Léon had, from the first, the best intentions. He was to be the good
comrade to Raoul, the sympathetic counselor to Madame, and for the
situation in general a happy blend of an olive branch, a dove, and a
rainbow in the heavens!
His shrewdness of judgment was only to be matched by the lightness of
his heart. For a month many of his most salient gifts had been lying
idle. Rose had not asked for management, and there had been in their
easy-going lovemaking no very great place for tact.
Léon was on the look-out for difficulty, for gulfs of temperament and
training, efforts and sacrifices and gently taught lessons, but after a
time his look-out ceased. Rose looked out. She made the efforts, she
learned his lessons, before the need arose to teach her. In fact, she
saved him trouble, and there had been moments when Léon found this a
trifle dull. It was different now; his skill was called upon at every
turn. Madame Gérard was a very unhappy woman. She had had a spoilt
childhood and a sentimental and enthusiastic youth guarded at every
point from experience.
All her adventures had been in her unfettered dreams. She had dreamed
that she should marry Raoul, and then she had married him. Life had
brought her up very short. She had believed in an exquisite and ideal
relationship and she had been given with terrible promptitude Monsieur
Gérard’s impression of what constituted the marriage tie.
He had spoilt her dreams, he had shaken about her ears the fullness of
her life; but he was still the man she loved. All other men were but as
trees walking, even Léon was only a tree that walked. It was true that
he walked more and more frequently in her direction. She took a certain
notice of him, her heart lay in the dust but it began to mean something
to her that Léon resented this. She felt through the bitterness of her
shame a tiny spark of returning pride.
It was a very tiny spark, it hardly amounted to self-respect--but Léon
guarded it and kept it alight, as a man shields a flickering match from
the rough air. He flattered her grossly at first because she was too sad
to understand subtlety. Afterwards, as her mind turned towards him, he
refined his flatteries. He kept her a little hungry so that she should
more and more look to him for this nourishment of the spirit.
But Madame Gérard, in spite of her grief, was a kind-hearted little
woman. She remembered Rose.
“We must not neglect her,” she would say gently, “the little English
wife. One does not cure one unhappiness by making another.” And Léon
would explain that the English were a strange race. They loved solitude,
speechlessness and wonderful long newspaper articles about politics.
Also Rose was learning French from a nun and she didn’t care to make a
third in their little amusements until she could talk more freely with
them.
“She has a pride about it,” Léon explained. “These cold, silent women
are very proud.”
“I should not have thought her cold,” said Madame Gérard, thoughtfully.
“She has kind eyes. When one is very unhappy one notices kind eyes.”
Léon led the conversation back to Madame’s unhappiness and away from
Rose’s eyes. He had not meant to be disloyal to Rose, he rather liked to
think of her as cold and proud. After a time Madame no longer tried to
send him back to Rose; she was a Frenchwoman, even if she was
broken-hearted, and she was not slow to understand Léon. “This type,”
she said to herself, “will always be with some woman or other--with me
he is safe! I shall send him back to her as he came even perhaps a
little wiser, a little more appreciative of her. I will do her no bad
turn, the little English wife.”
Madame Gérard had the best intentions, too. She had even better ones
than Léon, but neither of them perceived that they had them in the wrong
direction. Nevertheless, for a time all went well. Monsieur Gérard
studied for the coming opera season with a freer mind and in a better
temper.
Rose took long lessons from the nun, and as she slowly and painstakingly
began to master the intricate and exquisite language of her husband she
felt as if she were approaching his spirit, and preparing for herself
and for him a fresh world of understanding and companionship. Day by day
Léon brought her, with fresh enthusiasm, endless stories of his progress
with the affair Gérard. Some instinct in Rose told her that by the
length of these stories, and by Léon’s absorbed, invigorated returns to
her, their love was still safe.
She needed all the assurances that she could get, for she was very much
alone. She was always just the same to Léon; she spread about him the
warm, wide sea of her magnanimity; he was never to know she felt sad or
strange, or that she had a silly habit of almost crying when she walked
alone on the cliffs above the bright, transparent sea.
He wasn’t to dream that she minded his boating and driving and walking
with Madame Gérard, or that she kept explaining to herself how natural
it was for him to talk more and with more gaiety in French, and not to
care so much as he used to for moonlight in the garden.
She succeeded so entirely in the effect of appearing not to mind that
she thoroughly annoyed Léon.
He had been looking forward to a fresh drama with Rose, a little visible
but not fettering jealousy, a scene or two, even a few tears, wise and
tender explanation on his part, and passionate pleading upon her own.
But Rose’s passion was very quiet and it never occurred to it to plead.
She had no such intention, but she made Léon’s vanity smart, under her
daily serenity. “Is she made of wood--or of iron,” he asked himself
bitterly, “that she lets me live in the pocket of another woman even
during the honeymoon? What have I to look forward to--centuries of ice?”
He knew very well that there was no ice in Rose, but his bad conscience
enjoyed resentment very much. It was not only his vanity that was
injured, he began to be conscious of a secret fear.
Rose was to be his guardian angel in this affair--he mustn’t, whatever
happened, be allowed to lose his head.
He didn’t expect his wife to stop his doing what he wanted, but she
ought to be so effective, so in the center of things as to prevent his
wanting it, and Rose wouldn’t come into the center of things. She
remained in the background, trusting him. He felt the burden of her
confidence checking him at every turn.
There was danger, and she didn’t see danger. Was she going to walk
straight through it, with her wonderful blue eyes forever unaware?
She ought to have realized that however noble a man is, and however
unhappy a woman, a situation in which, from the best motives, they are
constantly thrown together, needs watching. A most unfortunate thing had
already happened. Madame had discovered, from an unguarded remark of
Léon’s, that he had talked with her husband about her. Madame Gérard had
a constructive mind--if two and two were anywhere about, it did not take
her long to arrive at four. Instantly she understood: this new
companionship, the devout attention of her husband’s friend was nothing
at all but a plot between the two men to play with her broken heart!
She knew their aim; it was to make her compliant to the lowest needs of
one who had not so much affection for her as a stray dog for the hand
that strokes it. To say that Madame Gérard was angry at this discovery
is to underestimate the uses of language. She was attacked by a bitter
fury of outraged pride. Léon had brought back her pride, then, simply in
order to outrage it! But this time she kept her head. Any woman can keep
her head with a man with whom she is not in love.
Madame Gérard knew herself to be standing with her back to the wall,
fighting for her life against two men, one of them at least she could
injure.
She gave herself a moment of despair, her small hand clutched fiercely
at a little stone beside the path near which they sat--her hidden eyes
burned with unshed tears. For a long moment she held herself in silence,
while she let Léon cover up his mistake as if she had not heard him;
then, being a practical woman, she put despair away till afterwards:
besides, despair could only hurt herself.
It was a pity that in destroying Léon’s marriage she should have to
destroy Rose’s. Enraged as she was, she thought of this; still, she
couldn’t stop to consider a woman who, if she had had the least sense,
would have interfered in the whole affair long ago.
“You are not angry,” Léon urged, “that I should have touched on your
sufferings with the good Raoul?”
Madame laughed softly and looked at Léon with provocative, caressing
eyes.
“You who know women--must know how safe you are from me,” she replied.
“Do I look angry?” She did not look angry, but she looked provocative,
and this was the first time that she had looked provocative.
It was the difference between a battery turned on and a battery turned
off. Madame Gérard, like all Frenchwomen, could use her sex or sink it
as the occasion required. Up till now she had never used it, she had
kept it steadily in abeyance out of respect to Rose. Now Rose had to go,
respect had to go, everything had to go--but her fierce rage against the
two men who were in league against her pride.
It was no wonder that Léon began to be afraid, even though it must be
admitted that his fear was chiefly of a pleasurable nature, nor that
Monsieur Gérard should suddenly feel that he had evoked rather more help
than he needed; nor that Rose should find herself not only more alone
but suddenly deprived of the support of the long histories Léon used to
make to her, on his returns.
He could no longer tell her what took place between him and Madame;
speech had become a medium for something better not explained.
Madame Gérard was the only one of the group who appeared wholly at her
ease; all her energies were being freely used, and in the direction she
had chosen for them. She was making her husband jealous, Léon infatuated
and giving the stupid English wife plenty of time to learn French.
The good intentions of everybody began to look a little like the fashion
of the year before last.