The Nabob Volume Ii Part 23

But as the day wore on, the sun, mounting higher in the heavens, scattered its beams over the sea just emerging from its mists, heavy with sleep, dazed, motionless, with a quartz-like transparence, and myriads of rays fell upon the water as if arrow-points had p.r.i.c.ked it, making a dazzling reflection, doubled in intensity by the whiteness of the cliffs and the soil, by a veritable African sirocco which raised the dust in a spiral column as the carriage pa.s.sed. They reached the hottest, the most sheltered portions of the Corniche,--a genuinely tropical temperature, where dates, cactus, the aloe, with its tall, candelabra-like branches, grow in the fields. When he saw those slender trunks, that fantastic vegetation shooting up in the white, hot air, when he felt the blinding dust crunching under the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes partly closed, half-dreaming in that leaden noonday heat, fancied that he was making once more the tiresome journey from Tunis to the Bardo, which he had made so often in a strange medley of Levantine chariots, brilliant liveries, _meahris_ with long neck and hanging lip, gayly-caparisoned mules, young a.s.ses, Arabs in rags, half-naked negroes, great functionaries in full dress, with their escorts of honor. Should he find yonder, where the road skirts gardens of palm-trees, the curious, colossal architecture of the bey's palace, its close-meshed window gratings, its marble doors, its _moucharabies_ cut out of wood and painted in vivid colors? It was not the Bardo, but the pretty village of Bordighera, divided like all those on the coast into two parts, the _Marine_ lying along the sh.o.r.e, and the upper town, connected by a forest of statuesque palms with slender stalks and drooping tops,--veritable rockets of verdure, showing stripes of blue through their innumerable regular clefts.

The unendurable heat and the exhaustion of the horses compelled the traveller to halt for two or three hours at one of the great hotels that line the road and, from early in November, bring to that wonderfully sheltered little village all the luxurious life and animation of an aristocratic winter resort. But at that time of year the _Marine_ of Bordighera was deserted, save for a few fishermen, who were invisible at that hour. The villas and hotels seemed dead, all their blinds and shades being closely drawn. The new arrival was led through long, cool, silent pa.s.sages, to a large salon facing north, evidently a part of one of the full suites which are generally let for the season, as it was connected with other rooms on either side by light doors. White curtains, a carpet, the semi-comfort demanded by the English even when travelling, and in front of the windows, which the innkeeper threw wide open as a lure to the visitor, to induce him to make a more extended halt, the magnificent view of the mountain. An astonis.h.i.+ng calm reigned in that huge, deserted inn, with no steward, no cook, no attendants,--none of the staff arrived until the first cool days,--and given over to the care of a native spoil-sauce, an expert in _stoffatos_ and _risottos_, and to two stable-boys, who donned the regulation black coat, white cravat and pumps at meal hours. Luckily, de Gery proposed to remain there only an hour or two,--long enough to breathe, to rest his eyes from the glare of burnished silver and to free his heavy head from the helmet with the painful chin-strap that the sun had placed upon it.

From the couch on which he lay, the beautiful landscape, terraces of light, quivering olive-trees, orange-groves of darker hue, their leaves gleaming as if wet in the moving rays, seemed to come down to his window in tiers of verdure of different shades, amid which the scattered villas stood forth in dazzling whiteness, among them Maurice Trott, the banker's, recognizable by the capricious richness of its architecture and the height of its palm-trees. The Levantine's palace, whose gardens extended to the very windows of the hotel, had sheltered for several months past an artistic celebrity, the sculptor Brehat, who was dying of consumption and owed the prolongation of his life to that princely hospitality. This proximity of a famous moribund, of which the landlord was very proud and which he would have been glad to charge in his bill,--the name of Brehat, which de Gery had so often heard mentioned with admiration in Felicia Ruys' studio, led his thoughts back to the lovely face with the pure outlines, which he had seen for the last time in the Bois de Boulogne, leaning upon Mora's shoulder. What had become of the unfortunate girl when that support had failed her? Would the lesson profit her in the future? And, by a strange coincidence, while he was thinking thus of Felicia, a great white grey-hound went frisking along a tree-lined avenue in the sloping garden before him. One would have said that it was Kadour himself,--the same short hair, the same fierce, slender red jaws. Paul, at his open window, was a.s.sailed in an instant by all sorts of visions, sweet and depressing. Perhaps the superb scenery before him, the lofty mountain up which a blue shadow was running, tarrying in all the inequalities of the ground, a.s.sisted the vagabondage of his thought. Under the orange and lemon trees, set out in straight lines for cultivation, stretched vast fields of violets in close, regular cl.u.s.ters, traversed by little irrigating ca.n.a.ls, whose walls of white stone made sharp breaks in the luxuriant verdure.

An exquisite odor arose, of violets fermented in the sun, a hot boudoir perfume, enervating, weakening, which called up before de Gery's eyes feminine visions, Aline, Felicia, gliding across the enchanted landscape, in that blue-tinted atmosphere, that elysian light which seemed to be the visible perfume of such a mult.i.tude of flowers in full bloom. A sound of doors closing made him open his eyes. Some one had entered the adjoining room. He heard a dress brus.h.i.+ng against the thin part.i.tion, the turning of leaves in a book in which the reader seemed to feel no absorbing interest; for he was startled by a long sigh ending in a yawn. Was he still asleep, still dreaming? Had he not heard the cry of the "jackal in the desert," so thoroughly in harmony with the heavy, scorching temperature without? No. Nothing more. He dozed again; and this time all the confused images that haunted him took definite shape in a dream, a very lovely dream.

He was taking his wedding journey with Aline. A fascinating bride she was. Bright eyes, overflowing with love and faith, which knew only him, looked at none but him. In that same hotel parlor, on the other side of the centre table, the sweet girl was sitting in a white _neglige_ morning costume which smelt of violets and of the dainty lace of the trousseau. One of those wedding-journey breakfasts, served immediately after rising, in sight of the blue sea and the clear sky which tinge with azure the gla.s.s from which you drink, the eyes into which you gaze, the future, life and the vast expanse of s.p.a.ce. Oh! what superb weather, what a divine, youth-renewing light, and how happy they were!

And suddenly, amid their kisses, their intoxicating bliss, Aline became sad. Her lovely eyes were dimmed with tears. "Felicia is there," she said, "you will not love me any more." And he laughed at her: "Felicia,--here? What an idea!" "Yes, yes, she is there." Trembling, she pointed to the adjoining room, where he heard Felicia's voice, mingled with fierce barking. "Here, Kadour! Here, Kadour!" the low, concentrated, indignant voice of one who seeks to remain concealed and suddenly finds that she is discovered.

Awakened with a start, the lover, disenchanted, found himself in the empty room, beside a table at which no one else was sitting, his lovely dream flown away through the window to the great hillside which filled the whole field of vision and seemed to stoop toward the house. But he really heard the barking of a dog in the adjoining room and repeated blows on the door.

"Open the door. It is I--Jenkins."

Paul sat up on his couch in speechless amazement. Jenkins in that house?

How could that be? To whom was he talking? What voice was about to reply to him? There was no reply. A light step walked to the door and the bolt was nervously drawn back.

"At last I have found you," said the Irishman, entering the room.

And in truth, if he had not taken pains to announce himself, Paul, hearing it through the part.i.tion, would never have attributed that brutal, hoa.r.s.e, savage tone to the oily-mannered doctor.

"At last I have found you, after eight days of searching, of rus.h.i.+ng frantically from Genoa to Nice, from Nice to Genoa. I knew that you hadn't gone, as the yacht was still in the roads. And I was on the point of investigating all the hotels along the sh.o.r.e when I remembered Brehat. I thought that you would want to stop and see him as you pa.s.sed.

So I came here. It was he who told me that you were at this house."

To whom was he speaking? What extraordinary obstinacy the person showed in not replying! At last a rich, melancholy voice, which Paul knew well, made the heavy resonant air of the hot afternoon vibrate in its turn.

"Well! yes, Jenkins, here I am. What of it, pray?"

Paul could see through the wall the disdainful, drooping mouth, curled in disgust.

"I have come to prevent you from going, from perpetrating this folly."

"What folly? I have work to do in Tunis. I must go there."

"Why, you can't think of such a thing, my dear child."

"Oh! enough of your paternal airs, Jenkins. I know what is hidden underneath. Pray talk to me as you did just now. I prefer you as the bulldog, rather than as the fawning cur. I'm less afraid of you."

"Very good! I tell you that you must be mad to go to that country all alone, young and lovely as you are."

"Why, am I not always alone? Would you have me take Constance, at her age?"

"What about me?"

"You?" She emphasized the word with a most satirical laugh. "And Paris?

and your patients? Deprive Paris of its Cagliostro! No, indeed, never!"

"I am thoroughly resolved, however, to follow you wherever you go," said Jenkins, with decision.

There was a moment's pause. Paul wondered if it were very dignified in him to listen to this discussion, which seemed pregnant with terrible disclosures. But, in addition to his fatigue, an unconquerable curiosity glued him to his place. It seemed to him that the engrossing enigma by which he had been so long puzzled and disturbed, to which his mind still held by the end of its veil of mystery, was about to speak at last, to reveal itself, to disclose the woman, sorrowful or perverse, hidden beneath the sh.e.l.l of the worldly artist. So he remained perfectly still, holding his breath, but with no need to listen closely; for the others, believing themselves alone in the hotel, allowed their pa.s.sions and their voices to rise without restraint.

"After all, what do you want of me?"

"I want you."

"Jenkins!"

"Yes, yes, I know; you have forbidden me ever to utter such words before you; but others than I have said them to you and more too--"

Two nervous steps brought her nearer to the apostle, placed the breathless contempt of her retort close to his broad sensual face.

"And if that were true, villain! If I were unable to defend myself against disgust and ennui, if I did lose my pride, is it for you to mention it? As if you were not the cause of it, as if you had not withered and saddened my life forever."

And three swift, burning words revealed to the horrified Paul de Gery the shocking scene of that a.s.sault disguised by loving guardians.h.i.+p, against which the girl's spirit and mind and dreams had had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable depression of premature sorrow, a loathing for life almost before it had begun, and that curl at the corner of the lip like the visible wreck of a smile.

"I loved you,--I love you. Pa.s.sion carries everything before it,"

Jenkins replied in a hollow voice.

"Very well, love me, if it amuses you. For my part, I hate you, not only because of the injury you have done me and all the beliefs and laudable enthusiasms that you killed in me, but because you represent what are the most execrable and hideous things under the sun to me, hypocrisy and falsehood. Yes, in that worldly masquerade, that ma.s.s of false pretences, of grimaces, of cowardly, indecent conventions which have sickened me so thoroughly that I am running away, exiling myself in order to avoid seeing them, that I prefer to them the galleys, the gutter, or to walk the street as a prost.i.tute, your mask, O sublime Jenkins, is the one that inspires the greatest horror in me. You have complicated our French hypocrisy, which consists mainly in smiles and courtesies, with your effusive English handshakes, your cordial and demonstrative loyalty. Everybody is taken in by it. People speak of 'honest Jenkins,' 'excellent, worthy Jenkins.' But I know you, my man, and for all your fine motto, so insolently displayed on your envelopes, on your seal, your cuff-b.u.t.tons, your hat-buckles and the panels of your carriages, I always see the knave that you are, showing everywhere around the edges of your disguise."

Her voice hissed between her clenched teeth with an indescribably savage intonation; and Paul expected some frantic outburst on the part of Jenkins, rebelling against such a storm of insults. But no. That exhibition of hatred and contempt on the part of the woman he loved evidently caused him more sorrow than anger; for he answered low, in a tone of heart-broken gentleness:--

"Ah! you are cruel. If you knew how you hurt me! Hypocrite, yes, it is true; but a man isn't born that way, he becomes so perforce, in face of the harsh vicissitudes of life. When you have the wind against you and want to go ahead, you tack. I tacked. Charge it to my miserable beginnings, to an unsuccessful entrance on the stage, and agree at least that one thing in me has never lied: my pa.s.sion! Nothing has succeeded in repelling it, neither your contempt, nor your insults, nor all that I read in your eyes, which have never once smiled on me in all these years. And it is my pa.s.sion which gives me strength, even after what I have just heard, to tell you why I am here. Listen. You informed me one day that you needed a husband, some one to watch over you while you were at work, to relieve poor, worn-out Crenmitz from sentry duty. Those were your own words, which tore my heart then because I was not free. Now everything is changed. Will you marry me, Felicia?"

"What about your wife?" cried the girl, while Paul asked himself the same question.

"My wife is dead."

"Dead? Madame Jenkins? Is that true?"

"You never knew the one to whom I refer. The other was not my wife. When I met her, I was already married, in Ireland. Years ago. A horrible marriage, entered into with a rope around my neck. My dear, at twenty-five this alternative was presented to me: imprisonment for debt or Miss Strang, a pimply-faced, gouty old maid, the sister of a money-lender who had advanced me five hundred francs to pay for my medical studies. I preferred the jail; but weeks and months of it exhausted my courage and I married Miss Strang, who brought me as her dowry--my note of hand. You can imagine what my life was between those two monsters who adored each other. A jealous, sterile wife. The brother spying upon me, following me everywhere. I might have fled. But one thing detained me. The money-lender was said to be enormously rich. I proposed at all events to secure the profits of my cowardice. You see, I tell you everything. However, I was well punished. Old Strang died insolvent; he was a gambler, and had ruined himself without saying a word. Thereupon I placed my wife's rheumatism in an asylum and came to France. I had to begin life anew, to struggle with poverty once more.

But I had on my side experience, hatred and contempt for mankind, and freedom, for I did not suspect that the horrible ball and chain of that infernal union would continue to impede my steps at a distance. Luckily it's all over, and I am free at last."

"Yes, Jenkins, free. But why doesn't it occur to you to marry the poor creature who has shared your life so long, humble and devoted to you as we have all seen her?"

"Oh!" he said with a burst of sincere feeling, "between my two galleys I believe I preferred the other, where I could show my indifference or my hatred without restraint. But the ghastly comedy of conjugal love, of unwearying happiness, when for so many years I have loved no one but you, thought of no one but you! There's no such torture on earth. If I can judge by my own experience, the poor woman must have shouted with relief and joy when we separated. That is the only farewell greeting I hoped for from her."

"But who forced you to use such restraint."

"Paris, society, the world. Being married according to public opinion, we were bound by it."

"And now you are no longer so bound?"

"Now there is one thing that overshadows everything else, the thought of losing you, of seeing you no more. Oh! when I learned of your flight, when I saw the sign: TO LET, on your door, I felt that the time for poses and grimaces had gone by, that there was nothing for me to do but to pack up and rush after my happiness, which you were carrying away.

You left Paris, I did the same. Everything in your house was sold; everything in my house is to be sold."

"And she?" rejoined Felicia, with a shudder. "She, the irreproachable companion, the virtuous woman whom no one has ever suspected, where will she go? what will she do? And you have come to propose to me to take her place? A stolen place, and in what a h.e.l.l! Aha! And our motto, honest Jenkins, virtuous Jenkins, what are we to do with that? 'Do good without hope,' old man!"