"You've a cheque book--give me a cheque, then."
I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that
night, the banks being closed.
"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stop
fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn."
The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer
in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted
and went out hurriedly without more words.
After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings
about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place"
immediately or we should all be ruined.
Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great
French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must
be the sink of every kind of corruption.
We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysées, and there (as
well as in the cafés in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on
Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and
Americans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strange
that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to
do, merely loafing round it like tramps--the richest being the idlest,
and the idlest the most immoral.
My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he
spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma's
instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.
"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us in
places like those?"
I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged
around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself that
if I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason or
under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch
by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the
contaminations of his company.
As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no
efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went
together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of
the society papers throughout Europe.
I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from
those sources--that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut
out of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she did
the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night
was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a
queen--princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members
of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other
countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock with
every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after
supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the
dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a _Chaîne diabolique_ at
seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and
the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.
I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the
Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced
upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when--the priest
standing at the foot of the altar--the choir sang the _Kyrie eleison_,
down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being
washed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage.
The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the _Gloria in
excelsis_, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my
sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure
hung above me.
"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."
It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the
church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of
purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred
Heart.
It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early
morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in
the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysées on my way back to the
hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a
little company of young girls returning to school after their first
communion.
How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and
stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they
were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing
unseen in the leaves above them.
It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but
turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great
and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such
strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in
my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.
But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires
of passion!
As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroom
from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my
husband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I was
beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and coming
over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:
"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I can't help
that. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman and
have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and see
if you can stand any more."
With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room,
but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood,
and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hear
in my husband's bedroom.
There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other a
woman's soft and cautious.
There was no need to tell myself whose voices they were, and neither did
I ask myself any questions. I did not put to my mind the pros and cons
of the case for myself or the case for my husband. I only thought and
felt and behaved as any other wife would think and feel and behave at
such a moment. An ugly and depraved thing, which my pride or my
self-respect had never hitherto permitted me to believe in, suddenly
leapt into life.
I was outraged. I was a victim of the treachery, the duplicity, the
disloyalty, and the smothered secrecy of husband and friend.
My heart and soul were aflame with a sense of wrong. All the sweetening
and softening and purifying effects of the sacrament were gone in an
instant, and, moving stealthily across the carpet towards my husband's
door, I swiftly turned the handle.
The door was locked.
I heard a movement inside the room and in a moment I hurried from the
salon into the corridor, intending to enter by another door. As I was
about to do so I heard the lock turned back by a cautious hand within.
Then I swung the door open and boldly entered the room.
Nobody was there except my husband.
But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in the
adjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind them.
I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were down and
the air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as might have
been brought back in people's clothes from that shameless woman's salon.
My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me with a
half-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered. His
prominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was trying to
carry things off with an air.
"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the first
time . . . the very first time that. . . ."
I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe, but I
said:
"Is that all you've got to say to me?"
"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . ."
"You understand quite well," I answered, and then looking towards the
door of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you understand."
My husband began to laugh--a drunken, idiotic laugh.
"Oh, you mean that . . . perhaps you imagine that. . . ."
"Listen," I said. "This is the end of everything between you and me."
"The end? Why, I thought that was long ago. In fact I thought everything
ended before it began."
"I mean. . . ." I knew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can no
longer keep up the farce of being your wife."
"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce is
exactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever since the
day we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you have only
yourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife is no company
for anybody but the saints and angels?"
His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the thought
that after all in his own gross way my husband had something to say for
himself.
Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without another
word. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face must have
been more powerful than my speech, for after a few seconds in which he
went on saying in his drawling way that I had been no wife to him, and
if anything had happened I had brought it on myself, he stopped, and
neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should faint, I
turned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low, perhaps in
mockery, as I passed out.
When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost dropped, and
so cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot bottles to my
feet.
And then the tears came and I cried like a child.