IV
Side by side in the brougham that took them back to their house after the performance at the Opéra, the Comte and Comtesse de Mascaret sat in silence. But suddenly the husband said to his wife:
“Gabrielle!”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you think this has lasted long enough?”
“What?”
“The abominable torture to which you have condemned me for six years.”
“Well, I can’t do anything about it.”
“At least, tell me which one it is.”
“Never.”
“Think how I can no longer see my children or feel them round me without my heart being wrung by this doubt. Tell me which it is, and I swear I will forgive and that I’ll treat it just like the others.”
“I haven’t the right to do it.”
“Don’t you see that I can’t endure this life any longer, this gnawing thought, this question that I never cease to ask myself, this question that tortures me every time I look at them? I shall go mad.”
She asked:
“So you have suffered deeply?”
“Frightfully. Would I otherwise have endured the horror of living beside you, and the still worse horror of feeling, of knowing that there is one such child among them, whom I can’t recognise, and who makes it impossible for me to love the others?”
She repeated:
“So, you really have suffered very much?”
He answered in a sad restrained voice:
“Don’t I tell you every day that it is an intolerable torture to me? But for that, would I have come back, would I have remained in this house, near you and near them, if I had not loved them, my children? Oh, you have behaved towards me in a shameful way. The only passion of my heart is for my children: you know it well. I feel for them as a father of olden days, as I was for you the husband of an older ideal of family life, for I remain a man of instinct, a man of nature, a man of an earlier day. Yes, I own it, you made me terribly jealous, because you are a woman of another race, another spirit, with other needs. Oh, I shall never forget the things you said to me. From that day, moreover, I cared no more what you did. I did not kill you because that would have deprived me of the last means on earth by which I could find out which of our … of your children is not mine. I have waited, but I have suffered more than you would believe, for I dare not love them now, except perhaps the eldest: I daren’t look at them now, call them, embrace them, I can’t take one of them on my knees now without wondering: ‘Is this the one?’ For six years I have been courteous to you, even kind and complaisant towards you. Tell me the truth and I give you my word that I will do nothing unkind.”
In the darkness of the carriage, he thought he could feel that she was moved, and feeling that at last she was going to speak, he said:
“I beg you to tell me, I implore you.”
She murmured:
“Perhaps I have been more guilty than you think. But I could not, I could not go on with that destestable life of continued pregnancies. There was only one way in which I could drive you from my bed. I lied before God, and I lied with my hand raised to my children’s heads, for I never deceived you.”
He seized her arm in the darkness, and gripping it as he had done on the terrible day when they drove in the park, he stammered:
“Is it true?”
“Quite true.”
But, distraught with agony, he groaned:
“Oh, I shall be a prey to new doubts that will never end. Which time did you lie, that other day or today? How can I believe you now? How can I believe a woman after that? I shall never know again what to think. I had rather you had said to me: ‘It’s Jacques,’ or ‘It’s Jeanne.’ ”
The carriage was turning into the courtyard of the house. When it drew up before the steps, the comte descended first and as always offered his arm to his wife to mount the steps.
“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” he said.
She answered:
“I’d like you to.”
They went into a small sitting-room, and a rather surprised footman lit its candles.
Then, when they were alone, he went on:
“How am I to know the truth? I have implored you a thousand times to speak, you remained silent, impenetrable, inflexible, inexorable, and now you come to me today and tell me that you lied. For six years you have found it in your heart to let me believe a thing like that! No, it’s now you’re lying, I don’t know why, out of pity for me, perhaps?”
She replied, with a grave sincere air:
“But if I had not lied I should have had four more children in the last six years.”
He cried:
“Is it a mother talking like that?”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t feel in the least as a mother towards children who are not born, I’m content to be the mother of those I have and to love them with all my heart. I am, we are women of the civilised world. We no longer are and we refuse to be mere females who replenish the earth.”
She rose, but he seized her hands.
“One word, only one word, Gabrielle. Will you tell me the truth?”
“I have just told you it. I have never deceived you.”
He looked her squarely in the face, so lovely as she was, with her eyes grey as cold skies. In her dusky hair, in that shadowy night of black hair, shone the diadem powdered with diamonds like a milky way. Then he felt suddenly, by some intuition he felt that this being before him was not only a woman destined to perpetuate her race, but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires, garnered in us by the centuries, turned aside from primitive and divine goal to wander towards a mystic beauty half-seen and intangible. So that some of them flourish only for our dreams, adorned with all the poetry, the romantic luxury, the conceits and the aesthetic charm that civilisation has gathered round woman, this statue of flesh that engenders as many fevers of the senses as immaterial appetites.
Her husband remained standing in front of her, dazed by this tardy and obscure discovery, reaching directly back to the cause of his old jealousy and understanding it hardly at all.
At last he said:
“I believe you. I feel that at this moment you are not lying: and indeed it always seemed to me before that you were lying.”
She held out her hand:
“We are friends then?”
He took this hand and kissed it, answering:
“We are friends. Thank you, Gabrielle.”
Then he went out, still looking at her, marvelling that she was still so lovely, and feeling in himself the birth of a strange emotion, an emotion perhaps more terrible than the simple love of old.