"When we are young, our mornings are triumphant."
Then we wake up with a cool skin, a bright eye, and glossy hair.
When one grows older one wakes up in a very different state. Dull eyes,
red, swollen cheeks, dry lips, the hair and beard all disarranged,
impart an old, fatigued, wornout look to the face.
The Baron opened his traveling dressing-case, and made himself as tidy
as he could, and then he waited.
The engine whistled and the train stopped, and his neighbor moved. No
doubt he was awake. They started off again, and then an oblique ray of
sun shone into the carriage just on to the sleeper, who moved again,
shook himself, and then calmly showed his face.
It was a young, fair, pretty, stout woman, and the Baron looked at her
in amazement. He did not know what to believe. He could really have
sworn that it was--his wife, but wonderfully changed for the better:
stouter--why she had grown as stout as he was--only it suited her much
better than it did him.
She looked at him quietly, did not seem to recognize him, and then
slowly laid aside her wraps. She had that calm assurance of a woman who
is sure of herself, the insolent audacity of a first awakening, knowing
and feeling that she was in her full beauty and freshness.
The Baron really lost his head. Was it his wife, or somebody else who
was as like her as any sister could be? As he had not seen her for six
years he might be mistaken.
She yawned, and he knew her by her gesture, and she turned and looked at
him again, calmly, indifferently, as if she scarcely saw him, and then
looked out at the country again.
He was upset and dreadfully perplexed, and waited, looking at her
sideways, steadfastly.
Yes; it was certainly his wife. How could he possibly have doubted?
There could certainly not be two noses like that, and a thousand
recollections flashed through him, slight details of her body, a
beauty-spot on one of her thighs, and another opposite to it on her
back. How often he had kissed them! He felt the old feeling of the
intoxication of love stealing over him, and he called to mind the sweet
odor of her skin, her smile when she put her arms on to his shoulders,
the soft intonations of her voice, all her graceful, coaxing ways.
But how she had changed and improved! It was she and yet not she. He
thought her riper, more developed, more of a woman, more seductive, more
desirable, adorably desirable.
And this strange, unknown woman, whom he had accidentally met in a
railway-carriage belonged to him; he had only to say to her:
"I insist upon it."
He had formerly slept in her arms, existed only in her love, and now he
had found her again certainly, but so changed that he scarcely knew her.
It was another, and yet she at the same time. It was another who had
been born, and had formed and grown since he had left her. It was she,
indeed; she whom he had possessed but who was now altered, with a more
assured smile and greater self-possession. There were two women in one,
mingling a great past of what was new and unknown with many sweet
recollections of the past. There was something singular, disturbing,
exciting about it--a kind of mystery of love in which there floated a
delicious confusion. It was his wife in a new body and in new flesh
which lips had never pressed.
And he thought that in six years everything changes in us, only the
outline can be recognized, and sometimes even that disappears.
The blood, the hair, the skin all change, and is reconstituted, and when
people have not seen each other for a long time, when they meet they
find another totally different being, although it be the same and bear
the same name.
And the heart also can change. Ideas may be modified and renewed, so
that in forty years of life we may, by gradual and constant
transformations, become four or five totally new and different beings.
He dwelt on this thought till it troubled him; it had first taken
possession of him when he surprised her in the Princess's room. He was
not the least angry; it was not the same woman that he was looking
at--that thin, excitable little doll of those days.
What was he to do? How should he address her? and what could he say to
her? Had she recognized him?
The train stopped again. He got up, bowed, and said: "Bertha, do you
want anything I could bring you?..."
She looked at him from head to foot, and answered, without showing the
slightest surprise or confusion, or anger, but with the most perfect
indifference:
"I do not want anything,--thank you."
He got out and walked up and down the platform a little in order to
recover himself, and, as it were, to recover his senses after a fall.
What should he do now? If he got into another carriage it would look as
if he were running away. Should he be polite or importunate? That would
look as if he were asking for forgiveness. Should he speak as if he were
her master? He would look like a fool, and besides, he really had no
right to do so.
He got in again and took his place.
During his absence she had hastily arranged her dress and hair, and was
now lying stretched out on the seat, radiant, and without showing any
emotion.
He turned to her, and said: "My dear Bertha, since this singular chance
has brought us together after a separation of six years--a quite
friendly separation--are we to continue to look upon each other as
irreconcilable enemies? We are shut up together, _tête-à-tête_, which is
so much the better or so much the worse. I am not going to get into
another carriage, so don't you think it is preferable to talk as friends
till the end of our journey?"
She answered quite calmly again:
"Just as you please."
Then he suddenly stopped, really not knowing what to say; but as he had
plenty of assurance, he sat down on the middle-seat, and said:
"Well, I see I must pay my court to you; so much the better. It is,
however, really a pleasure, for you are charming. You cannot imagine how
you have improved in the last six years. I do not know any woman who
could give me that delightful sensation which I experienced just now
when you emerged from your wraps. I could really have thought such a
change impossible...."
Without moving her head or looking at him, she said: "I cannot say the
same with regard to you; you have certainly deteriorated a great deal."
He got red and confused, and then, with a smile of resignation, he said:
"You are rather hard."
"Why?" was her reply. "I am only stating facts. I don't suppose you
intend to offer me your love? It must, therefore, be a matter of perfect
indifference to you what I think about you. But I see it is a painful
subject, so let us talk of something else. What have you been doing
since I last saw you?"
He felt rather out of countenance, and stammered:
"I? I have traveled, shot, and grown old, as you see. And you?"
She said, quite calmly: "I have taken care of appearances, as you
ordered me."
He was very near saying something brutal, but he checked himself, and
kissed his wife's hand:
"And I thank you," he said.
She was surprised. He was indeed cool and always master of himself.
He went on: "As you have acceded to my first request, shall we now talk
without any bitterness?"
She made a little movement of surprise.
"Bitterness? I don't feel any; you are a complete stranger to me; I am
only trying to keep up a difficult conversation."
He was still looking at her, carried away in spite of her harshness, and
he felt seized with a brutal desire, the desire of the master.
Perceiving that she had hurt his feelings, she said:
"How old are you now? I thought you were younger than you look."
He grew rather pale.
"I am forty-five;" and then he added: "I forgot to ask after Princess de
Raynes. Are you still intimate with her?"
She looked at him as if she hated him:
"Yes, I certainly am. She is very well, thank you."
They remained sitting side-by-side, agitated and irritated. Suddenly he
said:
"My dear Bertha, I have changed my mind. You are my wife, and I expect
you to come with me to-day. You have, I think, improved both morally and
physically, and I am going to take you back again. I am your husband,
and it is my right to do so."
She was stupefied, and looked at him, trying to divine his thoughts; but
his face was resolute and impenetrable.
"I am very sorry," she said, "but I have made other engagements."
"So much the worse for you," was his reply. "The law gives me the power,
and I mean to use it."
They were getting to Marseilles, and the train whistled and slackened
speed. The Baroness got up, carefully rolled up her wraps, and then
turning to her husband, she said:
"My dear Raymond, do not make a bad use of the _tête-à-tête_ which I had
carefully prepared. I wished to take precautions, according to your
advice, so that I might have nothing to fear from you or from other
people, whatever might happen. You are going to Nice, are you not?"
"I shall go wherever you go."
"Not at all; just listen to me, and I am sure that you will leave me in
peace. In a few moments, when we get to the station, you will see the
Princess de Raynes and Countess Hermit waiting for me with their
husbands. I wished them to see us, and to know that we had spent the
night together in the railway-carriage. Don't be alarmed; they will tell
it everywhere as a most surprising fact.
"I told you just now that I had most carefully followed your advice and
saved appearances. Anything else does not matter, does it? Well, in
order to do so, I wished to be seen with you. You told me carefully to
avoid any scandal, and I am avoiding it, for, I am afraid--I am
afraid--"
She waited till the train had quite stopped, and as her friends ran up
to open the carriage-door, she said:
"I am afraid that I am in the family-way."
The Princess stretched out her arms to embrace her, and the Baroness
said, pointing to the Baron, who was dumb with astonishment, and was
trying to get at the truth:
"You do not recognize Raymond? He has certainly changed a good deal, and
he agreed to come with me so that I might not travel alone. We take
little trips like this, occasionally, like good friends who cannot live
together. We are going to separate here; he has had enough of me
already."
She put out her hand, which he took mechanically, and then she jumped
out on to the platform among her friends, who were waiting for her.
The Baron hastily shut the carriage-door, for he was too much disturbed
to say a word or come to any determination. He heard his wife's voice,
and their merry laughter as they went away.
He never saw her again, nor did he ever discover whether she had told
him a lie or was speaking the truth.