ACT II
The same scene. Evening. Electric light.
LUCIE. Now you know. I sent for you as soon as possible.
MADELEINE [who is in evening dress] There is only one thing to do. Tell your husband everything and make him go to the Bernins.
LUCIE. My God!
MADELEINE. The doctor is a long time with him. I absolutely must go to this party.
LUCIE. Yes, go. But you’ll come back?
MADELEINE. As soon as I can. Don’t despair. Poor little Annette!
LUCIE. Do you think—?
MADELEINE. Good bye for the moment. Don’t move.
Madeleine goes out, and the servant is seen giving her her cloak. Lucie, alone, walks restlessly to and fro. As she comes to the door of Brignac’s study, she stops to listen.
LUCIE [aloud, to herself] How loud the doctor’s speaking. One would think they had quarrelled.
Fresh pause. The study door opens. Enter Hourtin and Brignac.
BRIGNAC. I can assure you, Dr. Hourtin, that I have reached years of discretion.
HOURTIN. It was my duty, sir, to speak to you as I have done.
BRIGNAC [shewing him to the door, drily] I am obliged to you.
HOURTIN. I have something else to say to Madame Brignac.
BRIGNAC. About me?
HOURTIN. About herself and the children; but if you object—
BRIGNAC. I hardly imagine it is indispensable.
LUCIE. What is it? Dr. Hourtin, I beg you will tell me what you think I ought to know.
BRIGNAC. I haven’t time to waste over this subject. I repeat I am exceedingly busy, and I have to make a speech this evening. You must excuse my leaving you. Good bye.
Hourtin bows. Brignac goes out, slamming the door of his study.
LUCIE. I trust you will forgive my husband if he has annoyed you.
HOURTIN. A doctor cannot be annoyed at the symptoms of a disease. I would no more be indignant at M. Brignac’s temper than bear malice against him for having fever in an attack of pneumonia.
LUCIE. You wanted to speak to him. Is there something about the children?
HOURTIN. If you see that the children are treated as your own doctor and I have prescribed in our consultation, I am confident that their condition will improve. But I have something more to say to you yourself. Not long ago I was called in to a married couple, one of whom was a victim to morphia and refused to give up the use of the poison. The children of the marriage were degenerate, and there was every reason to think that should others be born they would be even less healthy than the first. I had to inform the other parent concerned of the facts, in order, if possible, to discover some means of cure. Towards you I have the same duty. With the difference that here the poison is alcohol instead of morphia, the cases are identical. Like my other patient, M. Brignac refused to listen to me; and although his obstinacy is due to his poisoned condition, I confess I was unable, in spite of a physician’s philosophy, to see without irritation the way in which he is rushing to ruin, intellectual and physical. Now your nerves are strong. I was unwilling to go away without speaking to you.
LUCIE. My children?
HOURTIN. Your children are suffering from a nervous complaint which was born with them.
LUCIE. As the result, you mean, of their father’s intemperance? Our own doctor and another besides have already told me the same thing.
HOURTIN. They should have begun by telling M. Brignac.
LUCIE. They did.
HOURTIN. Well?
LUCIE. He listened no more to them than he did to you.
HOURTIN. Is he not fond of the children?
LUCIE. In his own way he is. But he will never change his way of living.
HOURTIN. So much the worse for him.
LUCIE. He did try once. He was incapable of work and became sad, weak, restless.
HOURTIN. Like a morphinomaniac deprived of his drug.
LUCIE. To his mind the experiment was decisive. He simply cannot study a brief or speak in court without the help of his usual stimulant. He thinks it does him no harm.
HOURTIN. He has only to look at the children.
LUCIE. What he says is that at their age he had nervous convulsions, and that now he is perfectly well.
HOURTIN. Precisely. He received from his father a legacy that he has transmitted to them in a graver degree. His father drank, but his life was the healthy, active, open air life of a peasant, and his power of resistance greater because he probably did not inherit a morbid tendency. Your husband’s life is sedentary and feverish. Moreover, he does inherit the tendency. You tell me that he had convulsions in infancy; yesterday he said he was a backward child. These are symptoms just as much as his desire for drink and his irritability. He had a taint at birth that he has increased. His children suffer from a cumulative degeneracy. The grandfather drank, the son suffers from alcoholism, the children are nervous invalids.
LUCIE. Horrible.
HOURTIN. You must use all your influence with your husband to cure him.
LUCIE. He won’t listen to me.
HOURTIN. You must insist. You must make him see his duty as a father.
LUCIE. It would be so useless that I shall not even try.
HOURTIN [rising] Then I have only one further piece of advice for you both: don’t have any more children.
LUCIE. No more children?
HOURTIN. No.
LUCIE. Why not?
HOURTIN. Because it is to be feared that any you might now have would be more diseased than the first.
LUCIE. Is that certain?
HOURTIN. In medicine there are no certainties; only probabilities. The chances are, perhaps, five to one that I am right. Would you venture to give any creature so doubtful an existence?
LUCIE. I! No, indeed. Most likely you have said as much to my husband. Won’t he believe you?
HOURTIN. You must make him realize that the responsibility of having a child, great as it always is, becomes terrible when, so far from its being born into normal circumstances, it runs the risk of going into the world worse equipped than usual. To give birth to a child doomed to unhappiness or likely to be an invalid or incapable of growing up is like crippling someone. It is as much a crime as robbery or murder. Children ought to be deliberately and soberly brought into the world by parents healthy enough to give them health and of sufficient means to ensure their complete development. You must forgive me. When I get on this subject I hardly know how to stop. But really there is so much unavoidable misery and distress that we ought not to add to the sum of general suffering for which there is no remedy.
Enter Madeleine. She wears an opera cloak and a mantilla over her evening dress. During the following scene Josephine helps her off with her things.
MADELEINE. How do you do, Dr. Hourtin? I’m so glad to find you still here. I’ve only just been able to get away from the party. I had to go. There’s nothing serious the matter with the children, I hope?
HOURTIN. Nothing serious. With the care of a mother like theirs, I have every confidence. Now I was just going. Good bye.
MADELEINE. Good bye. Thank you.
LUCIE. I’m extremely grateful to you, Dr. Hourtin.
HOURTIN. Don’t mention it. Good bye, good bye. [He goes out].
LUCIE. Oh, Madeleine!
MADELEINE. What is it?
LUCIE. Do you know why the children are ill? Because of Julien’s intemperance.
MADELEINE. My poor darling! But you knew that before. Our doctor said so; and when they went to Paris with me, the man there said the same.
LUCIE. I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t true.
MADELEINE. And Annette?
LUCIE. Has anything fresh happened?
MADELEINE. Yes; the Bernins have announced Jacques’ engagement to his cousin. They want to put an end to the business. People were talking of the engagement this evening.
LUCIE. Ah! And they’re still going away this evening.
MADELEINE. At ten o’clock. How does she take it?
LUCIE. She is in her room, waiting as though she expected something. She said just now she knew the Bernins would not go this evening. What can she hope?
MADELEINE. We must tell her about the engagement. She mustn’t be left to hear of it from strangers.
LUCIE. No, no.
MADELEINE. And your husband?
LUCIE. He’s working in there. There’s to be a political meeting, a smoking concert or something, after the dinner at the Prefecture to-night. He heard at the last moment that he was expected to speak, on the budget of the Department, I think. I don’t know exactly. Anyway, he’s there.
MADELEINE. Fetch Annette, then.
LUCIE. Yes. [She goes out. A short silence. Then she calls outside] Madeleine! Madeleine!
MADELEINE [running to the door] What is it?
LUCIE [returning] She isn’t there.
MADELEINE. Where is she?
LUCIE. Gone! She’s left a note. She’s gone to look for him. Quick! Your carriage is here. Go and find her. Help her!
MADELEINE. Gone!
LUCIE. Yes. Quick! Go!
Madeleine goes out. Enter Brignac.
BRIGNAC. What is all this noise about?
LUCIE. Julien, I’ve something very serious to say to you. A disaster has fallen on us.
BRIGNAC. The children!
LUCIE. No; it’s about Annette.
BRIGNAC. Is she ill?
LUCIE. Not ill, but in cruel, horrible grief.
BRIGNAC. Grief at her age! A love affair, eh? She’s been jilted?
LUCIE. That’s it.
BRIGNAC. Whew! I breathe again. You frightened me. Not so very serious.
LUCIE. Yes; it is. My dear, you must listen with all your heart and with all your mind—and be kind.
BRIGNAC. But what’s the matter?
LUCIE. Annette has fallen in love with a scoundrel who has deceived her. The poor child committed the mistake of trusting him completely. He promised to marry her and took advantage of her innocence to seduce her. [Low] Understand me, Julien: she is going to have a baby in six months.
BRIGNAC. Annette?
LUCIE. Annette.
BRIGNAC. Impossible. It’s—
LUCIE. It was she who confessed to me. She is sure of it.
BRIGNAC [after a silence] Who’s the man?
LUCIE. Jacques Bernin.
BRIGNAC. Jacques Bernin!
LUCIE. Yes.
BRIGNAC [furious] Here’s a fine piece of business! Ha, at the moment of my election, too! Magnificent! Oh, she’s done me to rights, your sister has! All’s up with me now. We may as well pack our trunks and be off.
LUCIE. You exaggerate.
BRIGNAC. Do I? I tell you if she had been caught stealing—stealing, do you hear?—it wouldn’t have been worse. Even that would have compromised me less—thrown me less absolutely out of the running.
LUCIE. Leave that till later. Now the thing is to save her. You’ll go tomorrow morning, won’t you, Julien, and find this fellow? Make him see what an abominable crime it would be for him to desert our poor little girl.
BRIGNAC. Much you know him, M. Jacques Bernin. But I do! He’ll laugh in my face. His one idea is to get on in the world. Why, he was talking of his engagement to Mademoiselle Dormance two months ago and chortling over her shekels. Good lord, what a man for your sister to hit upon!
LUCIE. But you won’t abandon her?
BRIGNAC. Yes; I’m in a nice place. Who’d have thought it? So this is the thanks I get for all I’ve done for her!
LUCIE. Don’t fly into a rage!
BRIGNAC. Her! her! A child brought up in the strictest principles, brought up at home here by you and me, not allowed to read novels or go to the theatre! She hasn’t even the excuse of having been to a boarding school. Why, sometimes we could hardly help laughing at her ignorance of life.
LUCIE. Perhaps if she had been less ignorant, she would have run less risk.
BRIGNAC [breaking out] That’s right! Now it’s all my fault!
LUCIE. Don’t get into a passion!
BRIGNAC. I shall if I like! And I think there’s some reason, too! Annette!
LUCIE. Annette is only a victim.
BRIGNAC [shouting] A victim! I tell you there’s only one victim here! Only one! And do you know who?
LUCIE. You, I suppose.
BRIGNAC. Yes; it is. Look here. Can’t you see the jokes that will be made about me, the ironical congratulations—me, the apostle of repopulation? Ha, they’ll say that if I don’t give an example myself, my family does!
LUCIE. Julien, Julien, please!
BRIGNAC. Just when I thought I had done with vegetating as a provincial lawyer, when my patience and ability had got me accepted as candidate!
LUCIE. You might not have been elected.
BRIGNAC. I should have been! Even if it were not me, our side would win. Once in the Chamber, I should have done with this wretched obscure existence.
LUCIE. And then?
BRIGNAC. Then? A deputy gets any amount of work, and wins his cases, too! Judges listen very differently to a man who any day may become Minister of Justice. It means something to them. And now this catastrophe! I tell you that here, at Chartres, it spells ruin.
LUCIE. How you exaggerate! Who’s to know?
BRIGNAC. Who’s to know? Next Sunday every person in the town’ll be talking of it. And my political opponents, do you think they’ll scruple? Not only them either. M. de Forgeau and his committee won’t give the electors the chance to turn me down. Within a week I shall be shewn the door. You see! It’ll be lucky if no one insinuates that I seduced the girl myself!
LUCIE. Oh!
BRIGNAC. This is a provincial town! This is Chartres!
LUCIE. So when an unhappy woman is seduced by a scoundrel, her shame, if shame there is, falls on her whole family! Is that the system you uphold?
BRIGNAC. Society must defend itself against immorality. Without the guarantee of social punishment, there would soon be hardly any except illegitimate children.
LUCIE. If anyone is guilty, two are. Why do you only punish the mother?
BRIGNAC. How should I know? Because it’s easier.
LUCIE. But you can’t sit still and do nothing. You must do something! You’re the head of the family.
BRIGNAC. Something! Something! What? The only logical thing I know is to take a pistol—
LUCIE. Julien!
BRIGNAC. And go coolly and put a bullet through the man’s head. No? A crime, is it? Ah, if we lived in an age with a little more guts! [As if to himself] No; I’m not sure it’s not my duty to go and do justice myself
LUCIE. Julien, you’re not dreaming of that!
BRIGNAC. And why not?
LUCIE. Think of the scandal, and then—
BRIGNAC. And then I should be tried for murder? Well, do you think I’m afraid of that? What then? I should defend myself, and I can tell you not many people have heard such a speech as I should make! Think of the effect on the jury! I should be acquitted, and the public would cheer till the court had to be cleared. [A pause]. He’s in luck’s way, the brute, that I’ve too much respect for human life. If I weren’t a bit old fashioned—ha, so much for him. [A pause]. No, no; the weak point in these folk is their pocket. That’s what I’ll go for. That’s it. We’ll bring an action, an action for the seduction of an infant.
LUCIE. Publish her shame like that!
BRIGNAC. He’ll have his share of it. I’ll make him sing another tune, so I will. We’ll ask twenty, fifty, a hundred thousand francs damages! It’ll be a dowry for Annette. Yes; we can do that, an ordinary civil action, or else, if we like, prosecute him criminally. I could shew you the law about it; it’s all in the reports. And besides, the way I’ll conduct the case, the papers will boom it sky high.
LUCIE. You can’t surely want to have the papers talking about us, printing poor Annette’s story, discussing her honor?
BRIGNAC. Reflecting on me, too. If only we weren’t related!
LUCIE. We should be just as much dishonored.
BRIGNAC. If you hadn’t made me take Annette to live with us when your parents died, none of this would have happened.
LUCIE. It was you who suggested it to me!
BRIGNAC. I know I did. All the stupid things I’ve done in my life—not that there have been many—come from my having too good a heart. All people from the South have; we can’t think twice before doing a kindness. So much the more reason why you should have looked after her carefully.
LUCIE. Oh, it’s too much! When you yourself wanted her to make friends with the Bernins!
BRIGNAC. Because I hoped that old Bernin would be useful to us!
LUCIE. You always kept urging Annette to go to them.
BRIGNAC. So it’s all my fault, is it?
LUCIE. I don’t say that, but I must shew you that I’m not so culpable as you make out. What are we going to do?
BRIGNAC. In any case Annette can’t stay here.
LUCIE. Good heavens, where can she go? Madeleine can’t have her. Perhaps our old nurse, Catherine—
BRIGNAC. If she went to Madeleine or Catherine, it would be exactly as if we kept her here. The important thing is that no one should know anything about it. She must go to Paris, to some big town, till the birth of her child.
LUCIE. It’s not possible.
BRIGNAC. The only thing not possible is to let it be known, to keep her at Chartres. Can’t you imagine what it would be like for her if we did? Think of her going to a concert or to Mass when her condition became evident! She wouldn’t be able to go out of the house without being exposed to insult and insolence. And the way our acquaintances would look at her! Why, it would be purgatory.
LUCIE. And everyone will welcome M. Jacques Bernin.
BRIGNAC. Of course they will. And when the child is born, what then? I’m not thinking of the expense: fortunately for her she has us to fall back on, so she wouldn’t starve. Suppose she put the baby out to nurse? Afterwards she’d have to keep it with her—imagine what people would say! She might pay for it to be brought up elsewhere, but that’s only a way of deserting it. She would never be able to marry. All her life she would be a pariah. No; the only thing is to send her away.
LUCIE. Send her away—where to?
BRIGNAC. How should I know? We’ll find some place. There are places for that at Paris. Yes; I remember now, special places. We’ll pay whatever is necessary. Establishments where you’re not required to give your name at all. The difficulty will be to find a plausible reason of Annette’s absence. However, we’ll find one.
LUCIE. And the child?
BRIGNAC. The child? She can do what she likes with that. You don’t suppose I’ll have it back here with her, do you?
LUCIE. Then that’s what you’re proposing to do?
BRIGNAC. That’s what we must do.
LUCIE. How does one get into these places you were speaking of?
BRIGNAC. I don’t know exactly. I’ll find out. Don’t worry. If necessary, I’ll go to Paris and take the proper steps. Of course without saying that it’s to do with anyone I know.
LUCIE. Of course.
BRIGNAC. Of course.
LUCIE [rising and touching him on the shoulder as she passes] You are a fine fellow.
BRIGNAC [modestly] Oh, come; only a little thought was wanted.
LUCIE. I think you have no conscience at all.
BRIGNAC. What do you mean? You speak as if I were a monster.
LUCIE. Nothing but respect for public opinion.
BRIGNAC. Respect for public opinion is one form of conscience.
LUCIE. The conscience of people who haven’t got any!
BRIGNAC. Anyway, one can’t do anything else.
LUCIE. Can’t you imagine what my poor darling’s life would be like if we did what you said? Turned out of here—
BRIGNAC. No, no; not turned out.
LUCIE. Sent away unwillingly, if you like, coming to this place, suddenly thrust into contact with all the sadness and the misery and the vice of Paris! Think of her waiting all those months, in the midst of the women there, while a poor little creature is growing into life that she knows beforehand is condemned to all the risks and cruelty suffered by children whom their mothers abandon! And when she is torn with the torturing pain that I know so well, at that moment of martyrdom when a woman feels death hovering over her bed and watching jealously for mother and child, when the full horror of the sacred mystery she has accomplished is on her, then she’ll only have strangers round her! And if her poor eyes look round, like a victim’s, perhaps for the last time, for a friendly glance, if she feels for a hand to press, she will only see round her bed unknown men performing a duty and women carrying on their trade. And then? Then she must resist her highest instincts, stifle the cry of love that consoles all women for what they have gone through, and say she doesn’t want her child—look aside, and say: ‘Take him away! I don’t want to see him.’ That’s the price for which she will be pardoned the crime of someone else! That’s your justice! Justice! Social hypocrisy rather—that’s what you stand up for. Nothing but that. And that’s why, if Annette stayed to bring up her child here, she would be an object of reproach; whereas, if she is confined secretly in Paris and gets rid of the baby, nobody will say anything. Let’s be frank about it. If she had a lover, but no child, she would be let off. It isn’t immorality that’s condemned, but having children! You cry out for a higher birth rate, and at the same time you say to women: ‘No children without marriage, and no marriage without a dowry.’ Well, so long as you don’t change that, all your circulars and your speeches will only succeed in arousing laughter of pity and of rage!
BRIGNAC. Well, is it my fault?
LUCIE. No; it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of all of us, of our prejudice, our silly vanity, our hypocrisy. But you stand up for it all and justify it. You have the typical window dressing, middle class virtues. You publicly preach the repopulation of France, and then find it in your conscience to get rid of a child whose only fault is that its parents had it without first going through a stupid ceremony, and without the whole town being told that Monsieur X and Mademoiselle Y were going to bed together! [A pause]. Go and make your speech. Go and defend the morals of society. That’s about what you’re worth.
Enter Madeleine.
MADELEINE. She’s not come back?
LUCIE. No. Haven’t you seen her?
MADELEINE. No.
BRIGNAC. Since you take it like that, then, you will kindly find another home than my house for your sister from now onwards.
LUCIE. Ah, yes; say it outright! You long to get rid of her!
BRIGNAC [talking all the time while he goes into his study and comes back with his portfolio, hat, and coat] I’m off. It’s too much! Yes; I’m off! And for my part, I refuse to be the victim of your sister’s pranks!
LUCIE [to herself] Wretch! wretch!
BRIGNAC. Do what you like, but I won’t have that sort of thing here. [He goes out].
MADELEINE. I don’t know which way she went nor where she is.
LUCIE. You’ve been to the Bernins?
MADELEINE. They were dining out.
LUCIE. Did they leave the town by an afternoon train?
MADELEINE. I don’t know.
LUCIE. Oh, I’m afraid.
MADELEINE. Annette must have known where they were dining, because I got to their door before she had time to get there herself.
LUCIE. You should have gone to the station.
MADELEINE. I made up my mind to, but then I saw that I shouldn’t have time before the train went. So I thought she must have come back.
LUCIE. Here she is! Thank God!
Enter Catherine and Annette.
CATHERINE. I will! I will tell! So as they may stop you trying again.
Annette, her teeth clenched, her eyes fixed, shrugs her shoulders. Throughout the ensuing scene no tear comes to her eyes.
MADELEINE. In heaven’s name what has happened?
LUCIE. You’re here, you’re here! [She tries to take Annette in her arms].
ANNETTE. Let me go! Let me go! [She picks up her hat and coat, which she has thrown on to a chair, and sits down, hard and reticent]
LUCIE. What is the matter? What have you done?
ANNETTE [in a broken voice] I wanted to put an end to myself. Catherine stopped me.
LUCIE. To kill—
MADELEINE. Annette!
LUCIE. And us, had you forgotten us?
ANNETTE. My death would have brought less trouble on you than my life will.
MADELEINE. Catherine, what has happened?
CATHERINE. I was getting out of the train. I saw her start to throw herself under the wheels.
MADELEINE and LUCIE [terrified] Oh!
ANNETTE. You’ll be sorry one day you stopped me.
CATHERINE. You hear her! That’s the way she’s been going on as we came back, all the time she was telling me her story.
LUCIE. Swear you’ll never try again, Annette.
ANNETTE. How can I tell?
MADELEINE. Was she alone?
CATHERINE. No. When I saw her, she seemed to be having a dispute with M. Bernin’s family. I stopped to watch. Then M. Jacques got into the train and Annette stood there crying; and just as the train went away, she gave a cry and ran to try and throw herself under the wheels. I caught her by her dress and brought her away; and I wouldn’t leave her till I knew she was back here and I had told you what she’d done.
ANNETTE. All right. Don’t let’s speak about it. I tried to kill myself and I failed. If they saw me, no doubt they shrugged their shoulders.
MADELEINE. You went to wait for them at the train?
ANNETTE. No. I knew where Jacques was dining—at a restaurant—a farewell party. His parents were having dinner at the station. I went to the restaurant and asked for him, like a girl off the streets. I could hear his friends laughing and joking from where I was, when the waiter took my message.
LUCIE. Did he come?
ANNETTE. Yes. He told me afterwards he thought it was some woman from a café chantant who sent for him. Oh!
MADELEINE. And when he saw that it was you?
ANNETTE. He took me into the street, so that I shouldn’t be recognized. That’s where we had our talk. The passers-by laughed and made horrible jokes.
MADELEINE. And then you told him?
ANNETTE. Yes.
LUCIE. Well?
ANNETTE. You couldn’t guess what he answered: that it wasn’t true.
LUCIE. Oh!
ANNETTE [still tearlessly] Then he lost his temper and said he saw through my game; that I wanted to force him to marry me because he was rich. Much he spared me! I tried to put my arms round him: he threatened to call the police. Then I cried, I implored him—I asked him to come with me tomorrow to a doctor to prove I wasn’t lying. He answered quite coldly that, even if it was true, there was nothing to prove that it was him. Ah, you can’t believe it, can you? It’s too much! I couldn’t have, unless I had heard it with my own ears; and how I could without dying I don’t know. You don’t know what depths of shame and cowardice I sunk to. Then he looked at his watch, saying he only had time to catch the train. He said good bye and dashed off to the station. I had to half run to keep up, crying, and begging him not to desert me—for the sake of his child, of my happiness, my love, my very life! Horrible! Horrible! Loathsome! And how ridiculous! I had him by the arm. I couldn’t believe that was the end. At the entrance to the station he said, brutally: ‘Let me go, will you?’ I said: ‘You shan’t go.’ Then he rushed to the train and got into the carriage, nearly crushing my fingers in the door, and hid behind his mother; and she threatened, too, to have me arrested. Gabrielle sat there, looking white, and pretending not to notice and not to know me. Catherine’s told you the rest.
A silence.
LUCIE. You must swear, Annette, never to think again of suicide.
ANNETTE. I couldn’t swear sincerely.
MADELEINE. You must be brave, now that you know what life is, brutally as it has been revealed to you. Almost all the women you think happy have gone through an inner catastrophe. They make themselves forget it because their very tears give out. Suffering is reticent, and they conceal theirs. But there are few women whose lives have not been broken, few who don’t carry within them the corpse of the woman they would have wished to be.
ANNETTE. You say that to console me. I don’t believe it.
MADELEINE. It’s the truth; and I’ve learnt it by experience.
ANNETTE. I’m tired of life. I feel as if I were a hundred.
LUCIE. Keep up your heart. We won’t desert you.
ANNETTE. What can you do? I shall be turned away from here.
LUCIE. If you are, I’ll go with you.
ANNETTE. And your children?
LUCIE. I’ll take them, too.
ANNETTE. He’ll fetch them back. Besides, what should we live on?
LUCIE. Ah!
ANNETTE. You see. You can’t do anything either, Madeleine, for all your love. Your husband wouldn’t let you take me in. Nor you either, Catherine. You couldn’t afford to. Well, then?
CATHERINE. Eh! eh!
Fresh silence.
ANNETTE. What a terrible thing life is!
MADELEINE. For all women.
ANNETTE. Not for anyone as much as for me.
MADELEINE. You think so, and that’s why you think of dying. Well, I’m alive. You see me laughing now and then. If you only knew!
CATHERINE. And what about about me, Annette?
ANNETTE. You have your children to console you.
CATHERINE. It’s they that make it hard for me.
ANNETTE. For other women it’s a refuge to have children. What will it be for me?
MADELEINE. You think that I am happy, Annette?
ANNETTE. You have a husband who loves you, you’re rich, you can afford to dress beautifully, you go everywhere, and everyone wants to have you. That’s some happiness, isn’t it?
MADELEINE. That’s all you see. If you only knew what you don’t see!
CATHERINE. Do you think being a mother has made me happy?
ANNETTE. I know you’re poor. You have to work, to work hard, to bring up your children; but you can look the world in the face and love them.
CATHERINE. If you knew!
MADELEINE. Then you must know! Even Lucie doesn’t know what I’m going to say. You think I’m happy because the money my godmother left me enabled me to marry the man of my choice, a man who was well off. Listen, then. My husband married me because I was good looking. He wanted a son. I gave him one, but my child cost me his love. You can’t be a wife and a mother at the same time. I lost my elegant figure, I was ill, I suffered the woes that woman’s flesh is heir to and—he left me for another woman! Don’t be too quick to condemn worldly women who shrink from motherhood, Annette. Man’s baseness is such that they must often choose between their husbands and their children. And if some choose their husband, let those who have never loved throw the first stone at them! I felt that if I nursed my baby I should lose my husband for good, and to win him back I put my child out to nurse. He died, Annette; and I have the agony of thinking that if I had kept him with me he would be alive. Do you understand? It’s as if I had killed him. Now I don’t mean to have another child. I lead a worldly life, laughing, dining out, going to parties, because that’s what my husband wants, and that’s how he loves me. I shall have a lonely old age. My arms are empty—mine, whose joy would have been to rock my children to sleep in them—and I’m ashamed of what I’m doing. I despise myself. You’d think I’d paid enough for my husband’s love, wouldn’t you? Oh, no. He’s gone to Paris, ostensibly on business, really to another woman. I know it. I pretend not to know because I’m afraid of forcing him to choose between her and me. That’s my life, Annette. Many women whom you think happy live like that.
ANNETTE. Poor Madeleine!
LUCIE. And I. One of my little girls is an invalid, the other is ailing. Perhaps she’ll die.
CATHERINE. Two of mine died of want.
MADELEINE. I don’t want to have another child for fear that my husband would leave me altogether. A divorce, if I got one, would leave me a kind of half-widow and make my girl an orphan.
CATHERINE. If I had any more, it would only mean taking away food from those who haven’t enough as it is.
LUCIE. I’m guilty enough already. Two children of suffering owe their existence to me.
MADELEINE. Think of my torture! I adore my husband: when he comes back I long to feel myself in his arms and I dread the consequences.
CATHERINE. Mine will leave me if I have another. And then what would become of me, all alone with all my children?
LUCIE. Your children who are grown up will support you, Catherine.
CATHERINE. Those who are grown up! Grown up! I’ve just been hearing about them. Edmond is in hospital, ruined for life by going into what they call ‘a dangerous trade’ because he couldn’t get work in any other. There are too many workmen. My daughter, she’s on the streets. [Sobbing] Oh, it’s too much! There’s too much misery in the world!
MADELEINE. Yes, there’s too much misery!
ANNETTE. And I thought I was the most miserable!
LUCIE. There’s too much unhappiness!
CATHERINE. The children of poor folk are unhappy, all of them, all.
ANNETTE. The child of an unmarried woman, too, is born only to suffering.
LUCIE. Children who are born sickly or ill ought not to be born at all.
CATHERINE. You see, Annette, we must bear it. God’s given us eyes; it’s to cry with.
ANNETTE. To cry with!
The four women cry silently. Catherine is in Madeleine’s arms. Lucie has her head on Annette’s lap.
CATHERINE [making ready to leave] Please to forgive me.
MADELEINE. We have the same troubles.
ANNETTE. Yes; we have the same troubles.
CATHERINE. Yes; whether one’s rich or poor, when one’s a woman—
Annette kisses Catherine. Catherine goes out.
MADELEINE. I must go, too. Your husband will be coming back.
LUCIE [to herself, terrified] My husband coming back—coming back!
ANNETTE. I won’t see him. Madeleine, you’re alone; take me with you!
MADELEINE. Yes. You can come tomorrow, Lucie. We’ll talk then.
LUCIE. Yes. [Suddenly] Here he is. Go out that way.
She pushes them out through Annette’s room. After a moment Brignac comes in, flushed and happy.
BRIGNAC. What, still up! Aha, my dear, I’m going to be elected! Absolutely certain, I tell you. Here, I’ve brought you a bunch of roses.
LUCIE [without listening] Thank you. So you’re going to turn Annette out?
BRIGNAC. I’m not turning her out. I simply ask her to go somewhere else.
LUCIE. I shall go with her.
BRIGNAC. You’re going to leave me?
LUCIE. Yes.
BRIGNAC. You don’t love me any more, then?
LUCIE. No.
BRIGNAC. Ha. Another story beginning. Since when?
LUCIE. I’ve never loved you.
BRIGNAC. All the same you married me.
LUCIE. I didn’t love you.
BRIGNAC. This is nice news. Go on.
LUCIE. You’re only another victim of the morals you were championing just now.
BRIGNAC. I don’t know what you mean.
LUCIE. When you asked me to marry you I was tired of waiting in poverty for the man I could have loved. I didn’t want to become an old maid. I took you, but I knew you came to me because the girls with money wouldn’t have you. You were on the shelf, too. I made up my mind to try and love you loyally.
BRIGNAC. Well, then?
LUCIE. The first time I was going to have a child you left me for other women. Since then I have only put up with you. I was too cowardly not to. You may as well know it. I wanted my first child; the others I’ve had only because you made me. Each time you left me—I was so ugly! Yes; ugly through you! You left me at home, alone, dreary, repulsive, to come back from the arms of some prostitute, full of hypocritical solicitude for my health! After the fatigue of nursing I begged for a rest, to have a breathing space, so that I might have some life of my own; and when I demanded only to have children at my own wish, you laughed like a self-satisfied fool. Oh, your fatuous pride, your base egoism, your utter want of thought for the future of your children and the life of your wife! So you forced on me the labor and the agony and the danger of having another child. What did it matter to you? It flattered your vanity to make merry with your friends and give yourself the airs of a fine fellow. Idiot!
BRIGNAC. I’ve had enough of this. You’re my wife!
LUCIE. I won’t be your wife any more. I won’t have any more children.
BRIGNAC. Pray why?
LUCIE. Didn’t Dr. Hourtin tell you anything?
BRIGNAC. Yes. All right. I’ll do what he said. There, does that content you? Come to bed.
LUCIE. No.
BRIGNAC. You haven’t looked at my roses. Come, isn’t he a loving husband, your little Julien?
LUCIE. Leave me alone. You’re drunk.
BRIGNAC. You know I’m not. Come and give me a kiss!
LUCIE. You stink of alcohol. Let me go.
BRIGNAC [low] I want you. [He kisses her].
LUCIE [tearing herself away] Faugh! [She wipes her mouth furiously].
BRIGNAC. Enough of that, do you hear? [He seizes her brutally]. That’s enough.
LUCIE. You hurt me! Let me go.
BRIGNAC. Be kind now. How well you look when your temper’s up! Pretty pet. Mustn’t be naughty. Come.
LUCIE. I won’t.
BRIGNAC. Then I’ll make you! [They struggle, with low cries, panting].
LUCIE [at the end of her strength] I can’t! I can’t!
He puts her on a chair; then goes to open the door of the bedroom and turns on the electric light. The bed is seen, a vision of white sheets. Brignac comes to his wife.
LUCIE [mad with terror] The cave man! The cave man!
He seizes her. She gives a cry and faints. He carries her towards the bedroom.