Exaggerated? Certainly she was exaggerated. Idiotic? Perhaps so. Understand her? Of course I didn’t. It was not until long after that I began to understand her. It was enough for me at that moment to understand Philibert and perceive that never, even if she lived with him for twenty years and maintained intact the dignity of her honesty, would he respect her.
Claire had been a passive spectator of this little passage between husband and wife. A slight flush had mounted to her cheek, a flush I took to be of annoyance, for she rose a moment later with more than usual abruptness and kissed my mother good-bye, ignoring completely the other two, not so much as looking at them as she made for the door. Jane, however, was too quick for her, and wrenching herself free from Philibert, was upon her before she turned the door knob.
“Don’t go like that,” she cried, “don’t be annoyed. I know he was joking. I know he did not mean it.” She seemed to be trying to grasp Claire in her arms, to get hold of her, to cling to her. I had a confused impression of something almost like a scuffle taking place between the two women, and of Claire actually throwing her off. I may be wrong. It may have been merely the expression on Claire’s face and the tone of her voice that sent Jane backwards. I don’t know, but it was quite pitifully horrid, and again I turned away my eyes, and with my back to them heard Claire say in her coldest tone, and God knows how cold her lovely voice can be—
“Ne soyez pas grotesque, je vous en prie. Laissez-moi partir.”
I do not mean to suggest that I sympathized with Jane that afternoon, for I did not. It was all too absurdly out of proportion. She had created out of nothing, out of the blue, a scene in my mother’s drawing-room, and one had only to look at the little delicate crowded place to know that scenes were abhorrent there. I believe actually that a small table full of trinkets had been overturned in Jane’s rush for the door, and I know that a coffee-cup was broken. It was the sort of thing one simply never had conceived of. My mother’s nerves were very much upset, and when Jane turned to her after Claire had shut the door in her face, wanting to beg her pardon, Maman could only wave her hands before a twitching face and say, “No, no, my child. Don’t say any more, it is enough for today.”
After that I did not see Jane for some weeks. Neither she nor Philibert came to lunch with my mother the following Sunday, nor the Sunday after. On the third Sunday Philibert came alone and explained briefly that Jane was indisposed. He seemed preoccupied. He talked little, ate nothing, and drank a number of glasses of wine as if he were very thirsty. His lips twitched constantly, forming themselves into a kind of snarl, and he was continually jerking the ends of his moustaches. I remember thinking that he looked for all the world as if he wanted to bite some one. He had never appeared more cruel. I began to have a sickening foreboding. Claire eyed him strangely. I wondered if she had something of my feeling. How I wished she had!
It all came out after luncheon. He could not contain himself. He was beside himself with exasperation. Jane’s stupidity was too colossal. He could not put up with being loved like that any longer. She had made him a scene after the absurd affair of the other day and had asked him to swear that he would never be unfaithful to her. Here he raised his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders and threw out his hands. It was incredible how she had gone on. She had said that she had been thinking over his remark to Claire and was frightened by it, that when he had spoken so lightly of his brother-in-law’s infidelities it had come to her as a tremendous shock that such a thing was possible. An abyss had opened before her—that was her word. How could Claire go on living with a man who was unfaithful? She could not understand. What did he mean by her sister’s growing more beautiful in proportion to her husband’s infidelities? Had he meant anything, or was it only a joke? Did Claire know her husband made love to other women? She loved Claire, she thought her wonderful, but she didn’t understand. And so on and so on.
Philibert recited it all to us. His voice grew shriller and shriller. He piled up phrase after phrase in a crescendo of exasperation until he burst into a loud laugh with the words—“She talks, she talks of our marriage being made in Heaven.” He grasped his head in his hands.
Claire’s face wore a sneer.