XII. The Decisive Encounter
As soon as they were alone, Nasenberg said: “Naturally, you know why I’ve come—and also naturally, you haven’t taken any measures to meet your obligations?”
“You’re mistaken. In a month, I’ll pay you.”
“Why the delay?”
“To permit me to complete the turbine engine that will make me suddenly rich. You know how my work stands—the invention is almost ready.”
Nasenberg burst out laughing. “Oh no, my lad—you’ve strung me out long enough with that humbug. I know exactly how things stand in the story in which I invested; the only thing that’s spun is my money. No, seriously—are you mocking me?” Very calmly and very coldly, emphasizing his words, the banker said: “I know that you’re about to leave the Côte d’Azur, imminently, and it’s precisely for that reason that—regretfully, believe me—I’ve brought forward my intervention. I can’t have you going off who knows where without our having settle our little bit of business.”
Sincerely surprised, Rozal stammered: “I don’t understand.”
“Play the innocent. Do you think I don’t know that your wife bought Fred O’Neil’s yacht last week, and has had it fitted out for a voyage round the world? A man like me has his spies, my lad! And do you think that I’d have lost sight, stupidly, of a gentleman who owes me two million? I’ve no intention of hunting you down in some port in Java or the other side of the Pacific! Pay first, make your great honeymoon voyage afterwards!”
Rozal was flabbergasted. So, without saying anything to him, Nelly had made all the preparations for that escapade! She would have carried him off, by surprise, in a fit of sentimental and passionate over-enthusiasm. Then, far away, alone with him, she would no longer have been afraid that he might escape, to return to his scientific research, to the labor of which she was jealous! And when she submitted her seemingly-spontaneous idea to him that morning, she had been following, with the recklessness of a woman in love, a program that had been ripening for some time.
Then, Rozal became fearful of that immense, exclusive, all-consuming love, as an opium-smoker is obliged to fear the drug that sends him to sleep, as a sick man demands and curses the poison that intoxicates him and kills him at the same time. He felt overwhelmed, annihilated by an enveloping sentiment stronger than his own: the state of enslavement that he glimpsed seemed to him as joyful as a Paradise, and as dangerous as an Inferno.
In a tone that seemed sincere to Nasenberg, he confessed: “I swear to you that I knew nothing about this project.”
The banker studied him for a minute, and reflected. The situation disconcerted him. He had scented a maneuver on Rozal’s part, and he suddenly found himself confronted by something new and much more interesting. He pitied the engineer and admired him at the same time, for the extent of the love that he had inspired in such a woman.
He concluded, however: “I believe you. You’ve no reason to lie, and I see everything. Well, that can only render my decision more immediate. Given what I know, you’ll never go back to work. Now, my friend, you must play your part: you’re no longer anything but a lover. That’s not my fault—but why are you such a strapping fellow, why that gladiatorial visage and those magnificent eyes? Doubtless you have a brain—but what use is that, when one is too handsome? What does it matter, after all? You’ll have attained the same goal, by a different route, that’s all! Except, farewell aviation! Richard Nasenberg can no longer count on that for his payment.”
“I’m still counting on it, though!” Rozal protested energetically. “And you’ll see…you’ll see...”
“What? Within a week you’ll be sailing towards marvelous lands—where I have no desire, I repeat, to hunt you down.”
“Within a week, I’ll be in Paris.”
“No. Then again, my friend, why worry? At the point you’ve reached with your wife, no confession can be redoubtable; she loves you too much and doesn’t want to lose you. You’ve been stupid in marrying under legal conditions that scarcely give you the rights of a child, or a steward, but you’ve redeemed your error by rendering yourself master of a woman in love, whose god you are! It’s good work, even so.”
Livid, Rozal, took a step toward the banker. “Shut up! If you mention my wife again, I’ll put my hands around your throat.”
“Oh! Threats! Why. No one strangles me—it’s me who strangles others. Better to bring things to a close. You don’t have the cash. You no longer have any hope of getting it, because you’re no longer your own master, and you’ll never have the leisure, even if your intellectual faculties remain as powerful. But I want to be paid! As regards my own commission, I’d be prepared to wait—but those of your former rivals...”
“The Duc de Créqui is in Morocco.”
“Yes, but there’s still the deputé. As Lamentin is manifesting some impatience, and I have reasons for obliging him with regard to my business in Morocco, and as he also raised the possibility of disturbing your honeymoon on the Côte d’Azur by means of a leak to a well-chosen newspaper, I’ve advanced him the amount of this indemnity, which is 250,000 francs—and I want, at least, to make up that deficit in my accounts. You understand, now, why I can’t return to Paris without a check for that amount? Come on, a small sacrifice!”
“It’s not a matter of a sacrifice, but of stealing a part of my wife’s dowry, to pay the traffickers who sold it to me.”
“La la la, my dear! There’s a limit to my patience too—and if you continue your insults... Come on, calm down and refrain from your grand speeches, my friend—they don’t impress me. Come on, be a man of your time, and what circumstances have made you. You’re a man beloved. Someone dreams of carrying you away, of guarding you jealously. Let yourself go. There’s a debt to pay, from your life as a bachelor and an inventor? What’s that? A mere bagatelle, for a woman who has no many millions and is intent on holding on to you at any price.”
Nasenberg drew closer to Rozal, took him by the arm, and said, a voice that was almost a whisper, insinuating and roguish: “Admit it! It’s the simplest way. Obtain the whole sum, the two million, in one go—in one go! Better still, don’t tell her the reason, just name me as your creditor—I won’t betray you. It’s agreed? This evening, on the pillow...”
“Scoundrel!”
Rozal had pulled away. Now he was threatening the banker with his two open hands, alarmingly. He had gone white, with an indescribable fury that made the man who had soiled his love tremble momentarily.
“Scoundrel! To what degree of ignominy do you think I’ve descended, to dare to advise me to adopt the role of gigolo, of prostitute? What cynicism!”
“Enough! I am what I am, and in spite of your lofty airs, you’re no better than me. No more futile remarks, then! It’s twenty past three. If, when nine o’clock chimes this evening, you haven’t repaid me the 250,000 francs, here, to settle my demand, at nine o’clock plus the time it takes to get to the Villa des Aigles by car, I’ll reclaim your debt from your wife, the two million, and tell her everything. I’m sure that she’ll pay me.”
“Wretch! You won’t do that.”
“Why not?” He smiled diabolically. “I’ve seen others do it; I know that everything can be arranged.”
“No—you’ll have destroyed everything, after your passing.” The engineer’s voice stuck in his throat. He had tears in his eyes. He put his hands together. “Have pity on my wife, at least!”
A malicious crease marked the corners of Nasenberg’s lips, and his gaze, keener and harsher, lit up his rounded head with the sharp, hooked nose, like that of a bird of prey. “You have five hours. I can’t give you all night for so little. Go, and don’t waste time, for I shall be terribly punctual in the rendezvous.”
Rozal sensed that there as nothing more he could do. He went out, grimly, his eye wild, his head full of insensate thoughts and resolutions mingled in a frightful chaos. He wondered whether he ought to wait for Nasenberg at the gate of the villa and kill him like a wolf. He
also wondered whether he ought not to kill himself. Beyond that, however, he was already beaten, devoid of courage. He was no more than a weakling. There was nothing within him but an immense despair.
Nothing remained of all that drama but one implacably obsessive idea: he was about to lose the woman he adored. Then, like an infant, he babbled: “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!”
XIII. The Dolorous Settlement
What should he do? He had a sudden impulse to go into the Casino, to gamble. He still had more three hours to battle against chance in the private rooms, at roulette or trente-et-quarante. After highs and lows, wins and losses, whose emotional distractions made him forget his obsession somewhat, he had raised 40,000 and a few hundred francs—not even a fifth of what he had to pay Nasenberg that evening.
When he went back to his wife, he was completely at a loss, still possessed by the obsessive thought that he was about to lose her, and that he could no nothing to prevent the accomplishment of that destiny. He had offended and humiliated Nasenberg, when there was no need, and would not be forgiven. In any case, the banker no longer trusted Rozal.
Seven o’clock! Soon, his happiness would collapse entirely and he would fall back, an anonymous gin of sand, into the dust of life—but into a filthy, obscure dust in which, this time, he would be conclusively caught.
Nelly was waiting for him at the top of the perron, leaning on the stone balustrade. The twilight was mauve and soft, the April atmosphere warm and perfumed, and he passed between the branches of the olive-trees, the eucalyptus and the salubrious pines: a fresh and almost-imperceptible music, a light accompaniment o the harmonious colors of the evening.
Rozal got out of the car, and hesitated. But he saw the young woman, her arms extended, her eyes filled with an immense, yearning love. Then he ran forward.
“My darling, my darling…my beloved!” she said.
He held her, conquered once again, and, wrapping his strong arms around her, he seemed to be challenging invisible enemies hidden in the bushes.
Still in a low voice, she murmured: “My darling...my darling...”
He deduced that Turner had spoken, like a true friend who scents dangers approaching and hastens to raise a barrier around the imperiled happiness. And Nelly, doubtless, had listened to him. She had understood what Turner had shown her: Rozal’s renunciation of all that was dear to him: the dream of work, glory, ambition—in sum, the grandiose holocaust, as an offering to his Beloved, of everything that was not Love! She had been ashamed, then, of not having measured the extent of his sacrifice; it had been necessary to wait for his late return in order to hung him and ask forgiveness.
“My darling, my beloved…you’ll see how good I shall be from now on! We’ll leave tomorrow, I’ve decided! In Paris, you’ll go to your factory every day. You’ll work hard! You’ll make fine discoveries…and I’ll only have permission to meet you in the evening, at the exit, like a worker’s bride. I’ll carry you off every day, but only at the hour when work and science surrender you to your mistress.”
She was intoxicated by her own words, and intoxicated by him, too, for she had flung her arms around his neck her ardent lips were caressing his eyes. In her excitement, she did not see the infinite despair that the engineer’s face betrayed.
“Your little wife will be genteel and reasonable. She wants to be proud of her husband. And it’s necessary, isn’t it, that her husband becomes a great man? And she’ll help him passionately, with all her might!”
Rozal sensed that his courage was lacking. So much happiness, so much love, within sight of port, when the ship was about to sink in the frightful tempest rising on the horizon, which he alone could see, with the wide eyes of his terrified passion!
She went on: “Your Nelly doesn’t want to be an amorous egotist, unjust and authoritarian. She will be your loving companion, but also your collaborator, your partner.”
He could not contain himself, then. That warm, disturbing intoxication, so close to him, those words of love, that shared dream, that communion to which he aspired—all of it went to his head, made him shiver, and clouded his eyes. He was exalted.
“My adored wife, do you love me still as you did this morning, in the path through the lilacs, when you wanted us to go away—far away—and immediately?”
“No, I love you more, now. Your friend Turner has shown me the truth.”
“There’s only one truth: our love!”
“Yes, I understand that. Our love, and, also, whatever the step might be on which one finds oneself, an ideal that might be more or less high, depending on one’s situation, but which must be the goal of life.”
“Nelly, it’s you who were right, this morning: let’s leave!”
She pulled away from him suddenly, looked into his eyes, half-joyfully and half-anxiously, and examined him in the darkening shadows of the evening. She saw, then—she who knew so well how to read him—the atrocious dolor that had him in its grip. Her first cry was one of compassion.
“Henri, my Henri! What’s wrong? Tell me what’s been done to you?”
“Nothing—no one has done anything to me—but all day, I’ve been thinking about your words of love, your project, and I’ve understood that glory and work are goals or consolations for those who don’t have the good fortune of loving and being loved, desires and adolescent games or the occupation of overly mature men. Let’s change our passionate youth. I owe you my kisses and I don’t have the right, while the same thought unites us, to follow any road other than the one on which your tyranny desires to take me, my little Yankee queen.”
“It’s bizarre: instead of rejoicing in the conversion of my sentiments, you’re regretting, this evening, that which, this morning, caused you an indescribable terror. Is it the case, my beloved, that the impulses of my heart are always ill-timed?”
He hugged her to him, and drew her hair to his lips. The darkness was thickening. They had forgotten that it was time for dinner, and Turner—who, having seen them together on the perron, was awaiting the end of the conversation in the lighted hallway, reading sporting newspapers. A cool breeze was rising from the Latin sea, pleasant and calm, caressing their faces. From the country, where the fields of flowers were going to sleep in the silence, a cool mixture of aromas was also rising, in which the heady perfumes of carnations, tuberoses, hyacinths, roses and lilacs were detectable.
“We’ve been so content here...” sighed the lovestruck woman, already lazy.
At the same moment, the silvery chime of the clock in the hall sounded eight times—and Rozal shivered. One more hour. He saw the large dark eyes of his wife, huddled in his arms, staring at him, watchfully—and he thought that he also read an intuitive anguish there. A surge of passion lifted him up, and he was able to profit from the moment of doubt and compassion; she was still his for a time, in spite of the imminent danger. He hugged her forcefully.
“Nelly, do you believe that another duty is imposed upon us, stronger that of being eternal lovers, jealous of everything that is not their love? Then let’s depart for the lands of dream and sun, of which, everywhere, you will be for me the intimate enchantment, the most beautiful and blonde. Let’s go far way, as you wanted to do this morning. Yes. Let’s be crazy, let’s live a life that the wise can never know.”
Swooning, conquered, delightfully emotional, she pressed herself against him more forcefully. Her voice trembled with astonished happiness. “Yes, tomorrow.”
“No, right away. See—the darkness seems an accomplice…it’s blacker tonight than other nights. We came here by air, like the migratory birds that set off toward the Sun in autumn. We’ll leave by sea, this evening, and we’ll set a course, this very evening, for Greece, then Egypt, India, Japan...”
“Are you mad?”
“Were you mad, then, this morning?”
“Since your friend returned, I’ve been horribly anxious—I was afraid. Now, I’m sure of you, your faithful affection. We can fit out the yacht to our taste, prett
ily.”
“I know that everything’s ready—prepared on your orders—to lift anchor immediately.”
“Oh!” Abruptly, she pulled away from him and looked at him with a changed expression. “Who told you?”
“Nasenberg.”
“You’ve seen him? Why hasn’t he come here?”
“It doesn’t matter! Before you awake from the beautiful dream that you’ve had, and caused me to have, let me take you away!”
“Tomorrow, them, my love...”
Making a despairing gesture, he uttered a dolorous exclamation that he regretted immediately: “That will be too late!”
“Why too late?”
She was facing him, very pale, for she was beginning to understand that he was struggling in the toils of a web, his eyes wider, mote profound, more anxious, with a hint of hardness, because he had just pronounced five imprudent words. Now, he would have to climb the entire calvary.
“Why too late?” she repeated, shivering.
She had a new expression now, a gaze that was almost hostile. In that first strange moment, with a constrained attitude, she straightened up immediately, looking at him bleakly, forgetful of her love, the kisses they had exchanged, everything magnificently beautiful that they had between them.
Oh, she was certainly a woman!
He bowed his head. In any case, he sensed that the game was lost. It was twenty to nine. Nasenberg would arrive soon. It was necessary for him, in those brief moments, to win the battle or bow down before unavoidable destiny.
Clutching at a straw, nevertheless, Rozal said: “Let’s go in—I’ll tell you everything.”
Astonished, but still maintaining the severe and harsh expression that alarmed the engineer, she followed him into the villa. In the hall, Rozal made his excuses to Turner and asked him to wait on the terrace. Meanwhile, a domestic came to say: “Dinner is served, Madame.”
She sent the servant way with a gesture—and when they were alone again, she was the first to break the silence of their heart-rending armistice.
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