! We’re not selfish, because we want to live our idyll to the end. Who has stolen our happiness?”
“You don’t want to understand.”
“Yes, I have understood. You’re insisting, because you don’t love me anymore.”
“I’m not arguing, my adored wife, to punish you. But can we have friends?”
“You have Georges Turner.”
“Poor fellow. You have something against him.”
“Yes. I sense affinities between the two of you that have a common origin in the thought of aviation. Now, you swore to me to renounce it, except as a technician. You’d risk dying, like so many others, every week. And all our conversations with Turner, on that frightening subject, are as many treasons. I like Turner, though. I appreciate at their full value his qualities of tact and devotion. He loves us sincerely, but I’m afraid that he might unintentionally, set you a bad example.”
“And your Aunt, Mrs. Flower—do you also fear that she might incite me to resume flying?”
“Poor Aunt. It’s true, you’re right. I’ve left her in Paris, all alone in that immense house, where she must be bored. She’s so delicate that she hasn’t come here, in spite of my invitation—perhaps insufficiently emphatic—afraid of getting in our way on our honeymoon. Yes, Henri, I’m a vile egotist. My love for you has caused me to commit a bad deed...”
“Don’t exaggerate. But I’m glad to see you being more reasonable.”
“I’ll go send her a telegram right away, asking her to come tomorrow. Hold on…and Nasenberg, our good friend, what if I were to ask him, too, to be our guest for a few days? You see—I’m full of good intentions!”
Rozal had shivered, but he quickly got a grip n himself. Calmly and naturally, he said: “What’s the point? It’s the seventh of April. The season’s coming to an end. And isn’t it appropriate, in any case, my dear, that I should resume my research, with a view to completing the discovery that ought to revolutionize aviation? And Turner, a sublime friend, will risk the Atlantic crossing in my stead.”
She went frightfully pale and stiff, and her voice became dolorous. “Oh, miscreant! Why are you in so much of a hurry to go back to Paris?”
“And why are you so obstinate in wanting to stay here?”
“Because I want to possess you, to love me as I please, all alone! Here, I don’t share you with anyone. When you’ve taken up your calculations, your designs, your machines and your factory again, you’ll no longer be mine.”
“Silly girl!”
“You’ll no longer be mine! Another passion will possess you, steal you away from mine. All the thought, the determination, the ardor that you consecrate to science will be thefts from me. I’ll be jealous of every hour you devote to your work, every minute of the late nights you’ll devote to the realization of that futile project. There are magnificent steamers.”
Having received, by virtue of that sentence, a thrust in the heart, he lowered his desperate eyes before her—eyes, however, in which “his love for that amorous woman,” so completely his, was burning.
“What do you want, then?”
She did not reply immediately. Her eyelids closed, she seemed to be thinking, as if plunged in a sort of hypnotic trance. Finally, she said: “What would I like? What would I like? To take you away, far away, very far…further than the immense seas. We’re very rich. What would I like? There’s a magnificent yacht in the harbor at Monaco, which the heirs of an American who died at Cap d’Ail last winter have put up for sale. If you weren’t so wise, if you didn’t think that every act of love was akin to madness, we could go to the notary in Beausoleil this morning. By noon, we’d own the yacht. It has a crew, it’s fully equipped; this evening, we could be sailing toward the lands of sun and dreams—Ceylon, India, Japan—toward unknown shores, splendid Edens…this evening, you hear, my love.”
“I hear that you’re crazy.”
“Or very wise, too conscious of that which might destroy our idyll, by perhaps bringing forward its denouement, consigning us to the prosaic routine of the whole world, of those who need to work, to make money. You love me, yes, I believe that—but you love me with a restriction of which I’m jealous. I repeat: I don’t want you to divide yourself between aviation and me. My love—mine—doesn’t want to share. Nothing, you hear, nothing, can oblige us to enslave our free sensations, to however limited an extent. We’re too independent to preoccupy ourselves with material things, impossibilities. So, if you truly love me, with a love equal to mine, let’s leave immediately. Let’s go together, by ourselves, selfishly, if you wish, like eccentrics, like crazy people, like thieves…but like true lovers!”
He was heartbroken, thinking of unavoidable, imperious duty. Oh, if he had only paid Nasenberg! If he were only free, the master of his destiny! Yes, undoubtedly, infected by the intoxication that had gripped the young woman, the idea of that escapade, he would have cried out, full of love, seizing her hand: “Let’s go! Wherever you wish!”
And he would have forgotten his chimera, the scientific dream, for the disturbing and radiant reality!
But he could see Georges Turner, who was observing him from the end of a path, seemingly anxious in watching his long conversation with the legitimately amorous woman. He made a great effort to p
ull himself together, and articulated, with difficult; “And if you love me, you ought to be happy that my destiny is calling me. And you ought to rejoice in that which makes my joy. Nelly, my Nelly, let’s go back to Paris, please. I must—I swear to you that I must—go back to work.”
She became paler than a corpse—and Rozal suddenly had the atrocious impression that something within her as on the point of death. He stammered: “Forgive me…but I must...”
Astonished, wounded, she looked at him, trying to understand. “Why do you say that you must, in that fashion? Is there a force driving you, then, that is stronger than my love?”
But he was haunted now by the obsession: to work; to become rich; to pay Nasenberg. Afterwards—oh, yes, afterwards, how he would make up for lost time! And without realizing that he was hammering the words within him and that she could hear them, he thought obstinately, desperately: I must… I must… I must...
She understood then the futility of her efforts, of her very determination, that she had masked s well beneath the avowal of her real tenderness—and she suffered, atrociously, because she was not loved as she had believed, as she had always believed, in the feverish months lived in these surroundings, beneath the sky. He was arguing; he was not giving in; he was cool enough to reason; he was not completely besotted with her. And there was a profound rip in her soul. But her pride reared up, and caused hr suddenly to form a conjecture: What if he only married me for my fortune, to have the means of realizing his folly?
The atrocious thought passed through her head like a poisoned arrow; it left her bruised, dazed and ill.
She got to her feet, painfully. “I see, Henri, that you won’t make any concession to my love, my wifely anguish. So be it. You’re speaking with your reason; I don’t have the right, therefore, to refuse to hear you. You reject my folly, which I wanted you to share. Oh, how that voyage to the Orient would have led us to joys whose memory would have intoxicated our entire lives, ensured our happiness!”
He threw himself forward, tried to hug his wife, and said, ardently: “That folly! My Nelly, my beloved, my adored, we’ll do it later…when it’s reasonable.”
But she shook her head. “Then it will no longer have its charm. No, never again, now. You’ve killed the dear illusion within me: the dream is no longer possible. You’ll see how reasonable and wise I can be. You’ll see, you’ll see...”
She could not contain herself any longer, and dissolved in tears. He tried to support her, to hug her to him, but she pulled away nervously. With a prompt gesture, she picked up the irises that she had dropped, and, burying her face in the black and gray flowers, in order that no one would see her tears, she ran way, toward the white house, the nuptial residence.
X. In a Flowering Acacia
Henri Rozal was torn from his thoughts by Turner’s voice.
“Ah, you’re alone! I’ve been looking out for you, since the post arrived.
“You have urgent news? From whom?”
“From Nasenberg, this telegram. Having departed yesterday evening on the nine o’clock express, he’ll be here in four hours. He asks me to inform you of it, to prepare you for his visit.”
“It’s the catastrophe, old chap.”
“No—I doubt, though, that he’s coming here without a bill to present. Oh, I know that lascar, if he’s coming to see you, it’s serious.”
“And to think that I’d decided to leave. He’ll never know—nor will you, nor anyone—what I’ve just killed of the beautiful, the splendid and the passionate, in order to satisfy that bandit...”
Very emotional, Turner took his friend’s hands. “What do you mean?”
“Later…yes, later, I’ll tell you everything. In the meantime, let’s go in. The express arrives in Monte Carlo, I believe, at 2:34 p.m. We’ll take the car immediately after dinner. It’s absolutely necessary that I see Nasenberg when he gets off the sleeper. He can’t come here!”
“You’re right about that.”
They went along a pathway bordered by aloes, pineapples, laurier-roses and flowering mimosas. The Sun was now high in the sky and the life of people and this was on the move everywhere, following its irresistible march in an apotheosis of light, beauty and love.
Little cries and a flutter of wings in a flowering acacia caused the engineer to raise his head; he perceived two superimposed blue tits, making love.
XI. Meeting the Obstacle
When he saw Rozal and Turner on the station platform at Monte Carlo, the naturalized German banker with the slender red ribbon in his buttonhole started. Ah! He’s here already? My visit undoubtedly frightens him. Well, so much the better. He got down slowly, in order to give himself time to think, for he had not anticipated this precipitation to meet him on the engineer’s part. It was with a broad smile and an amicable expression that he advanced toward the two friends.
“I won’t ask you how you are,” he said, addressing Rozal. “I haven’t heard any word of you since your marriage, so you must be happy—and when one is happy, one forgets one’s friends.”
Rozal wore a mocking smile, but his voice trembled slightly as he replied: “I beg your pardon, but is it as a friend that you’ve come?”
“But of course! Why would I cease to be your friend? If I return to Paris with other sentiments, it will be because you have wanted that.”
“We’ll talk, but not here. Where are you staying?”
The banker bit his lip. One isn’t invited to dinner at the villa? he thought. One is treated, already, as a vulgar stranger, an enemy? You, my lad, are being stupid. You want to humiliate Nasenberg—that’s not clever. You’ll soon see how I take my revenge. Dryly, he replied: “I’m going to the Hôtel de Paris—but to get there, my dear chap, I have no need of your limousine.”
“Climb in all the same. We need to sort things out; it’s as well to do it today. I assume that you have no time to waste?”
“I had—but I don’t have it any more, in fact. So, since business is business, best not to drag it out. I expect to return tomorrow evening, with everything concluded to my satisfaction.”
Begun on that note, the conversation did not presage anything good, and Turner was sorry that the two men had made contact with words of hatred on their lips. He would have preferred that Rozal, without offering him accommodation, had treated Nasenberg as a friend and made some concessions. If he had invited him to dinner at the villa in Turbie that evening, the banker, flattered, might have been perfectly prepared to wait. What was he risking, so long as the engineer and the American heiress were passionately in love?
To be sure, in the short journey from Turbie to Monte Carlo, and on the station platform, while pacing back and forth waiting for the arrival of the Calais-Mediterranean, Turner had urged Rozal to be flexible and adroit, as nothing was lost yet. Rozal, however, had cried out in irritation: “That go-between disgusts me. When I think that he has a contract signed by me, which soils my love…that he has speculated on my happiness, made a business deal of my sentiments! Can I forget that he is coming to claim his commission on the adorable masterpiece who is my wife? So all my happiness, my passion, the kisses that Nelly and I have exchanged, all our joie de vivre, are no more than the result of an odious scheme? No, my friend, don’t ask me to be amiable with Nasemberg; all that I can promise you is not to strangle him.”
“Nevertheless,” Turner had replied, “the best thing to do is to be polite and charming. You haven’t always had these sentiments toward him. At the very moment of your marriage you incurred a legal obligation to pay him a commission on your wife’s dowry—not to mention the extra half-million that you agreed to share between the competitors.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking! In my almost-childish joy, I wanted to see everyone happy. But since then…since the dear, delicate creature that Nelly is has become my sun, my life, you can’t imagine how jealous I am of everything that was close to her before me. Then again, I have to say, I believed that I could pay Nasenberg myself, with my own mone
y, which I would have earned...” He lowered his head to add: “And I didn’t know, either, that our marriage would be a celebration so splendid and long-lasting that it would make me forget that which once seemed to be my unique objective and my destiny…oh, that bandit, who is intruding upon my felicity like a toad in a flower-garden!”
Henri Rozal, carried away by anger, had simulated crushing a vile beast beneath his heel...
Turner, distressed, had nevertheless continued to recommend him to be courteous, even pleasant—diplomatic, in sum, in order to gain time.
This was the result. All three of them went to the hotel, without saying a word. Turner broke the silence once, to ask Nasenberg what the weather was like in Paris. Coldly, he replied: “It’s raining.”
While the banker was booking a room, Rozal said to Turner: “Go back to the villa, my friend. My wife will be anxious—tell her that I’ll be absent for an hour or two. Today, more than ever, because of this morning’s scene, she needs a friend with her. Since you’ll be alone, and she’ll talk to you about me, tell her how much I love her, and how unhappy I will be if I lose her...”
“But you won’t lose her!”
“Tel her, all the same, that I adore her, that I adored her from the very first moment, without knowing who she was. I want her to hear that truth from your mouth, my dear friend, because you’ll have the sincerity that will convince her…later, she’ll remember.”
“You’re mad! Your life isn’t at breaking-point yet. This resident alien isn’t as terrible as he wants to make you believe. Try to mollify him; I’m sure that he won’t demand anymore.”
“Go, my friend, go. I feel as if I were high in the air, aboard an apparatus that no longer has more than one wing. That spin, that terrible fall! Beware of the shock of impact!”
The two friends shook hands, and Rozal remained with the banker, who had just invited him to go up to his room.
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