“That’s true,” replied Mr. Frasne, with some presence of mind. “Bring me my breakfast to my study.”
And without any further show of surprise he entered his private room, which adjoined his offices. What use was there in putting any further questions to this girl, who was ill-disposed and plainly not very well informed? The unexpected news shot at him point blank had not yet hurt him. His only sensations were those of astonishment. A wound, even a mortal one, cannot at first be distinguished from a simple shock. It takes some time before suffering sets in.
His glance was sharpened and his nerves were taut when he caught sight of a letter lying on the table, sealed and placed almost aggressively within view. He took it in his hands, but without opening it, trying to guess its contents. There would doubtless be some explanation of this departure—carelessness, bravado, or indiscretion, who could tell? After nine years of marriage he was so little sure of his wife that all these conjectures seemed equally likely. Should he look for a companion in his wife’s flight, or would it be just the caprice of a neurasthenic, who would ere long come back to the fold? The name of Maurice Roquevillard did not enter his mind. Mrs. Frasne sought for men’s attentions, and amused herself with them: every one paid harmless court to her. He could not take seriously the banal friendship that she had shown for his clerk, even though he had been warned in some anonymous letters that the town was already preoccupied with it. He showed the rather general disdain of mature men for young people, with their propensity to take time for an ally and content them selves with hope. In proportion as a man loses his youth, it is always his own age or an age approaching it that he attributes to seducers. Sentiment in youth’s eyes goes for nothing unless it leads to some developments, and he knew how many adulterous thoughts are prevented by moral conditions in the country from going further. And, besides, how could he admit so unreasonable a hypothesis as her voluntarily renouncing a place so comfortable and untroubled? He did not understand it at all, but he found himself in the presence of a fact, and he attached importance to nothing but facts. He was irritated by this mystery which his penetration could not clear up, so he tore open the envelope and read:
SIR: I have never loved you, and you knew it. What is a woman’s heart that it should be taken possession of by a legal document? I have stood my slavery for nine years because I loved no one else. To-day everything is changed: I set myself free in loyalty to myself, refusing to be shared. What is there to prevent me? In the very beginning of our marriage you objected to having children. A little hand held out to me might have been enough to enchain me completely, but our house is empty, and no one has any need of me. You thought me worth one hundred thousand francs in our marriage contract. You will think it natural that I take away with me the price paid for me. I have already paid for it myself with my youth. In leaving you I pardon you. Good-bye.
EDITH DANNEMARIE.
For Mr. Frasne, whether from professional habit or a positive turn of mind, everything in life, even sentiment, translated itself into acts and obligations. Our characters rule us even in our suffering: in this shipwreck in which his life was going down he was for the moment conscious only of the loss of his wife, not his money, even though he was not prodigal with money; but to revive his past and exasperate his sorrow he went instinctively to an old portfolio and got out the marriage contract to which the letter made allusion. With this bit of stamped paper he evoked more clearly the great passion that had taken his later youth in its grasp. He saw again at the church door a young girl, delicate and supple, whose movements and eyes betrayed the fever in her veins. It was at Tronche, near Grenoble, his native country. He came there each summer for his vacation, from Paris, when he was head clerk. He could not make up his mind, though on the brink of forty, to leave the capital for good, and buy a practice in Dauphiné. According to inquiries that he made, Edith Dannemarie lived with her mother in the neighbourhood, in a little house to which the two women had retired almost without resources after the death of the head of the family, who had ruined himself with cards. A young country girl with those eyes ought to be easy prey. Two years in succession he had attempted to get hold of her. She was waiting for a prince, for her fancy flew high, and was losing her patience with the long waiting, solitude keeping her imagination warm. Accordingly she rebuffed him, but not severely enough to send him away for good. She had discovered without preparatory studies the art of promising and refusing, and she practised it on a man whom conquests in an easy and sensually minded world must have made more irritable and nervous in the face of coquetry. He should have known himself defeated, but his desire was greater than his interest. Being alone in the world, after the loss of his parents, who had left him a goodly inheritance, he decided at last to ask formally for her hand—a hand which at one and the same time repulsed him and coyly exhibited the proper place for an engagement ring.
How could he construct again from the laconic clauses of a contract the traces of that love? One article conceded to his future bride, in consideration of the marriage, a gift of one hundred thousand francs; not, as is customary and almost fashionable in such cases, a gift on the condition of her surviving the giver, but an immediate settlement, resembling a transfer of property. This abnormal generosity was the proof of his feebleness, the lamentable testimony to his defeat. It conferred authenticity on his passion.
The maid who brought in his chocolate distracted him a moment from his examination. She watched her master out of the corner of her eye as she served him, and was astonished to see him with business papers in his hands. Here he was examining a brief, while she was watching for an outbreak of spite or fury, ready to make a good story out of it in the town. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and breakfasted without appetite, by sheer force of will. Should he not need to keep his forces all intact, presently, and decide definitely what to do?
As he gulped down his steaming chocolate he succeeded in making the dead years live again. He revived them from his own point of view, incapable, like many men and almost all women, of representing things from that of their partners. There was the marriage at Tronches, after many hesitations and delays, which had not been of his making; then the departure for Paris. In Paris there had been revealed to him an unknown companion, a woman who passed without transition or surprise from isolation and monotony to the most delirious gaiety. If she did not manage him in his maturity, neither did he respect her youth. It was then, in the hope of finding more quiet in the country, that he had bought out Mr. Clairval’s practice at Chambéry, in default of an office being obtainable in Grenoble. His wife had adapted herself, with the indifference of those whom life cannot satisfy further, to this radical change in her existence. She appeared to accept their retreat as a pleasure, without enthusiasm, but with no objections. Two years slipped by thus, as peacefully as could be expected of a woman who even in her calmer moments never failed to give him some anxiety. And now, just as he began to think she was sunk deep in the comfort of good surroundings, content with their daily jog trot, suddenly, without a sound of warning, she was leaving her husband and running away with a lover.
The lawyer was crushed by a catastrophe that had caught him so unprepared, and mechanically went back over these memories, the deed of gift bringing back all details to him. For the second time he stood on the brink, and this time he measured it better. This Maurice Roquevillard, whom he had disdained just now on his arrival, began to loom larger in his jealous fury. Edith had not gone away alone. She had gone with him probably, nay, surely. At this very moment, far away down there in Italy, safely out of reach, he held her in his arms. Mr. Frasne took his handkerchief and passed it across his eyes, then held it savagely to his mouth with both hands, and gritted his teeth upon it. Presently he gave way and wept without control. “He loves me in his way,” she had said of him. His way was one which is not the most noble, but is the most fertile certainly in devising torments. It knocks itself against definite and cruelly imagined things, it tears up the heart as a plow tears up the ground, and lays hatred bare.