LITMIR.BIZ

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was still holding out his arms to her, and repeating: “My poor Madeleine, console me — You are the only one left to me in the world.”

      Console him for James’s death; it seemed ridiculous and cruel to her. She was obliged to take him in her arms again, and dry the tears which he was shedding for her first lover. The strange part she was acting at this moment, would have made her weep too, could she have found tears. She was truly unfeeling and pitiless; no regret, no tenderness for him whom she had loved, nothing but a secret irritation at William’s grief. She was still the daughter of Férat the workman.

      “He loved him more than he does me,” she thought; “he would cast me off if I were to declare what I think.”

      Then, for the sake of saying something, prompted too by bitter curiosity, she asked in a brief tone, how he had met with his death?

      Then William told her how. having to wait at his banker’s he had mechanically taken up a newspaper. His eyes had fallen on a paragraph which announced the wreck of the frigate Prophet which had been caught in a gale on nearing the Cape. The vessel had been dashed to pieces on the rocks and not a man had been saved. James, who was going out to Cochin China on this steamer, did not even repose in a grave where his friends could go to pray for him. The news was officially confirmed.

      When the anguish of the lovers was allayed, during the night that followed, Madeleine meditated more calmly on the unexpected events of the day. Her anger had gone, and she felt herself dejected and sad. Had she heard of James’s death under other circumstances, no doubt she would have had a choking sensation in her throat and the tears would have come. Now, alone in the recess where the bed stood, at the sound of the fitful breathing of her lover who was sleeping the heavy sleep of the wretched, she thought of him who was dead, of the corpse rolled and beaten against the rocks by the waves. Perhaps, as he had fallen into the sea, he had uttered her name. She remembered bow one day he had cut himself rather severely, in the Rue Soufflot, and how she had nearly fainted at the sight of the blood trickling along his hand. She loved him then, she would have sat up with him for months to rescue him from an illness. And now he was drowned, and she was feeling angry with him. Yet he had not become so indifferent to her as all that; she had him still, on the contrary, always in her breast, in every member; he had such hold on her that she thought she could feel his breath on her face. Then she felt the quiver which thrilled her in the old days, when the young fellow wound his arms round her body. She felt an inexpressible pang, as if a part of her being had been torn away from her. She began to weep, burying her head in the pillow, so that William might not hear. All her woman’s weakness had come back to her; it seemed to her that she was more alone than ever in the world.

      This crisis lasted for a long time. Madeleine prolonged it involuntarily as she called to mind the days of James’s love; at each touching detail which came back to her from the past, she became more distressed, and she reproached herself with her petulant indifference during the day, as if it had been a crime. William himself, had he known her history, would have told her to fall on her knees and weep with him. She clasped her hands, she asked pardon of him who was dead, of him whom she evoked, of him whose cries of agony she fancied she could hear mingled with the roaring of the sea.

      A violent desire suddenly seized her. She made no effort to struggle against this irresistible longing.

      She got quietly out of bed, with infinite precautions, so as not to wake William. When she had put her feet on the carpet, she looked at him uneasily, dreading lest he should ask her where she was going. But he was asleep, his eyes still full of tears. Then, she went and looked for the night-lamp and passed into the sitting-room, trembling when the floor creaked beneath her bare feet.

      She walked straight to the album, opened it on a little table, and sat down before James’s portrait. It was James that she came to look for. Her shoulders covered with her loose hair, wrapping herself up shiveringly in her long nightdress, she gazed long at the portrait in the yellow flickering light of the lamp. A deep silence fell around her, and as she listened, starting with sudden and groundless fears, she could hear nothing but William’s feverish breathing in the next room.

      James no longer appeared to her to have his mocking look of the morning. His bare neck and arms, and his open shirt no longer irritated her memories. The man was dead; his portrait had assumed an indefinable softened expression of friendship and Madeleine felt soothed as she gazed on him. He was smiling at her with his old cordial smile, and even his careless attitude touched her deeply. The young fellow, astride on a chair, smoking his clay pipe, seemed to be forgiving her goodnaturedly. He was as she had known him, a good fellow in death; he looked as if she had opened the door of their room in the Rue Soufflot, and James in his lighthearted, offhand way was getting forgiveness for his peccadillos by his gay spirits.

      Her tears became less bitter, she forgot herself in the contemplation of him who was no more. Henceforth this portrait would be a relic, and she thought she had nothing to fear from it. Then, she remembered her struggles of the morning, her indecision, her anxiety to know what to do. Poor James, at the moment of her distress at seeing him rise up between herself and her lover, had seemed to have sent her the news of his death to tell her to live in peace. He would come no more to disturb her in her new love; he seemed to authorise her to bury deep in her heart the secret of their intimacy. Why make William suffer? and why not seek for happiness again? She ought to keep silent out of pity, out of affection. James’s portrait murmured: “Go, try to be happy, my child. I am no longer near you. I will never appear before you as your living shame. Your lover is a child. I have befriended him, and I implore you to befriend him in your turn. If you are good, just think of me sometimes.”

      Madeleine’s mind was made up. She would say nothing, she would not be more cruel than fate which had wished to conceal her first lover’s name from William. Besides, had he not said so himself? James’s memory would live in his mind, and it must live there elevated and serene. It would be doing wrong to speak. When she had sworn to preserve silence, it seemed to her that the portrait thanked her for her resolution.

      She kissed the likeness.

      Day was breaking when she went back to bed. William, worn out, was still slumbering. She fell asleep at last, comforted, nursed by distant hope. They would forget this day of anguish, they would come back to their beloved state of bliss and love.

      But their dream was over. The peacefulness of their first acquaintance was never more to lull them in their retreat in the Rue de Boulogne. During the days that followed, the rueful phantom of the shipwreck haunted the house, casting around them a gloomy sadness. They forgot their kisses, they would sit for a whole morning side by side, hardly saying a word, absorbed in their sad memories. James’s death had entered into their genial solitude like an icy blast; now they shuddered, and it seemed to there as if the little rooms, where they had lived the day before on each other’s knees, were large, dilapidated and exposed to every wind. The silence and the seclusion which they had sought, caused them a vague feeling of terror. They found themselves too lonely. One day, William could not restrain a cruel remark.

      “This house is really like a grave,” he exclaimed, “it is enough to stifle one.”

      He was sorry for it directly he had spoken, and, taking Madeleine’s hand, he added:

      “Forgive me. I shall forget him, and I will be yours again.” He was in earnest, but he was not aware that the same dream rarely comes twice. When they had got over their dejection, they had lost the blind confidence of their early acquaintance. Madeleine especially was quite changed. She had just evoked the past, and she could no longer surrender herself to William’s embraces like one who knew nothing. Life had inflicted a wound on her, it would do so again, and she must, she thought, be on her guard against the wounds that threatened her. Before, she hardly thought of the shame attached to her title of mistress; it seemed to her natural to be loved, she herself loved, smilingly, forgetting the world. Now, her pride had been hurt, she was feeling again the anguish she had felt in the Rue Soufflot, and she looked upon her lover as an enemy who was robbing her of her self-respect. There was a something which made her feel that she was not in her proper sphere in the Rue de Boulogne. The thought, “I am a kept woman,” presented itself to her in all its nakedness and made her burn like a hot iron;

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