Tales of Two Countries | Page 7

drawer; reluctantly she drew
it out, and the memories overpowered her.
She remembered how often she herself, still almost a child, had
devoured with greedy eyes the fine ladies who drove in splendor to
balls or theatres; how often she had cried in bitter envy over the flowers
she laboriously pieced together to make others beautiful. Here she saw
the same greedy eyes, the same inextinguishable, savage envy.
And the dark, earnest men who scanned the equipages with
half-contemptuous, half-threatening looks--she knew them all.
Had not she herself, as a little girl, lain in a corner and listened,
wide-eyed, to their talk about the injustice of life, the tyranny of the
rich, and the rights of the laborer, which he had only to reach out his
hand to seize?
She knew that they hated everything--the sleek horses, the dignified
coachmen, the shining carriages, and, most of all, the people who sat
within them--these insatiable vampires, these ladies, whose ornaments
for the night cost more gold than any one of them could earn by the
work of a whole lifetime.
And as she looked along the line of carriages, as it dragged on slowly
through the crowd, another memory flashed into her mind--a

half-forgotten picture from her school-life in the convent.
She suddenly came to think of the story of Pharaoh and his
war-chariots following the children of Israel through the Red Sea. She
saw the waves, which she had always imagined red as blood, piled up
like a wall on both sides of the Egyptians.
Then the voice of Moses sounded. He stretched out his staff over the
waters, and the Red Sea waves hurtled together and swallowed up
Pharaoh and all his chariots.
She knew that the wall which stood on each side of her was wilder and
more rapacious than the waves of the sea; she knew that it needed only
a voice, a Moses, to set all this human sea in motion, hurling it
irresistibly onward until it should sweep away all the glory of wealth
and greatness in its blood-red waves.
Her heart throbbed, and she crouched trembling into the corner of the
carriage. But it was not with fear; it was so that those without should
not see her--for she was ashamed to meet their eyes.
For the first time in her life, her good-fortune appeared to her in the
light of an injustice, a thing to blush for.
Was she in her right place, in this soft-cushioned carriage, among these
tyrants and blood-suckers? Should she not rather be out there in the
billowing mass, among the children of hate?
Half-forgotten thoughts and feelings thrust up their heads like beasts of
prey which have long lain bound. She felt strange and homeless in her
glittering life, and thought with a sort of demoniac longing of the
horrible places from which she had risen.
She seized her rich lace shawl; there came over her a wild desire to
destroy, to tear something to pieces; but at this moment the carriage
turned into the gate-way of the hôtel.
The footman tore open the door, and with her gracious smile, her air of
quiet, aristocratic distinction, she alighted.
A young attaché rushed forward, and was happy when she took his arm,
still more enraptured when he thought he noticed an unusual gleam in
her eyes, and in the seventh heaven when he felt her arm tremble.
Full of pride and hope, he led her with sedulous politeness up the
shining marble steps.
***
"'Tell me, belle dame, what good fairy endowed you in your cradle

with the marvellous gift of transforming everything you touch into
something new and strange. The very flower in your hair has a charm,
as though it were wet with the fresh morning dew. And when you
dance it seems as though the floor swayed and undulated to the rhythm
of your footsteps."
The Count was himself quite astonished at this long and felicitous
compliment, for as a rule he did not find it easy to express himself
coherently. He expected, too, that his beautiful partner would show her
appreciation of his effort.
But he was disappointed. She leaned over the balcony, where they were
enjoying the cool evening air after the dance, and gazed out over the
crowd and the still-advancing carriages. She seemed not to have
understood the Count's great achievement; at least he could only hear
her whisper the inexplicable word, "Pharaoh."
He was on the point of remonstrating with her, when she turned round,
made a step towards the salon, stopped right in front of him, and looked
him in the face with great, wonderful eyes, such as the Count had never
seen before.
"I scarcely think, Monsieur le Comte, that any good fairy--perhaps not
even a cradle--was present at my birth.