Читать книгу: «Bel Ami», страница 10

She was sitting on his knees, and holding him in her arms as though to share his dangers. She murmured: "Oh, my poor darling! my poor darling!"

When he had finished his narration, she said: "Do you know, I cannot live without you. I must see you, and with my husband in Paris it is not easy. Often I could find an hour in the morning before you were up to run in and kiss you, but I won't enter that awful house of yours. What is to be done?"

He suddenly had an inspiration, and asked: "What is the rent here?"

"A hundred francs a month."

"Well, I will take the rooms over on my own account, and live here altogether. Mine are no longer good enough for my new position."

She reflected a few moments, and then said: "No, I won't have that."

He was astonished, and asked: "Why not?"

"Because I won't."

"That is not a reason. These rooms suit me very well. I am here, and shall remain here. Besides," he added, with a laugh, "they are taken in my name."

But she kept on refusing, "No, no, I won't have it."

"Why not, then?"

Then she whispered tenderly: "Because you would bring women here, and I won't have it."

He grew indignant. "Never. I can promise you that."

"No, you will bring them all the same."

"I swear I won't."

"Truly?"

"Truly, on my word of honor. This is our place, our very own."

She clasped him to her in an outburst of love, exclaiming: "Very well, then, darling. But you know if you once deceive me, only once, it will be all over between us, all over for ever."

He swore again with many protestations, and it was agreed that he should install himself there that very day, so that she could look in on him as she passed the door. Then she said: "In any case, come and dine with us on Sunday. My husband thinks you are charming."

He was flattered "Really!"

"Yes, you have captivated him. And then, listen, you have told me that you were brought up in a country-house."

"Yes; why?"

"Then you must know something about agriculture?"

"Yes."

"Well, talk to him about gardening and the crops. He is very fond of that sort of thing."

"Good; I will not forget."

She left him, after kissing him to an indefinite extent, the duel having stimulated her affection.

Duroy thought, as he made his way to the office, "What a strange being. What a feather brain. Can one tell what she wants and what she cares for? And what a strange household. What fanciful being arranged the union of that old man and this madcap? What made the inspector marry this giddy girl? A mystery. Who knows? Love, perhaps." And he concluded: "After all, she is a very nice little mistress, and I should be a very big fool to let her slip away from me."

VIII

His duel had given Duroy a position among the leader-writers of the Vie Francaise, but as he had great difficulty in finding ideas, he made a specialty of declamatory articles on the decadence of morality, the lowering of the standard of character, the weakening of the patriotic fiber and the anemia of French honor. He had discovered the word anemia, and was very proud of it. And when Madame de Marelle, filled with that skeptical, mocking, and incredulous spirit characteristic of the Parisian, laughed at his tirades, which she demolished with an epigram, he replied with a smile: "Bah! this sort of thing will give me a good reputation later on."

He now resided in the Rue de Constantinople, whither he had shifted his portmanteau, his hair-brush, his razor, and his soap, which was what his moving amounted to. Twice or thrice a week she would call before he was up, undress in a twinkling, and slip into bed, shivering from the cold prevailing out of doors. As a set off, Duroy dined every Thursday at her residence, and paid court to her husband by talking agriculture with him. As he was himself fond of everything relating to the cultivation of the soil, they sometimes both grew so interested in the subject of their conversation that they quite forgot the wife dozing on the sofa. Laurine would also go to sleep, now on the knee of her father and now on that of Pretty-boy. And when the journalist had left, Monsieur de Marelle never failed to assert, in that doctrinal tone in which he said the least thing: "That young fellow is really very pleasant company, he has a well-informed mind."

February was drawing to a close. One began to smell the violets in the street, as one passed the barrows of the flower-sellers of a morning. Duroy was living beneath a sky without a cloud.

One night, on returning home, he found a letter that had been slipped under his door. He glanced at the post-mark, and read "Cannes." Having opened it, he read:

"Villa Jolie, Cannes.

"Dear Sir and Friend, – You told me, did you not, that I could reckon upon you for anything? Well, I have a very painful service to ask of you; it is to come and help me, so that I may not be left alone during the last moments of Charles, who is dying. He may not last out the week, as the doctor has forewarned me, although he has not yet taken to his bed. I have no longer strength nor courage to witness this hourly death, and I think with terror of those last moments which are drawing near. I can only ask such a service of you, as my husband has no relatives. You were his comrade; he opened the door of the paper to you. Come, I beg of you; I have no one else to ask.

"Believe me, your very sincere friend,

"Madeleine Forestier."

A strange feeling filled George's heart, a sense of freedom and of a space opening before him, and he murmured: "To be sure, I'll go. Poor Charles! What are we, after all?"

The governor, to whom he read the letter, grumblingly granted permission, repeating: "But be back soon, you are indispensable to us."

George left for Cannes next day by the seven o'clock express, after letting the Marelles know of his departure by a telegram. He arrived the following evening about four o'clock. A commissionaire guided him to the Villa Jolie, built half-way up the slope of the pine forest clothed with white houses, which extends from Cannes to the Golfe Juan. The house – small, low, and in the Italian style – was built beside the road which winds zig-zag fashion up through the trees, revealing a succession of charming views at every turning it makes.

The man servant opened the door, and exclaimed: "Oh! Sir, madame is expecting you most impatiently."

"How is your master?" inquired Duroy.

"Not at all well, sir. He cannot last much longer."

The drawing-room, into which George was shown, was hung with pink and blue chintz. The tall and wide windows overlooked the town and the sea. Duroy muttered: "By Jove, this is nice and swell for a country house. Where the deuce do they get the money from?"

The rustle of a dress made him turn round. Madame Forestier held out both hands to him. "How good of you to come, how good of you to come," said she.

And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. Then they looked at one another. She was somewhat paler and thinner, but still fresh-complexioned, and perhaps still prettier for her additional delicacy. She murmured: "He is dreadful, do you know; he knows that he is doomed, and he leads me a fearful life. But where is your portmanteau?"

"I have left it at the station, not knowing what hotel you would like me to stop at in order to be near you."

She hesitated a moment, and then said: "You must stay here. Besides, your room is all ready. He might die at any moment, and if it were to happen during the night I should be alone. I will send for your luggage."

He bowed, saying: "As you please."

"Now let us go upstairs," she said.

He followed her. She opened a door on the first floor, and Duroy saw, wrapped in rugs and seated in an armchair near the window, a kind of living corpse, livid even under the red light of the setting sun, and looking towards him. He scarcely recognized, but rather guessed, that it was his friend. The room reeked of fever, medicated drinks, ether, tar, the nameless and oppressive odor of a consumptive's sick room. Forestier held out his hand slowly and with difficulty. "So here you are; you have come to see me die, then! Thanks."

Duroy affected to laugh. "To see you die? That would not be a very amusing sight, and I should not select such an occasion to visit Cannes. I came to give you a look in, and to rest myself a bit."

Forestier murmured, "Sit down," and then bent his head, as though lost in painful thoughts. He breathed hurriedly and pantingly, and from time to time gave a kind of groan, as if he wanted to remind the others how ill he was.

Seeing that he would not speak, his wife came and leaned against the window-sill, and indicating the view with a motion of her head, said, "Look! Is not that beautiful?"

Before them the hillside, dotted with villas, sloped downwards towards the town, which stretched in a half-circle along the shore with its head to the right in the direction of the pier, overlooked by the old city surmounted by its belfry, and its feet to the left towards the point of La Croisette, facing the Isles of Lerins. These two islands appeared like two green spots amidst the blue water. They seemed to be floating on it like two huge green leaves, so low and flat did they appear from this height. Afar off, bounding the view on the other side of the bay, beyond the pier and the belfry, a long succession of blue hills showed up against a dazzling sky, their strange and picturesque line of summits now rounded, now forked, now pointed, ending with a huge pyramidal mountain, its foot in the sea itself.

Madame Forestier pointed it out, saying: "This is L'Estherel."

The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to express his admiration, "It is stunning."

Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: "Let me have some fresh air."

"Pray, be careful," was her reply. "It is late, and the sun is setting; you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you."

He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: "I tell you I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or a day later, since I am done for?"

She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring, already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers which sprang up along this shore. A powerful scent of turpentine and the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.

Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones: "Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar."

His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in space, her forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have liked to have chatted with the invalid and reassured him. But he could think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: "Then you have not got any better since you have been here?"

Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. "You see very well I have not," he replied, and again lowered his head.

Duroy went on: "Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes, it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the afternoon."

"Anything new at the paper?" asked Forestier.

"Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the Voltaire, to do your work, but he is not up to it. It is time that you came back."

The invalid muttered: "I – I shall do all my work six feet under the sod now."

This fixed idea recurred like a knell apropos of everything, continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of sable and crimson. The chimney-glass, reflecting the horizon, seemed like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.

Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to listen to. "How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty, perhaps thirty – no more. You have time before you; for me it is all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was still here." He was silent for a few moments, and then continued: "All that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is horrible. I shall see nothing – nothing of all that exists; not the smallest things one makes use of – the plates, the glasses, the beds in which one rests so comfortably, the carriages. How nice it is to drive out of an evening! How fond I was of all those things!"

He nervously moved the fingers of both hands, as though playing the piano on the arms of his chair. Each of his silences was more painful than his words, so evident was it that his thoughts must be fearful. Duroy suddenly recalled what Norbert de Varenne had said to him some weeks before, "I now see death so near that I often want to stretch out my arms to put it back. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend's beard, rend my heart and cry to me, 'Behold!'"

He had not understood all this on that occasion; now, seeing Forestier, he did. An unknown pain assailed him, as if he himself was sensible of the presence of death, hideous death, hard by, within reach of his hand, on the chair in which his friend lay gasping. He longed to get up, to go away, to fly, to return to Paris at once. Oh! if he had known he would not have come.

Darkness had now spread over the room, like premature mourning for the dying man. The window alone remained still visible, showing, within the lighter square formed by it, the motionless outline of the young wife.

Forestier remarked, with irritation, "Well, are they going to bring in the lamp to-night? This is what they call looking after an invalid."

The shadow outlined against the window panes disappeared, and the sound of an electric bell rang through the house. A servant shortly entered and placed a lamp on the mantelpiece. Madame Forestier said to her husband, "Will you go to bed, or would you rather come down to dinner?"

He murmured: "I will come down."

Waiting for this meal kept them all three sitting still for nearly an hour, only uttering from time to time some needless commonplace remark, as if there had been some danger, some mysterious danger in letting silence endure too long, in letting the air congeal in this room where death was prowling.

At length dinner was announced. The meal seemed interminable to Duroy. They did not speak, but ate noiselessly, and then crumbled their bread with their fingers. The man servant who waited upon them went to and fro without the sound of his footsteps being heard, for as the creak of a boot-sole irritated Charles, he wore list slippers. The harsh tick of a wooden clock alone disturbed the calm with its mechanical and regular sound.

As soon as dinner was over Duroy, on the plea of fatigue, retired to his room, and leaning on the window-sill watched the full moon, in the midst of the sky like an immense lamp, casting its cold gleam upon the white walls of the villas, and scattering over the sea a soft and moving dappled light. He strove to find some reason to justify a swift departure, inventing plans, telegrams he was to receive, a recall from Monsieur Walter.

But his resolves to fly appeared more difficult to realize on awakening the next morning. Madame Forestier would not be taken in by his devices, and he would lose by his cowardice all the benefit of his self-devotion. He said to himself: "Bah! it is awkward; well so much the worse, there must be unpleasant situations in life, and, besides, it will perhaps be soon over."

It was a bright day, one of those bright Southern days that make the heart feel light, and Duroy walked down to the sea, thinking that it would be soon enough to see Forestier some time in course of the afternoon. When he returned to lunch, the servant remarked, "Master has already asked for you two or three times, sir. Will you please step up to his room, sir?"

He went upstairs. Forestier appeared to be dozing in his armchair. His wife was reading, stretched out on the sofa.

The invalid raised his head, and Duroy said, "Well, how do you feel? You seem quite fresh this morning."

"Yes, I am better, I have recovered some of my strength. Get through your lunch with Madeleine as soon as you can, for we are going out for a drive."

As soon as she was alone with Duroy, the young wife said to him, "There, to-day he thinks he is all right again. He has been making plans all the morning. We are going to the Golfe Juan now to buy some pottery for our rooms in Paris. He is determined to go out, but I am horribly afraid of some mishap. He cannot bear the shaking of the drive."

When the landau arrived, Forestier came down stairs a step at a time, supported by his servant. But as soon as he caught sight of the carriage, he ordered the hood to be taken off. His wife opposed this, saying, "You will catch cold. It is madness."

He persisted, repeating, "Oh, I am much better. I feel it."

They passed at first along some of those shady roads, bordered by gardens, which cause Cannes to resemble a kind of English Park, and then reached the highway to Antibes, running along the seashore. Forestier acted as guide. He had already pointed out the villa of the Court de Paris, and now indicated others. He was lively, with the forced and feeble gayety of a doomed man. He lifted his finger, no longer having strength to stretch out his arm, and said, "There is the Ile Sainte Marguerite, and the chateau from which Bazaine escaped. How they did humbug us over that matter!"

Then regimental recollections recurred to him, and he mentioned various officers whose names recalled incidents to them. But all at once, the road making a turn, they caught sight of the whole of the Golfe Juan, with the white village in the curve of the bay, and the point of Antibes at the further side of it. Forestier, suddenly seized upon by childish glee, exclaimed, "Ah! the squadron, you will see the squadron."

Indeed they could perceive, in the middle of the broad bay, half-a-dozen large ships resembling rocks covered with leafless trees. They were huge, strange, mis-shapen, with excrescences, turrets, rams, burying themselves in the water as though to take root beneath the waves. One could scarcely imagine how they could stir or move about, they seemed so heavy and so firmly fixed to the bottom. A floating battery, circular and high out of water, resembling the light-houses that are built on shoals. A tall three-master passed near them, with all its white sails set. It looked graceful and pretty beside these iron war monsters squatted on the water. Forestier tried to make them out. He pointed out the Colbert, the Suffren, the Admiral Duperre, the Redoubtable, the Devastation, and then checking himself, added, "No I made a mistake; that one is the Devastation."

They arrived opposite a species of large pavilion, on the front of which was the inscription, "Art Pottery of the Golfe Juan," and the carriage, driving up the sweep, stopped before the door. Forestier wanted to buy a couple of vases for his study. As he felt unequal to getting out of the carriage, specimens were brought out to him one after the other. He was a long time in making a choice, and consulted his wife and Duroy.

"You know," he said, "it is for the cabinet at the end of the study. Sitting in my chair, I have it before my eyes all the time. I want an antique form, a Greek outline." He examined the specimens, had others brought, and then turned again to the first ones. At length he made up his mind, and having paid, insisted upon the articles being sent on at once. "I shall be going back to Paris in a few days," he said.

They drove home, but as they skirted the bay a rush of cold air from one of the valleys suddenly met them, and the invalid began to cough. It was nothing at first, but it augmented and became an unbroken fit of coughing, and then a kind of gasping hiccough.

Forestier was choking, and every time he tried to draw breath the cough seemed to rend his chest. Nothing would soothe or check it. He had to be borne from the carriage to his room, and Duroy, who supported his legs, felt the jerking of his feet at each convulsion of his lungs. The warmth of the bed did not check the attack, which lasted till midnight, when, at length, narcotics lulled its deadly spasm. The sick man remained till morning sitting up in his bed, with his eyes open.

The first words he uttered were to ask for the barber, for he insisted on being shaved every morning. He got up for this operation, but had to be helped back into bed at once, and his breathing grew so short, so hard, and so difficult, that Madame Forestier, in alarm, had Duroy, who had just turned in, roused up again in order to beg him to go for the doctor.

He came back almost immediately with Dr. Gavaut, who prescribed a soothing drink and gave some advice; but when the journalist saw him to the door, in order to ask his real opinion, he said, "It is the end. He will be dead to-morrow morning. Break it to his poor wife, and send for a priest. I, for my part, can do nothing more. I am, however, entirely at your service."

Duroy sent for Madame Forestier. "He is dying," said he. "The doctor advises a priest being sent for. What would you like done?"

She hesitated for some time, and then, in slow tones, as though she had calculated everything, replied, "Yes, that will be best – in many respects. I will break it to him – tell him the vicar wants to see him, or something or other; I really don't know what. You would be very kind if you would go and find a priest for me and pick one out. Choose one who won't raise too many difficulties over the business. One who will be satisfied with confession, and will let us off with the rest of it all."

The young fellow returned with a complaisant old ecclesiastic, who accommodated himself to the state of affairs. As soon as he had gone into the dying man's room, Madame Forestier came out of it, and sat down with Duroy in the one adjoining.

"It has quite upset him," said she. "When I spoke to him about a priest his face assumed a frightful expression as if he had felt the breath – the breath of – you know. He understood that it was all over at last, and that his hours were numbered." She was very pale as she continued, "I shall never forget the expression of his face. He certainly saw death face to face at that moment. He saw him."

They could hear the priest, who spoke in somewhat loud tones, being slightly deaf, and who was saying, "No, no; you are not so bad as all that. You are ill, but in no danger. And the proof is that I have called in as a friend as a neighbor."

They could not make out Forestier's reply, but the old man went on, "No, I will not ask you to communicate. We will talk of that when you are better. If you wish to profit by my visit – to confess, for instance – I ask nothing better. I am a shepherd, you know, and seize on every occasion to bring a lamb back to the fold."

A long silence followed. Forestier must have been speaking in a faint voice. Then all at once the priest uttered in a different tone, the tone of one officiating at the altar. "The mercy of God is infinite. Repeat the Comfiteor, my son. You have perhaps forgotten it; I will help you. Repeat after me: 'Comfiteor Deo omnipotenti – Beata Maria semper virgini.'"

He paused from time to time to allow the dying man to catch him up. Then he said, "And now confess."

The young wife and Duroy sat still seized on by a strange uneasiness, stirred by anxious expectation. The invalid had murmured something. The priest repeated, "You have given way to guilty pleasures – of what kind, my son?"

Madeleine rose and said, "Let us go down into the garden for a short time. We must not listen to his secrets."

And they went and sat down on a bench before the door beneath a rose tree in bloom, and beside a bed of pinks, which shed their soft and powerful perfume abroad in the pure air. Duroy, after a few moments' silence, inquired, "Shall you be long before you return to Paris?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "As soon as it is all over I shall go back there."

"Within ten days?"

"Yes, at the most."

"He has no relations, then?"

"None except cousins. His father and mother died when he was quite young."

They both watched a butterfly sipping existence from the pinks, passing from one to another with a soft flutter of his wings, which continued to flap slowly when he alighted on a flower. They remained silent for a considerable time.

The servant came to inform them that "the priest had finished," and they went upstairs together.

Forestier seemed to have grown still thinner since the day before. The priest held out his hand to him, saying, "Good-day, my son, I shall call in again to-morrow morning," and took his departure.

As soon as he had left the room the dying man, who was panting for breath, strove to hold out his two hands to his wife, and gasped, "Save me – save me, darling, I don't want to die – I don't want to die. Oh! save me – tell me what I had better do; send for the doctor. I will take whatever you like. I won't die – I won't die."

He wept. Big tears streamed from his eyes down his fleshless cheeks, and the corners of his mouth contracted like those of a vexed child. Then his hands, falling back on the bed clothes, began a slow, regular, and continuous movement, as though trying to pick something off the sheet.

His wife, who began to cry too, said: "No, no, it is nothing. It is only a passing attack, you will be better to-morrow, you tired yourself too much going out yesterday."

Forestier's breathing was shorter than that of a dog who has been running, so quick that it could not be counted, so faint that it could scarcely be heard.

He kept repeating: "I don't want to die. Oh! God – God – God; what is to become of me? I shall no longer see anything – anything any more. Oh! God."

He saw before him some hideous thing invisible to the others, and his staring eyes reflected the terror it inspired. His two hands continued their horrible and wearisome action. All at once he started with a sharp shudder that could be seen to thrill the whole of his body, and jerked out the words, "The graveyard – I – Oh! God."

He said no more, but lay motionless, haggard and panting.

Time sped on, noon struck by the clock of a neighboring convent. Duroy left the room to eat a mouthful or two. He came back an hour later. Madame Forestier refused to take anything. The invalid had not stirred. He still continued to draw his thin fingers along the sheet as though to pull it up over his face.

His wife was seated in an armchair at the foot of the bed. Duroy took another beside her, and they waited in silence. A nurse had come, sent in by the doctor, and was dozing near the window.

Duroy himself was beginning to doze off when he felt that something was happening. He opened his eyes just in time to see Forestier close his, like two lights dying out. A faint rattle stirred in the throat of the dying man, and two streaks of blood appeared at the corners of his mouth, and then flowed down into his shirt. His hands ceased their hideous motion. He had ceased to breathe.

His wife understood this, and uttering a kind of shriek, she fell on her knees sobbing, with her face buried in the bed-clothes. George, surprised and scared, mechanically made the sign of the cross. The nurse awakened, drew near the bed. "It is all over," said she.

Duroy, who was recovering his self-possession, murmured, with a sigh of relief: "It was sooner over than I thought for."

When the first shock was over and the first tears shed, they had to busy themselves with all the cares and all the necessary steps a dead man exacts. Duroy was running about till nightfall. He was very hungry when he got back. Madame Forestier ate a little, and then they both installed themselves in the chamber of death to watch the body. Two candles burned on the night-table beside a plate filled with holy water, in which lay a sprig of mimosa, for they had not been able to get the necessary twig of consecrated box.

They were alone, the young man and the young wife, beside him who was no more. They sat without speaking, thinking and watching.

George, whom the darkness rendered uneasy in presence of the corpse, kept his eyes on this persistently. His eye and his mind were both attracted and fascinated by this fleshless visage, which the vacillating light caused to appear yet more hollow. That was his friend Charles Forestier, who was chatting with him only the day before! What a strange and fearful thing was this end of a human being! Oh! how he recalled the words of Norbert de Varenne haunted by the fear of death: "No one ever comes back." Millions on millions would be born almost identical, with eyes, a nose, a mouth, a skull and a mind within it, without he who lay there on the bed ever reappearing again.

For some years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped like all the world. And it was all over for him all over for ever. Life; a few days, and then nothing. One is born, one grows up, one is happy, one waits, and then one dies. Farewell, man or woman, you will not return again to earth. Plants, beast, men, stars, worlds, all spring to life, and then die to be transformed anew. But never one of them comes back – insect, man, nor planet.