Sacred and Profane Love - Arnold Bennett (digital e reader .TXT) 📗

/> 'Ten years!' she repeated, musing.

'I am certain she has a kind heart,' I said to myself, and I decided to question her: 'Will you not sit down, madame?' I invited her.

'Ah, madame! it is you who should sit down,' she said quickly. 'You must have suffered.'

We both sat down. There were only two chairs in the room.

'I would like to ask you,' I said, leaning forward towards her, 'have you ever seen him--drunk--before?'

'No,' she replied instantly; 'never before yesterday evening.'

'Be frank,' I urged her, smiling sadly.

'Why should I not be frank, madame?' she said, with a grave, gentle appeal.

It was as if she had said: 'We are talking woman to woman. I know one of your secrets. You can guess mine. The male is present, but he is deaf. What reason, therefore, for deceit?'

'I am much obliged to you,' I breathed.

'Not at all,' she said. 'Decidedly he is alcoholic--that sees itself,' she proceeded. 'But drunk--no!... He was always alone.'

'Always alone?'

'Always.'

Her eyes filled. I thought I had never seen a creature more gentle, delicate, yielding, acquiescent, and fair. She was not beautiful, but she had grace and distinction of movement. She was a Parisienne. She had won my sympathy. We met in a moment when my heart needed the companionship of a woman's heart, and I was drawn to her by one of those sudden impulses that sometimes draw women to each other. I cared not what she was. Moreover, she had excited my curiosity. She was a novelty in my life. She was something that I had heard of, and seen--yes, and perhaps envied in secret, but never spoken with. And she shattered all my preconceptions about her.

'You are an old tenant of this house?' I ventured.

'Yes,' she said; 'it suits me. But the great heats are terrible here.'

'You do not leave Paris, then?'

'Never. Except to see my little boy.'

I started, envious of her, and also surprised. It seemed strange that this ribboned and elegant and plastic creature, whose long, thin arms were used only to dalliance, should be a mother.

'So you have a little boy?'

'Yes; he lives with my parents at Meudon. He is four years old.

'Excuse me,' I said. 'Be frank with me once again. Do you love your child, honestly? So many women don't, it appears.'

'Do I love him?' she cried, and her face glowed with her love. 'I adore him!' Her sincerity was touching and overwhelming. 'And he loves me, too. If he is naughty, one has only to tell him that he will make his petite mere ill, and he will be good at once. When he is told to obey his grandfather, because his grandfather provides his food, he says bravely: "No, not grandpapa; it is petite mere!" Is it not strange he should know that I pay for him? He has a little engraving of the Queen of Italy, and he says it is his petite mere. Among the scores of pictures he has he keeps only that one. He takes it to bed with him. It is impossible to deprive him of it.'

She smiled divinely.

'How beautiful!' I said. 'And you go to see him often?'

'As often as I have time. I take him out for walks. I run with him till we reach the woods, where I can have him to myself alone. I never stop; I avoid people. No one except my parents knows that he is my child. One supposes he is a nurse-child, received by my parents. But all the world will know now,' she added, after a pause. 'Last Monday I went to Meudon with my friend Alice, and Alice wanted to buy him some sweets at the grocer's. In the shop I asked him if he would like dragees, and he said "Yes." The grocer said to him, "Yes who, young man?" "Yes, petite mere," he said, very loudly and bravely. The grocer understood. We all lowered our heads.'

There was something so affecting in the way she half whispered the last phrase, that I could have wept; and yet it was comical, too, and she appreciated that.

'You have no child, madame?' she asked me.

'No,' I said. 'How I envy you!'

'You need not,' she observed, with a touch of hardness. 'I have been so unhappy, that I can never be as unhappy again. Nothing matters now. All I wish is to save enough money to be able to live quietly in a little cottage in the country.'

'With your child,' I put in.

'My child will grow up and leave me. He will become a man, and he will forget his petite mere.'

'Do not talk like that,' I protested.

She glanced at me almost savagely. I was astonished at the sudden change in her face.

'Why not?' she inquired coldly. 'Is it not true, then? Do you still believe that there is any difference between one man and another? They are all alike--all, all, all! I know. And it is we who suffer, we others.'

'But surely you have some tender souvenir of your child's father?' I said.

'Do I know who my child's father is?' she demanded. 'My child has thirty-six fathers!'

'You seem very bitter,' I said, 'for your age. You are much younger than I am.'

She smiled and shook her honey-coloured hair, and toyed with the ribbons of her peignoir.

'What I say is true,' she said gently. 'But, there, what would you have? We hate them, but we love them. They are beasts! beasts! but we cannot do without them!'

Her eyes rested on Diaz for a moment. He slept without the least sound, the stricken and futile witness of our confidences.

'You will take him away from Paris soon, perhaps?' she asked.

'If I can,' I said.

There was a sound of light footsteps on the stair. They stopped at the door, which I remembered we had not shut. I jumped up and went into the passage. Another girl stood in the doorway, in a peignoir the exact counterpart of my first visitor's, but rose-coloured. And this one, too, was languorous and had honey-coloured locks. It was as though the mysterious house was full of such creatures, each with her secret lair.

'Pardon, madame,' said my visitor, following and passing me; and then to the newcomer: 'What is it, Alice?'

'It is Monsieur Duchatel who is arrived.'

'Oh!' with a disdainful gesture. 'Je m'en fiche. Let him go.'

'But it is the nephew, my dear; not the uncle.'

'Ah, the nephew! I come. Bon soir, madams, et bonne nuit.'

The two peignoirs fluttered down the stairs together. I returned to my Diaz, and seeing his dressing-gown behind the door of the bedroom, I took it and covered him with it.


IV


His first words were:

'Magda, you look like a ghost. Have you been sitting there like that all the time?'

'No,' I said; 'I lay down.'

'Where?'

'By your side.'

'What time is it?'

'Tea-time. The water is boiling.

'Was I dreadful last night?'

'Dreadful? How?'

'I have a sort of recollection of getting angry and stamping about. I didn't do anything foolish?'

'You took a great deal too much of my sedative,' I answered.

'I feel quite well,' he said; 'but I didn't know I had taken any sedative at all. I'm glad I didn't do anything silly last night.'

I ran away to prepare the tea. The situation was too much for me.

'My poor Diaz!' I said, when we had begun to drink the tea, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes full of sleep, his chin rough, and his hair magnificently disarranged, 'you did one thing that was silly last night.'

'Don't tell me I struck you?' he cried.

'Oh no!' and I laughed. 'Can't you guess what I mean?'

'You mean I got vilely drunk.'

I nodded.

'Magda,' he burst out passionately, seeming at this point fully to arouse himself, to resume acutely his consciousness, 'why were you late? You said four o'clock. I thought you had deceived me. I thought I had disgusted you, and that you didn't mean to return. I waited more than an hour and a quarter, and then I went out in despair.'

'But I came just afterwards,' I protested. 'You had only to wait a few more minutes. Surely you could have waited a few more minutes?'

'You said four o'clock,' he repeated obstinately.

'It was barely half-past five when I came,' I said.

'I had meant never to drink again,' he went on.

'You were so kind to me. But then, when you didn't come--'

'You doubted me, Diaz. You ought to have been sure of me.'

'I was wrong.'

'No, no!' I said. 'It was I who was wrong. But I never thought that an hour and a half would make any difference.'

There was a pause.

'Ah, Magda, Magda!'--he suddenly began to weep; it was astounding--'remember that you had deserted me once before. Remember that. If you had not done that, my life might have been different. It would have been different.'

'Don't say so,' I pleaded.

'Yes, I must say so. You cannot imagine how solitary my life has been. Magda, I loved you.'

And I too wept.

His accent was sincerity itself. I saw the young girl hurrying secretly out of the Five Towns Hotel. Could it be true that she had carried away with her, unknowing, the heart of Diaz? Could it be true that her panic flight had ruined a career? The faint possibility that it was true made me sick with vain grief.

'And now I am old and forgotten and disgraced,' he said.

'How old are you, Diaz?'

'Thirty-six,' he answered.

'Why,' I said, 'you have thirty years to live.'

'Yes; and what years?'

'Famous years. Brilliant years.'

He shook his head.

'I am done for--' he murmured, and his head sank.

'Are you so weak, then?' I took his hand. 'Are you so weak? Look at me.'

He obeyed, and his wet eyes met mine. In that precious moment I lived.

'I don't know,' he said.

'You could not have looked at me if you had not been strong, very strong,' I said firmly. 'You told me once that you had a house near Fontainebleau. Have you still got it?'

'I suppose so.'

'Let us go there, and--and--see.'

'But--'

'I should like to go,' I insisted, with a break in my voice.

'My God!' he exclaimed in a whisper, 'my God!'

I was sobbing violently, and my forehead was against the rough stuff of his coat.


V


And one morning, long afterwards, I awoke very early, and the murmuring of the leaves of the forest came through the open window. I had known that I should wake very early, in joyous anticipation of that day. And as I lay he lay beside me, lost in the dreamless, boyish, natural sleep that he never sought in vain. He lay, as always, slightly on his right side, with his face a little towards me--his face that was young again, and from which the bane had passed. It was one of the handsomest, fairest faces in the world, one of the