Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal (20 page)

He had, however, one great defect—he was an artist, and had an artist's lavishness in the composition of his character. Although he now gained enough to live comfortably, his concerts did not yet afford him the means to live in the princely way he did. I often lectured him on that score; he invariably promised me not to throw away his money, but alas! there was in the web of his nature some of the yarn of which my namesake's mistress — Manon Lescaut — was made.

Knowing that he had debts, and that he was often worried with duns, I begged him several times to give me his accounts, that I might settle all his bills, and allow him to begin life afresh. He would not have me even speak of such a thing.

'I know myself,' he said, 'better than you do; if I accept once, I'll do so again, and what will be the upshot? I'll end by being kept by you.'

'And where is the great harm?' was my reply. 'Do you think I'd love you less for it?'

'Oh! no; you perhaps might love me even more on account of the money I cost you—for we are often fond of a friend according to what we do for him—but I might be induced to love you less; gratitude is such an unbearable burden to human nature. I am your lover, it is true, but do not let me sink lower than that, Camille,' he said, with a wistful eagerness.

'See! since I knew you, have I not tried to make ends meet? Some day or other I might even manage to pay off old debts; so do not tempt me any more.'

Thereupon, taking me in his arms, he covered me with kisses.

How handsome he was just then! I think I can see him, leaning on a dark-blue satin cushion, with his arms under his head, as you are leaning now, for you have many of his feline, graceful ways.

We had become inseparable, for our love seemed to wax stronger every day, and with us 'fire never drove out fire,' but, on the contrary, it grew on what it fed; so I lived far more with him than at home.

My office did not take up much of my time, and I only remained there just long enough to attend to my business, and also to leave him some moments to practice. The remainder of the day we were together.

At the theatre we occupied the same box, alone, or with my mother. Neither of us accepted, as was soon known, any invitation to whatsoever entertainment where the other was not also a guest. At the public promenades we either walked, rode or drove together. In fact, had our union been blessed by the Church, it could not have been a closer one. Let the moralist after that explain to me the harm we did, or the law-giver that would apply to us the penalty inflicted to the worst of criminals, the wrong we did to society.

Although we did not dress alike, still—being almost of the same build, of about the same age, as well as of identical tastes—the people, who saw us always arm-in-arm, ended by not being able to think of the one apart from the other.

Our friendship had become almost proverbial, and 'No Rene without Camille' had become a kind of by-word.

—But you, that had been so terrorized by the anonymous note, did you not fear that people might begin to suspect the real nature of your attachment?

—That fear had quite passed away. Does the shame of a divorce-court keep the adulteress from meeting her lover? Do the impending terrors of the law keep the thief from stealing? My conscience had been lulled by happiness into a calm repose; moreover, the knowledge I had acquired at Briancourt's gatherings, that I was not the only member of our cankered society who loved in the Socratic fashion, and that men of the highest intelligence, of the kindest heart, and of the purest aesthetic feelings, were—like myself—sodomists, quieted me. It is not the pains of hell we dread, but rather the low society we might meet there below.

The ladies now had, I believe, begun to suspect that our excessive friendship was of too loving a nature; and as I have heard since, we had been nicknamed the angels of Sodom—hinting, thereby, that these heavenly messengers had not escaped their doom. But what did I care if some tribades suspected us of sharing their own frailties.

—And your mother?

—She was actually suspected of being Rene's mistress. I was amused by it; the idea was so very absurd.

—But had she not any inkling of your love for your friend?

—You know the husband is always the last to suspect his wife's infidelity. She was surprised to see the change wrought in me. She even asked me how it was that I had learned to like the man I had snubbed and treated with such disdain; and then she added:

'You see you must never be prejudiced, and judge people without knowing them.'

A circumstance, however, which happened at that time forcibly diverted my mother's attention away from Teleny.

A young ballet-girl, whose attention I had apparently attracted at a masked ball, either feeling a certain liking for me, or else thinking me an easy prey, wrote a most loving epistle to me, and invited me to call upon her.

Not knowing how to refuse the honor she was conferring upon me, and at the same time never liking to treat any woman scornfully, I sent her a huge basket of flowers and a book explaining their meaning.

She understood that my love was bestowed elsewhere; still, in return for my present, I received a fine large photograph of her. I then called on her to thank her, and thus we soon got to be very good friends, but only friends and nothing more.

As I had left the letter and the portrait in my room, my mother, who certainly saw the one, must likewise have seen the other, too. That is why she never gave my
liaison
with the musician a single thought.

In her conversation there were, every now and then, either slight innuendoes or broad hints about the folly of men who ruin themselves for the
corps de ballet,
or about the bad taste of those who marry their own and other people's mistresses, but that was all.

She knew that I was my own master, therefore she did not meddle with my own private life, but left me to do exactly what I liked. If I had a
faux menage
somewhere or other, so much the better or so much the worse for me. She was glad that I had the good taste to respect
les convenances,
and not to make a public affair of it. Only a man of forty-five who had made up his mind not to marry can brave public opinion, and keep a mistress ostentatiously.

Moreover, it has occurred to me that, as she did not wish me to look too closely into the aim of her frequent little journeys, she left me full liberty to act at my own discretion.

—She was still a young woman at that time, was she not?

—That entirely depends upon what you call a young woman. She was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, and was exceedingly young-looking for her age. She has always been spoken of as a most beautiful and desirable woman.

. She was very handsome. Tall, with splendid arms and shoulders, a well-poised and erect head, you could not have helped remarking her whithersoever she went. Her eyes were large and of an invariable and impassable calmness that nothing ever seemed to ruffle; her eyebrows, which almost met, were level and thick; her hair dark, naturally wavy, and in massy clusters; her forehead, low and broad; her nose, straight and small. All this combined to give something classically grave and statuesque to her whole countenance.

Her mouth, however, was her best feature; not only was it perfect in its outline, but her almost pouting lips were so cherry-like, sappy, and luscious, that you longed to taste them. Such a mouth must have played the deuce with the men of strong desires who looked upon it— nay, it must have acted like a love-philter, a-wakening the eager fire of lust even in the most sluggish hearts. In fact, few were the trousers that did not swell out in my mother's presence, notwithstanding all their owner's efforts not to show the tattoo which was being beaten within them; and this, I should think, is the finest compliment that can be paid to a woman's beauty, for it is a natural not a maudlin one.

Her manners, however, had that repose, and her gait that calmness, which not only stamp the caste of Vere de Vere but which characterize an Italian peasant and a French
grande dame,
though never met with in the German aristocracy. She seemed born to reign as a queen of drawing-rooms, and therefore accepted as her due, and without the slightest show of pleasure, not only all the flattering articles of the fashionable papers, but also the respectful homage of a host of distant admirers, not one of whom would have dared to attempt a flirtation with her. To everybody she was like Juno, an irreproachable woman who might have been either a volcano or an iceberg.

—And may I ask what she was?

—A lady who received and paid innumerable visits, and who seemed always to preside everywhere — at the dinner-parties she gave, and also at those she accepted—therefore the paragon of a lady patroness. A shopkeeper once observed, 'It is a red-letter day when Madame des Grieux stops before our windows, for she not only attracts the gentlemen's attention, but also that of the ladies, who often buy what has caught her artistic eye.'

She had, besides, that excellent thing in woman:

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low;

for I think I could get accustomed to a plain-featured wife, but not to one whose voice is shrill, harsh, and piercing.

—They say that you looked very much like her.

—Do they? Anyhow, I hope that you do not wish me to praise my mother like Lamartine did, and then to add modestly, 'I am after her own image.'

But how is it that having become a widow so young, she did not marry again? Rich and handsome as she was, she must have had as many suitors as Penelope herself.

—Some day or other I will tell you her life, and then you will understand why she preferred her liberty to the ties of matrimony.

—She was fond of you, was she not?

—Yes, very; and so was I of her. Moreover —had I not been given to those propensities which I dared not avow to her, and which only tribades can understand; had I, like other men of my age, been living a merry life of fornication with whores, mistresses, and lively
grisettes
—I should often have made her the confidante of my erotic exploits, for in the moment of bliss our prodigal feelings are often blunted by the too great excess, while the remembrance doled out at our will is a real twofold pleasure of the senses and of the mind.

Teleny, however, had of late become a kind of bar between us, and I think she had got to be rather jealous of him, for his name seemed to have become as objectionable to her as it formerly had been to me.

—Did she begin to suspect your
liaison?

—I did not know whether she suspected it, or if she was beginning to be jealous of the affection I bore him.

Matters, however, were coming to a crisis, and were shaping towards the dreadful way in which they ended.

One day a grand concert was to be given at B—, and L—, who was to play, having been taken ill, Teleny was asked to take his place. It was an honor he could not refuse.

'I am loath to leave you,' said he, 'even for a day or two, for I know that just now you are so busy that you cannot possibly get away, especially as your manager is ill.'

'Yes,' said I, 'it is rather awkward, still I might—'

'No, no, it would be foolish; I'll not allow you.'

'But you know it is so long since you played at a concert where I was not present,' I said.

'You'll be present in mind if not in body. I shall see you sitting in your usual place, and I shall play for you and you alone. Besides, we have never been parted for any length of time —no, not for a single day since Briancourt's letter. Let us try and see if we can live apart for two days. Who knows? Perhaps, sometime or other—'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing, only you might get tired of this life. You might, like other men, marry just to have a family.'

'A family!' I burst out laughing. 'Is that encumbrance so very necessary to a man's happiness?'

'My love might surfeit you.'

'Rene, don't speak in that way! Could I live without you?'

He smiled incredulously.

'What! do you doubt my love?'

'Can I doubt that the stars are fire? but,' he continued slowly, and looking at me, 'do you doubt mine?'

It seemed to me as if he had grown pale when he put that question to me.

'No. Have you ever given me the slightest cause to doubt it?'

'And if I were unfaithful?'

'Teleny,' said I, feeling faint, 'you have another lover.' And I saw him in the arms of someone else, tasting that bliss which was mine and mine alone.

'No,' he said, 'I have not; but if I had?'

'You would love him—or her, and then my life would be blasted forever.'

'No, not forever; only for a time, perhaps. But could you not forgive me?'

'Yes, if you still loved me.'

The idea of losing him sent a sharp pang through my heart, which seemed to act like a sound flagellation, my eyes were filled with tears, and my blood was on fire. I therefore clasped him in my arms and hugged him, straining all my muscles in my embrace; my lips eagerly sought his, my tongue was in his mouth. The more I kissed him the sadder I grew, and the more eager was my desire. I stopped a moment to look at him. How handsome he was that day! His beauty was almost ethereal.