“Pray come,” he said; “it will give us great pleasure.”
Maze hesitated, embarrassed and smiling at the remembrance of past events.
Cachelin urged him: “Come, say we may expect you!”
“Very well, then, I accept.”
Cachelin said on entering the house: “Cora, do you know that M. Maze is coming here to dinner next Sunday?”
Cora, surprised at first, stammered: “M. Maze? Really!” She blushed up to her hair without knowing why. She had so often heard him spoken of, his manners, his successes, for he was looked upon at the office as a man who was irresistible with women, that she had long felt a desire to know him.
Cachelin continued rubbing his hands: “You will see that he is a real man, and a fine fellow. He is as tall as a carbineer; he does not resemble your husband there.”
She did not reply, confused as if they had divined her dreams of him.
They prepared this dinner with as much solicitude as the one to which Lesable had been formerly invited. Cachelin discussed the dishes, wishing to have everything served in perfection; and as though a confidence unavowed and still undetermined had risen up in his heart, he seemed more gay, tranquilised by some secret and sure prevision.
Through all that Sunday he watched the preparations with the utmost solicitude, while Lesable was doing some urgent work, brought the evening before from the office.
It was the first week of November, and the new year was at hand.
At seven o’clock Maze arrived, in high good humour. He entered as though he felt very much at home, with a compliment and a great bouquet of roses for Cora. He added, as he presented them, in the familiar tone of a man of the world: “It seems to me, Madame, I know you already, and that I have known you from your childhood, for many years your father has spoken to me of you.”
Cachelin, seeing the flowers, cried: “Ah they are charming!” and his daughter recalled that Lesable had not brought her a bouquet the day he was introduced.
The handsome clerk seemed enchanted, laughing and bestowing on Cora the most delicate flatteries, which brought the colour to her cheeks.
He found her very attractive. She thought him charming and seductive. When he had gone, Cachelin exclaimed: “Isn’t he a fine fellow? What havoc he creates! They say he can wheedle any woman!”
Cora, less demonstrative, avowed, however, that she thought him very agreeable, and not so much of a poseur as she had believed.
Lesable, who seemed less sad and weary than usual, acknowledged that he had underrated Maze on his first acquaintance.
Maze returned at intervals, which gradually grew shorter. He delighted everybody. They petted and coddled him. Cora prepared for him the dishes he liked, and the intimacy of the three men soon became so great that they were seldom seen apart.
The new friend took the whole family to the theatre in boxes procured through the press. They returned on foot, through the streets thronged with people, to the door of Lesable’s apartments, Maze and Cora walking before, keeping step, hip to hip, swinging with the same movement, the same rhythm, like two beings created to walk side by side through life. They spoke to each other in a low tone, laughing softly together, and seemed to understand each other instinctively: sometimes the young woman would turn her head and throw behind her a glance at her husband and father.
Cachelin followed them with a look of benevolent regard, and often, forgetting that he spoke to his son-in-law, he declared: “They have the same physique exactly. It is a pleasure to see them together.”
Lesable replied quietly: “Yes, they are about the same figure.” He was happy now in the consciousness that his heart was beating more vigorously, that his lungs acted more freely, and that his health had improved in every respect; his rancour against his father-in-law, whose cruel taunts had now entirely ceased, vanished little by little.
The first day of January he was promoted to the chief clerkship. His joy was so excessive over his happy event that on returning home he embraced his wife for the first time in six months. She appeared embarrassed, as if he had done something improper, and she looked at Maze, who had called to present to her his devotion and respect on the first day of the year. He also had an embarrassed air, and turned toward the window like a man who does not wish to see.
But Cachelin very soon resumed his brutalities, and began to harass his son-in-law with his coarse jests.
Sometimes he even attacked Maze, as though he blamed him also for the catastrophe suspended over them—the inevitable date of which approached nearer every minute.
Cora alone appeared composed, entirely happy and radiant. She had forgotten, it seemed, the threatening nearness of the term.
March had come. All hope seemed lost, for it would be three years on the twentieth of July since Aunt Charlotte’s death.
An early spring had advanced the vegetation, and Maze proposed to his friends one Sunday to make an excursion to the banks of the Seine, to gather the violets in the shady places. They set out by a morning train and got off at Maisons-Laffitte. A breath of winter still lingered among the bare branches, but the turf was green and lustrous, flecked with flowers of white and blue, and the fruit-trees on the hillsides seemed garlanded with roses as their bare branches showed through the clustering blossoms. The Seine, thick and muddy from the late rains, flowed slowly between its banks gnawed by the frosts of winter; and all the country, steeped in vapour, exhaled a savour of sweet humidity under the warmth of the first days of spring.
They wandered in the park. Cachelin, more glum than usual, tapped his cane on the gravelled walk, thinking bitterly of their misfortune, so soon to be irremediable. Lesable, morose also, feared to wet his feet in the grass, while his wife and Maze were gathering flowers to make a bouquet.
