The guests all drank the health of the young de Marthenay couple, whose wedding anniversary was being celebrated, and a move was made to the drawing-room. Alice, unable to bear it any longer, rushed to her mother’s room. In the darkness she gave way to her grief. She had been able to smile bravely during the toast they had drunk in her honor, with its allusion to her “enviable happiness.” Her happiness! She had looked in vain for it both in the present and in the past, and how could she expect it in the future? With the clear sight which the great shocks of destiny give us when we expect the bitterness of life to crush us, she lived again despairingly through the last years of her life. In a rapid succession of vivid pictures she saw her sad days pass before her eyes.
She had not wished to marry Armand de Marthenay: it was so constantly forced upon her that at last she had yielded. She came down the aisle of the church in her wedding dress on the arm of the husband she had not chosen. And since then? Could she look back upon one hour of joy, that deep, pure joy that her childish soul had imagined? The first days of her married life had been deadened by a kind of merciful stupor, like a fog which hides the desolation of a blasted plain. She forgot to feel she had a heart. Her husband still retained the good humor of a man with something to do. He rode, he fulfilled his military duties, he received his friends, he got up parties. She allowed herself to be occupied by her new household duties and by the many society calls. Instead of the husband of her dreams, she had a companion proud of her fortune and her pretty face, a man without much delicacy of feeling and with no great intelligence, not even clever, but possessed of a good digestion and an idiotic fatuity which enabled him to admire himself unceasingly all his life. When her little girl was born she thought she had at last found the oblivion for which at times she still sought.
From this tolerable time in her existence her thoughts travelled on to the present, which was always with her. After a series of unforeseen incidents, the regiment stationed at Chambéry had been designated for a distant Eastern garrison. M. de Marthenay tried to exchange, but it was impossible. He had either to go away and leave Savoy, or to spoil his career. At the prospect of this departure Madame Dulaurens had shown such violent grief that the young wife was foolish enough to remind her husband of the solemn promise he had made her when they became engaged. As a man of honor the dragoon sacrificed himself. In twenty-four hours he had resigned. He then gave way to his idle instincts, which a soldier’s life had kept in check. And from that time he went steadily from bad to worse.
He began by becoming a constant habitué of the cafés. In summer he was a member of the Club at Aix-le-Bains and of the Villa des Fleurs. He began to play baccarat and won. While his wife was slowly recovering after their child’s birth he was engaged in low adventures, and reports were spread about concerning him by the visitors to these watering-places. One day Alice learned of his base unfaithfulness. She had kept her innocence after her marriage and learnt the cruel fact of unfaithfulness before she well knew what unfaithfulness meant. She rebelled against it, but instead of finding the repentance which she expected and could have pardoned, she received only this humiliating answer:
“You wanted me to resign the service and I resigned. You have only yourself to blame if I try to make up for the loss of my career in my own way. A man must have something to do. I sacrificed the object of my life for your sake. What have you given up in return?”
Overwhelmed at his reproaches she retired into herself from that time and wrapped herself in a mournful silence. She was not resigned, but she followed the bent of her passive nature.
Losses at cards soured M. de Marthenay’s character. After the season, idle and unsettled, he began to drink. His wife saw him try to captivate her friend Isabelle before her very eyes, and was so discouraged that she noted his failure with indifference. Thus she was obliged to follow the only too rapid phases of his fall, of which she was perhaps indirectly the cause. She could not shut her eyes to it, yet felt the impossibility of saving him.
Thinking over all the details of her miserable past, Alice felt astonished that she suffered so much. She had grown accustomed to living amid such thoughts. Their dull monotony was now familiar to her. But to-day a new sorrow had come to reinforce their bitterness. Fresh melancholy pictures rose up in her memory as if to remind her of the part she had played in her own destiny. She remembered the day when Paule Guibert in the oakwood had stirred her heart with an unknown desire. She saw once more the vivid light of the setting sun through the trees and heaven descending upon her transfigured soul, saw Marcel’s tall figure bending down to her with his words of love. And then ... then she saw him lying dead in a distant, sun-scorched land, a bullet through his head, pale and terrible, his reproachful eyes fixed upon her. Oh, those eyes of agony! How well she knew their look! They had gazed on her like that when she had kept that obstinate silence—that wicked silence which had ruined their happiness. Now in this dark room she vainly hid her face so as not to see them. “Marcel, forgive me!” Distracted and trembling, her love made supplication to him. “Don’t look at me like that! I did not know. I was a child. That is my excuse. Yes, I was a coward, I was afraid to strive for you, to fight for my love. I was afraid to wait, to love, to suffer, to live. But God has punished me—oh, how cruelly! Close your eyes and forgive me....”
Frightened at the sound of her own voice, she laid her hand on her bosom. She was choking as on the day her child was born. At last in her broken heart rose up the knowledge of life in all its strength and dignity. Her soul had won its freedom, and she loved Marcel as he had loved her, nobly and proudly. For her sake, to seek forgetfulness, he had travelled over Africa and met glory and death. Perhaps, as he fell, he had recalled her face. That she might have been his last thought, though that thought might be but disdainful, was now her most ardent prayer. Comparing her existence with the one she had thrust from her she regretted not being a hero’s widow instead of sharing the dull life of a man incapable of inspiring or feeling love.
The door opened and Madame Dulaurens, anxious at her daughter’s long absence, called in the darkness.