Books: Cosmopolis, v3
P >>
Paul Bourget >> Cosmopolis, v3
When Madame Maitland suspected the liaison of Madame Steno and her
husband, she no more hesitated to open the latter's secretary than she
later hesitated to open the desk of her brother. The correspondence
which she read in that way was of a nature which exasperated her desire
for vengeance almost to frenzy. For not only did she acquire the
evidence of a happiness shared by them which humiliated in her the woman
barren in all senses of the word, a stranger to voluptuousness as well as
to maternity, but she gathered from it numerous proofs that the Countess
cherished, with regard to her, a scorn of race as absolute as if Venice
had been a city of the United States.... That part of the Adriatic
abounds in prejudices of blood, as do all countries which serve as
confluents for every nation. It is sufficient to convince one's self of
it, to have heard a Venetian treat of the Slavs as 'Cziavoni', and the
Levantines as 'Gregugni'.
Madame Steno, in those letters she had written with all the familiarity
and all the liberty of passion, never called Lydia anything but La
Morettina, and by a very strange illogicalness never was the name of the
brother of La Morettina mentioned without a formula of friendship. As
the mistress treated Florent in that manner, it must be that she
apprehended no hostility on the part of her lover's brother-in-law.
Lydia understood it only too well, as well as the fresh proof of
Florent's sentiments for Lincoln. Once more he gave precedence to the
friend over the sister, and on what an occasion! The most secret wounds
in her inmost being bled as she read. The success of Alba's portrait,
which promised to be a masterpiece, ended by precipitating her into a
fierce and abominable action. She resolved to denounce Madame Steno's
new love to the betrayed lover, and she wrote the twelve letters, wisely
calculated and graduated, which had indeed determined Gorka's return.
His return had even been delayed too long to suit the relative of Iago,
who had decided to aim at Madame Steno through Alba by a still more
criminal denunciation. Lydia was in that state of exasperation in which
the vilest weapons seem the best, and she included innocent Alba in her
hatred for Maitland, on account of the portrait, a turn of sentiment
which will show that it was envy by which that soul was poisoned above
all. Ah, what bitter delight the simultaneous success of that double
infamy had procured for her! What savage joy, mingled with bitterness
and ecstacy, had been hers the day before, on witnessing the nervousness
of poor Alba and the suppressed fury of Boleslas!
In her mind she had seen Maitland provoked by the rival whom she knew to
be as adroit with the sword as with the pistol. She would not have been
the great-grandchild of a slave of Louisiana, if she had not combined
with the natural energy of her hatreds a considerable amount of
superstition. A fortune-teller had once foretold, from the lines in her
palm, that she would cause the violent death of some person. "It will be
he," she had thought, glancing at her husband with a horrible tremor of
hope.... And now she had the proof, the indisputable proof, that her
plot for vengeance was to terminate in the danger of another. Of what
other?
The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her the threat of a
fatal duel suspended over the head which was the dearest to her. So she
had driven to a tragical encounter the only being whom she loved.... The
disappointment of the heart in which palpitated the wild energies of a
bestial atavism was so sudden, so acute, so dolorous, that she uttered an
inarticulate cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face of
those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, she repeated:
"He is going to fight a duel! He!.... And I am the cause!".... Then,
returning the letters and the will to the drawer, she closed it and rose,
saying aloud:
"No. It shall not be. I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself
between them. I do not wish it! I do not wish it!"
It was easy to utter such words. But the execution of them was less
easy. Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she
wrung her hands in despair--those weak hands which Madame Steno compared
in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so supple
and so long--and she uttered this despairing cry: "But how?".... which so
many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and fatal to
them, of their shrewdest calculations. The poet has sung it in the words
which relate the story of all our faults, great and small:
"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."
It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible
judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a
sinister apprehension when they have to brave the chance of a misfortune
absolutely merited. The remembrance of the soothsayer's prediction
suddenly occurred to Lydia. She uttered another cry, rubbing her hands
like a somnambulist. She saw her brother's blood flowing.... No, the
duel should not take place! But how to prevent it? How-how? she
repeated. Florent was not at home. She could, therefore, not implore
him. If he should return, would there still be time? Lincoln was not at
home. Where was he? Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno.
The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in the painter's arms,
plunged in the abyss of intoxication which her ardent letters described,
was presented to the mind of the jealous wife. What irony to perceive
thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to strike, with the ecstacy of
bliss in their eyes! Lydia would have liked to tear out their eyes, his
as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel. A fresh flood of
hatred filled her heart. God! how she hated them, and with what a
powerless hatred! But her time would come; another need pressed sorely
--to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother. To
whom should she turn, however? To Dorsenne? To Montfanon? To Baron
Hafner? To Peppino Ardea? She thought by turns of the four personages
whose almost simultaneous visits had caused her to believe that they were
the seconds of the two champions. She rejected them, one after the
other, comprehending that none of them possessed enough authority to
arrange the affair. Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's
adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had
always found so courteous. What if she should ask him to spare her
brother? It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a
grudge. Would he not be touched by her tears? Would he not tell her
what had led to the quarrel and what she should ask of her brother that
the quarrel might be conciliated? Could she not obtain from him the
promise to discharge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols,
or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his enemy?
Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she believed in infallible
fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas
profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another
in the matter of an insult. But how can women admit that inflexible
rigor in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations,
when they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their arguments
with men, nor in their discussions among themselves? Accustomed always
to appeal from convention to instinct and from reason to sentiment, they
are, in the face of certain laws, be they those of justice or of honor,
in a state of incomprehension worse than ignorance. A duel, for example,
appears to them like an arbitrary drama, which the wish of one of those
concerned can change at his fancy. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred
would think like Lydia Maitland of hastening to the adversary of the man
they love, to demand, to beg for his life. Let us add, however, that the
majority would not carry out that thought. They would confine themselves
to sewing in the vest of their beloved some blessed medal, in
recommending him to the Providence, which, for them, is still the
favoritism of heaven. Lydia felt that if ever Florent should learn of
her step with regard to Gorka, he would be very indignant. But who would
tell him? She was agitated by one of those fevers of fear and of remorse
which are too acute not to act, cost what it might. Her carriage was
announced, and she entered it, giving the address of the Palazzetto
Doria. In what terms should she approach the man to whom she was about
to pay that audacious and absurd visit? Ah, what mattered it? The
circumstances would inspire her. Her desire to cut short the duel was so
strong that she did not doubt of success.
She was greatly disappointed when the footman at the palace told her that
the Count had gone out, while at the same moment a voice interrupted him
with a gay laugh. It was Countess Maud Gorka, who, returning from her
walk with her little boy, recognized Lydia's coup, and who said to her:
"What a lucky idea I had of returning a little sooner. I see you were
afraid of a storm, as you drove out in a closed carriage. Will you come
upstairs a moment?" And, perceiving that the young woman, whose hand she
had taken, was trembling: "What ails you? I should think you were ill!
You do not feel well? My God, what ails her! She is ill, Luc," she
added, turning to her son; "run to my room and bring me the large bottle
of English salts; Rose knows which one. Go, go quickly."
"It is nothing," replied Lydia, who had indeed closed her eyes as if on
the point of swooning. "See, I am better already. I think I will return
home; it will be wiser."
"I shall not leave you," said Maud, seating herself, too, in the
carriage; and, as they handed her the bottle of salts, she made Madame
Maitland inhale it, talking to her the while as to a sick child: "Poor
little thing!"
"How her cheeks burn! And you pay visits in this state. It is very
venturesome! Rue Leopardi," she called to the coachman, "quickly."
The carriage rolled away, and Madame Gorka continued to press the tiny
hands of Lydia, to whom she gave the tender name, so ironical under the
circumstances, of "Poor little one!" Maud was one of those women like
whom England produces many, for the honor of that healthy and robust
British civilization, who are at once all energy and all goodness. As
large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to
her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled
state in which she had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her
compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to
question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when
with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from
the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs. Lydia had a
nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of
Boleslas's absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with
which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white
teeth, she moaned:
"No, I am not ill. But it is that thought which I can not bear. No, I
can not. Ah, it is maddening!" And turning toward her companion, she in
her turn pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing! You suspect
nothing! It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm,
happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as
well as to me. For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and
you love him. You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have
pardoned him."
She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme
nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling, her
very deepest thought. She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka any
information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas with
Madame Steno. She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of
her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of those
heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies. How many women have
immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which
the father shall at least not desert officially! All Rome was mistaken,
and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof. Not a suspicion that
such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother of her best
friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife. But to account
for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and to comprehend the depth
of innocence of which, notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the
beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so frank, was
possessed.
She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of
men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised care. She might
have seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being disillusioned. She
had only a liking for acquaintances and positive conversation. She was
very intellectual, but without any desire to study character.
Dorsenne said of her, with more justness than he thought: "Madame
Boleslas Gorka is married to a man who has never been presented to her,"
meaning by that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's
character, and then of the treason of which she was the victim. However,
the novelist was not altogether right. Boleslas's infidelity was of too
long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his
wife, not to have suffered by it. But there was an abyss between such
sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which
Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's
thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at
the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent
still than her words.
"Your brother? My husband?" she said. "I do not understand you."
"Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid
all from me. Well! They are going to fight a duel, and to-morrow
morning.... Do not tremble, in your turn," she continued, twining her
arms around Maud Gorka. "We shall be two to prevent the terrible affair,
and we shall prevent it."
"A duel? To-morrow morning?" repeated Maud, in affright. "Boleslas
fights to-morrow with your brother? No, it is impossible. Who told you
so? How do you know it?"
"I read the proof of it with my eyes," replied Lydia. "I read Florent's
will. I read the letter which he prepared for Maitland and for me in
case of accident...."
"Should I be in the state in which you see me if it were not true?"
"Oh, I believe you!" cried Maud, pressing her hands to her eyelids, as
if to shut out a horrible sight. "But where can they be seen? Boleslas
has been here scarcely any of the time for two days. What is there
between them? What have they said to one another? One does not risk
one's life for nothing when he has, like Boleslas, a wife and a son.
Answer me, I conjure you. Tell me all. I desire to know all. What is
there at the bottom of this duel?"
"What could there be but a woman?" interrupted Lydia, who put into the
two last words more savage scorn than if she had publicly spit in
Caterina Steno's face. But that fresh access of anger fell before the
surprise caused her by Madame Gorka's reply.
"What woman? I understand you still less than I did just now."
"When we are at home I will speak,".... replied Lydia, after having
looked at Maud with a surprised glance, which was in itself the most
terrible reply. The two women were silent. It was Maud who now required
the sympathy of friendship, so greatly had the words uttered by Lydia
startled her. The companion whose arm rested upon hers in that carriage,
and who had inspired her with such pity fifteen minutes before, now
rendered her fearful. She seemed to be seated by the side of another
person. In the creature whose thin nostrils were dilated with passion,
whose mouth was distorted with bitterness, whose eyes sparkled with
anger, she no longer recognized little Madame Maitland, so taciturn, so
reserved that she was looked upon as insignificant. What had that voice,
usually so musical, told her; that voice so suddenly become harsh, and
which had already revealed to her the great danger suspended over
Boleslas? To what woman had that voice alluded, and what meant that
sudden reticence?
Lydia was fully aware of the grief into which she would plunge Maud
without the slightest premeditation. For a moment she thought it almost
a crime to say more to a woman thus deluded. But at the same time she
saw in the revelation two certain results. In undeceiving Madame Gorka
she made a mortal enemy for Madame Steno, and, on the other hand, never
would the woman so deeply in love with her husband allow him to fight for
a former mistress. So, when they both entered the small salon of the
Moorish mansion, Lydia's resolution was taken. She was determined to
conceal nothing of what she knew from unhappy Maud, who asked her, with a
beating heart, and in a voice choked by emotion:
"Now, will you explain to me what you want to say?"
"Question me," replied the other; "I will answer you. I have gone too
far to draw back."
"You claimed that a woman was the cause of the duel between your brother
and my husband?"
"I am sure of it," replied Lydia.
"What is that woman's name?"
"Madame Steno."
"Madame Steno?" repeated Maud. "Catherine Steno is the cause of that
duel? How?"
"Because she is my husband's mistress," replied Lydia, brutally; "because
she has been your husband's, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy,
to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, who prevented him from
entering.... They quarrelled, I know not in what manner. But I know the
cause of the duel.... Am I right, yes or no, in telling you they are to
fight about that woman?"
"My husband's mistress?" cried Maud. "You say Madame Steno has been my
husband's mistress? It is not true. You lie! You lie! You lie! I do
not believe it."
"You do not believe me?" said Lydia, shrugging her shoulders. "As if I
had the least interest in deceiving you; as if one would lie when the
life of the only being one loves in the world is in the balance! For I
have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall no longer have
him.... But you shall believe me. I desire that we both hate that
woman, that we both be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel
to take place--the duel of which, I repeat, she is the cause, the sole
cause.... You do not believe me? Do you know what caused your husband
to return? You did not expect him; confess! It was I--I, do you hear--
who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln were doing; day after day I wrote
about their love, their meetings, their bliss. Ah, I was sure it would
not be in vain, and he returned. Is that a proof?"
"You did not do that?" cried Madame Gorka, recoiling with horror. "It
was infamous."
"Yes, I did it," replied Lydia, with savage pride, "and why not? It was
my right when she took my husband from me. You have only to return and
to look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters. You will certainly
find those I wrote, and others, I assure you, from that woman. For she
has a mania for letter-writing.... Do you believe me now, or will you
repeat that I have lied?"
"Never," returned Maud, with sorrowful indignation upon her lovely, loyal
face, "no, never will I descend to such baseness."
"Well, I will descend for you," said Lydia. "What you do not dare to do,
I will dare, and you will ask me to aid you in being avenged. Come,"
and, seizing the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into
Lincoln's studio, at that moment unoccupied. She approached one of those
Spanish desks, called baygenos, and she touched two small panels, which
disclosed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a package of
letters, which she seized. Maud Gorka watched her with the same
terrified horror with which she would have seen some one killed and
robbed. That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her mere
presence made of her an accomplice. But at the same time she was a prey,
as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite
to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical
need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's
sister, who continued:
"Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own
hand? Yes," she continued, with cruel irony, "she loves correspondence,
our fortunate rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may make no
more avowals. She writes as she feels. It seems that the successor was
jealous of his predecessor.... See, is this a proof this time?".... And,
after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them,
she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert
her eyes. What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of
anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much
mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was
ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka.
Countess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a
heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the
usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a
new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to
women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. She had not
essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him,
and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly,
that Madame Gorka's eyes fell:
"You will be pleased with me," she wrote, "and I shall no longer see in
your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust
which troubles me. I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka. If you
require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you
know of and which will render it difficult for me. But how can you be
jealous yet?.... Is not my frankness with regard to that liaison the
surest guarantee that it is ended? Come, do not be jealous. Listen to
what I know so well, that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on
the day when you took me in your arms. The woman you have awakened in
me, no one has known--"
"She writes well, does she not?" said Lydia, with a gleam of savage
triumph in her eyes. "Do you believe me, now?.... Do you see that we
have the same interest to-day, a common affront to avenge? And we will
avenge it.... Do you understand that you can not allow your husband to
fight a duel with my brother? You owe that to me who have given you this
weapon by which you hold him.... Threaten him with a divorce. Fortune
is with you. The law will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him
firmly. You will prevent the duel, will you not?"
"Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?" said
Maud. "From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not
approach me," she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder
of repulsion shook her entire frame.... "Do not speak to me.... I have
as much horror of you as of him.... Let me go, let me leave here....
Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror....
Ah, what disgrace!"
She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the
other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride
of defiance. She went out repeating: "Ah, what disgrace!" without Lydia
having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result of
all her attempts paralyzed her. But the formidable creature lost no time
in regret and repentance. She paused a few moments to think. Then,
crushing in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk
of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:
"Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She loves. She will pardon. Will
there, then, be no one to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent
happiness." After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted, she
placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half an hour
later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a letter, with
the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was addressed to the
inspector of police of the district. She informed him of the intended
duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of the four
seconds. If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would even that
time have signed her name.
"I should have gone to work that way at first," said she to herself, when
the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom she had
given her order personally. "The police know how to prevent them from
fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent.... As for him?"....
and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at which she had
just been writing. "Were I to tell him what is taking place.... No, I
will ask nothing of him.... I hate him too much.".... And she concluded
with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her
mouth: