The next day Monsieur Gérard carried out his intention of going to
Naples.
Madame Gérard remained invisible. She accepted the flowers Léon called
upon her to present, but she sent down a message that she was indisposed
and could see nobody. She was indisposed until five o’clock the
following day. By this time she had made up her mind.
It was not an easy task. She said to herself again and again that she
would have accepted heartbreak--but she could not accept outrage. Her
husband had not only cruelly wronged her--he had done so publicly before
the eyes of a man who loved her--and before his wife. Her marriage was a
false step--it had been her first adventure--but in her imagination she
had only counted upon adventures as successes--now she was face to face
with an adventure which had proved a failure. She could not go back--she
could only go on--and yet she hesitated, for after marriage, adventures
that go on are no longer innocent. Her husband had left her with a
weapon lying within her reach--from the first it had occurred to her
that she could strike back with Léon, but with this idea had come
another one, that in striking back she must cruelly wound an innocent
and happy woman. In all the horrible scene which had taken place the day
before there had only been one moment less intolerable than the others,
and Rose had given her that moment. She had distinctly stood by her with
an offer of friendship.
Madame Gérard spent twenty-four bitter, sleepless hours considering
Rose. At the end of that time--having come to the decision that she did
not want to hurt her, but that she wished to do the thing that would
hurt her--she made the further decision that, after all, it need not
hurt Rose so very much. When she thought of her own unhappiness, a
little distress on the part of other wives did not seem out of place.
She would do her best to shield Rose from the truth, but she wouldn’t do
anything to prevent the truth taking place. These two decisions placed
her in a better position than Léon. Léon had decided nothing.
He only knew that he must see this complex woman, that he must, out of
chivalry, discover what she felt about the incredible behavior of her
husband. He must find out also--in honor or common kindness--if there
wasn’t in the situation some successful part for a good friend to play.
He drew upon all his virtues for his reasons. Yesterday Madame had
sharply wounded his _amour propre_; he saw that she had been playing a
game with him. Well, the game had failed, and yet he was still there;
there was therefore still the possibility of a new game under new
conditions, with the advantage, perhaps, to him.
He went no further than that. He wanted, he assured himself, to go no
further. He was full of consideration for Rose, but he distinctly wished
to see how far he could go.
At five o’clock he found himself admitted. Madame was already out in the
sheltered wistaria-covered balcony. She lay in a long chair draped in a
soft white robe; there were pearls round her neck and a little black
velvet band. She looked extraordinarily pathetic and young and very
tired of grief.
There were no traces of tears on her little white face--but she was not
the woman to allow traces of any kind to appear, unless they were
becoming.
“It was kind of you to come,” she said gently after a long pause.
“Forgive me, I had misjudged you. I thought that you were playing with
me.”
Léon protested eagerly, how could she have had such an idea? One did not
go about playing with young and innocent women who were unhappy. She
must not do him so much injustice.
He talked for five minutes nobly and eloquently about unhappy young
married women. Madame Gérard listened, looking between the wistaria
branches towards the sea. When he had quite finished she said gently,
“And yet it was a plot between you and my husband--your friendship, your
attention to me--they were not very real, Monsieur. You had agreed with
him to win me over to his wishes. Is that not so?”
Léon was upset. You can never be sure what a husband will not tell a
wife, even an estranged and angry husband. There is a terrible habit of
indiscriminate confidence in marriage. Léon had come across it before.
He would have eagerly denied conjecture, but it would not do to deny a
confidence; besides he was secretly much relieved at this new version of
things. He had been afraid that Madame had been playing with him; it
appeared now that he had been playing with her. What had happened
yesterday was merely a charming little feminine _revanche_. He began to
find the part he was playing more attractive.
“It is true,” he said at last, “your husband told me that your marriage
was not happy--and to begin with perhaps I had the idea that it lay with
you to make it so. Forgive me, this idea soon passed. It passed before
the affair of the other day showed me the incredible _lacheté_ of Raoul.
Permit me to say that his behavior shocked me to the heart; but before
this shock took place I had learned in what light to consider you.
Believe me, I have not been playing with you. I am in earnest, in
terrible earnest.”
She turned her eyes to his. They were not beautiful eyes like
Rose’s--but he did not know them so well, besides she used them better.
“You are really in earnest, really, Léon?” she asked him searchingly. He
sprang to his feet, but with a wave of her hand she motioned to him to
remain where he was.
“I wonder,” she said very softly. “I do not want to be twice deceived,
to be deceived once is to go broken-winged through life, but to be
deceived twice, could one live at all?”
“I swear that I have not deceived you--that I will never deceive you!”
cried Léon passionately. “The feeling that I have for you is real--it is
intense.”
Still he meant to stay at Capri; he hadn’t any idea of doing anything
else.
“You are prepared,” she asked him, “to prove your words to me? You
realize if I believe them what is at stake for me--and if you realize
that, do you not think that I have the right to ask you for a proof?”
“You shall not ask me for one!” he cried. “Rather I will give you _all_
the proofs in my power--one or a dozen--what you will--you have only to
ask!”
“You are very generous,” she said with her pretty irony. “One will be
enough. I want you to-night to take me to Naples. I cannot stay in Capri
until my husband returns. I will not return alone to France. It appears
that we made a mistake in not going to Naples for our honeymoon. Let us
then--you and I--rectify this mistake.”
Léon said nothing. He gripped at the little wooden balcony railing with
both hands, and stared with blank eyes at the laughing sea. Leave Capri!
Leave Rose! His heart shuddered within him--with every honest fiber of
his nature, and he had many honest fibers in his nature, he loved Rose.
He did not love the woman before him--but he had sought what she
offered--how could he refuse it? It was true he had expected to make his
own terms, but this would not be very easy to explain to her. Still, he
tried hard to keep the situation in hand.
“I have said,” he began at last, “that I considered your husband, in
leaving you, to have committed the worst of infamies. You are asking me
to commit the same.”
Madame raised her eyebrows.
“You mean in leaving your wife?” she asked. “After what you have allowed
me to suppose, I had not thought you would have that feeling. Nor would
it be necessary for you to act as my husband has acted. But I am
supposing, of course, that what you feel for me is--real.”
“Pardon me, Madame,” said Léon firmly, “all that I have said to you is
true--and yet--is it incredible to you?--I love my wife!”
Madame smiled at him.
“You know how children play with daisies?” she said. “As they pull off
the little white petals one by one--‘He loves me--a little, very much,
passionately, not at all.’ It is funny what comes after passionately--so
soon after, Léon.”
He stirred uneasily. Madame began to pull to pieces a spray of wistaria,
throwing the blossoms one by one smilingly into her lap. “I do not ask
you, my friend,” she said slowly, “for the devotion of a lifetime--there
are hardly enough to go round of these blossoms--we must not stop at
passionately, must we--we must stop at not at all! I was thinking of
spending three days in Naples.”
“And you would expect me to leave you in three days?” asked Léon
reproachfully. He watched her feverishly. A man must know what he is in
for. “In three days,” said Madame, throwing all the silvery mauve
blossoms with a quick little gesture over the balcony, “I should insist
upon your leaving me.” As she did this her small, firm hand touched his.
He caught it to his lips and kissed it fervently. The smile in her eyes
deepened.
She supposed he must have stopped thinking of Rose, but he said again,
after a moment’s pause, “To leave her--to leave her--that seems somehow
very base!”
“Then do not leave her,” said Madame wearily, withdrawing her hand.
“Break your word to me, it is very simple. I have no claim on you--I am
not your wife.”
“You are everything in the world to me,” he said desperately. For the
moment he believed she was.
She leaned forward a little.
“After all,” she said, “your wife will not know why you go to Naples.
You have only to say you go on business. She is so innocent she will
believe you--you might even tell her that you are to act as my escort
back to my husband. She need not suffer.”
Léon flung back his head. “But,” he stammered, his eyes filling with
sudden tears, “I cannot lie to Rose! She is not like that! I cannot lie
to her--it is as you say, she would believe me!”
“Ah,” said Madame, “let us hope then that you can lie about women better
than you can lie to them! But you are making a mistake. It is very easy
to lie to us. All men have found it so.”
He pushed her words away from him.
“Elise,” he asked her suddenly, “do you care for me? This thing that you
are about to do, is it from your heart?”
She rose and stood beside him.
“I will give you the proof,” she said in a low voice.
But still he was not satisfied; his eyes continued to question her.
“It is from my heart,” she repeated firmly. He caught her to him and
kissed her, but it seemed to him even then as if he held something dead
in his arms, something which by no beat of the heart, by no single
spiritual response, met his. She gave him her lips.
For a long moment he held her, then she withdrew herself and moved away
from him. “No more,” she said gently. “To-night I shall expect you. I
will meet you at the turn of the road by the Madonna of the Rocks.”
She moved with him slowly towards the door. “_Voyons!_” she said before
they parted. “Don’t hurt her--don’t ever tell her--your young wife. She
is too good. A lie will cost you nothing. And, after all, if it was not
me--it would be some other woman soon--would it not? After all--” Her
voice faltered. Something in her wavered for a moment, something very
hard and deep, tried suddenly to melt. “After all,” said Léon gravely,
“this is the greatest proof I have to give. Take it as generously as I
give it!”
She looked at him with strange eyes. “We are both about to be very
generous, are we not?” she said with a dry little smile. “_Eh bien!_
Love is short and marriage is long--all the better for love--which sees
its end.”
Léon did not like this point of view. There was some truth in it, no
doubt, but it would have sounded better from the lips of a man. He
kissed her hands reproachfully. He could not think for the moment of
anything very beautiful to say about love, and Madame herself said no
more. She simply looked suggestively at the door.
After he had gone she stood where he had left her, clenching and
unclenching her small, firm hands.
“From my heart,” she whispered, “_Mon Dieu_--it appears so--from my
heart.”