His Excellency the Minister Part 51

Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these _docks_, that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the heaping,--all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian, but American and up-to-date.

"Oh! decidedly up-to-date!--And so convenient!" she said, as she heard the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.

Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought.

She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas did not receive the letter in time, it mattered little! To Lissac,--and this was the main consideration,--she intimated that she would call on him the next morning at ten o'clock.

"Rendezvous box!" she said, as she slipped her two letters into the letter-box. "This extreme comfort is very ironical."

She smiled as she thought how long it would take to count the number of the little hands, some trembling, some bold, that had slipped into the rectilinear mouth of the letter-box some little missive that was either the foretaste or the postscript of adultery.

Then she went downstairs and rejoined Vaudrey, who was impatiently tapping the floor of the carriage with his foot.

"I was a long time there, I ask your pardon," said Marianne.

"At any rate, I hope you have bought something that suited you?" asked Vaudrey, who seemed to have caught a cold.

"Nothing at all. There is nothing in that store!"

Vaudrey was alarmed. Were they to visit one after the other all the fancy goods stores?

Marianne took pity on him.

"Let us return, shall we?" she asked.

She called to the coachman: "Rue p.r.o.ny!" while Sulpice, whom she unwillingly took with her, though he wearily yawned, seized her hand and said as he sneezed:

"Ah! how kind you are!"

The next day, Marianne rang the bell of Lissac's house in Rue d'Aumale, a little before the appointed hour.

"Punctual as a creditor!" she thought.

She reached Guy's, ready for anything. She was very pale and charming in her light costume, and she entered as one would go into a fray with head high. She would not leave the place until she had recovered her letters.

It was only for those sc.r.a.ps of paper that she again, as it were, bound and tied herself to her past; she wished to cut herself away from it and to tear them to pieces with her teeth. But what if Guy should refuse to give them up to her? That could not be possible, although he was sincerely attached to Rosas. Still, between grat.i.tude to a woman and duty to a friend, a man might hesitate, when he is a corrupted Parisian like Lissac.

"His affection for Jose will not carry him to the length of forgetting all that I have given him of myself!" Marianne thought.

Then shrugging her shoulders:

"After all, these men have such a freemasonry between them, as _he_ said!--And they speak of our fraternity, we women!--It is nothing compared with theirs!"

Guy did not show any displeasure on hearing Mademoiselle Kayser announced. He was waiting for her. As Marianne could not feel free so long as he held the proof of her imprudence, some day or other she must inevitably seek him to supplicate or threaten him. The letter received overnight had apprised him that that moment had arrived.

He had just finished dressing when she entered. His suede gloves were laid out flat on a little table beside his hat, his stick and a small antique cloisonne vase into which were thrown the many-colored rosettes of his foreign decorations, some of them red, amid which a little gold cross glistened like some brilliant beetle settled on a deep-hued rose.

"I wager that you are going out!" Marianne remarked abruptly. "Clearly, you did not expect me!--Haven't you received my letter?"

"My dear Marianne," he replied, as he slowly finished adjusting the knot of his cravat, "that is the very remark you made when you condescended to reappear at my house after a lapse of some years. You have too modest a way of announcing yourself; I a.s.sure you that, for my part, I always expect you--and that with impatience. But to-day, more than on any other occasion, because of your charming note."

She knew Guy well enough to perceive that his exquisite politeness only concealed a warlike irony. She did not reply, but stood smiling in front of the fireplace and warmed her toes at the light flames that leapt about the logs.

"You are exceedingly polite," she said at last. "On honor, I like you very much--you laugh? I say very much--Yes, in spite--In no case, have you had aught to complain of me."

She half turned, resting her left hand on the edge of the velvet-covered mantel, and cast a furtive, gentle glance at Lissac that recalled a mult.i.tude of happy incidents.

"I have never complained," said the young man, "and I have frequently expressed my thanks!"

Marianne laughed at the discreet manner so ceremoniously adopted by Lissac.

"You are silly, come!--We have a great liking for each other, and it is in the name of that affection that I come to ask a service."

"You have only to speak, my dear Marianne," Lissac answered, as if he had not noticed the intimacy her words expressed.

He affected a cold politeness; Marianne replied to him with apparent renewed tenderness. She looked at him for some time as if she hesitated and feared, her glance penetrating Lissac's, and begging with a tearful pet.i.tion that wished to kindle a flame in his eyes.

"What I have to say to you will take some time. I am afraid--"

"Of what?" he asked.

"I don't know. You are in a hurry? I interfere with you, perhaps!"

"Not the least in the world. I breakfast at the Club, take a turn in the Bois, and drop in at the _Mirlitons_ to see the opening. You see that I should be ent.i.tled to very little merit in sacrificing to you a perfectly wasted day."

"Is the present Exposition of the _Mirlitons_ well spoken of?" asked Marianne, indifferently.

"Very. It is a collection of things that are to be sold for the benefit of a deceased artist. Would you like to go there at four o'clock?"

"No, thanks!--And I repeat, my dear Guy, that I will not hinder you, you know, if I have been indiscreet in giving you an appointment!--"

She seemed to be mechanically toying with the silk rosettes in the little vase; she picked them up and let them drop from her fingers like grains.

"These are yours?" she asked.--"Come near that I may put them on!"

She went to Guy, smilingly, and resting her body against his for its entire length, she paused for a moment while she held the lapel of his jacket, and from head to foot she gazed at him with a look that seemed to impregnate him with odor and turned him pale.

"What an idea, Marianne! I do not wear these ribbons now."

"A childish one. I remember that I was the first to place in this b.u.t.tonhole some foreign decoration that Monsieur de Rosas brought you--"

She p.r.o.nounced this name boldly, as if she would bring on the battle.

"That suits you well," she continued. "Orders on your coat are like diamonds in our ears--they are of no use, but they are pretty."

She had pa.s.sed a red rosette through the b.u.t.tonhole, and lowering his head, Guy saw her fair brow, her blond locks within reach of his lips.

They exhaled a perfume--the odor of hay, that he liked so well--and those woman's fingers on his breast, the fingers of the woman whom he had mocked the previous night at the theatre, caused him a disturbing sensation. He gently disengaged himself, while Marianne repeated: "That suits you well--" Then her hand fell on his and she pressed his fingers in her burning and soft palm and said, as she half lowered her head toward him:

"Do you know why I have come? You know that I am silly. Well, naughty one, the other evening in that box when you punished me with your irony, all my love for you returned!--Ah! how foolish we are, we women! Tell me, Guy, do you recall the glorious days we have spent? Those recollections retain their place in the heart! Has the idea of living again as in the past never occurred to you? It was so sweet!"