§ ii
It was a marvel to Claudine that no one else had noticed. There was a certain effrontery about them both, a smiling ease, but it should not have deceived Edna. She herself had observed it the first time she had gone downstairs and seen them together. Andrée had been at the piano, and Malloy standing by her, to turn her music. She had looked up at him, and met his eyes, and it was not possible for Claudine to doubt that they understood each other too well. She could not help watching them. Malloy was attentive to Edna—rather too much so—but it was with an air of bravado, of displaying his versatility, his irresistible fascination. With a sidelong glance he would follow Andrée with his idiotic infatuation, his bedazzlement, plain in his face. The very fact that they so seldom spoke to each other made her quite sure that there was a great deal of which she knew nothing. She regarded Andrée’s cool triumph with an aching heart. She was not shocked or astounded; it is a sad truth that no perfidy or evil could shock that woman. She was willing to believe both the best and the worst of anyone; whatever was presented to her, she accepted. She believed that now she was seeing the very worst of Andrée, the selfishness, the recklessness, the cruelty, which she knew better than anyone else. She didn’t blame Malloy; not much was to be expected from him. He was kind-hearted and manly, and so on, but wax in hands like Andrée’s. He didn’t love Andrée; he wouldn’t have thought of her if she hadn’t made him. He had been happy with Edna, and he would be again—if he were let alone. And Andrée didn’t love him; she would forget him. If it were stopped now.
That is the reason that Claudine had written to her son-in-law.
“I really think, Alfred, that for several reasons it would be wise to induce Andrée to go home to you as soon as possible, and to take up her work again,” she had written, and she had left it to his common sense to comprehend and to follow her hint.
But she hadn’t reckoned with his unruly passions. He had put two and two together, to make a sum considerably more than four. He had seen Malloy once in their sitting-room at the hotel, where he had come to sing for Andrée. He had decidedly not liked him.
“If he’s engaged to Edna—or going to be—why does he hang around here?” he had asked.
“I suppose he hasn’t the same idea of etiquette as you,” Andrée had answered, with an unpleasant smile. “However, if you don’t like him, I’ll tell him not to come. He’ll understand.”
She had intended to wound and anger him, and she had succeeded. But she had done something more; she had awakened in him that old and buried suspicion for women of Andrée’s class.
Years before he had met Andrée that idea had been superseded. He had made his money, and had begun to know at least a little of that other world. And he saw that the women there were no more or less than human beings, very much hampered and hurt by their idleness. He had tried to see in Andrée not only the beloved woman, but a human being entitled to as many faults and weaknesses as he had himself, entitled to the same moderation of judgment that he himself required. He had deliberately put aside his suspicion of Malloy, he had conquered Andrée’s irritability with his patient good-humour, and they had been getting along very nicely the week before Claudine’s illness.
And now, by the words of Claudine’s letter, all the fruits of his reason were destroyed, and the old distrust and envy and utter misunderstanding came rushing back. He saw Andrée as a stranger of whom he knew really nothing, an unaccountable, alien creature. He knew at once that Claudine’s letter referred to Malloy. No doubt the fellow was hanging about the house there all the time, singing to her....
It was on Saturday night that he got it; he had reflected upon it all that night, and the next morning, and by the afternoon he was in a humour which would have caused Andrée no little astonishment. He hated the Vincelles and all their entourage; he believed that they were laughing at him, that he had been played with all these weeks, that now they fancied they had got well rid of him. All except Claudine; she wasn’t like the others, of course. He wished that he could see her and talk to her, but that couldn’t be. She had at least indicated to him what should be done.