The Rendezvous
She had on her hat and coat with a black veil down to her nose and another in her pocket to put over the first as soon as she got into the offensive four-wheeler. She was tapping her boot with the point of her umbrella and remained seated in her room, uncertain whether to keep the appointment.
And yet how many times within the last two years had she got ready to join her lover, the handsome Viscount de Martelet, in his chambers, when she knew that her husband—a society stockbroker—would be at the Exchange!
The clock behind her loudly ticked out the seconds; a half-read book gaped open on the little rosewood writing-table between the windows, and a strong scent of violets from two small bunches floating in a couple of tiny Dresden vases on the mantlepiece, mingled with a faint odour of verbena wafted through the half-open door of the dressing-room.
The sound of the clock striking three made her jump up. She turned to look at the time, then smiled, thinking: “He is waiting for me, he will be getting angry.” Then she left the room, told the footman that she would be back in an hour at the least—a lie—went downstairs, and set out on foot.
It was the end of May, that delightful season when spring, on its way from the country, lays siege to Paris, seeming to carry all before it, bursting through brick walls into the home, making the city blossom forth, shedding gaiety over its buildings, over the asphalt of its pavements and the stones of its streets, drenching it in merriment, and making it drunk with vigour like a forest bursting forth into leaf.
Madame Haggar took a few steps to the right, intending, as usual, to go along the Rue de Provence where she could hail a four-wheeler, but the delightful feeling of summer suddenly took possession of her, and changing her mind, she turned down the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, not knowing why, but vaguely attracted by a wish to see the trees in the square de la Trinité.
“He can just wait ten minutes longer,” she said to herself. The idea of keeping him waiting pleased her and as she walked through the crowd she fancied she saw him getting impatient, looking at the clock, opening the window, listening at the door, sitting down and getting up again, not daring to smoke—as she had forbidden smoking on the days they met—and casting desperate glances at his box of cigarettes.
She walked along slowly, her mind adrift among the many things around her—the people, the shops—and she slackened her pace more and more; so little did she care about reaching the flat that she used every shop window as an excuse for loitering.
At the end of the street, in front of the church, the green of the small square attracted her and she crossed the Place and went into the garden—the children’s playground—and strolled twice round the narrow patch of grass, mingling with the nurses, gorgeous in their bright-coloured cloaks and caps trimmed with ribbons and flowers. Then she took a chair, sat down, and raising her eyes to the clock that looked like a moon in the steeple, she watched the hands move round.
The half-hour struck, and her heart beat with pleasure when she heard the chimes. She had already stolen thirty minutes, it would take another fifteen to reach the Rue Miromesnil, those and a few more minutes in which to loiter about would make an hour! One whole hour stolen from the rendezvous! She would stay barely forty minutes, and again the whole thing would be over.
Goodness! how it bored her to go! Going to the dentist’s was bad enough! She suffered from the intolerable memory of these appointments—on an average, one a week for the last two years—and the thought that there would be another one presently filled her with
