Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 47

A ferocious and determined band, made up of refugees from the South American republics, parasites from the coast cities or vagabonds from the inland forests, had grouped itself around her. At their head, as message-bearer for the doctor, was Karl, the secretary that Ferragut had seen in the great old house of the district of Chiaja.

This man, in spite of his oily aspect, had several b.l.o.o.d.y crimes in his life history. He was a worthy superintendent of the group of adventurers inflamed by patriotic enthusiasm who were forwarding supplies to the submarines in the Spanish Mediterranean. They all knew Captain Ferragut, because of the affair at Ma.r.s.eilles, and they were talking about his person with gloomy reticence.

"Through them I learned of your arrival," she continued. "They are spying upon you, waiting for a favorable moment. Who knows if they have not already followed you here?... Ulysses, flee; your life is seriously threatened."

The captain again shrugged his shoulders with an expression of disgust.

"Flee, I repeat it!... And if you can, if I arouse in you a little compa.s.sion, if you are not completely indifferent to me ... take me with you!..."

Ferragut began to wonder if all this preamble was merely a prelude to this final request. The unexpected demand produced an impression of scandalized amazement. Was he to flee with her, with the one who had done him so much harm?... Again unite his life to hers, knowing her as he now knew her!...

The proposition was so absurd that the captain smiled sardonically.

"I am just as much in danger as you are," continued Freya with a despairing accent. "I do not know exactly what the danger is that threatens me, nor whence it may come. But I suspect it, I foresee it hanging over my head.... I am of absolutely no use to them now; I no longer have their confidence, and I know too many things. Since I possess too many secrets for them to give me up, leaving me in peace, they have agreed to suppress me; I am sure of that. I can read it in the eyes of the one who was my friend and protector.... You cannot abandon me, Ulysses. You will not desire my death."

Ferragut waxed indignant before these supplications, finally breaking his disdainful silence.

"Comedienne!... All a lie!... Inventions to entangle yourself with me, making me intervene again in the network of your life, compromising me again in your work of detestable surveillance!..."

He was now taking the right path. His desire for vengeance had placed him among Germany's adversaries. He was lamenting his former blindness and was satisfied with his new interests. He was making no secret of his conduct. He was serving the Allies.

"And that is the reason you are hunting me up; that is the reason that you have arranged this interview, probably at the instigation of your friend, the doctor. You wish to employ me for a second time as the secret instrument of your espionage. 'Captain Ferragut is such an enamored simpleton,' you have said to one another. 'We have nothing to do but to make an appeal to his chivalry....' And you wish to live with me, perhaps to accompany me on my voyages, to follow my existence in order to reveal my secrets to your compatriots that I may again appear as a traitor. Ah, you hussy!..."

This supposed treason again aroused his homicidal wrath. He raised his arm and foot, and was about to strike and crush the kneeling woman. But her pa.s.sive humiliation, her complete lack of resistance, stopped him.

"No, Ulysses ... listen to me!"

She tried her utmost to prove her sincerity. She was afraid of her own people; she could see them now in a new light, and they filled her with horror. Her manner of looking at things had changed radically. Her remorse, on thinking of what she had done, was making her a martyr. Her conscience was beginning to feel the wholesome transformation of repentant women who were formerly great sinners. How could she wash her soul of her past crimes?... She had not even the consolation of that patriotic faith, b.l.o.o.d.y and ferocious though it was, which inflamed the doctor and her a.s.sistants.

She had been reflecting a great deal. For her there were no longer Germans, English, nor French; there only existed men; men with mothers, with wives, with daughters. And her woman's soul was horrified at the thought of the combats and the killings. She hated war. She had experienced her first remorse upon learning of the death of Ferragut's son.

"Take me with you," she urged. "If you do not take me out of my world I shall not know how to get away from it.... I am poor. In these last years, the doctor has supported me; I do not know any way of earning my living and I am accustomed to living well. Poverty inspires me with greater fear than death. You will be able to maintain me; I will accept of you whatever you wish to give me; I will be your handmaiden. On a boat they must need the care and well-ordered supervision of a woman.... Life locks its doors against me; I am alone."

The captain smiled with cruel irony.

"I divine what your smile means. I know what you wish to say to me....

I can see myself; you believe without doubt that such has been my former life. No,... _no_! You are mistaken. I have not been _that_.

There has to be a special predisposition, a certain talent for feigning what I do not feel.... I have tried to sell myself, and I cannot, I cannot avail myself of that. I embitter the life of men when they do not interest me; I am their adversary. I hate them and they flee from me."

But the sailor prolonged his atrociously sinister smile.

"It's a lie," he said again, "all a lie. Make no further effort.... You will not convince me."

As though suddenly reanimated with new force, she rose to her feet:--her face on a level with Ferragut's eyes. He saw her left temple with the torn skin; the spot caused by the blow extended around one eye, reddened and swollen. On contemplating his barbarous handiwork, remorse again tormented him.

"Listen, Ulysses; you do not know my true existence. I have always lied to you; I have eluded all your investigations in our happy days. I wished to keep my former life a secret ... to forget it. Now I must tell you the truth, the actual truth, just as though I were going to die. When you know it, you will be less cruel."

But her listener did not wish to hear it. He protested in advance with a ferocious incredulity.

"Lies!... new lies! I wonder when you will ever stop your inventions!"

"I am not a German woman," she continued without listening to him.

"Neither is my name Freya Talberg.... It is my _nombre de guerre_, my name as an adventuress. Talberg was the professor who accompanied me to the Andes, and who was not my husband, either.... My true name is Beatrice.... My mother was an Italian, a Florentine; my father was from Trieste."

This revelation did not interest Ferragut.

"One fraud more!" he said. "Another novel!... Keep on making them up."

The woman was in despair. She raised her hands above her head, twisting the interlaced fingers. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

"_Ay!_ How can I succeed in making you believe me?... What oath can I take to convince you that I am telling you the truth?..."

The captain's impa.s.sive air gave her to understand that all such extremes would be unavailing. There was no oath that could possibly convince him. Even though she should tell the truth, he would not believe her.

She went on with her story, not wis.h.i.+ng to protest against this impa.s.sable wall.

"My father also was of Italian origin but was Austrian because of the place of his birth.... Furthermore, the Germanic empires always inspired him with a blind enthusiasm. He was among those who detest their native land, and see all the virtues in the northern people.

"Inventor of marvelous business schemes, financial promoter of colossal enterprises, he had pa.s.sed his existence besieging the directors of the great banking establishments and having interviews in the lobbies of the government departments. Eternally on the eve of surprising combinations that were bound to bring him dozens of millions, he had always lived in luxurious poverty, going from hotel to hotel--always the best--with his wife and his only daughter.

"You know nothing about such a life, Ulysses; you come from a tranquil and well-to-do family. Your people have never known existence in the Palace Hotels, nor have you known difficulties in meeting the monthly account, managing to have it included with those of the former months with an unlimited credit."

As a child she had seen her mother weeping in their extravagant hotel apartment while the father was talking with the aspect of an inspired person, announcing that the next week he was going to clear a million dollars. The wife, convinced by the eloquence of her remarkable husband, would finally dry her tears, powder her face, and adorn herself with her pearls and her blonde laces of problematic value. Then she would descend to the magnificent hall, filled with perfumes, with the hum of conversation and the discreet wailings of the violins, in order to take tea with her friends in the hotel,--formidable millionaires from the two hemispheres who vaguely suspected the existence of an infirmity known as poverty, but incapable of imagining that it might attack persons of their own world.

Meanwhile the little girl used to play in the hotel garden of the Palace Hotel with other children dressed up and adorned like luxurious and fragile dolls, each one worth many millions.

"From my childhood," continued Freya, "I had been a companion of women who are now celebrated for their riches in New York, Paris, and in London. I have been on familiar terms with great heiresses that are to-day, through their marriages, d.u.c.h.esses and even princesses of the blood royal. Many of them have since pa.s.sed by me, without recognizing me, and I have said nothing, knowing that the equality of childhood is no more than a vague recollection...."

Thus she had grown into womanhood. A few of her father's casual bargains had permitted them to continue this existence of brilliant and expensive poverty. The promoter had considered such environment indispensable for his future negotiations. Life in the most expensive hotels, an automobile by the month, gowns designed by the greatest modistes for his wife and daughter, summers at the most fas.h.i.+onable resorts, winter-skating in Switzerland,--all these luxuries were for him but a kind of uniform of respectability that kept him in the world of the powerful, permitting him to enter everywhere.

"This existence molded me forever, and has influenced the rest of my life. Dishonor, death, anything is to me preferable to poverty.... I, who have no fear of danger, become a coward at the mere thought of that!"

The mother died, credulous and sensuous, worn out with expecting a solid fortune that never arrived. The daughter continued with her father, becoming the type of young woman who lives among men from hotel to hotel, always somewhat masculine in her att.i.tude;--a half-way virgin who knows everything, is not frightened at anything, guards ferociously the integrity of her s.e.x, calculating just what it may be worth, and adoring wealth as the most powerful divinity on earth.

Finding herself upon her father's death with no other fortune than her gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided upon her destiny.

"In our world there is no other virtue than that of money. The girls of the people surrender themselves less easily than a young woman accustomed to luxury having as her only fortune some knowledge of the piano, of dancing, and a few languages.... We yield our body as though fulfilling a material function, without shame and without regret. It is a simple matter of business. The only thing that matters is to preserve the former life with all its conveniences ... not to come down."

She pa.s.sed hastily over her recollection of this period of her existence. An old acquaintance of her father, an old trader of Vienna, had been the first. Then she felt romantic flutterings which even the coldest and most positive women do not escape. She believed that she had fallen in love with a Dutch officer, a blonde Apollo who used to skate with her in Saint Moritz. This had been her only husband. Finally she had become bored with the colonial drowsiness of Batavia and had returned to Europe, breaking off her marriage in order to renew her life in the great hotels, pa.s.sing the winter season at the most luxurious resorts.

"_Ay_, money!... In no social plane was its power so evident as that in which she was accustomed to dwell. In the Palace Hotels she had met women of soldierly aspect and common hands, smoking at all hours, with their feet up and the white triangle of their petticoats stretched over the seat. They were like the prost.i.tutes waiting at the doors of their huts. How were they ever permitted to live there!... Nevertheless, the men bowed before them like slaves, or followed as suppliants these creatures who talked with unction of the millions inherited from their fathers, of their formidable wealth of industrial origin which had enabled them to buy n.o.ble husbands and then give themselves up to their natural tastes as fast, coa.r.s.e women.

"I never had any luck.... I am too haughty for that kind of thing. Men find me ill-humored, argumentative, and nervous. Perhaps I was born to be the mother of a family.... Who knows but what I might have been otherwise if I had lived in your country?"

Her announcement of her religious veneration for money took on an accent of hate. Poor and well-educated girls, if afraid of the misery of poverty, had no other recourse than prost.i.tution. They lacked a dowry,--that indispensable requisite in many civilized families for honorable marriage and home-making.

Accursed poverty!... It had weighed upon her life like a fatality. The men who had appeared good at first afterwards became poisoned, turning into egoists and wretches. Doctor Talberg, on returning from America, had abandoned her in order to marry a young and rich woman, the daughter of a trader, a senator from Hamburg. Others had equally exploited her youth, taking their share of her gayety and beauty only to marry, later, women who had merely the attractiveness of a great fortune.