"_To-morrow_, I shall not be here."
She trembled at my strange voice. I added, without waiting:
"I am going..."
Then, making a violent effort to loosen my tongue, and terrified like a
man who must strike a second blow to put his victim to death, I added
hastily:
"I am going to Florence."
"Ah!"
She had suddenly understood. She turned round with a rapid movement,
she twisted herself on her cushions to look me in the face; and in that
tragic pose, I saw again the whites of her eyes and her bloodless gum.
"Juliana!" I stammered, without finding anything else to say to her,
bending toward her, fearing she would faint.
But she lowered her eyelids, sank back, withdrew into herself, so to
speak, as if chilled by severe cold. She remained thus for several
minutes, her eyes closed, lips compressed, motionless. Only the
pulsations of the carotid artery, visible at the neck, and a few
convulsive contractions of her hands indicated that she was still alive.
Was not this a crime? Yes, this was the _first_ of my crimes, and not
the least, without a doubt.
I went away under terrible circumstances. My absence lasted more than a
week. On my return and the days following, I was astonished myself at
my almost cynical impudence. I was bewitched by a sort of malefice that
suspended in me every moral sense and rendered me capable of the worst
injustices, the worst cruelties. This time again Juliana exhibited
prodigious force of character; this time again she was able to keep
silent. She appeared to me wrapped up in her silence as if in an
impenetrable adamantine wall.
She went to the Badiola with her daughters and my mother. My brother
accompanied them. I remained in Rome.
It was then that began for me a frightful period of sombre misery, the
recollection of which suffices to fill me with disgust and humiliation.
Harassed by a feeling that, more than any other, stirs up in man the
dregs of his being, I suffered every torture that a woman can make a
feeble, passionate, and ever-wakeful soul suffer. The fire of a
terrible sensual jealousy, kindled by suspicion, dried up in me every
honest source, fed on the dregs deposited in the baser depths of my
animal nature.
Never had Teresa Raffo seemed to me to be so desirable as since the day
when I indissolubly associated her with an ignoble image and a stain.
And she made herself a weapon of my very contempt to excite my
covetousness. Atrocious agonies, abject joys, dishonoring submission,
cowardly complacencies proposed and unblushingly accepted, tears more
acrid than all the poisons, sudden frenzies that drove me almost to the
confines of dementia, such violent plunges into the abyss of indulgence
that for many days after I lay in a stupefied state, every misery, every
ignominy of the lower passions exasperated by jealousy--all, yes, I have
known all. I became a stranger in my own house; the presence of Juliana
became an encumbrance to me. Sometimes entire weeks passed without my
addressing a single word to her; absorbed in my inner torture, I did not
see her, I did not listen to her. At certain moments, when I raised my
eyes towards her, I was surprised at her pallor, at the expression of
her face, by such and such a detail of her features, as if these things
were new, unexpected, strange; I did not succeed in entirely
reconquering the notion of the reality. Every act of her life was
unknown to me; I felt no desire to question her, to know anything; I
felt neither preoccupation, interest, nor fear in regard to her. An
inexplicable coldness acted as a cuirass against her. And still more:
sometimes I felt a kind of vague and inexplicable rancor against her.
One day I saw her laugh, and that laugh irritated me, almost put me in a
passion.
Another day I had a shock on hearing her singing in a distant room. She
was singing an air from "Orphee."
"_Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?_"
That was the first time she had sung while going through the house for a
long time; it was the first time I heard her for a long time.
"Why was she singing? Was she then happy? To what condition of her
soul does that unusual effusion correspond?" An inexplicable agitation
seized me. Without thinking, I went up to her, calling her by name.
When she saw me enter her room she was surprised, and remained for a
moment speechless; she was evidently startled.
"Are you singing?" I said, so as to say something, embarrassed and
astonished myself at the eccentricity of what I was doing.
She smiled a hesitating smile, not knowing what to answer, not knowing
what attitude to assume toward me. And I thought I read in her eyes a
grieved curiosity, the fugitive expression of which I had already
noticed more than once--the compassionate curiosity with which one gazes
at a person suspected of insanity, a maniac. As a matter of fact, I saw
myself in a mirror opposite, and my face looked emaciated, my eyes
sunken, my mouth puffed up--that feverish appearance that I had had for
a month.
"Are you dressing to go out?" I asked, still disturbed, almost ashamed,
not finding any other question to ask her, preoccupied only with
avoiding silence.
"Yes."
It was in the morning, in November. She was standing near a table
trimmed with lace, and on which scintillated the scattered innumerable
little articles that serve nowadays to beautify women. She wore a dress
of vigonia, of a dark color, and held in her hand a light-colored shell
comb mounted in silver. The dress, very simple in cut, set off her
slim, graceful figure. A large bouquet of white chrysanthemums, placed
on the table, reached up as far as her shoulder. The sun of the St.
Martin's summer entered through the window, and in the air there was a
perfume of chypre, or some other odor I could not recognize.
"What perfume do you use now?" I asked.
"Crab-apple," she replied.
"I like it," I said.
She took a small bottle from the table, and handed it to me. I inhaled
it deeply, so as to be doing something, and to gain time to prepare some
other phrase. I did not succeed in dissipating my confusion, or in
recovering my assurance. I felt that all intimacy between us was at an
end. She seemed to me to be _another woman_. And yet the air from
"Orphee" still surged through my soul, still disturbed me:
"_Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?_"
In that warm and golden light, amidst that delightful perfume, among
these objects impressed with feminine grace, the echo of the ancient
melody seemed to put the palpitation of a secret life, to shed a shadow
of some strange mystery.
"The air that you sang just now is very beautiful," I said, obeying an
impulse that came from my uneasiness.
"Yes, very beautiful," she cried.
A question rose to my lips: "Why are you singing?" but I repressed it
and began to seek in myself the reasons of the curiosity which tormented
me.
There was an interval of silence. She ran her finger-nail across the
teeth of the comb, producing a light, grating noise. This grating is a
circumstance that I recall with perfect clearness.
"You were dressing to go out. Go on," I said.
"I have only to put on my jacket and hat. What time is it?"
"A quarter to eleven."
"What! So late already?"
She took her hat and veil, and sat down before the glass. I watched her.
Another question rose to my lips: "Where are you going?" Yet, although
it might appear quite natural, I restrained myself again, and continued
to observe Juliana attentively.
She reappeared to me once more what she was in reality--a young and
stylish woman, a gentle and noble face full of a refined physical
delicacy, radiant with an intense moral expression; in short, an
adorable woman, and one who could be as delightful a mistress for the
flesh as for the mind. "Suppose she were really someone's mistress?" I
thought then. "Assuredly, it is impossible but that many men have
hovered around her; everyone knows how I neglect her, everyone knows how
I wrong her. Suppose she has yielded, or is about to yield? Suppose
she has at last considered the sacrifice of her youth to be useless and
unjust? Suppose she was at last grown tired of her abnegation? Suppose
she has made the acquaintance of a man superior to me, some delicate and
deep seducer, who has inspired her with renewed curiosity, who has
taught her to forget her faithless husband? Suppose I have already lost
her heart, which I have so often trampled upon without pity and without
remorse?" A sudden fright seized me, and the anguish was so keen that I
thought: "That is what I will do; I will confess my suspicion to
Juliana. I will look into the depths of her eyes and say, 'Are you
still _faithful?_' And I will know the truth. She is incapable of
lying."
"Incapable of lying? Ah! ah! ah! A woman! ... What do you know about
it? A woman is capable of everything. Never forget that. Sometimes
the large cloak of heroism serves but to hide half a dozen lovers.
Sacrifice! Abnegation! Those are appearances, words. Who will ever
know the truth? Swear, if you dare, that your wife is faithful to you;
and I speak, not of the present faithfulness, but of that which preceded
the episode of the illness. Swear in perfect assurance, if you dare."
And the wicked voice (ah! Teresa Raffo, how your poison acts), the
perfidious voice made me shudder.
"Do not be impatient, Tullio," said Juliana, almost timidly. "Will you
stick this pin in my veil--here?"
She raised her arms and held them over her head to fasten the veil, and
her white fingers tried in vain to fasten it.
Her pose was full of grace. The white fingers made me think: "How long
it is since we clasped hands! Oh, the frank and warm clasps that her
hand used to give me, as if to assure me that she bore me no ill-will
for any offence! Now that hand is perhaps defiled." And while I
fastened the veil, I felt a sudden revulsion in thinking of the possible
pollution.
She arose, and I helped her again to put on her cloak. Two or three
times our eyes met by stealth, and again I observed in hers a sort of
anxious curiosity. Perhaps she was asking herself: "Why did he come in
here? Why is he staying here? What does that absent-minded air mean?
What does he want with me? What has happened to him?"
"Excuse me a moment," she said.
And she left the room.