Читать книгу Two banks of the Seine (Les Deux Rives) - Fernand Vandérem - Страница 3

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THE carriage stopped at the gate of the Collège de France; Mme. Chambannes alighted briskly. She did not take the trouble to close the door and, swinging her muff, hurried through the somber courtyard, where three pigeons wandered in the security that silence and solitude ensured them.

Through the panes of the glass door M. Pageot, first usher of the Collège, watched her approach, his thick mustache slightly lifted in a smile of sympathy.

“Another one!” he thought, remembering all the fashionable ladies whom he had seen come in during the last hour. This one, moreover, was very dainty. Her small, fine, although bold, face, her astrakhan jacket and purple velvet toque with border of astrakhan to match, the curls of which mingled with her own brown hair, an aigrette of white feathers perched on the side, reminded him, reverence apart and minus the whiskers, of an old lithograph which hung above his bed, Murat, Future King of Naples, at the Battle of Eylau.

It was therefore with an eager hand that he opened the door for her.

“What is it you wish, madame?”

“If you please, where is the lecture on Egyptology?”

“M. Rainda lecture? There, you are facing the hall.”

She was rushing forward when M. Pageot held her back with a calm gesture. “It is useless, madame! The hall is full, overcrowded.... Moreover, you will not miss much, for it will be over in five minutes....”

“Thank you,” acknowledged Mme. Chambannes, regretfully, adding, after a pause, “Did you happen to see a tall, fair lady in a blue costume ... with a strapped jacket?”

Pageot tried to recollect.

“See her? See her?... Why, surely I saw her; but, madame, there are so many of them! Upon my word, I do not remember having seen so many people at an opening lecture during the whole fifteen years that I have been an usher of the Collège....” Carelessly he straightened his light nickel chain, and added in the competent tone of one who knew, “I suppose they came on account of his book on Cleopatra....”

Mme. Chambannes nodded assent. At that moment the doors of the lecture hall swung back under the pressure of the departing audience and the huge hall suddenly resounded with a church-like sonorousness.

“Here, perhaps, is your friend in blue,” said Pageot, indicating a lady who was one of the first to come out.

Mme. Chambannes hurried to stop Mme. de Marquesse, who exclaimed:

“You!... Well, I cannot say you are early! Yet I only came here to please you!”

“A letter I was expecting from Gerald,” apologized her friend. “l tell you about it later.... I was quite upset, I assure you.... Well, tell me, was it at least all right inside there? Was it worth the trouble?... Did he speak of Cleopatra?... Was he very shocking?”

Mme. de Marquesse assumed a roguish expression.

“I do know.... You are asking too much.... I am like the little girl in the play.... I saw nothing, I heard nothing.... Standing, with rows of men in front of me and the smell of perspiration!... I wo be caught again.... Or else I shall send my footman to book my seats in good time....”

“How dreadful!”

“Oh, well, it might have been worse,” replied Mme. de Marquesse protectively.... “Goodness gracious! What a child you are, little Zozé! Here or elsewhere you will meet M. Raindal again.... There is nothing lost.... And all this because M. de Meuze turned your head with his blarney!...”

“This has nothing to do with M. de Meuze!”

“With whom, then?... Is it Gerald?... If it is the father, then it must be the son.... Do you really think that notorieties carry any weight with him?... How naïve you are!”

“Why not!” demanded Mme. Chambannes sarcastically. “With such ideas, in three months I shall succeed in having a salon like the Pums or the Silberschmidts.... Thank you!... My system is not so absurd.... I know what I am doing!” Then she added more cordially, “Shall we watch them come out?”

“If you like,” replied Mme. de Marquesse. And they stood at one side in the narrow passage through which the audience filed out.

It was obviously a public meant for show, a delegation of that brilliant civic guard with which Paris keeps its successful glories surrounded. There were people from the literary salons, the “large circulation revues,” the conservative periodicals that have none but authentic illustrations after the title-page; there were academicians, famous as well as obscure, thinkers, men with dreamy minds and men with reflective ones, jugglers of ideas, men who dug up questions and men who solved problems. There were the established mistresses of the tables where discussion takes place, plus their lively retinue of little women, little men, little young men, little old men, the whole flight of those who prattle, cackle, and giggle on the heights of art as sparrows do on the branches of trees; there were pretty faces, dull with powder, peeping out of soft sable collars; inquisitive silhouettes with military mustaches; voices that were disciplined in the practice of the correct phrase; brows that were furrowed by years of study or the persistent search for the witty word; smiles, furs, and whiffs of perfume. They called to each other; they bowed to each other; they exchanged the opinions they had or even those they were going to have—all this before the amazed eyes of a few outsiders who spoke their names in low, respectful voices.

Mme. Chambannes seemed especially delighted with the spectacle. She had never been seriously tempted to belong to this élite. Fate had directed her aims elsewhere, towards a simpler, a more human and tender object; and thither, despite contrary appearances, all her actions tended. But to witness the gossip, the coquetries and friendly encounters of those well-known people who were so often mentioned in the society columns, afforded her a naïve delight, a joy of the eye and of the mind which gave her miniature face quite a serious look of attention.

Suddenly she made an involuntary movement of surprise and touched Mme. de Marquesse.

“Do look at this one!”

Her glance indicated a poorly clad girl who was coming towards them, in a jacket of green cloth with marten revers which seemed even more worn than the dusty tulle bonnet pinned awry on her head. The girl, who had the haughty gait and the somewhat bitter, aggressive expression which fatigue, pride, and masculine worries often give to women of science, gave the two women an almost hostile look as she passed them, and approached the usher.

“Pageot, has my father come out?” she asked in a tone of authority.

The usher quickly removed his skull cap.

“No, mademoiselle.... Shall I tell him that mademoiselle....”

“Thank you, Pageot.... You will please tell him that I am waiting for him outside, near the gate....”

“Very well, mademoiselle!” and the usher ran to open the door for her. “Do you know who she is?” he added mysteriously, as he turned back to Mme. Chambannes. “You do know?... It is Mlle. Thérèse Raindal, M. Rainda daughter!”

Outside, Mlle. Raindal began to pace back and forth in front of the ancient gate, walking briskly up and down the pavement, her neck shrunk in her shoulders and her shoulders hunched forward like those of a sentry struggling against the cold. At intervals she would stop and throw a searching glance towards the steps at the end of the courtyard. Through the window could be seen the meditative face of Pageot, which had at that distance and in the thick ochreous air of that dark November afternoon, almost the complexion of a yellow-fever patient. But as M. Raindal was not yet in sight, Thérèse took up her sentry walk again, her elbows close to her body, her hands crossed inside her plush muff.

Gradually, as she paced back and forth, the line of her lips, almost as thin as a thread of rose silk, paled and all but vanished in a pouting expression. She was thinking of the approaching evening ordeal, the forced introduction which had been arranged for her at the house of M. Lemeunier de Saulvard, of the Department of Moral Sciences,—an introduction to an unknown man who would be presented to her at a dance, a “possible husband,” the man who would have a right to her kisses, to her flesh, and would thereafter spend all his nights beside her. One more to reject! The ninth one in ten years! “A young savant of the greatest merit,” Saulvard had written; “one of our rising hopes in Assyriology, M. Pierre Boerzell....” M. Boerzell! M. Boerzell! She repeated the harsh, barbarous name. Well, that “hope” would be no less sadly handicapped in the matter of good looks than the others before him! Probably something like the podgy little man carrying a barriste case who was coming in her direction on the other side of the street! Instinctively she stopped to take a good look at the passer-by, her lips wickedly pursed and her eye aflame as at the sight of prey. Then, with lips relaxed in a disdainful smile, she turned about, and shrugging her shoulders, murmured:

“Yes, probably one of that type!”

She was suffering. As the wind bit her face, it seemed to her that something icy was gripping her heart. She remembered that other one—the man she had once lost—the runaway and defaulting fiancé, Albert Dastarac. Ten years had passed since then, but there were still nights when, in her maidenly dreams, she fancied that she felt his maddening embraces and the lingering fragrance of his lips.

Who could have foreseen that the young agrégé of history would prove so perfidious? That wheedling southerner, that seductive Albârt, as his deep bass voice sounded his name! He was so caressing, so passionate; the director of the Normal School had praised him so much! Even now while she waited outside the gate in that icy mist, Thérèse Raindal could not believe in the actuality of that past betrayal; she could not explain it to herself or even understand it. Images, daily called back to her memory, were so familiar and recent! She fancied she was beside Albârt in her fathe drawing-room in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Once more she saw his impudent profile, like that of a classical bandit, his splendid frame, his straight legs, his huge brown eyes with scarcely any white to be seen, and the fine black mustache which he curled with his tapering fingers, coppered by the use of tobacco. How he had made love to her during those eight days of their engagement!

She was flat-chested; her mouth was bloodless, small, and narrowed as if drawn together by a cord; her complexion was dulled by that greenish tan which one acquires when shut away from the sun, amidst dusty books, in over-heated libraries or in the feverish air of lecture halls. Albârt seemed to notice none of all those defects of which she was more conscious than anyone else and which often made her secretly unhappy. He saw nothing but her charms. He was always enraptured with her pale, straight nose chiselled like an antique, with her fierce gray eyes crowned with black velvet,—like those of Minerva, he would say,—with the massive coils of her brown hair, which he wanted to take down and bathe his face in. And the tenderness of his words matched his ability to flatter.

Ceaselessly, ardently, and without reason, he called her, as in an invocation or a prayer, “Oh, ma Theresoun! Oh, ma chato!” For her he sang slow Provençal songs, mournful as the tunes played by distant hunting-horns, which Mme. Raindal, who was also from the South, accompanied as best she could on the piano, quiveringly singing the chorus with him. Or, when he was alone with the young girl, he would sit at her feet on a stool of blue satin while she talked about the future,—how she would regulate the hours of his work, help him in his career, and push him on to the highest attainments. Then suddenly, wildly, he would throw himself upon her and press her in his arms murmuring, “Ma Theresoun!” The stone-like biceps of his arm would roll against her flesh, his scented mustache would be close to her face, his fragrant lips meet hers, and she would throw back her head, her eyelids closed, with a longing to yield, to let the sweet balm of his kisses permeate all her being.

Then one morning an embarrassed letter had come from Albârt. Family matters compelled him to put off the wedding and to leave at once for St. Gaudens, his native town. The young gentleman apologized, whined, protesting his sorrow. Three weeks later, M. Raindal had taken his daughter to the Luxembourg, as one would lead a convalescent to take a little rest in the spring air of the gardens; there Thérèse saw her fiancé, the spruce and lively Dastarac, with a young girl on his arm, a short, thin, sickly creature, the third daughter of M. Gaussine, professor of the Sumarian language at the Sorbonne, who was walking behind them.

“Come along, child,” murmured M. Raindal, trying to lead his daughter away. “Yes, they are to be married. I only heard of it yesterday!... Maître Gaussine has a reputation for getting good positions for his sons-in-law.... This is what must have attracted our rascal.... Come on, l explain to you....”

But she had stood still, unable to move, although she could hardly keep from screaming aloud in her pain. She had been on the verge of fainting. What an outrageous memory! Then came the ghastly days in her room, still impregnated with the rogu perfume,—the long hours of day dreams, when she had taken her vows of renunciation, swearing henceforth to devote herself to a life of study as others are driven by despair into religion!

In spite of her work, however, and of the long years that had passed since then, she had been unable to dismiss from her mind, no matter how much learning she had crowded it with, the tenacious image of the charming Albârt, who, notwithstanding the offices of his father-in-law, was said to be buried miles away from Paris, in an obscure Lycée of Provence.

Thérèse was still dazzled by the memory of his caresses, as were those mortals of antiquity whom a god had loved. He remained her mourned husband, the masterful lord of her secret life; and when they wanted to marry her, to give her to another man, it was always he who came between, who took her back, resurrecting in her austere frame his Theresoun of old, his captivated Theresoun. Invisible to all others, but present to her, he would seem to be there, hand on hip, his knee bent in that swaggering attitude of bravado, murmuring with sneering lips, “But look, ma chato, look, compare us!... Is it possible ... after me?” It was true; how could she stoop—betray him! And so in a few brusque words the new suitor was always dismissed.

“So you do want him, child?” M. Raindal would ask pitifully, only to be met with a refusal so sharp and angry, and like a blow that it left him dazed, reduced him to silence, and effectively prevented any further argument.

“Well, dear, are we ready?... I was delayed by a newspaper man, a reporter who interviewed me on Cleopatra, the English in Egypt ... and I do know what.... Tell me, you did not feel too impatient?”

Thérèse started on hearing the jovial voice of her father.

“No, no, I was thinking; I was working, walking up and down.”

“Good! I am glad of it....” And as one does to a friend or a colleague, he took her arm and rapidly led her towards the Boulevard St. Michel.

People turned to look as they passed, puzzled by the strange couple: this officer of the Légion onneur, an old gentleman with a white beard, and a girl who looked like a school teacher, walking arm in arm tenderly. Some attempted a guess; some instinctively smiled, moved by vague sympathetic ideas. Sometimes students who knew the master by sight purposely stared at him to win a glance for themselves, or even, moved by respect, saluted him.

M. Raindal perceived this homage only confusedly. He was now concentrating all his attention on questioning Thérèse to ascertain her exact opinion of his opening lecture. Was she satisfied? Had it gone well? It was not too long? And the peroration, what had she thought that? Had he done right in dismissing those loungers and snobs who had dared to invade his lecture hall, his own quiet little chapel?

“Oh, yes!” Thérèse replied. “Although I might say you were a little too severe and scornful.”

“Never enough so!... It may be good for the Sorbonne to have all those fine ladies and their tame cats.... But as for us, we want none but workers, true apprentices....”

Then he digressed into a diffuse commentary on the duties, the dignity, and the aim of the Collège de France. Science! Le Collège de France! There lay his faith, his church, and he had no other! Thérèse knew by heart the order and the verses of these fiery litanies, and let him proceed without interruption.

“Never mind, child,” he concluded, out of breath. “They have had their warning. I think we shall not see them again.... Moreover, this affluence has its reasons.... It is another miracle of our Cleopatra.”

“Oh, our Cleopatra!” Thérèse protested.

“Yes, yes, ours. I maintain the word....”

Following the natural bent which leads one to talk of oneself, he recalled the phases of his disconcerting triumph: fame that had come in a night, the whole press, the reviews, and the salons working together to make him famous; five thousand copies sold in three weeks; articles every night, every morning ... everywhere—those papers which fell into line later proving more ardent than the first ones, thus seeking in the fervor of their adhesion an excuse for the shame of their delay; letters, interviews, requests for articles, portraits and autographs. Success, in one word,—that imperial investiture, with its long, endless offerings, delirious praetorians, and even the intolerant enthusiasm that forces the jealous to wait, which Paris sometimes gives to its elect.

And to whom did M. Raindal owe it all? Who had suggested to him the subject of this book three years ago? Who had thought of a Life of Cleopatra, written from the national Egyptian point of view, and deriving its inspiration from indigenous documents and the popular sentiments of the period? And then who had helped him to the very end, faithfully seconded him in the heavy task? Who had classified the material, copied the papyri, transcribed the inscriptions, and read the proofs over and over, one by one, with the exception of the Latin notes? Who had....

“But, I say, where are you leading me now!” he exclaimed, abandoning the tone of friendly custody which he had assumed in reciting his eulogy of her.

Thérèse smiled tenderly.

“There you are, father; tha what you get for exaggerating.... One forgets everything, one does know where one is any more.... I am leading you to the Bon Marché, where I am going to buy gloves for to-night....”

“Ah, yes, the dance!” M. Raindal sighed, as if he had already received the customary blow of a refusal. Then he went on: “Well, no! I must leave you.... I am going to climb up to your Uncle Cyprie; I want to inquire how his rheumatism is to-day and whether he is coming to dine with us to-night....”

Before the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés, they stopped in the midst of the melancholy crowd standing about the street-car office and shook hands firmly, like two comrades.

“Au revoir, dear, l see you a little later.”

“Au revoir, father.”

Thérèse crossed the street, while M. Raindal gathered up his leather case, which was slipping from his elbow, and slowly and with deliberation, as if weighed down by his thoughts, ventured into the rue Bonaparte.