by George Moore
Lewis had counted upon a tete-à-tete upstairs, but he was too wise to show his disappointment; and, drawing up close to her in the captivating ease of the victoria, he endeavoured to attune his conversation to the spirit of the hour. And what a delightful hour it was! The tepid air was as soft and luxurious as silk on their faces, and the swing of the swiftly rolling carriage treacherously rocked to quietude all uneasy thoughts. Never had Lewis felt so happy; from time to time so intense a consciousness of pleasure rose up within him, that with a sense of sweet suffocation he caught for breath. He did not look backwards or forwards; his nature allowed him the feminine luxury of burying deep his face in the present beyond reach of the past and out of sight of the future.
This precious quality, possessed by most women and by all men who exercise over others that magnetic influence called love, was in the large lips and voluptuous eyes plainly written upon Lewis’s face: he was the perfect lover who could forget all but the adored mistress. To be this lover is no more in every man’s power than it is to become an immortal poet; it is as difficult to command an earthly as a heavenly inspiration. This latter, however, Lewis could wholly control, and he now realized nothing but Mrs. Bentham; she was a part of him as entirely as the waves of sound floating around an instrument are the emanations of the musician’s soul, and rise and fall controlled by it. Now and again a fitful thought of failure crossed his mind, but he thrust it from him with an almost savage ardour. It appeared to him impossible that fate could be so cruel as to deny him the attainment of his life’s desire.
They had told the coachman to take Les Grands Boulevards, and the victoria was now passing through the wide and mournful Place Vendôme into the brilliantly-lighted Rue de la Paix. Upon a vast plain of moonlight blue sky was stretched the façade of the opera house; with its rich perspectives extending down the shadow-filled Rue Auber and Meyerbeer. On each side and atop of the highest roofs two gold figures spread their gold wings, whilst below in the blanching glow of clustering electric lights, the passers went like an endless procession of marionettes marching to the imagined strain of an invisible orchestra.
Lewis, who had till now scarcely spoken, ventured a few remarks on the beauty of the building, and they arranged to go there as soon as Mrs. Thorpe had got rid of her cold. But as they passed into the Boulevard des Italiens, they saw by the bill that Faust was being given that night. This coincidence interested them beyond measure; it brought to their minds a thousand pleasant remembrances, and gave them opportunities of playing and fencing with an infinite number of little reproaches and tendernesses. Then, again, they would relapse into silence, so that they might muse over the fatality that had guided them together. Mrs. Bentham had on her side forgotten all resolutions; Lewis no longer thought of himself, and both were united in the sensual moodiness of the moment.
At this hour the Boulevard was full of carriages. Crowded omnibuses, drawn by immense grey horses, often stopped the way. Now and again a victoria containing a gaudily-dressed woman, her tiny feet resting on an embroidered cushion, would speed past; the lady casting amiable glances to the right and left, until perhaps two young men would tell their coachman to touch up the high-stepping bay, and follow in the wake of the reclining beauty. Then would come a fiacre with a party of English tourists; three sitting down, whilst the fourth screamed at the coachman, who did not understand him. The footways, too, were encumbered with idlers come to enjoy the evening air. They crowded round the kiosques to buy the evening papers; stopped each other on the edge of the roadway, and entered the brilliantly-lighted cafés arm-in-arm. There, in the great squares of light that the glaring plate-glass windows threw over the pavement, sat groups and single figures drinking, talking, or watching the crowd as it surged past. Women, too, were not wanting, and a gleam of white petticoat or the elegancy of a lace stocking relieved the monotonous regularity of trousers and men’s boots. Out of this seething mass of life the tall houses, built in huge blocks of grey stone, arose and faded into darkness, whilst the Boulevard, with its immense grey trottoirs, and its two interminable lines of gas-lamps running out and into a host of other lights, extended until lost in what appeared to be a piece of starry sky.
The beauty of the city acted on Mrs. Bentham and Lewis as a narcotic; and, in spirit, they had already stepped into the pleasures which Paris, in her capacity of fashionable courtesan, holds open to all comers.
The measure of expectant waltzes beat in their feet, the fumes of uncorked champagne arose to their heads, and the light wings of unkissed kisses had already touched their lips. Lewis held Mrs. Bentham’s hand, and their thoughts and bodies swayed by the motion of the carriage, they watched deliciously the flashing and gleaming of the thousand lights that moved around them, seeing nothing distinctly but the round back of the coachman as he sat, his shoulders set, steering faultlessly through an almost inextricable mass of whirling wheels.
They did not awake from their reveries until they had passed into the darkness of the Boulevard St. Denis. The huge archway of the Porte St. Martin had attracted their attention; they had even attempted to criticise the style of the architecture. But now the honest plain look of the quarter proclaimed that they had passed from the regions of pleasure into those of work. The darkness and sobriety of the streets dimmed their spirits as breath dims a glass, and they told the coachman to turn and go back. The drive home was not pleasant; an irritating feeling of unrest seemed to have come over them. Lewis told Mrs. Bentham that he loved her, that her love was to him something that stretched beyond life, and that death would be powerless to extinguish. Occasionally she would lift her eyes and look at him caressingly, but her manner was vague and uncertain. Lewis noticed this, and in fear he redoubled his protestations of affection. At last, not knowing well what to do, he said:
“But is it not strange that the first opera we should hear of in Paris is the very one we sang together? I always loved the music of Faust, but I love it a thousand times better now, for it was in singing the page’s song that I first told you I cared for you.”
“I wish we could go and hear it to-night,” Mrs. Bentham replied, dreamily.
The idea enchanted Lewis, and after a few moments’ consultation they told the coachman to drive to the opera house, and they affectionately discussed the possibilities of getting places. When the carriage stopped before the steps they were surrounded by a crowd of marchands de billets, who, gesticulating wildly, told Lewis that they could sell him something. Without having very clearly understood what, he pushed past them and made his way into the vestibule. There he found the bureau de location shut, but after some conversation carried on in broken French with the officials he learned that every seat was let, but that he could obtain from the marchands tickets which would give him the right of visiting the house. He would have liked Mrs. Bentham to have heard the music, but as that, as he put it to her, was not to be, they would have to content themselves with admiring M. Baudry’s decorations and M. Garnier’s architecture. This Mrs. Bentham declared was all she wanted, and they passed up the staircase.
It was in light-coloured marble, and, according to Lewis, branched to the right and left as white as a woman’s arms. The beauty of the place astonished them, but Lewis, not wishing to appear ignorant, argued that the whole building was wanting in style, and he compared it to a huge cake. This made Mrs. Bentham laugh, although she did not quite understand what he meant. In the foyer, however, the pictures interested them vastly; even Lewis, who was always disposed to find fault, found himself forced to admit that, as a decorator, Baudrie was the greatest artist of modern times; the immense amount of gold on the cornices and mouldings likewise astonished them, and they wandered until they lost themselves in the great passages which encircle the different tiers. Then they descended again to the foyer, and for a time it amused them to watch the fashionable crowd that talked, smiled and bowed as they walked up and down the glittering floors during the entr’acte.
But Mrs. Bentham and Lewis were ill at eas
e. The publicity and agitation of the place wearied them, and they both longed to be sitting again in the carriage under the quietude of the skies. Lewis suffered from an intense anxiety. He felt that his future prospects were to be decided that night. On one side he saw a life full of brilliant fetes, women and gratified vanity; on the other, an existence clouded with misery, made wretched with heart-breaking struggles, and in the end a gradual blotting out, a trampling down by a crowd against whose force he felt he would not have the force to wrestle. Mrs. Bentham was on the contrary calm, and collected; only a slight twitching of the lips betrayed the emotion which she hid under an indifferent manner. For some time they had been speaking of trifles, but the conversation had become more and more artificial, and at last they walked in silence.
The entr’acte bell had rung, and the public had made their way back to the theatre. The evening toilettes were the first to go, the morning coats still lingered. These people had come to gaze at the pictures, the gilding, the parquet floor; the opera was to them a matter of secondary importance. Nevertheless, they gradually by twos and threes wandered back to their places in the upper circle, and Mrs. Bentham and Lewis found themselves almost alone in the glittering gallery. Not a note reached them of the music that was being played deep down in the vast building. A tourist or two passed by, the white capped ouvreuses sat in the transparent obscurity of the circular passages or with a tinkling of keys let some late corner into a box.
At last, after a long silence, Mrs. Bentham said, “I think we have seen everything. I think we had better go, it is getting late.”
To this proposition, Lewis was delighted to agree. He was sick of the place. They were not alone under these high roofs; any change could not but be for the better; but each change marked the passing of the hours, and he feared the time was now drawing nigh when he would have to bid Mrs; Bentham good-night. This seemed to him as dark and as miserable as a sentence of death, and he thought frantically of what he should do to keep her with him. He asked himself why he had not made love to her more pointedly — he cursed himself for the want of decision he had shown, and he felt that it might turn out to be the fatal mistake of his life. Resolving, however, this time to retrieve his error, he begged of her, when she told the coachman to drive to the hotel, to take one turn in the Champs Elysées before going in. Mrs. Bentham demurred to any further delay; it was eleven o’clock, but Lewis pleaded — urging as a reason that, on her way back she could leave him at his hotel.
The excuse was à paltry one, but when hand is laid on hand and the breath of amorous words stirs the light hair on the neck, “No” is a difficult word to say. Then Lewis triumphantly gave the order: “Aux Champs-Elysées” to the coachman.
Then as the victoria whirled along the boulevards, the lovers re-found their old dreams. Overhead all was dim, the windows and roofs of the great houses were simplified by the shadows of a lowering sky to one tint; along the street there was a floating mass of light. The shops were closed, but the broad glare of the cafés and the round grey spaces thrown by the gas-lamps on the dark asphalte remained. Women’s skirts flashed from shadow to light; the black body of the crowd hustled, and sometimes there was seen in the twilight of a passing brougham a man’s hands raising an unshrinking face to his lips.
Oh! what was there in this beautiful city that drew beyond resistance Lewis and Mrs. Bentham together? Pleasure and light love sparkled in every ray of light, seemed blown forward. by a million invisible fans, and it gushed and went up towards the stars in the foaming champagne.
The victoria had now passed the Madeleine. Not a glance did they bestow on the long lines of cold Greek pillars. The stately and rigid perspectives were not in harmony with their thoughts. It was a false note that jarred ever so imperceptibly. But opposite was Durand’s restaurant, and Lewis watched the windows of the cabinets parti-culiers and a vision of Mrs. Bentham seated at supper by his side, rose to his lips. Would she accept? he asked himself frantically, and he felt in his pocket for money although he knew he had come out without any. This was terribly vexatious, and after a moment’s hesitation he determined that it would look too bad to let her pay for the supper. But as they ascended the Champs-Elysées he redoubled his pleadings. His arm had slipped round her waist, and he had drawn her quite towards him. She struggled faintly, hating him for offering her a temptation which she could not combat. He strove to kiss her. Then half determined to resist, half fearing the coachman would turn round, she struggled more resolutely, but by placing his hand on the other side of her face he held her still, and put his mouth to hers. She trembled violently; consciousness slipped from her, and she clasped his lips with hers. The kiss was silent and passionate, but soon recovering herself, she, with a strong effort of will, dragged herself from him and said almost angrily:
“I wish you wouldn’t Lewis — you have no right — and—” Then, words failing her, she settled her bonnet which had become disarranged in the struggle. Frightened at his own temerity, he remained quiet; his heart was full of a throbbing delight, but when he saw that she was not going to turn him out of the carriage, he attempted to renew his caresses.
“For goodness sake don’t,” said Mrs. Bentham, in a very low voice, “he will hear you — you are disgracing me.”
Yielding to her entreaties Lewis withdrew his arm, and gazing at the round back of the coachman, they both wondered if he had heard anything. And as they mounted the long green avenue, Lewis told Mrs. Bentham again and again, how life without her would be intolerable, how he had fallen in love with her from the first hour — the first minute he had seen her. Delighted as she was at being assured of the reality of her dearest dream, she had nevertheless to beg of him to speak low. The coachman was to them a perpetual source of fear.
It was a midnight full of stars and dreams; the air was warm and tender, and in the mild and luscious light of a moon swimming up through an illimitable expanse of blue, the gardens on the right and left seemed to realise even more than their name implied. But they were not in the least Greek. They were too fantastic, too weird, too encumbered with trivial strangenesses of form and colour to be anything but modern.
Along the glancing leaves of the chestnuts were long garlands of lamps, looking like chaplets of luminous pearls; these marked the lines of the trottoirs: others deeply buried in the woods formed mystic circles: they were the boundaries of the different cafes-concerts. Above these strings and clusters of lights the foliage took a greenness as unreal as it was charming, and from time to time the gasmen with their wands bade fairyland depart, whilst a band of hunters playing their cors de chasse awoke unearthly echoes in the sonorous gardens.
The big round circus had long ago been closed, and it stood lonely and stupid-looking nearly opposite the Palais de l’Industrie: there a pretentious angel held out both hands as if to welcome all comers. After this came the desolate rond point; a dell of dark asphalte in the midst of sylvan fancies: miserable bits of dim water and gloomy avenues breaking off to the right and left. But as they passed they could see a circular archway made of glowing lamps, from which issued suddenly a tumultuous crowd of gaily dressed women. They got into the cabs noisily, sometimes with men, sometimes they drove away alone, and the plumes of their hats could be seen for a long time glimmering over the hoods of the fiacres. Mrs. Bentham asked Lewis what was the name of the place. He declared he didn’t know, for fear she should think he had ever been there. It was the Mabille.
Mrs. Bentham now lay back in the carriage; dreamily she held Lewis’s hand. She had fallen into that delicious state of semi-oblivion which drapes reality in gossamer robes, blots out the hard lines and gives to the present the languid tenderness of a well-loved recollection. Lewis was near her, his presence penetrated her with a sense of mutuality; his arm supported her, and then, mysteriously, with the softness of a warm bath, the phenomenon of the transfusion of blood was imperceptibly accomplished: their eyes gazed deeply, in each ray their souls went forth, and so was consummated the double ma
rriage of the spirit and flesh. For a long while not a word had been spoken; they were both mad with love, the moon, and the fervour of the night The swaying of the carriage had rocked their bodies as their thoughts to one sweet glowing sensation — a sensation that can best be described by likening it to the moment when sea and sky are united under the wings of the twilight.
But that such dreams may endure, no change must take place; the slightest shock awakes the sleeper; and when the coachman pulled his horse into a walk, Mrs. Bentham’s conscience returned to her, and she saw in a moment how hopelessly she was losing herself. She begged her lover to give the order to drive home. She spoke of what Mrs. Thorpe would say if she were to hear that they had remained out till twelve o’clock. Lewis, who thought of nothing now but the time she would bid him good-night, insisted on driving round the Arc de Triomphe. Mrs. Bentham for peace’s sake yielded, and when this détour had been accomplished, they descended the avenue towards Paris.
The chaplets of lights that glowed through the leaves of the chestnut trees were now all extinguished; but Paris blazed at the bottom of the great wide road. Far away lay the Place de la Concorde, the terraces of the Orangerie — the dark running Seine with its bridges and beautiful buildings, lay extended like a lover-awaiting courtesan, and Mrs. Bentham watched the city becoming distinct as they descended the long incline. Chameleon-like it changed with every hour, now it appeared in her eyes like an infamous alcove full of shames and ignominies into which she was being dragged; she would fain have shut out the sight with her hands, she longed to fly from it; but she was whirled in a current which she could not combat, and wearily she wished to sink to sleep, and then to awake to find that all was over, that all had been decided for her.
