Part 69

Wide awake, the lover, disenchanted, found himself in his empty room, before an empty table, his dream, fled through the window to the great hillside. But he heard very distinctly in the next room the bark of a dog, and hurried knocks on the door.

“Open the door! It is I--it is Jenkins.”

Paul sat up on his divan, stupefied. Jenkins here? How was that? To whom was he speaking? What voice was going to answer him? No one answered. A light step went to the door, and the lock creaked nervously.

“Here you are at last,” said the Irishman, entering.

And truly if he had not taken care to announce himself, Paul would never have taken this brutal, violent, hoarse voice heard through the partition for the doctor’s with his sugary manners.

“At last I have found you after a week of searching, of mad rushing from Genoa to Nice, from Nice to Genoa. I knew that you had not gone, because the yacht was in the harbour, and I was going to inspect all the inns on the coast, when I remembered Brehat. I have just come from him. It was he who told me you were here.”

But to whom was he speaking? Who was so singularly obstinate? At last a beautiful, sad voice, which Paul well knew, made the hot afternoon air vibrate.

“Well, yes, Jenkins, here I am. What is the matter?”

Through the wall Paul could see the disdainful mouth, turned down with disgust.

“I have come to prevent you from going--from doing this foolish thing.”

“What foolish thing? I have some work at Tunis. I must go there.”

“But you don’t think, my dear child, that--”

“Oh, enough of your fatherly airs, Jenkins. We know what lies underneath it. Speak to me as you did just now. I prefer the bull-dog to the spaniel. I fear it less.”

“Well, I tell you that you must be mad to go over there alone, young and beautiful as you are.”

“And am I not always alone? Would you like me to take Constance, at her age?”

“Or me?”

“You!” She pronounced the word with an ironical laugh. “And what about Paris? And your patients--deprive society of its Cagliostro? Never, on any account.”

“I have, however, made up my mind to follow you wherever you go,” said Jenkins resolutely.

There was an instant of silence. Paul asked himself if it was worthy of him to listen to this conversation which was full of terrible revelations. But in spite of his fatigue an invincible curiosity nailed him to the spot. It seemed to him that the enigma which had so long been perplexing and troubling him was going to be solved at last, to show the woman sad or perverse, concealed by the fashionable artist. He remained there, still holding his breath, needlessly, however; for the two, believing themselves to be alone in the hotel, let their passions and their voices rise without constraint.

“Well, what do you want of me?”

“I want you.”

“Jenkins!”

“Yes, yes, I know; you have forbidden me to say such words before you, but other men than I have said them, and nearer still.”

“And if it were so, wretch! If I have not been able to protect myself from disgust and boredom, if I have lost my pride, is it for you to say a word? As if you were not the cause of it; as if you had not forever saddened and darkened my life for me!”

And these burning and rapid words revealed to the terrified Paul de Gery the horrible meaning of this apparently affectionate guardianship, against which the mind, the thought, the dreams of the young girl had had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable sadness of precocious regret, the heart-break of a life hardly begun.

“I loved you! I love you still! Passion excuses everything,” answered Jenkins in a hollow voice.

“Love me, then, if that amuses you. As for me, I hate you not only for the wrong you have done me, all the beliefs and energy you have killed in me, but because you represent what is most execrable, most hideous under the sun--hypocrisy and lies. This society masquerade, this heap of falsity, of grimaces, of cowardly and unclean conventions have sickened me to such an extent, that I am running away exiling myself so as to see them no longer; rather than them I would have the prison, the sewer, the streets. And yet it is your deceit, O sublime Jenkins, which horrifies me most. You have mingled our French hypocrisy, all smiles and politeness, with your large English shakes of the hand, with your cordial and demonstrative loyalty. They have all been caught by it. They said, ‘The good Jenkins; the worthy, honest Jenkins.’ But I--I knew you, and in spite of your fine motto on the envelopes of your letters, on your seal, your sleeve-links, your hat-bands, the doors of your carriage, I always saw the rascal you are.”

Her voice hissed through her teeth, clinched by an incredible ferocity of expression, and Paul expected some furious revolt of Jenkins under so many insults. But this hate and contempt of the woman he loved must have given him more sorrow than anger, for he answered softly, in a tone of wounded gentleness: