“Yes, wife.”
Ernest smiled as he said that, and so did I, for Madame Ernest emphasized the word husband, which she uttered every instant, as if to make up for the time when she dared not say it.
I took my daughter by the hand to walk about the garden. Henriette was seven years old; she was not very large, but her wit and good sense amazed me. All the evening I kept her talking; her answers delighted me, for they denoted no less sense than goodness of heart. I could not tire of looking at her and of listening to her. More than once I had been terribly bored in a fashionable assemblage, but I was very sure that I should never be bored with my daughter.
The days passed quickly at Ernest’s house. Painting, reading, walks with my daughter, occupied the time. In the evening we talked; a few friends and neighbors dropped in, but informally and without dressing; the men in their jackets or blouses, the women in their aprons. That is the proper way to live in the country. Those who carry to the fields the fashion and the etiquette of the city will never know the true pleasures of country life.
I had been a fortnight at Saint-Mandé, and I had not once been tempted to go to Paris. Pettermann brought me all that I desired and did my errands with exactness. I always asked him if anybody had called, although I never expected visitors. In society no one knew that I had returned from my travels. Monsieur Roquencourt and his niece did not know my address in Paris, and even if they had known it, I could not expect a visit from them. Doubtless Caroline had ceased to think of me. She did well. For my part, I confess that I very often thought of her, and sometimes I regretted that I had given her her portrait. But a smile or a word from my daughter banished such ideas.
There was another person of whom I often thought, although Ernest and his wife never mentioned her. I continually saw her, changed and pale as I had seen her at Mont-d’Or; and at night, in the woods or in the garden, I fancied that I still saw sometimes that white spectre, the sight of which had caused me to fly so hurriedly from the hotel at which I was living.
How could I forget Eugénie? Did not my daughter talk to me every day about her mother? Did she not constantly ask me if she would come home soon? I tried in vain to avoid that subject, Henriette recurred to it again and again; I dared not tell her that she made me unhappy by speaking to me of her mother; but could I hope ever to enjoy perfect happiness? Was there not always someone whose presence would prevent me from forgetting the past?
Poor child! it was not his fault that his mother was guilty. That was what I said to myself every day as I looked at him; but in spite of that, I could not conquer my feelings and conceal the depression which his presence caused me. I did not hate him, and I felt that I should love him if I dared think that he was my son; but those cruel suspicions hurt me more than the certainty of the worst, for then I could have made up my mind with respect to Eugène, whereas now I did not know what course to pursue.
The poor boy had never seen a smile on my face for him; so that he always held aloof from me, and never came near me except when his sister brought him. Sometimes, as I walked in the garden, I saw Eugène in the distance playing with Ernest’s children. Then I would stop, and, standing behind a hedge, would watch him for a long while. I passed hours in that way. He did not see me and abandoned himself without restraint to the natural gayety of his age, which my presence seemed always to hold in check. He feared me, no doubt, and he would never love me. Often that thought distressed me; at such times I was seized with a wild longing to run to him and to embrace him, to overwhelm him with caresses, for I said to myself: “Suppose he were my son?” but soon the painful thought would return, my heart would turn to ice, and I would hurry away from the child’s neighborhood.
My daughter noticed that I did not caress her brother as I did her; for a child of seven makes her own little observations, and children notice more than we think. Henriette, who considered herself a woman beside her brother, because she was four years older than he, seemed to have taken little Eugène under her protection; she told him what games to play, scolded him, or rewarded him; in short, she played the little mamma with him. But when I called Henriette, I did not call Eugène; when I took her on my knee, I did not take her brother. Having observed all this, she said to me one morning as I had my arms about her: