Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal (22 page)

That by-and-by will make the music mute,

And ever widening slowly silence all.'

'Teleny, you have had for some days a weight on your mind—something that I cannot fathom. Will you not tell your friend what it is?'

He opened his eyes widely, as if he were looking into the depths of limitless space, while a painful expression was seen upon his lips; and then he added slowly:

'My fate. Have you forgotten the prophetic vision you had that evening of the charity concert?'

'What! Adrian mourning over dead Antinous?'

'Yes.'

'A fancy bred in my over-heated brain by the conflicting qualities of your Hungarian music, so stirringly sensuous and at the same time so gorgeously mournful.'

He shook his head sadly.

'No, it was something more than idle fancy.'

'A change has been taking place in you, Teleny. Perhaps it is the religious or spiritual element of your nature that is predominating just now over the sensual, but you are not what you were.'

'I feel that I have been too happy, but that our happiness is built on sand—a bond like ours—'

'Not blessed by the Church, repugnant to the nice feelings of most men.'

'Well—yes, in such a love there is always

A little pitted speck in garnered fruit

That, rotting inward, slowly smothers all.

Why did we meet—or, rather, why was not one of us born a woman? Had you only been some poor girl—'

'Come, leave aside your morbid fancies, and tell me candidly if you would have loved me more than you do.'

He looked at me sadly, but could not bring himself to utter an untruth. Still, after a while he added, sighing:

'There is a love that is to last,

When the hot days of youth are past.

Tell me, Camille, is such love ours?'

'Why not? Can you not always be as fond of me as I am of you, or do I only care for you on account of the sensual pleasures you afford me? You know that my heart yearns for you when the senses are satiated and the desire is blunted.'

'Still, had it not been for me, you might have loved some woman whom you could have married—'

'And have found out, but too late, that I was born with other cravings. No, sooner or later I should have followed my destiny.'

'Now it might be quite different; satiated with my love, you might, perhaps, marry and forget me.'

'Never. But come, have you been confessing yourself? Are you going to turn Calvinist? or, like the “Dame aux Camelias,” or Antinous, do you think it necessary to sacrifice yourself on the altar of love for my sake?'

'Please, don't joke.'

'No, I'll tell you what we'll do. Let us leave France. Let us go to Spain, to Southern Italy —nay, let us leave Europe, and go to the East, where I must surely have lived during some former life, and which I have a hankering to see, just as if the land

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,

had been the home of my youth; there, unknown to everyone, forgotten by the world.'

'Yes, but can I leave this town?' he said.

I knew that of late Teleny had been dunned a good deal, and that his life had often been rendered unpleasant by usurers.

Caring, therefore, but little what people might think of me—besides, who has not a good opinion of the man that pays?—I had called all his creditors together, and, unknown to him, I had settled all his debts. I was about to tell him so, and relieve him from the weight that was oppressing him, when Fate—blind, inexorable, crushing Fate—sealed my mouth.

There was again a loud ring at the door. Had that bell been rung a few seconds later, how different his life and mine would have been! But it was
Kismet,
as the Turks say.

It was the carriage that had come to take him to the station. While he was getting ready, I helped him to pack up his dress suit and some other little things he might require. I took up, by chance, a small matchbox containing French letters, and smiling, said:

'Here, I'll put them in your trunk; they might be useful.'

He shuddered, and grew deathly pale.

'Who knows?' said I; 'some beautiful lady patroness—'

'Please, don't joke,' he retorted, almost angrily.

'Oh! now I can afford to do so, but once—do you know that I was even jealous of my mother?'

Teleny at that moment dropped the mirror he was holding, which, as it fell, was shivered to pieces.

For a moment we both looked aghast. Was it not a dreadful omen?

Just then the clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour. Teleny shrugged his shoulders.

'Come,' he said, 'there's no time to lose.'

He snatched up his portmanteau, and we hurried downstairs.

I accompanied him to the terminus, and before leaving him when he alighted from the carriage, my arms were clasped around him, and our lips met in a last and lingering kiss. They clung fondly to one another, not with the fever of lust, but with a love all fraught with tenderness, and with a sorrow that gripped the muscles of the heart.

His kiss was like the last emanation of a withering flower, or like the sweet scent shed at evening tide by one of those delicate white cactus blossoms that open their petals at dawn, follow the sun in its diurnal march, then droop and fade away with the planet's last rays.

At parting from him I felt as if I had been bereft of my soul itself. My love was like a Nessus shirt, the severing of which was as painful as having my flesh torn from me piecemeal. It was as if the joy of my life had been snatched away from me.

I watched him as he hurried away with his springy step and feline grace. When he had reached the portal he turned round. He was deathly pale, and in his despair he looked like a man about to commit suicide. He waved a last farewell, and quickly disappeared.

The sun had set for me. Night had come over the world. I felt

like a soul belated;

In hell and heaven unmated;

and, shuddering, I asked myself, what morn would come out of all this darkness?

The agony visible on his face struck a deep terror within me; then I thought how foolish we both were in giving each other such unnecessary pain, and I rushed out of the carriage after him.

All at once a heavy country lout ran up against me, and clasped me in his arms.

'Oh,—!' I did not catch the name he said— 'what an unexpected pleasure! How long have you been here?'

'Let me go—let me go! You are mistaken!' I screamed out, but he held me fast.

As I wrestled with the man, I heard the signal bell ring. With a strong jerk I pushed him away, and ran into the station. I reached the platform a few seconds too late, the train was in motion, Teleny had disappeared.

Nothing was then left for me to do but to post a letter to this friend of mine, begging him to forgive me for having done what he had often forbidden me to do; that is, to have given an order to my attorney to collect all his outstanding accounts, and pay all those debts that had so long been weighing upon him. That letter, however, he never got.

I jumped back into the cab, and was whirled away to my office through the crowded thoroughfares of the town.

What a jarring bustle there was everywhere! How sordid and meaningless this world appeared!

A garishly-dressed, smirking female was casting lewd glances at a lad, and tempting him to follow her. A one-eyed satyr was ogling a very young girl—a mere child. I thought I knew him. Yes, it was that loathsome school fellow of mine, Bion, only he looked even more of a pimp than his father used to look. A fat, sleek-headed man was carrying a
cantaloup
melon, and his mouth seemed to be watering at the prospect of the pleasure he would have in eating it after the soup, with his wife and children. I asked myself if ever man or woman could have kissed that slobbering mouth without feeling sick?

I had during these last three days quite neglected my office, and my manager was ill. I therefore felt it my duty to set to work and do what had to be done. Notwithstanding the sorrow gnawing in my heart, I began answering letters and telegrams, or giving the necessary directions as to how they were to be answered. I worked feverishly, rather like a machine than a man. For a few hours I was quite absorbed in complicated commercial transactions, and although I worked and reckoned clearly, still my friend's face, with his mournful eyes, his voluptuous mouth with its bitter smile, was ever before me, while an aftertaste of his kiss lingered on my lips.

The hour for shutting up the office came, and yet not half of my task was done. I saw, as in a dream, the rueful faces of my clerks kept back from their dinners or from their pleasures. They had all somewhere to go to. I was alone, even my mother was away. I therefore bade them go, saying I should remain with the head bookkeeper. They did not wait to be told twice; in a twinkling the offices were empty.

As for the accountant, he was a commercial fossil, a kind of living calculating machine; grown so old in the office that all his limbs creaked like rusty hinges every time he moved, so that he hardly ever did move. Nobody had ever seen him anywhere else but on his high stool; he was always at his place before any of the junior clerks came in, he was still there when they went off. Life for him had only one aim—that of making endless additions.

Feeling rather sick, I sent the office boy for a bottle of dry sherry and a box of vanilla-wafers. When the lad returned I told him he could go.

I poured out a glass of wine for the bookkeeper, and handed him the box of biscuits. The old man took up the glass with his parchment-colored hand, and held it up to the light as if he were calculating its chemical properties or its specific weight. Then he sipped it slowly with evident gusto.

As for the wafer he looked at it carefully, just as if it had been a draft he was going to register.

Then we both set to work again, and at about ten, all the letters and dispatches having been answered, I heaved a deep sigh of relief.

'If my manager comes tomorrow, as he said he would, he'll be satisfied with me.'

I smiled as this thought flitted through my brain. What was I working for? Lucre, to please my clerk, or for the work itself? I am sure I hardly knew. I think I labored for the feverish excitement the work gave me, just as men play at chess to keep their brains active with other thoughts than those that oppress them; or, perhaps, because I was born with working propensities like bees or ants.

Not wanting to keep the poor bookkeeper on his stool any longer, I admitted the fact to him that it was time to shut up the office. He got up slowly, with a crepitating sound, took off his spectacles like an automaton, wiped them leisurely, put them in their case, quietly took out another pair—for he had glasses for every occasion—put them on his nose, then looked at me.

'You have gone through a vast amount of work. If your grandfather and your father could have seen you, they surely would have been pleased with you.'

I again poured out two glasses of wine, one of which I handed to him. He quaffed the wine, pleased, not with the wine itself, but for my kindness in offering it to him. Then I shook hands with him, and we parted.

Where was I to go now—home?

I wished my mother had come back. I had got a letter from her that very afternoon; in it she said that, instead of returning in a day or two, as she had intended doing, she might, perhaps, go off to Italy for a short time. She was suffering from a slight attack of bronchitis, and she dreaded the fogs and dampness of our town.

Poor mother! I now thought that, since my intimacy with Teleny, there had been a slight estrangement between us; not that I loved her less, but because Teleny engrossed all my mental and bodily faculties. Still, just now that he was away, I almost felt mother-sick, and I decided to write a long and affectionate letter to her as soon as I got home.

Meanwhile I walked on haphazardly. After wandering about for an hour, I found myself unexpectedly before Teleny's house. I had wended my steps thitherwards, without knowing where I went. I looked up at Teleny's windows with longing eyes. How I loved that house. I could have kissed the very stones on which he had stepped.

The night was dark but clear, the street—a very quiet one—was not of the best lighted, and for some reason or other the nearest gas-lamp had gone out.

As I kept staring up at the windows, it seemed as if I saw a faint light glimmering through the crevices of the shut-up blinds. 'Of course,' I thought, “it is only my imagination.'

I strained my eyes. 'No, surely, I am not mistaken,' I said, audibly to myself, 'surely there is a light'

Had Teleny come back?

Perhaps he had been seized with the same state of dejection which had come over me when we parted. The anguish visible on my ghastly face must have paralyzed him, and in the state which he was he could not play, so he had come back. Perhaps, also, the concert had been postponed.