-VI B R.ARY OF THL U N 1 VLRS 1TY OF ILLINOIS 691.73 88 o cop- 5. The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of book* are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN |gp) OCT14 : FEB 5 igfa *P 1 8 Kfl MAR 1 2 lis4 JUN 6 19 OCT 1 i 'j 95 NOV 1 19! 5 SEP 3 i997 SEP 3 w JUL 0? 20(1 L161 O-1096 THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHER STORIES THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHER STORIES BY I. A. BUNIN NEW YORK THOMAS SELTZER 1923 Copyright, 1923, by THOMAS SELTZER, INC. All Rights Reserved MINTED IK THE UNITED STATES OT AMERICA black as boiling pitch upon my word, :'s what they say there, boiling pitch! KOWS black as night, and a tender flush be complexion, a slim figure, hands longer i the ordinary little feet, a fairly large ist, a regularly rounded leg, a knee the mr of the inside of a shell, high but sloping alders a good deal of it I have nearly nt by heart, it is all so true; but do you w what the chief thing is? Gentle breath- ! And I have got it; you listen how I a the; isn't it gentle?" I"ow the gentle breathing has again van- id away into the world, into the cloudy day, > the cold spring wind. . . . 77 KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH Translated by S. S. KOTELIANSKY AND LEONARD WOOLF KASIMIR STANISLAVOVITCH ON the yellow card with a nobleman's coro- net the young porter at the Hotel "Versailles" somehow managed to read the Christian name and patronymic "Kasimir Stanislavovitch." * There followed something still more compli- cated and still more difficult to pronounce. The porter turned the card this way and that way in his hand, looked at the passport, which the visitor had given him with it, shrugged his shoulders none of those who stayed at the "Versailles" gave their cards then he threw both on to the table and began again to exam- ine himself in the silvery, milky mirror which hung above the table, whipping up his thick hair with a comb. He wore an overcoat and L t. There was no family name. The name is Polish, not Russian. 81 Kasimir Stanislavovitch shiny top-boots ; the gold braid on his cap was greasy with age the hotel was a bad one. Kasimir Stanislavovitch left Kiev for Mos- cow on April 8th, Good Friday, on receiving a telegram with the one word "tenth." Some- how or other he managed to get the money for his fare, and took his seat in a second-class compartment, grey and dim, but really giving him the sensation of comfort and luxury. The train was heated, and that railway-carriage heat and the smell of the heating apparatus, and the sharp tapping of the little hammers in it, reminded Kasimir Stanislavovitch of other times. At times it seemed to him that winter had returned, that in the fields the white, very white drifts of snow had covered up the yellowish bristle of stubble and the large leaden pools where the wild-duck swam. But often the snow-storm stopped suddenly and melted; the fields grew bright, and one felt that behind the clouds was much light, 82 Kasimir Stanislavovitch and the wet platforms of the railway-stations looked black, and the rooks called from the naked poplars. At each big station Kasimir Stanislavovitch went to the refreshment- room for a drink, and returned to his carriage with newspapers in his hands ; but he did not read them ; he only sat and sank in the thick smoke of his cigarettes, which burned and glowed, and to none of his neighbours Odessa Jews who played cards all the time did he say a single word. He wore an autumn overcoat of which the pockets were worn, a very old black top-hat, and new, but heavy, cheap boots. His hands, the typical hands of an habitual drunk- ard, and an old inhabitant of basements, shook when he lit a match. Everything else about him spoke of poverty and drunkenness: no cuffs, a dirty linen collar, an ancient tie, an inflamed and ravaged face, bright-blue watery eyes. His side-whiskers, dyed with a bad, 83 Kasimir Stanislavovitch brown dye, had an unnatural appearance. He looked tired and contemptuous. The train reached Moscow next day, not at all up to time ; it was seven hours late. The weather was neither one thing nor the other, but better and drier than in Kiev, with some- thing stirring in the air. Kasimir Stanislavo- vitch took a cab without bargaining with the driver, and told him to drive straight to the "Versailles." "I have known that hotel, my good fellow," he said, suddenly breaking his silence, "since my student days." From the "Versailles," as soon as his little bag, tied with stout rope, had been taken up to his room, he immediately went out. It was nearly evening: the air was warm, the black trees on the boulevards were turning green; everywhere there were crowds of people, cars, carts. Moscow was trafficking and doing business, was returning to the usual, pressing work, was ending her holiday, and 84 Kasimir Stanislavovitch unconsciously welcomed the spring. A man who has lived his life and ruined it feels lonely on a spring evening in a strange, crowded city. Kasimir Stanislavovitch walked the whole length of the Tverskoy Boulevard; he saw once more the cast-iron figure of the musing Poushkin, the golden and lilac top of the Strasnoy Monastery. . . . For about an hour he sat at the Cafe Filippov, drank chocolate, and read old comic papers. Then he went to a cinema, whose flaming signs shone from far away down the Tverskaya, through the dark- ling twilight. From the cinema he drove to a restaurant on the boulevard which he had also known in his student days. He was driven by an old man, bent in a bow, sad, gloomy, deeply absorbed in himself, in his old age, in his dark thoughts. All the way the man painfully and wearily helped on his lazy horse with his whole being, murmuring some- thing to it all the time and occasionally bit- 85 Kasimir Stanislavovitch terly reproaching it and at last, when he reached the place, he allowed the load to slip from his shoulders for a moment and gave a deep sigh, as he took the money. "I did not catch the name, and thought you meant 'Brague'!" he muttered, turning his horse slowly; he seemed displeased, although the "Prague" was further away. "I remember the 'Prague' too, old fellow," answered Kasimir Stanislavovitch. "You must have been driving for a long time in Mos- cow." "Driving?" the old man said; "I have been driving now for fifty-one years." "That means that you may have driven me before," said Kasimir Stanislavovitch. "Perhaps I did," answered the old man dryly. "There are lots of people in the world ; one can't remember all of you." Of the old restaurant, once known to Kasi- mir Stanislavovitch, there remained only the 86 Kasimir Stanislavovitch name. Now it was a large, first-class, though vulgar, restaurant. Over the entrance burnt ^an electric globe which illuminated with its unpleasant, heliotrope light the smart, second- rate cabmen, impudent, and cruel to their lean, short-winded steeds. In the damp hall stood pots of laurels and tropical plants of the kind which one sees carried on to the platforms from weddings to funerals and vice versa. From the porters' lodge several men rushed out together to Kasimir Stanislavovitch, and all of them had just the same thick curl of hair as the porter at the "Versailles." In the large greenish room, decorated in the rococo style, were a multitude of broad mirrors, and in the corner burnt a crimson icon-lamp. The room was still empty, and only a few of the electric lights were on. Kasimir Stanislavovitch sat for a long time alone, doing nothing. One felt that behind the windows with their white blinds the long, spring evening had not yet Kasimir Stanislavovitch grown dark; one heard from the street the thudding of hooves ; in the middle of the room there was the monotonous splash-splash of the little fountain in an aquarium round which gold-fish, with their scales peeling off, lighted somehow from below, swam through the water. A waiter in white brought the dinner things, bread, and a decanter of cold vodka. Kasimir Stanislavovitch began drinking the vodka, held it in his mouth before swallowing it, and, having swallowed it, smelt the black bread as though with loathing. With a sud- denness which gave even him a start, a gramo- phone began to roar out through the room a mixture of Russian songs, now exaggeratedly boisterous and turbulent, now too tender, drawling, sentimental. . . . And Kasimir Stanislavovitch's eyes grew red and tears filmed them at that sweet and snuffling drone of the machine. Then a grey-haired, curly, black-eyed 88 Kasimir Stanislavovitch Georgian brought him, on a large iron fork, a half-cooked, smelly shashlyk, cut off the meat on to the plate with a kind of dissolute smartness, and, with Asiatic simplicity, with his own hand sprinkled it with onions, salt, and rusty barbery powder, while the gramo- phone roared out in the empty hall a cake- walk, inciting one to jerks and spasms. Then Kasimir Stanislavovitch was served with cheese, fruit, red wine, coffee, mineral water, liqueurs. . . . The gramophone had long ago grown silent; instead of it there had been playing on the platform an orchestra of Ger- man women dressed in white; the lighted hall, continually filling up with people, grew hot, became dim with tobacco smoke and heavily saturated with the smell of food; waiters rushed about in a whirl; drunken people or- dered cigars which immediately made them sick; the head-waiters showed excessive offi- ciousness, combined with an intense realiza- 89 Kasimir Stanislavovitch tion of their own dignity; in the mirrors, in the watery gloom of their abysses, there was more and more chaotically reflected some- thing huge, noisy, complicated. Several times Kasimir Stanislavovitch went out of the hot hall into the cool corridors, into the cold lava- tory, where there was a strange smell of the sea ; he walked as if on air, and, on returning to his table, again ordered wine. After mid- night, closing his eyes and drawing the fresh night air through his nostrils into his intoxi- cated head, he raced in a hansom-cab on rub- ber tires out of the town to a brothel; he saw in the distance infinite chains of light, running away somewhere down hill and then up hill again, but he saw it just as if it were not he, but some one else, seeing it. In the brothel he nearly had a fight with a stout gentleman who attacked him, shouting that he was known to all thinking Russia. Then he lay, dressed, on a broad bed, covered with a satin quilt, in a 90 Kasimir Stanislavovitch little room half-lighted from the ceiling by a sky-blue lantern, with a sickly smell of scented soap, and with dresses hanging from a hook on the door. Near the bed stood a dish of fruit, and the girl who had been hired to entertain Kasimir Stanislavovitch, silently, greedily, with relish ate a pear, cutting off slices with a knife, and her friend, with fat bare arms, dressed only in a chemise which made her look like a little girl, was rapidly writing on the toilet-table, taking no notice of them. She wrote and wept of what? There are lots of people in the world; one can't know every- thing. . . . On the tenth of April Kasimir Stanislavo- vitch woke up early. Judging from the start with which he opened his eyes, one could see that he was overwhelmed by the idea that he was in Moscow. He had got back after four in the morning. He staggered down the stair- case of the "Versailles," but without a mistake 91 Kasimir Stanislavovitch he went straight to his room down the long, stinking tunnel of a corridor which was lighted only at its entrance by a little lamp smoking sleepily. Outside every room stood boots and shoes all of strangers, unknown to one another, hostile to one another. Sud- denly a door opened, almost terrifying Kasimir Stanislavovitch; on its threshold appeared an old man, looking like a third- rate actor acting "The Memoirs of a Lunatic," and Kasimir Stanislavovitch saw a lamp under a green shade and a room crowded with things, the cave of a lonely old lodger, with icons in the corner, and innumerable cigarette boxes piled one upon another almost to the ceiling, near the icons. Was that the half-crazy writer of the lives of the saints, who had lived in the "Versailles" twenty- three years ago? Kasimir Stanislavovitch's dark room was terribly hot with a malignant and smelly dryness. . . . The light from the 92 Kasimir Stanislavovitch window over the door came faintly into the darkness. Kasimir Stanislavovitch went behind the screen, took the top-hat off his thin, greasy hair, threw his overcoat over the end of his bare bed. ... As soon as he lay down, everything began to turn round him, to rush into an abyss, and he fell asleep instantly. In his sleep all the time he was C9nscious of the smell of the iron wash-stand which stood close to his face, and he dreamt of a spring day, trees in blossom, the hall of a manor house and a number of people waiting anxiously for the bishop to arrive at any moment; and all night long he was wearied and tormented with that waiting. . . . Now in the corridors of the "Versailles" people rang, ran, called to one another. Behind the screen, through the double, dusty window-panes, the sun shone; it was almost hot. . . . Kasimir Stanislavovitch took off his jacket, rang the bell, and began to wash. There came in a quick-eyed boy, the 93 Kasimir Stanislavovitch page-boy, with fox-coloured hair on his head, in a frock-coat and pink shirt. "A loaf, samovar, and lemon," Kasimir Stanislavovitch said without looking at him. "And tea and sugar?" the boy asked with Moscow sharpness. And a minute later he rushed in with a boil- ing samovar in his hand, held out level with his shoulders; on the round table in front of the sofa he quickly put a tray with a glass and a battered brass slop-basin, and thumped the samovar down on the tray. . . . Kasimir Stanislavovitch, while the tea was drawing, mechanically opened the Moscow Daily, which the page-boy had brought in with the samovar. His eye fell on a report that yester- day an unknown man had been picked up unconscious. . . . "The victim was taken to the hospital," he read, and threw the paper away. He felt very bad and unsteady. He got up and opened the window it faced the 94 Kasimir Stanislavovitch yard and a breath of freshness and of the city came to him; there came to him the melodi- ous shouts of hawkers, the bells of horse-trams humming behind the house opposite, the blended rap-tap of the cars, the musical drone of church-bells. . . . The city had long since started its huge, noisy life in that bright, jolly, almost spring day. Kasimir Stanislavovitch squeezed the lemon into a glass of tea and greedily drank the sour, muddy liquid ; then he again went behind the screen. The "Ver- sailles" was quiet. It was pleasant and peace- ful ; his eye wandered leisurely over the hotel notice on the wall : "A stay of three hours is reckoned as a full day." A mouse scuttled in the chest of drawers, rolling about a piece of sugar left there by some visitor. . . . Thus half asleep Kasimir Stanislavovitch lay for a long time behind the screen, until the sun had gone from the room and another freshness was 95 Kasimir Stanislavovitch wafted in from the window, the freshness of evening. Then he carefully got himself in order : he undid his bag, changed his underclothing, took out a cheap but clean handkerchief, brushed his shiny frock-coat, top-hat, and overcoat, took out of its torn pocket a crum- pled Kiev newspaper of January 15, and threw it away into the corner. . . . Having dressed and combed his whiskers with a dyeing comb, he counted his money there remained in his purse four roubles, seventy copecks and went out. Exactly at six o'clock he was outside a low, ancient, little church in the Mol- chanovka. Behind the church fence a spread- ing tree was just breaking into green ; children were playing there the black stocking of one thin little girl, jumping over a rope, was con- tinually coming down and he sat there on a bench among perambulators with sleeping babies and nurses in Russian costumes. Spar- 96 Kasimir Stanislavovitch rows prattled over all the tree; the air was soft, all but summer even the dust smelt of summer the sky above the sunset behind the houses melted into a gentle gold, and one felt that once more there was somewhere in the world joy, youth, happiness. In the church the chandeliers were already burning, and there stood the pulpit and in front of the pul- pit was spread a little carpet. Kasimir Stani- slavovitch cautiously took off his top-hat, try- ing not to untidy his hair, and entered the church nervously; he went into a corner, but a corner from which he could see the couple to be married. He looked at the painted vault, raised his eyes to the cupola, and his every movement and every gasp echoed loudly through the silence. The church shone with gold ; the candles sputtered expectantly. And now the priests and choir began to enter, cross- ing themselves with the carelessness which comes of habit, then old women, children, 97 Kasimir Stanislavovitch smart wedding guests, and worried stewards. A noise was heard in the porch, the crunching wheels of the carriage, and every one turned their heads towards the entrance, and the hymn burst out "Come, my dovel" Kasimir Stanislavovitch became deadly pale, as his heart beat, and unconsciously he took a step forward. And close by him there passed her veil touching him, and a breath of lily-of-the- valley she who did not know even of his existence in the world; she passed, bending her charming head, all flowers and transparent gauze, all snow-white and innocent, happy and timid, like a princess going to her first communion. . . . Kasimir Stanislavovitch hardly saw the bridegroom who came to meet her, a rather small, broad-shouldered man with yellow, close-cropped hair. During the whole ceremony only one thing was before his eyes: the bent head, in the flowers and the veil, and the little hand trembling as it held 98 Kasimir Stanislavovitch a burning candle tied with a white ribbon in a bow. . . . About ten o'clock he was back again in the hotel. All his overcoat smelt of the spring air. After coming out of the church, he had seen, near the porch, the car lined with white satin, and its window reflecting the sunset, and be- hind the window there flashed on him for the last time the face of her who was being carried away from him for ever. After that he had wandered about in little streets, and had come out on the Novensky Boulevard. . . . Now slowly and with trembling hands he took off his overcoat, put on the table a paper bag con- taining two green cucumbers which for some reason he had bought at a hawker's stall. They too smelt of spring even through the paper, and spring-like through the upper pane of the window the April moon shone silvery high up in the not yet darkened sky. Kasimir Stanislavovitch lit a candle, sadly illuminat- 99 Kasimir Stanislavovitch ing his empty, casual home, and sat down on the sofa, feeling on his face the freshness of evening. . . . Thus he sat for a long time. He did not ring the bell, gave no orders, locked himself in all this seemed suspicious to the porter who had seen him enter his room with his shuffling feet and taking the key out of the door in order to lock himself in from the inside. Several times the porter stole up on tiptoe to the door and looked through the key-hole: Kasimir Stanislavovitch was sitting on the sofa, trembling and wiping his face with a handkerchief, and weeping so bitterly, so copiously that the brown dye came off, and was smeared over his face. At night he tore the cord off the blind, and, seeing nothing through his tears, began to fasten it to the hook of the clothes-peg. But the guttering candle flickered, and terrible dark waves swam and flickered over the locked room : he was old, weak and he him- IOO Kasimir Stanislavovitch self was well aware of it. ... No, it was not in his power to die by his own hand! In the morning he started for the railway station about three hours before the train left. At the station he quietly walked about among the passengers, with his eyes on the ground and tear-stained; and he would stop unexpect- edly now before one and now before another, and in a low voice, evenly but without expres- sion, he would say rather quickly: "For God's sake ... I am in a desperate position. . . . My fare to Briansk. ... If only a few copecks. ..." And some passengers, trying not to look at his top-hat, at the worn velvet collar of his overcoat, at the dreadful face with the faded violet whiskers, hurriedly, and with confusion, gave him something. And then, rushing out of the station on to the platform, he got mixed in the crowd and disappeared into it, while in the "Versailles," IOI Kasimir Stanislavovitch in the room which for two days had as it were belonged to him, they carried out the slop- pail, opened the windows to the April sun and to the fresh air, noisily moved the furniture, swept up and threw out the dust and with the dust there fell under the table, under the table cloth which slid on to the floor, his torn note, which he had forgotten with the cucum- bers: "I beg that no one be accused of my death. I was at the wedding of my only daughter who . . " 102 SON Translated by S. S. KOTELIANSKY AND LEONARD WOOLF SON MADAME MARAUD was born and grew up in Lausanne, in a strict, honest, industrious family. She did not marry young, but she married for love. In March, 1876, among the passengers on an old French ship, the Auvergne, sailing from Marseilles to Italy, was the newly married couple. The weather was calm and fresh ; the silvery mirror of the sea appeared and disappeared in the mists of the spring horizon. The newly married couple never left the deck. Every one liked them, every one looked at their happiness with friendly smiles; his happiness showed itself in the energy and keenness of his glance, in a need for movement, in the animation of his welcome to those around him; hers showed 105 Son itself in the joy and interest with which she took in each detail. . . . The newly married couple were the Marauds. He was about ten years her elder; he was not tall, with a swarthy face and curly hair; his hand was dry and his voice melodious. One felt in her the presence of some other, non-Latin blood; she was over medium height, although her figure was charming, and she had dark hair and blue-grey eyes. After touching at Naples, Palermo, and Tunis, they arrived at the Algerian town of Constantine, where M. Maraud had obtained a rather good post. And their life in Constantine, for the fourteen years since that happy spring, gave them everything with which people are nor- mally satisfied: wealth, family happiness, healthy and beautiful children. During the fourteen years the Marauds had greatly changed in appearance. He became as dark as an Arab ; from his work, from trav- 106 Son elling, from tobacco and the sun, he had grown grey and dried up many people mis- took him for a native of Algeria. And it would have been impossible to recognize in her the woman who sailed once in the Auvergne: at that time there was even in the boots which she put outside her door at night the charm of youth; now there was silver in her hair, her skin had become more transparent and more of a golden colour, her hands were thinner and in her care of them, of her linen, and of her clothes she already showed a certain excessive tidiness. Their re- lations had certainly changed too, although no one could say for the worse. They each lived their own life: his time was filled with work he remained the same passionate, and, at the same time, sober man that he had been before; her time was rilled up with looking after him and their children, two pretty girls, of whom the elder was almost a young lady : and every 107 Son one with one voice agreed that in all Constan- tine there was no better hostess, no better mother, no more charming companion in the drawing-room than Madame Maraud. Their house stood in a quiet, clean part of the town. From the front rooms on the second floor, which were always half dark with the blinds drawn down, one saw Constantine, known the world over for its picturesqueness. On steep rocks stands the ancient Arab fortress which has become a French city. The win- dows of the living-rooms looked into a garden where in perpetual heat and sunshine slum- bered the evergreen eucalyptuses, the syca- mores, and palms behind high walls. The master was frequently away on business, ancl the lady led the secluded existence to which the wives of Europeans are doomed in the colonies. On Sundays she always went to church. On weekdays she rarely went out, and she visited only a small and select circle. 108 Son She read, did needle-work, talked or did les- sons with the children; sometimes taking her younger daughter, the black-eyed Marie, on her knee, she would play the piano with one hand and sing old French songs, in order to while away the long African day, while the great breath of hot wind blew in through the open windows from the garden. . . . Con- stantine, with all its shutters closed and scorched pitilessly by the sun, seemed at such hours a dead city: only the birds called be- hind the garden wall, and from the hills behind the town came the dreary sound of pipes, filled with the melancholy of colonial countries, and at times there the dull thud of guns shook the earth, and you could see the flashing of the white helmets of soldiers. The days in Constantine passed monoto- nously, but no one noticed that Madame Maraud minded that. In her pure, refined nature there was no trace of abnormal sensi- 109 Son tiveness or excessive nervousness. Her health could not be called robust, but it gave no cause of anxiety to M. Maraud. Only one incident once astonished him : in Tunis once, an Arab juggler so quickly and completely hypnotized her that it was only with difficulty that she could be brought to. But this happened at the time of their arrival from France; she had never since experienced so sudden a loss of will-power, such a morbid suggestibility. And M. Maraud was happy, untroubled, con- vinced that her soul was tranquil and open to him. And it was so, even in the last, the four- teenth year of their married life. But then there appeared in Constantine Emile Du- Buis. Emile Du-Buis, the son of Madame Bon- nay, an old and good friend of M. Maraud, was only nineteen. Emile was the son of her first husband and had grown up in Paris, where he studied law, but he spent most of his no Son time in writing poems, intelligible only to himself; he was attached to the school of "Seekers," which has now ceased to exist. Madame Bonnay, the widow of an engineer, also had a daughter, Elise. In May, 1889, Elise was just going to be married, when she fell ill and died a few days before her wed- ding, and Emile, who had never been in Con- stantine, came to the funeral. It can be easily understood how that death moved Madame Maraud, the death of a girl already trying on her wedding dress; it is also known how quickly in such circumstances an intimacy springs up between people who have hardly met before. Besides, to Madame Maraud Emile was, indeed, only a boy. Soon after the funeral Madame Bonnay went for the sum- mer to stay with her relations in France. Emile remained in Constantine, in a suburban villa which belonged to his late step-father, the villa "Hashim," as it was called in the in town, and he began coming nearly every day to the Marauds. Whatever he was, whatever he pretended to be, he was still very young, very sensitive, and he needed people to whom he could attach himself for a time. "And isn't it strange?" some said; "Madame Maraud has become unrecognizable! How lively she has become, and how her looks have improved!" However, these insinuations were ground- less. At first there was only this, that her life had become a little bit jollier, and her girls too had become more playful and coquettish, since Emile, every now and then forgetting his sorrow and the poison with which, as he thought, the fin de siecle had infected him, would for hours at a time play with Marie and Louise as if he were their age. It is true that he was all the same a man, a Parisian, and not altogether an ordinary man. He had already taken part in that life, inaccessible to ordinary mortals, which Parisian writers live; 112 Son he often read aloud, with a hypnotic expres- siveness, strange but sonorous poems; and, peihaps it was entirely owing to him that Madame Maraud's walk had become lighter and quicker, her dress at home imperceptibly smarter, the tones of her voice more tender and playful. Perhaps, too, there was in her SOIL a drop of purely feminine pleasure that hen was a man to whom she could give her small commands, with whom she could talk, hal: seriously and half jokingly as a mentor, with that freedom which their difference in age so naturally allowed a man who was so devoted to her whole household, in which, however, the first person this, of course, very soon became clear was for him, never- theless, she herself. But how common all that is! And the chief thing was that often what she really felt for him was only pity. He honestly thought himself a born poet, and he wished outwardly, too, to look like a "3 Son poet; his long hair was brushed back witn artistic modesty; his hair was fine, brown, aid suited his pale face just as did his bhck clothes ; but the pallor was too bloodless, vith a yellow tinge in it; his eyes were always fhin- ing, but the tired look in his face made them seem feverish ; and so flat and narrow was his chest, so thin his legs and hands, that one felt a little uncomfortable when one saw him get very excited and run in the street or garden, with his body pushed forward a little, as though he were gliding, in order to hide his defect, that he had one leg shorter than the other. In company he was apt to be unpleas- ant, haughty, trying to appear mysterious, negligent, at times elegantly dashing, at times contemptuously absent-minded, in everything independent; but too often he could not carry it through to the end, he became confused and began to talk hurriedly with naive frankness. And, of course, he was not very long able to 114 Son hide his feelings, to maintain the pose of not believing in love or in happiness on earth. He had already begun to bore his host by his visits; every day he would bring from his villa bouquets of the rarest flowers, and he would sit from morn to night reading poems which were more and more unintelligible the children often heard him beseeching some one that they should die together while he spent his nights in the native quarter, in dens where Arabs, wrapped in dirty white robes, greedily watch the danse de venire, and drank fiery liqueurs. ... In a word it took less than six weeks for his passion to change into God knows what His nerves gave way completely. Once he sat for nearly the whole day in silence; then he got up, bowed, took his hat and went out and half an hour later he was carried in from the street in a terrible state; he was in hys- terics and he wept so passionately that he terri- "5 Son fied the children and servants. But Madame Maraud, it seemed, did not attach any particu- lar importance to this delirium. She herself tried to help him recover himself, quickly un- did his tie, told him to be a man, and she only smiled when he, without any restraint in her husband's presence, caught her hands and cov- ered them with kisses and vowed devotion to her. But an end had to be put to all this. When, a few days after this outbreak, Emile, whom the children had greatly missed, arrived calm, but looking like some one who has been through a serious illness, Madame Maraud gently told him everything which is always said on such occasions. "My friend, you are like a son to me," she said to him, for the first time uttering the word son, and, indeed, almost feeling a maternal affection. "Don't put me in a ridiculous and painful position." "But I swear to you, you are mistaken!" 116 Son he exclaimed, with passionate sincerity. "I am only devoted to you. I only want to see you, nothing else!" And suddenly he fell on his knees they were in the garden, on a quiet, hot, dark evening impetuously embraced her knees, nearly fainting with passion. And looking at his hair, at his thin white neck, she thought with pain and ecstasy: "Ah, yes, yes, I might have had such a son, almost his age!" However, from that time until he left for France he behaved reasonably. This essen- tially was a bad sign, for it might mean that his passion had become deeper. But out- wardly everything had changed for the better only once did he break down. It was on a Sunday after dinner at which several strangers 1 were present, and he, careless of whether they noticed it, said to her : "I beg you to spare me a minute." 117 Son She got up and followed him into die empty, half -dark drawing-room. He went to the window through which die evening light fefl m broad shafts, and, Innfci^g trgti S^m r.z: lire -i : "To-day is the day on which my father died. I love your She turned and was about to leave him. h.Ti-i-.f he hinLj :illri :::e: he-: "Forgive me, it is for die first and last she heard no fuilhei confessi from him. "I was fascinated by her agita- tion," he noted that night in his diary in his and pompous style; U I swore never again to disturb her peace of mind : am I not blessed enough without that?" He continued to come to town he only slept at the villa Hasfnm and he behaved erratically, bat always more or kss propcilv. At times he was, as before, unnaturally playful and naive, 118 Son running about with the children in the gar- den; bat more often he sat with her and "sipped of her presence," read newspapers and novels to her, and "was happy in her Hff^fag to him." 'The children were not in the way," he wrote of those days, "their voices, laughter, comings and goings, their very beings acted like the subtlest conductors for our feelings; thanks to them, the charm of those feelings was intensified; we talked about the most everyday matters, but something else sounded through what we said: our happi- ness; yes, yes, she, too, was happy I main- tain that! She loved me to read poetry; in the evenings from the balcony we looked down upon Constantino lying at our feet in the blu- ish moonlight. . . ." At last, in August Madame Maraud insisted that he should go away, return to his work; and during his jour- ney he wrote: "I'm going awayl I am going away, poisoned by the bitter sweet of parting I 119 Son She gave me a remembrance, a velvet ribbon which she wore round her neck as a young girl. At the last moment she blessed me, and I saw tears shine in her eyes, when she said : 'Good-bye, my dear son.' ' Was he right in thinking that Madame Maraud was also happy in August? No one knows. But that his leaving was painful to her there is no doubt of that. That word "son," which had often troubled her before, now had a sound for her which she could not bear to hear. Formerly when friends met her on the way to church, and said to her jokingly : "What have you to pray for, Madame Maraud? You are already without sin and without troubles!" she more than once answered with a sad smile: "I complain to God that he has not given me a son." Now the thought of a son never left her, the thought of the happiness that he would constantly give her by his mere existence in the world. And 120 Son once, soon after Emile's departure, she said to her husband : "Now I understand it all. I now believe firmly that every mother ought to have a son, that every mother who has no son, if she look into her own heart and examine her whole life, will realize that she is unhappy. You are a man and cannot feel that, but it is so. ... Oh, how tenderly, passionately a woman can love a son!" She was very affectionate to her husband during that autumn. It would happen some- times that, sitting alone with him, she would suddenly say bashfully: "Listen, Hector. ... I am ashamed to mention it again to you, but still ... do you ever think of March, '76? Ah, if we had had a sonl" "All this troubled me a good deal," M. Maraud said later, "and it troubled me the more because she began to get thin and out 121 Son of health. She grew feeble, became more and more silent and gentle. She went out to our friends more and more rarely, she avoided going to town unless compelled. ... I have no doubt that some terrible, incomprehensible disease had been gradually getting hold of her, body and soul!" And the governess added mat that autumn, Madame Maraud, if she went out, invariably put on a thick white veil, which she had never done before, and that, on coming home, she would immediately take it off in front of the glass and would care- fully examine her tired face. It is unneces- sary to explain what had been going on in her soul during that period. But did she desire to see Emile? Did he write to her and did she answer him? He produced before the court two telegrams which he alleged she sent him in reply to letters of his. One was dated November 10: "You are driving me mad. Be calm. Send me a message immediately." 122 Son The other of December 23: "No, no, don't come, I implore you. Think of me, love me as a mother." But, of course, the truth that the telegrams had been sent by her could not be proved. Only this is certain, that from September to January the life which Madame Maraud lived was miserable, agitated, morbid. The late autumn of that year in Constantine was cold and rainy. Then, as is always the case in Algeria, there suddenly came a delight- ful spring. And a liveliness began again to return to Madame Maraud, that happy, subtle intoxication which people who have already lived through their youth feel at the blossom- ing of spring. She began to go out again ; she drove out a good deal with the children and used to take them to the deserted garden of the villa Hashim; she intended to go to Algiers, and to show the children Blida, near which there is in the hills a wooded gorge, the favourite haunt of monkeys. And so it went "3 Son on until January 17 of the year 1893. January 17 she woke up with a feeling of gentle happiness which, it seemed, had agi- tated her the whole night. Her husband was away on business, and in his absence she slept alone in the large room; the blinds and cur- tains made it almost dark. Still from the pale bluishness which filtered in one could see that it was very early. And, indeed, the little watch on the night table showed that it was six o'clock. She felt with delight the morning freshness coming from the garden, and, wrap- ping the light blanket round her, turned to the wall. . . . "Why am I so happy?" she thought as she fell asleep. And in vague and beautiful visions she saw scenes in Italy and Sicily, scenes of that far-off spring when she sailed in a cabin, with its windows opening on to the deck and the cold silvery sea, with door- hangings which time had worn and faded to a rusty silver colour, with its threshold of brass 124 Son shining from perpetual polishings. . . . Then she saw boundless bays, lagoons, low shores, an Arab city all white with flat roofs and be- hind it misty blue hills and mountains. It was Tunis, where she had only once been, that spring when she was in Naples, Palermo. . . . But then, as though the chill of a wave had passed over her, with a start, she opened her eyes. It was past eight; she heard the voices of the children and the governess. She got up, put on a wrap, and, going out on to the bal- cony, went down to the garden and sat in the rocking-chair. It stood on the sand by a round table under a blossoming mimosa tree which made a golden arbour heavily scented in the sun. The maid brought her coffee. She again began to think of Tunis, and she remembered the strange thing which had happened to her there, the sweet terror and happy silence of the moment before death which she had ex- perienced in that pale-blue city in a warm, 125 Son pink twilight, half lying in a rocking-chair on the hotel roof, faintly seeing the dark face of the Arab hypnotizer and juggler, who squat- ted in front of her and sent her to sleep by his hardly audible, monotonous melodies and the slow movements of his thin hands. And sud- denly, as she was thinking and was looking mechanically with wide-open eyes at the bright silver spark which shone in the sun- light from the spoon in the glass of water, she lost consciousness. . . . When with a start she opened her eyes again, Emile was standing over her. All that followed after that unexpected meeting is known from the words of Emile himself, from his story, from his answers in cross-examination. "Yes, I came to Constan- tine out of the blue!" he said; "I came because I felt that the Powers of Heaven themselves could not stop me. In the morning of January 17 straight from the railway station, without 126 Son any warning, I arrived at M. Maraud's house and ran into the garden. I was overwhelmed by what I saw, but no sooner had I taken a step forward than she woke up. She seemed to be amazed both by the unexpectedness of my appearance and by what had been happen- ing to her, but she uttered no cry. She looked at me like a person who has just woken up from a sound sleep, and then she got up, arranging her hair. "It is just what I anticipated," she said without expression; "you did not obey me I" And with a characteristic movement she folded the wrap round her bosom, and taking my head in her two hands kissed me twice on the forehead. I was bewildered with passionate ecstasy, but she quietly pushed me from her and said : "Come, I am not dressed; I'll be back presently; go to the children." "But, for the love of God, what was the 127 Son matter with you just now?" I asked, following her on to the balcony. "Oh, it was nothing, a slight faintness; I had been looking at the shining spoon," she answered, regaining control of herself, and beginning to speak with animation. "But what have you done, what have you done!" I could not find the children anywhere; it was empty and quiet in the house. I sat in the dining-room, and heard her suddenly begin to sing in a distant room in a strong, melodious voice, but I did not understand then the full horror of that singing, because I was trem- bling with nervousness. I had not slept at all all night; I had counted the minutes while the train was hurrying me to Constantine; I jumped into the first carriage I met, raced out of the station; I did not expect as I came to the town. ... I knew I, too, had a forebod- ing that my coming would be fatal to us ; but still what I saw in the garden, that mystical 128 Son meeting, and that sudden change in her atti- tude towards me, I could not expect that! In ten minutes she came down with her hair dressed, in a light grey dress with a shade of blue in it. "Ah," she said, while I kissed her hand, "I forgot that to-day is Sunday; the children are at church, and I overslept . . . After church the children will go to the pine-wood have you ever been there?" And, without waiting for my answer, she rang the bell, and told them to bring me coffee. She began to look fixedly at me, and, without listening to my replies, to ask me how I lived, and what I was doing; she began to speak of herself, of how, after two or three very bad months during which she had become "terri- bly old" those words were uttered with an imperceptible smile she now felt so well, as young, as never before. ... I answered, listened, but a great deal I did not understand. 129 Son Both of us said meaningless things; my hands grew cold at the thought of another terrible and inevitable hour. I do not deny that I felt as though I were struck by lightning when she said "I have grown old. ..." I suddenly noticed that she was right; in the thinness of her hands, and faded, though youthful, face, in the dryness of some of the outlines of her figure, I noticed the first signs of that which, painfully and somehow awkwardly but still more painfully makes one's heart contract at the sight of an ageing woman. Oh yes, how quickly and sharply she had changed, I thought. But still she was beautiful ; I grew intoxicated looking at her. I had been accus- tomed to dream of her endlessly; I had never for an instant forgotten when, in the evening of July n, I had embraced her knees for the first time. Her hands, too, trembled sligutly, as she arranged her hair and spoke and smiled and looked at me; and suddenly you will 130 Son understand the whole catastrophic power of that woman suddenly that smile somehow became distorted, and she said with difficulty, but yet firmly: "You must go home, you must rest after your journey you are not looking yourself; your eyes are so terribly suffering, your lips so burning that I cannot bear it any longer. . . . Would you like me to come with you, to accompany you?" And, without waiting for my answer, she got up and went to put on her hat and cloak. . . . We drove quickly to the villa Hashim. I stopped for a moment on the terrace to pick some flowers. She did not wait for me, but opened the door herself. I had no servants; there was only a watchman, but he did not see us. When I came into the hall, hot and dark with its drawn blinds, and gave her the flowers, she kissed them ; then, putting one arm round 131 Son me, she kissed me. Her lips were dry from excitement, but her voice was clear. "But listen . . . how shall we ... have you got anything?" she asked. At first I did not understand her; I was so overwhelmed by the first kiss, the first endear- ment, and I murmured: "What do you mean?" She shrank back. "What!" she said, almost sternly. "Did you imagine that I ... that we can live after this? Have you anything to kill ourselves with?" I understood, and quickly showed her my revolver, loaded with five cartridges, which I always kept on me. She walked away quickly ahead of me from one room to the other. I followed her with that numbness of the senses with which a naked man on a sultry day walks out into the sea; I heard the rustle of her skirts. At last 132 Son we were there; she threw off her cloak and began to untie the strings of her hat. Her hands were still trembling and in the half- light I again noticed something pitiful and tired in her face. . . . But she died with firmness. At the last moment she was transformed ; she kissed me, and moving her head back so as to see my face, she whispered to me such tender and moving words that I cannot repeat them. I wanted to go out and pick some flowers to strew on the death-bed. She would not let me ; she was in a hurry and said : "No, no, you must not . . . there are flowers here . . . here are your flowers," and she kept on repeating: "And see, I beseech you by all that is sacred to you, kill me!" "Yes, and then I will kill myself," I said, without for a moment doubting my resolution. "Oh, I believe you, I believe you," she 133 Son answered, already apparently half-uncon- scious. . . . A moment before her death she said very quietly and simply: "My God, this is unspeakable!" And again : "Where are the flowers you gave me? Kiss me for the last time." She herself put the revolver to her head. I wanted to do it, but she stopped me : "No, that is not right; let me do it. Like this, my child. . . . And afterwards make the sign of the cross over me and lay the flowers on my heart. ..." When I fired, she made a slight movement with her lips, and I fired again. . . . She lay quiet; in her dead face there was a kind of bitter happiness. Her hair was loose; the tortoise-shell comb lay on the floor. I staggered to my feet in order to put an end to myself. But the room, despite the blinds, 134 Son was light; in the light and stillness which 'suddenly surrounded me, I saw clearly her face already pale. . . . And suddenly mad- ness seized me ; I rushed to the window, undid and threw open the shutters, began shouting and firing into the air. . . . The rest you know. ..." [In the spring, five years ago, while wander- ing in Algeria, the writer of these lines visited Constantine. . . . There often comes to him a memory of the cold, rainy, and yet spring evenings which he spent by the fire in the read- ing-room of a certain old and homely French hotel. In the heavy, elaborate book-case were much-read illustrated papers, and in them you could see the faded photographs of Madame Maraud. There were photographs taken of her at different ages, and among them the Lausanne portrait of her as a girl. . . . Her story is told here once more, from a desire to tell it in one's own way.] 135