CHAPTER XIV. EXPLANATION

By slow degrees Sidonie sank to her former level, yes, even lower. From the rich, well-considered bourgeoise to which her marriage had raised her, she descended the ladder to the rank of a mere toy. By dint of travelling in railway carriages with fantastically dressed courtesans, with their hair worn over their eyes like a terrier's, or falling over the back 'a la Genevieve de Brabant', she came at last to resemble them.

She transformed herself into a blonde for two months, to the unbounded amazement of Rizer, who could not understand how his doll was so changed. As for Georges, all these eccentricities amused him; it seemed to him that he had ten women in one. He was the real husband, the master of the house.

To divert Sidonie's thoughts, he had provided a simulacrum of society for her--his bachelor friends, a few fast tradesmen, almost no women, women have too sharp eyes. Madame Dobson was the only friend of Sidonie's s.e.x.

They organized grand dinner-parties, excursions on the water, fireworks.

From day to day Risler's position became more absurd, more distressing.

When he came home in the evening, tired out, shabbily dressed, he must hurry up to his room to dress.

"We have some people to dinner," his wife would say. "Make haste."

And he would be the last to take his place at the table, after shaking hands all around with his guests, friends of Fromont Jeune, whom he hardly knew by name. Strange to say, the affairs of the factory were often discussed at that table, to which Georges brought his acquaintances from the club with the tranquil self-a.s.surance of the gentleman who pays.

"Business breakfasts and dinners!" To Risler's mind that phrase explained everything: his partner's constant presence, his choice of guests, and the marvellous gowns worn by Sidonie, who beautified herself in the interests of the firm. This coquetry on his mistress's part drove Fromont Jeune to despair. Day after day he came unexpectedly to take her by surprise, uneasy, suspicious, afraid to leave that perverse and deceitful character to its own devices for long.

"What in the deuce has become of your husband?"

Pere Gardinois would ask his grand-daughter with a cunning leer. "Why doesn't he come here oftener?"

Claire apologized for Georges, but his continual neglect began to disturb her. She wept now when she received the little notes, the despatches which arrived daily at the dinner-hour: "Don't expect me to-night, dear love. I shall not be able to come to Savigny until to-morrow or the day after by the night-train."

She ate her dinner sadly, opposite an empty chair, and although she did not know that she was betrayed, she felt that her husband was becoming accustomed to living away from her. He was so absent-minded when a family gathering or some other unavoidable duty detained him at the chateau, so silent concerning what was in his mind. Claire, having now only the most distant relations with Sidonie, knew nothing of what was taking place at Asnieres: but when Georges left her, apparently eager to be gone, and with smiling face, she tormented her loneliness with unavowed suspicions, and, like all those who antic.i.p.ate a great sorrow, she suddenly became conscious of a great void in her heart, a place made ready for disasters to come.

Her husband was hardly happier than she. That cruel Sidonie seemed to take pleasure in tormenting him. She allowed everybody to pay court to her. At that moment a certain Cazabon, alias Cazaboni, an Italian tenor from Toulouse, introduced by Madame Dobson, came every day to sing disturbing duets. Georges, jealous beyond words, hurried to Asnieres in the afternoon, neglecting everything, and was already beginning to think that Risler did not watch his wife closely enough. He would have liked him to be blind only so far as he was concerned.

Ah! if he had been her husband, what a tight rein he would have kept on her! But he had no power over her and she was not at all backward about telling him so. Sometimes, too, with the invincible logic that often occurs to the greatest fools, he reflected that, as he was deceiving his friend, perhaps he deserved to be deceived. In short, his was a wretched life. He pa.s.sed his time running about to jewellers and dry-goods dealers, inventing gifts and surprises. Ah! he knew her well. He knew that he could pacify her with trinkets, yet not retain his hold upon her, and that, when the day came that she was bored--

But Sidonie was not bored as yet. She was living the life that she longed to live; she had all the happiness she could hope to attain.

There was nothing pa.s.sionate or romantic about her feeling for Georges.

He was like a second husband to her, younger and, above all, richer than the other. To complete the vulgarization of their liaison, she had summoned her parents to Asnieres, lodged them in a little house in the country, and made of that vain and wilfully blind father and that affectionate, still bewildered mother a halo of respectability of which she felt the necessity as she sank lower and lower.

Everything was shrewdly planned in that perverse little brain, which reflected coolly upon vice; and it seemed to her as if she might continue to live thus in peace, when Frantz Risler suddenly arrived.

Simply from seeing him enter the room, she had realized that her repose was threatened, that an interview of the gravest importance was to take place between them.

Her plan was formed on the instant. She must at once put it into execution.

The summer-house that they entered contained one large, circular room with four windows, each looking out upon a different landscape; it was furnished for the purposes of summer siestas, for the hot hours when one seeks shelter from the sunlight and the noises of the garden. A broad, very low divan ran all around the wall. A small lacquered table, also very low, stood in the middle of the room, covered with odd numbers of society journals.

The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds--produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one's languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on the sh.o.r.e.

Sidonie sat down as soon as she entered the room, pushing aside her long white skirt, which sank like a ma.s.s of snow at the foot of the divan; and with sparkling eyes and a smile playing about her lips, bending her little head slightly, its saucy coquettishness heightened by the bow of ribbon on the side, she waited.

Frantz, pale as death, remained standing, looking about the room. After a moment he began:

"I congratulate you, Madame; you understand how to make yourself comfortable."

And in the next breath, as if he were afraid that the conversation, beginning at such a distance, would not arrive quickly enough at the point to which he intended to lead it, he added brutally:

"To whom do you owe this magnificence, to your lover or your husband?"

Without moving from the divan, without even raising her eyes to his, she answered:

"To both."

He was a little disconcerted by such self-possession.

"Then you confess that that man is your lover?"

"Confess it!--yes!"

Frantz gazed at her a moment without speaking. She, too, had turned pale, notwithstanding her calmness, and the eternal little smile no longer quivered at the corners of her mouth.

He continued:

"Listen to me, Sidonie! My brother's name, the name he gave his wife, is mine as well. Since Risler is so foolish, so blind as to allow the name to be dishonored by you, it is my place to defend it against your attacks. I beg you, therefore, to inform Monsieur Georges Fromont that he must change mistresses as soon as possible, and go elsewhere to ruin himself. If not--"

"If not?" queried Sidonie, who had not ceased to play with her rings while he was speaking.

"If not, I shall tell my brother what is going on in his house, and you will be surprised at the Risler whose acquaintance you will make then--a man as violent and ungovernable as he usually is inoffensive. My disclosure will kill him perhaps, but you can be sure that he will kill you first."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Very well! let him kill me. What do I care for that?"

This was said with such a heartbroken, despondent air that Frantz, in spite of himself, felt a little pity for that beautiful, fortunate young creature, who talked of dying with such self-abandonment.

"Do you love him so dearly?" he said, in an indefinably milder tone.

"Do you love this Fromont so dearly that you prefer to die rather than renounce him?"

She drew herself up hastily.

"I? Love that fop, that doll, that silly girl in men's clothes?

Nonsense!--I took him as I would have taken any other man."

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't help it, because I was mad, because I had and still have in my heart a criminal love, which I am determined to tear out, no matter at what cost."

She had risen and was speaking with her eyes in his, her lips near his, trembling from head to foot.

A criminal love?--Whom did she love, in G.o.d's name?

Frantz was afraid to question her.

Although suspecting nothing as yet, he had a feeling that that glance, that breath, leaning toward him, were about to make some horrible disclosure.