The Lady of the Camellias (18 page)

It seemed that the train was not moving.

I arrived at Bougival at eleven o'clock.

Not one window of the house was lit, and I rang, but nobody answered.

It was the first time such a thing had happened to me. At last the gardener appeared. I went in.

Nanine joined me with a light. I came to Marguerite's room.

“Where is madam?”

“Madam went to Paris,” Nanine responded.

“To Paris!”

“Yes, sir.”

“When?”

“An hour after you.”

“Did she leave a note for you to give me?”

“Nothing.”

Nanine left me.

“It is possible she was afraid,” I thought, “and went to Paris to make sure the visit I'd told her I was making to see my father was not a pretext for a day of freedom.”

“Maybe Prudence wrote her about some important business,” I told myself when I was alone; but I had seen Prudence upon my arrival, and she had said nothing that made me suppose that she might have written to Marguerite.

All at once I remembered that question Mme Duvernoy had asked me: “Isn't she coming today, then?” when I had said Marguerite was sick. I recalled at the same moment Prudence's air of embarrassment when I had looked at her after that question, which seemed to imply a rendezvous. To this memory I added Marguerite's tears during the day, tears that my father's warm welcome had made me forget a little.

From that moment on, all the incidents of the day regrouped around my first suspicion, and fixed it so solidly in my mind that everything seemed to confirm it, right up to the paternal clemency.

Marguerite had almost insisted I go to Paris; she had affected calm when I had proposed that I stay beside her. Had I fallen into a trap? Was Marguerite deceiving me? Had she counted on being back in time for me to remain unaware of her absence, and had chance detained her? Why had she said nothing to Nanine; why had she not written me? What did those tears, that absence, this mystery, mean?

This is what I asked myself with dread, in the middle of that empty room, my eyes fixed on the clock, which, striking midnight, seemed to tell me it was too late for me to hope to see my mistress return.

All the same, after the arrangements we had just made, with the sacrifice offered and accepted, was it realistic that she would deceive me? No. I tried to reject my first suspicions.

“The poor girl must have found a buyer for her furniture, and gone to Paris to conclude the deal. She didn't want to alert me, because she knows that, though I accept it, this sale, which is necessary to our happiness together, is painful for me, and she would have been afraid of hurting my pride and my feelings by talking about it with me. She prefers to reappear only once everything is over. Prudence was obviously waiting for her for that purpose, and gave herself away in front of me. Marguerite must not have finished her business today, and she has gone to sleep at her own place, or perhaps she might even turn up here later, for she must suspect my worries, and certainly would not want to leave me to them.”

But then, why those tears? Doubtless, in spite of her love for me, the poor girl must not have been able to come to terms with abandoning the luxury in the midst of which she had existed up until now, and which had made her happy and envied.

I freely pardoned Marguerite for these regrets. I waited impatiently for the chance to tell her, while covering her in kisses, that I had divined the cause of her mysterious absence.

However, the night advanced, and Marguerite did not arrive.

Anxiety tightened its grip on me little by little, oppressing my head and heart. Maybe something had happened to her! Maybe she was wounded, sick, dead! Maybe a messenger was about to arrive who would inform me of some grievous accident! Maybe the morning would find me in the same uncertainty and with the same fears!

The idea that Marguerite might have been deceiving me at the hour when I awaited her amid the terrors that her absence caused me did not return to my mind. There had to have been some cause beyond her control that had kept her away from me, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that this cause could be nothing but some sort of misfortune. O, the vanity of men! You reveal yourself at every turn.

The clock struck one. I told myself I would wait one more hour, but that if at two o'clock Marguerite had not returned, I would leave for Paris.

While waiting I went to look for a book, because I didn't dare to think.

Manon Lescaut
was open on the table. It seemed that here and there the pages were dampened as if by tears. After leafing through it, I closed this book, whose characters seemed void of sense to me, obscured by the veil of my doubts.

The hour passed slowly. The sky was overcast. An autumn rain lashed at the windows. The empty bed seemed at times to take on the aspect of a tomb. I was afraid.

I opened the door. I listened and heard nothing but the wind in the trees. Not one carriage passed on the road. The half hour struck sadly in the church tower.

I was beginning to hope that nobody would enter. It seemed that only a calamity could find me at this hour and in this somber weather.

The clock struck two. I waited a little longer. Only the clock disturbed the silence with its monotonous, cadenced sound.

Finally I left this room, whose smallest objects had clothed it in that mournful aspect that the lonely heart confers upon everything that surrounds it.

In the next room I found Nanine, who had fallen asleep over her needlework. At the sound of the door she woke up and asked if my mistress had returned home.

“No, but if she does, tell her I could not overcome my worry and that I have gone to Paris.”

“At this hour?”

“Yes.”

“But how? You will not find a carriage.”

“I will go on foot.”

“But it's raining.”

“What do I care?”

“Madam will come home, or if she doesn't, there will be time in the day to go see what has detained her. You will get yourself killed on the road.”

“There is no danger, my dear Nanine. Until tomorrow.”

The good-natured girl went to get my coat, threw it over my shoulders, and offered to go wake the inn owner, Mère Arnould, and inquire if it would be possible to get a carriage, but I refused, convinced I would lose more time in this possibly fruitless attempt than it would take me to complete half the journey.

Also I needed fresh air, as well as physical exertion to exhaust the overexcitement to which I had fallen prey.

I took the key to the apartment of the rue d'Antin, and, after having said good-bye to Nanine, who had accompanied me as far as the gate, I left.

I started out running, but the earth was newly damp, which was doubly tiring. After a quarter hour of running, I was forced to stop; I was bathed in sweat. Recovering my breath, I continued on my path. The night was so dark that I trembled at every moment, thinking I might stumble into one of the trees along the roadside—looming suddenly before my eyes, they looked like giant ghosts charging at me.

I saw one or two transport wagons, which I soon left behind.

A calèche approached at a full trot heading for Bougival. At the moment it passed in front of me, the hope sprang to mind that Marguerite was within.

I stopped and cried out, “Marguerite! Marguerite!”

But nobody answered, and the calèche continued on its way. I watched it recede into the distance, and continued on.

It took me two hours to reach the edge of the Place de l'Étoile.

The sight of Paris restored my strength, and at a run I descended the long avenue I had crossed so many times.

That night nobody was there.

You would have thought it was the boulevard of a dead city.

The day began to break.

When I arrived at the rue d'Antin, the great city was already stirring before completely waking.

Five o'clock struck in the Church of Saint-Roch at the moment I entered Marguerite's building.

I gave my name to the porter, who had received enough twenty-franc pieces from me to know I had the right to come visit Mlle Gautier at five o'clock in the morning.

I passed without interference.

I could have asked him if Marguerite was at home, but he might have responded no, and I preferred to remain in doubt for two minutes longer because in doubt, I still could hope.

I put my ear to the door, trying to detect a sound, a movement.

Nothing. The silence of the countryside seemed to extend all the way here.

I opened the door and entered.

All the curtains were hermetically closed.

I drew open the dining room curtains, then headed to the bedroom, and pushed open the door.

I leapt at the curtain cord and pulled it violently. The curtains flew open; a weak daylight broke through. I ran to the bed.

It was empty!

I opened the doors one after the other; I entered all the rooms.

Nobody.

It was enough to drive you mad.

I entered the dressing room, opened the window, and called out for Prudence many times.

Mme Duvernoy's window remained shut.

I then went down to see the porter and asked if Mlle Gautier had come home during the day.

“Yes,” responded the man, “with Mme Duvernoy.”

“She left no word for me?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you know what they did next?”

“They got into a carriage.”

“What sort of carriage?”

“A private carriage.”

What did it all mean?

I rang at the next door.

“Where are you going, sir?” the concierge asked after having opened the door.

“To see Mme Duvernoy.”

“She is not back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir, and here is even a letter that someone brought her last night and which I have not yet given to her.”

And the porter showed me a letter, at which I mechanically glanced.

I recognized Marguerite's handwriting.

I took the letter.

The address bore these words:

“To Mme Duvernoy, to give to M. Duval.”

“This letter is for me,” I told the porter, and showed him the address.

“You are Monsieur Duval?” replied this man.

“Yes.”

“Ah! I recognize you; you often come to see Mme Duvernoy.”

Once in the street, I broke the seal of this letter.

A lightning bolt could have landed at my feet and I would not have been more shocked than I was by what I read there.

“By the time you read this letter, Armand, I will already be the mistress of another man. Everything, therefore, is over between us.

“Return to the side of your father, my friend, go see your sister again—that chaste young girl, unaware of all our miseries—in whose company you will quickly forget what you have suffered because of that lost girl called Marguerite Gautier, whom you once tried to love for an instant, and who owes to you the only happy moments of a life that, she hopes, will not now last long.”

When I read the last word, I thought I would go mad.

At one moment I truly feared I would fall down on the street. A cloud passed before my eyes, and the blood rushed to my temples.

At last I got hold of myself. I looked around me, astonished to see the lives of others continue without being slowed by my despair.

I was not strong enough to bear alone the blow that Marguerite had brought upon me.

It was then that I remembered that my father was in the same city as I, and that in ten minutes' time I could be by his side, and that, whatever the cause of my pain, he would share it with me.

I ran like a madman, like a thief, to the Hôtel de Paris. I found the key in the door of my father's room. I entered.

He was reading.

From the slight degree of astonishment he showed in seeing me appear, you would have thought he had expected me.

I threw myself into his arms without saying a word, I gave him Marguerite's letter and, sinking to my knees beside his bed, I wept hot tears.

As the ordinary routine of daily life resumed its course, I could not believe the day that broke would not resemble the ones that had preceded it. There were moments when I told myself that some circumstance I could not recall had brought me to spend the night away from Marguerite, but that if I returned to Bougival, I would find her anxious, just as I had been, and that she would ask me who it was who had kept me so far away from her.

Once existence has solidified into habit, as had happened with this love affair, it seems impossible that this habit could be broken without simultaneously shattering all the other mainsprings of life.

I was therefore forced to reread that letter from Marguerite time and again, to convince myself I had not dreamed it.

My body, succumbing to moral shock, was incapable of a single movement. My anxiety, my nighttime journey, the news of the morning, had exhausted me. My father took advantage of this total prostration of my forces to ask me to formally consent to leave with him.

I promised everything he wanted. I was incapable of enduring an argument, and I needed genuine affection to help me survive what had just happened.

I was only too happy that my father was willing to console me for such heartbreak.

All I recall is that around five o'clock that afternoon he had me step into a post chaise with him. Without telling me anything, he'd had my trunks packed, had them loaded with his own behind the carriage, and taken me off.

I had no idea of what I was doing until the city had disappeared and the solitude of the road reminded me of the emptiness of my heart.

Again I was overcome by tears.

My father understood that words, even from him, would not console me, and let me cry without saying a word, contenting himself with sometimes gripping my hand, as if to remind me that I had a friend next to me.

That night I slept a little. I dreamt of Marguerite.

I woke with a start, not understanding why I was in a carriage.

Then reality came back to me, and I let my head sink on my chest.

I did not dare talk to my father; I was too afraid he might say, “You see, I was right when I denied that woman's ability to love.”

But he did not abuse his advantage, and we arrived at C . . . without his having said anything to me but words completely unrelated to the events that had caused my departure.

When I embraced my sister, I recalled the words of Marguerite's letter concerning her, but understood at once that, good as she was, my sister was incapable of making me forget my mistress.

Hunting season was open; my father thought it would provide a distraction for me. He organized shooting parties with neighbors and friends. I attended them without repugnance and without enthusiasm, with the same apathy that characterized all my actions after my departure.

We were hunting for game. I was brought to my post. I set my unloaded gun down beside me and daydreamed.

I watched the clouds pass. I let my thoughts wander across the lonely plains, and from time to time I would hear my name called by some hunter, pointing out a hare ten steps away from me.

None of these details escaped my father, and he did not let himself be deceived by my tranquil exterior. He understood very well that, defeated as it was, my heart might someday experience a terrible, perhaps dangerous reaction, and while avoiding the appearance of consoling me, he did his utmost to distract me.

My sister, naturally, had not been made aware of all that had occurred. She could not understand why I, usually so cheerful, had suddenly become so dreamy and sad.

Sometimes, surprised in the midst of my sadness by an uneasy glance from my father, I would give him my hand and clasp his as if tacitly begging his pardon for the pain that, in spite of myself, I had caused him.

A month passed this way, but it was all I could bear.

The memory of Marguerite pursued me endlessly. I had loved this woman too much, and I still did, for her to become indifferent to me at once. Whatever feelings I might have for her, I simply had to see her again, and at once.

This desire entered my mind and planted itself there with all the violence of the determination that finally reemerges in a body that has been paralyzed for a long time.

It was not in the future, in one month, in a week that I had to see Marguerite; it was the day following the very day when the idea seized me, and I went to tell my father that I was leaving him for business that called me back to Paris, but that I would return promptly.

No doubt he guessed the motive for my departure, because he urged me to stay; but, seeing that the suppression of this desire, in the excitable state I was in, might have fatal consequences for me, he hugged me and begged me, almost in tears, to return quickly to his side.

I did not sleep all the way to Paris.

Once I was there, what would I do? I did not know, but first of all I needed to find out what had become of Marguerite.

I went to my apartment to get dressed, and as the weather was good, and there was plenty of time, I went to the Champs-Élysées.

After half an hour I saw Marguerite's carriage approach from afar, from the Rond-Point at the Place de la Concorde.

She had bought back her horses, because the carriage was just as it used to be, except she was not inside it.

Hardly had I noticed this absence when, following the eyes of others around me, I saw Marguerite, on foot, accompanied by a woman I'd never seen before.

In passing alongside me, she turned pale, and a nervous smile tightened her lips. As for me, the violent beating of my heart shook my chest, but I succeeded in maintaining a chilly expression on my face, and coldly saluted my old mistress, who reached her carriage almost at the same time, and climbed into it with her friend.

I knew Marguerite. Meeting me unexpectedly must have disconcerted her. Without doubt she had learned of my departure, which must have calmed her in the aftermath of our rupture; but seeing me come back, and finding herself face-to-face with me, pale as I was, she must have understood that my return had a purpose, and asked herself what was going to happen.

If I had come upon Marguerite unhappy—if, as a sort of revenge, I had been able to rescue her in some way—I would perhaps have forgiven her, and certainly would not have thought of doing her harm. But I found her happy, at least so it appeared; another man had returned to her the luxury I could not provide for her. As a consequence, our rupture, initiated by her, seemed to take on the basest character. I felt as humiliated in my pride as in my love; she absolutely had to pay for the suffering she had caused me.

I could not be indifferent to what this woman was doing, and surely, the thing that would hurt her the most would be my indifference; so that was the sentiment I had to feign, not only for her eyes, but also for the eyes of others.

Trying to put on a smiling face, I presented myself at Prudence's.

The chambermaid went to announce me and made me wait a few moments in the living room.

At last Mme Duvernoy appeared and invited me into her boudoir. As soon as I sat down, I heard the door of the living room open. A light step made the parquet creak, and then the door of the building slammed violently.

“Am I disturbing you?” I asked Prudence.

“Not at all; Marguerite was here. When she heard your name announced, she ran away; it is she who has just left.”

“She is afraid of me now?”

“No, but she believes it would be disagreeable for you to see her.”

“Why then,” I said, making an effort to breathe naturally, as emotion was choking me, “the poor girl has left me to get back her carriage, her furniture, and her diamonds. She has done the right thing, and I should not resent her for it. I ran into her today,” I continued casually.

“Where?” said Prudence, looking at me and seeming to ask herself if this man was really the same one she had known who had been so in love.

“On the Champs-Élysées; she was with another very pretty woman. Who is that woman?”

“What does she look like?”

“A blonde, slender, with long curls, blue eyes, very elegant.”

“Ah! That's Olympe, a very pretty girl, indeed.”

“Who does she live with?”

“With nobody, with everybody.”

“And where does she live?”

“Rue Tronchet, number . . . Ah! Wait, you would like to pursue her?”

“You never know what might happen.”

“And Marguerite?”

“To tell you that I don't think of her at all anymore would be a lie, but I am one of those men for whom the manner in which an affair ends carries great weight. Marguerite sent me away me in such a light manner that I felt like a fool for having been as in love as I was, for I was truly very much in love with that girl.”

You may guess in what tone I attempted to say these things; sweat poured down my forehead.

“Come now, she loved you very much, and she still loves you; the proof is that after she saw you today, she came immediately to tell me about this encounter. When she arrived, she was trembling; she was almost ill.”

“Well, what did she tell you?”

“She said to me, ‘No doubt he will come to see you,' and begged me to ask your forgiveness.”

“I forgive her; you may tell her that. She is a good girl, but she's a girl of a certain type, and what she did to me I should have expected. I am grateful to her for her decisiveness, because today I ask myself where my idea of building a life with her would have led. It was folly.”

“She will be very happy to learn that you are reconciled to the necessity in which she found herself. It was time for her to leave you, my dear. The scoundrel of a businessman she had planned to sell her furniture to had contacted her creditors to ask how much she owed them; they had taken fright, and everything was going to be sold in two days.”

“And now it's all paid off?”

“Just about.”

“And who provided the funds?”

“The Comte de N . . . . Ah! My dear! There are men made just for that purpose. In short, he gave her twenty thousand francs, but that was his limit. He knows Marguerite is not in love with him, but that does not keep him from being very kind to her. As you saw, he bought back her horses, he redeemed her jewels, and he gives her as much money as the duke gave her. If she would like a tranquil life, that man will stay with her for a long time.”

“And what is she doing? Is she living entirely in Paris?”

“She never wanted to return to Bougival after you left. I am the one who went there and got all her things, and even yours, which I've made into a bundle that you can pick up here. Everything is there, except for a small portfolio with your monogram on it. Marguerite wanted to keep it; she has it at her place. If you are attached to it, I will ask for it back from her.”

“She may keep it,” I stammered, for I felt the tears rise from my heart to my eyes at the memory of the village where I had been so happy, and at the thought that Marguerite wanted to hold on to something of mine that reminded her of me.

If she had entered at that moment, my resolutions of vengeance would have disappeared, and I would have fallen at her feet.

“Besides,” Prudence resumed, “I've never seen her as she is now. She hardly sleeps anymore, she goes to the balls, she has supper, she even drinks too much. Very recently, after a supper, she had to stay in bed for a week; and when the doctor permitted her to get up, she started it up again, at risk of her life. Are you going to go see her?”

“What good would that do? I came to see you—you—because you have always been kind to me, and because I knew you before I knew Marguerite. It is to you that I owe the fact that I was her lover, just as it's to you that I owe the fact that I no longer am, is that not so?”

“Ah, I should say so. I did everything I could to make her leave you, and I believe that, later, you will not hold it against me.”

“In that case I owe you a double debt of gratitude,” I added as I rose, because I was disgusted by this woman, seeing that she took at face value everything I said to her.

“You are going?”

“Yes.”

I had learned enough.

“When will we see you again?”

“Soon. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Prudence led me as far as the door, and I went home with tears of rage in my eyes and a hunger for vengeance in my heart.

So Marguerite, in the end, was like all the rest, and the deep love she had for me had not been able to overcome her desire to resume her past life and her need to have a carriage and to take part in wild parties.

That is what I told myself during my sleepless nights whereas, if I had reflected as coolly as I pretended to, I might have read into Marguerite's clamorous new existence her hope of quieting a persistent thought, an unceasing memory.

Unfortunately I was overcome with fury, and sought nothing but a way to torture this poor creature.

Oh! Man can be so petty and vile when one of his small-minded passions is wounded.

This Olympe, whom I had seen her with, was, if not Marguerite's friend, at least the person she had seen most often since her return to Paris. She was going to give a ball, and since I supposed that Marguerite would be there, I sought to get an invitation, and received one.

When, seething with my painful emotions, I arrived at this ball, it was already at full tilt. People were dancing, people were even shouting, and, in one of the quadrilles, I saw Marguerite dancing with the Comte de N . . . , who seemed quite proud to show her off, and seemed to say to all the world, “This woman is mine!”

I went to lean against the mantel, just across from Marguerite, and watched her dance. Hardly had she noticed me when she became troubled. I saw her and greeted her absently with a glance and a wave.

When I reflected that, after the ball, it would not be with me that she would leave, but with this rich idiot, and when I pictured what in all likelihood would follow their return to her apartment, the blood rushed to my face, and I felt compelled to stir up trouble between them.