And from that far-off memory things surged up that
stirred her to a deeper wrath.
“Ah, yes, parbleu! I am a daughter
of adventure, and this adventurer is, of a truth,
the fit husband for me.”
“You must wait at least till he is a widower,”
replied Jenkins calmly. “And, in that case,
you run the risk of having a long time to wait, for
his Levantine seems to enjoy excellent health.”
Felicia Ruys turned pale.
“He is married?”
“Married? certainly, and father of a bevy of
children. The whole camp of them landed a couple
of days ago.”
For a minute she remained overwhelmed, looking into
space, her cheeks quivering. Opposite her, the
Nabob’s large face, with its flattened nose,
its sensual and weak mouth, spoke insistently of life
and reality in the gloss of its clay. She looked
at it for an instant, then made a step forward and,
with a gesture of disgust, overturned, with the high
wooden stool on which it stood, the glistening and
greasy block, which fell on the floor shattered to
a heap of mud.
Married he was and had been so for twelve years, but
he had mentioned the fact to no one among his Parisian
acquaintances, through Eastern habit, that silence
which the people of those countries preserve upon
affairs of the harem. Suddenly it was reported
that madame was coming, that apartments were to be
prepared for herself, her children, and her female
attendants. The Nabob took the whole second floor
of the house on the Place Vendome, the tenant of which
was turned out at an expense worthy of a Nabob.
The stables also were extended, the staff doubled;
then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Gare
de Lyon to meet madame, who arrived by train heated
expressly for her during the journey from Marseilles
and filled by a suite of negresses, serving-maids,
and little negro boys.
She arrived in a condition of frightful exhaustion,
utterly worn out and bewildered by her long railway
journey, the first of her life, for, after being taken
to Tunis while still quite a child, she had never left
it. From her carriage, two negroes carried her
into her apartments on an easy chair which, subsequently,
always remained downstairs beneath the entrance porch,
in readiness for these difficult removals. Mme.
Jansoulet could not mount the staircase, which made
her dizzy; she would not have lifts, which creaked
under her weight; besides, she never walked.
Of enormous size, bloated to such a degree that it
was impossible to assign to her any particular age
between twenty-five and forty, with a rather pretty
face but grown shapeless in its features, dull eyes
beneath lids that drooped, vulgarly dressed in foreign
clothes, laden with diamonds and jewels after the fashion
of a Hindu idol, she was as fine a sample as could
be found of those transplanted European women called
Levantines—a curious race of obese creoles
whom speech and costume alone attach to our world,
but whom the East wraps round with its stupefying
atmosphere, with the subtle poisons of its drugged
air in which everything, from the tissues of the skin
to the waists of garments, even to the soul, is enervated
and relaxed.
