When Alfred Chazel had said good-night to Helen as usual and was left
alone, he began to suffer with an intensity of which he himself could
not have believed himself capable. He had now no longer any need to
discuss the fact. His wife had lied to him. The clearness of this simple
fact prostrated him. He could hear her say in that voice whose slightest
inflections he knew so well:
"How have you been since yesterday?"
The last four syllables rang pitilessly in his ear and to the depth of
his heart. He had just lost, never, never again to recover it, complete
trust in that gentle voice, in these beloved eyes. There are no such
things as petty insincerities; a person who has once deceived may always
deceive. The perception of this natural law, the same perception which
had prevented Armand from believing in Helen, was torturing Alfred at
this moment. Liar! Liar! When he came to the utterance of this word, he
gave forth an outbreaking of grief as he paced to and fro about his
study, to which, as often of an evening, he had withdrawn.
On one of the walls was displayed a long blackboard, covered with a
medley of algebraical formulæ. Between the two windows stood a white
wooden table constructed so as to facilitate writing in a standing
position. Another low table, intended for correspondence; a bookcase
filled with tall mathematical volumes; engraved likenesses of Lagrange,
Fresnel, Cauchy, and Laplace; a leathern divan, and a carpet, completed
the furniture of a room, the abstract, peaceful aspect of which
presented a strange contrast to the disturbed countenance of the man who
was walking about in it at that moment; and the contrast symbolised only
too well the drama that was being enacted in the existence of a man born
for study, for prolonged and painful thought, for happy labour, and
constrained to action by the sudden revelation with which he had just
been visited.
Yes, the necessity for action was present and inevitable. To rest at the
suspicion which was tormenting him at that moment was what he could not
do--neither morally, without losing self-respect, nor physically, for
the pain of it was too great. As he raised his head with a gesture of
despair, his eyes encountered the board; he perceived the signs of his
calculations traced in chalk with that absolute equality of lettering,
that absence of thick and thin strokes, which imparted an appearance of
incomparable lucidity to his writing. The sudden sight of this changed
the current of his grief.
"Let us reason out the thing," he said aloud, and involuntarily he
recovered for subservience to his passion all the methodical habits
contracted by his intellect. "Yes," he went on, "let us reason it out."
He sat down beside his fire in an easy-chair, and, with his forehead
resting upon his hands, gathered together all his thoughts, which were
not long in shaping themselves to the following dilemma:
"There are two alternatives. Either the walk and the falsehood are to be
explained by some petty, innocent motive, a visit of charity or a chance
meeting, and they have not spoken to me about it owing to a false dread
of displeasing me; or else, the walk and the falsehood indicate that
there is a mystery between Helen and Armand. Let us speak out and say
that they love each other. There is no means of avoiding the
alternative. In the first case, I should have to scold Helen for
believing me to be so childishly jealous; in the second--"
Here his imagination paused, being taken unawares. There was within him
no anticipatory prevision of a misfortune of the kind. The practical
rules, received and accepted in his youth, upon which his whole life was
based, did not afford an answer to this cruel hypothesis. On the other
hand, he had for the determining of his will neither that dread of
public opinion which serves to guide nearly all husbands in similar
crises, nor the startling physical vision, that besetting, unendurable
vision which maddens a jealous man by showing him sexual union, fleshly
abandonment, irredeemable pollution.
The fact that Helen and Armand loved each other did not for a moment
signify to Chazel that she was the young man's mistress. It signified
that she had given him her heart. But then what was his duty as her
husband? For lack of previously adopted principles, he suffered himself
to be led away by the mania for absolute, ideal theories that is
characteristic of mathematicians.
"My duty, if I am becoming an obstacle to her happiness, is to sacrifice
myself. She must be left free; all must be given up."
He thought immediately of his son; he could see the little gestures, the
pretty face, the bright eyes of the child whom he had already moulded in
his own likeness.
"Ah!" he said to himself, "I have no right to forsake him. But to take
him with me--to deprive his mother of him?"
The tragic nature of this possibility disconcerted his intellect afresh,
and like a timorous swimmer who has ventured a few fathoms too far, he
speedily returned to the place where he could keep his footing, where
his reasoning stood firm close to the facts.
"I am losing my head," he groaned. "The question is, does she love him?
Does she not love him?"
He had risen once more, and was walking with a more hurried step than
before.
"How can I find out? How? how?" he asked himself, and the emotion of
uncertainty became so insupportable to him that he said to himself: "Let
there be an end of it. I will come to an understanding with Helen--and
at once."
He looked at the clock which was pointing to midnight. He had been in
these throes for an hour. He left his study with the lamp in his hand.
The narrow wooden staircase, which was covered with a red carpet, was
devoid of sound and light. All the servants were in bed. He went down
the steps of the staircase leaning on the bannisters, his legs
trembling, his lips parched, his throat choking. He was in front of the
door of his wife's bedroom. He gave two slight knocks with the back of
his hand. There was no reply. He turned the brass handle and leaned
against it. The door was double-locked, and the key was inside.
"She is asleep," he said to himself.
The action of descending the stairs, and then of pressing against the
door, had used up the feverish impulse produced by excess of
uncertainty. Instead of knocking again, he paused, motionless.
"She is asleep," he repeated to himself; "if I awake her, what shall I
say to her?"
He remained standing against the wall, with the lamp at his feet,
listening. Only the murmur of nocturnal Paris reached him, and he
reflected. He could see by anticipation the manner in which Helen would
receive him. She would be lying in her bed, her plaited hair rolled
about her head, while the lace of her fine night-dress quivered at neck
and wrist.
At the thought of this, Alfred experienced a thrill of amorous emotion
that restored to him the timidity with which the desire of his wife's
person always overwhelmed him, and he continued to picture the scene.
"What shall I say to her?--'You have lied to me.' And what will she
reply?"
He foresaw the countless pretexts that Helen could advance to explain
her walk.
"I shall ask her: 'Are you in love with Armand?'"
He felt himself incapable of being the first to articulate the words in
that way. Moreover, what might not the result of the question be? If it
were not true that she was in love with Armand, he would inflict useless
pain upon her, which would aggravate still further their divorce of
intimacy. What if it were true? She would not acknowledge it. She had
lied just now. What would another lie cost her?
Irresolution proved the stronger. He went up to his study again without
having made a fresh attempt. There was a lull for a few minutes, such as
succeeds to acute crises. It was one o'clock in the morning.
"I will go to sleep," he said to himself. "When I awake it will be time
enough to make up my mind."
As was usual with him, he arranged a few papers, carefully covered up
the fire to avoid accidents, and was almost tranquil as he got into bed.
But scarcely was he there before his anguish began again, more torturing
than before. The avenue in the Jardin des Plantes again extended its
vault of naked branches beneath which Helen and Armand passed along.
What were they saying to each other? The well-known voice uttered again
the fatal syllables, "Since yesterday!" Ah! Liar! liar! the deceiver!
Once more the necessity for action pressed in its inevitableness upon
this purely speculative nature. His thoughts distributed themselves
again into two groups.
"Either they love each other or they do not love each other. If they
do?--If they do not?--How can I find out? From her? From him?"
The thought of coming to an explanation with De Querne presented itself
abruptly, and as this thought, while satisfying the need for acting,
deferred the action for several hours, Alfred began mentally to muster
all the arguments that told in its favour.
Such an explanation would not involve any of the drawbacks which must
follow a conversation with Helen. If Armand and she did not love each
other, everything would remain as it was, since she was in ignorance of
her husband's suspicion and of the step that he had taken. If they were
in love with each other, he would extort the acknowledgment of the fact
more readily from the loyalty of his friend. The latter at least had not
lied to him. Could he have replied otherwise than as he did to Helen's
phrase, that simple phrase that was so terrible to himself, Alfred: "How
have you been since yesterday?" To receive the young man with these
words was tantamount to a prohibition to speak.
Again, there are suspicions respecting which one friend has no right to
keep silence towards another. If he, Alfred, were to learn that Armand
had harboured an insulting distrust of him in his heart without speaking
of it, would he not feel deeply wounded? Would he not consider such
silence an unwarrantable affront? Well, then, he would not offer this
affront to De Querne. He would go to him with open hand and heart, and
show him all his trouble. Such a step had further in its favour the fact
that it would involve practical results. He might ask his friend to come
to the Rue de La Rochefoucauld less frequently. If he were mistaken in
his distrust, and if the real cause of Helen's grief had been confided
to Armand, he might speak of it without indelicacy on that occasion, in
the course of the conversation.
During the whole of that long night he turned this plan over and over,
and in the end it impressed itself upon his will. Towards morning, he
fell into that dark overwhelming sleep which follows upon excessive
deperditions of nervous energy. Upon awaking, he again found himself
face to face with his resolution of the night before; he foresaw, unless
he acted, a day worse than that horrible night, and at nine o'clock he
was ringing at Armand's door, not without a thrilling of his whole
heart, yet with decision. These abstract souls, to whom action is so
repellent, are capable of energy, provided this energy be sustained by
reasoning, just as impassioned souls derive their force from blind
impulse, and arid souls from a clear perception of self-interest.
Many days had gone by since Chazel had entered the rooms in the Rue
Lincoln. The valet who answered his ring, an old servant of the De
Querne family, was the same who formerly used to come to the school to
take Armand away for his holidays. The few words that this man uttered
when asking about his master's old companion with the familiarity of
former days, brought real comfort to Alfred. He experienced an awakening
of memories that to him was equivalent to an impression of friendship.
"The baron is in his bath," the servant went on, "but if Monsieur Alfred
will walk into the drawing-room," and he opened the door with attentive
assiduity, "and read the papers," and he handed them. Then kneeling in
front of the fire to put on a fresh log, he asked:
"Will Monsieur Alfred take tea with the baron?"
These trifling attentions softened Alfred; in them he found as it were a
palpable renewal of the intimacy in which he had lived with Armand. The
aspect of the room heightened this first impression still more. He knew
the room well; he had seen it forming year by year, and furniture being
added to furniture. At every visit he was aware of some slight
alterations.
"Stay, that's new, is it not?" he would say to his friend, who used then
to explain to him the convenience or rarity of his recent acquisition.
He went up to the low bookcase, and by the look of the binding
recognised some books which must have been college prizes. He took one
out and saw the stamp of the Vanaboste School printed on the green
shagreen. He replaced the volume, and the courtyard of the school was
revived before his mind. What delightful hours had been spent in walking
round that yard with Armand--an Armand who, despite the years, resembled
the Armand of to-day; and to convince himself of the fact, he proceeded
to look at a profile of his friend done by Bastien-Lepage, in the
refined and exact manner of this master's portraits. From the portrait
Alfred passed on to the photographs scattered over the mantelpiece; the
comrades, living or dead, that they represented, had been known by him,
ay, by him also.
Ah! from the most insignificant objects in the apartment there issued a
voice to protest on behalf of the friendship that united De Querne and
himself. After the anguish of the night before, this atmosphere of
settled affection operated powerfully on Alfred's heart and brought him
relief.
"How well it was I came," he reflected, throwing himself into an
easy-chair, and looking at the fire, the flames of which were assuming a
joyous brightness: "I will tell him everything in a straightforward way:
what is the good of artifice! And I have full confidence that everything
will be explained."
He had reached this stage in his meditations, when he felt a hand laid
on his shoulder. It was the hand of Armand, who had just come in. But
Alfred's absorption had been too great to admit of his being disturbed
by the noise of the door. The young baron was wearing a handsome morning
jacket of black quilted silk, light trousers, and thin patent leather
shoes, while all about him there floated the fresh odour of a scent
which Alfred suddenly recognised. This same delicate aroma was diffused
around her by his wife in the morning hours when she went about in those
loose dresses which best indicated the suppleness of the lines of her
person. The fact that Helen and Armand made use of the same perfume was
sufficient, in Alfred's present condition of soul, to make the soothing
influence of youthful memories give way once more to the indefinable,
the vague and torturing suspicion of the night before. He looked at his
friend, but the latter seemed to be occupied solely with the
preparations for his breakfast. The valet had wheeled a little movable
table up to the fire, and arranged upon it a silver urn, a cup, slices
of toast, butter and honey.
"Another cup for Monsieur Chazel," said Armand.
"Monsieur Alfred has refused already," said the servant.
"Then you will allow me," Armand resumed in a cheerful tone.
Sitting down, he poured the black tea into the cup, and then the hot
water, calculating the proportion between them just as though his friend
had not been present. Was this the attitude of a man who had a secret to
conceal?
"No," said Alfred to himself, "if there were any mystery between Helen
and him, my visit would put him out, he would want to know the reason of
it. Are you not astonished," he went on aloud, "to see me so early in
the morning?" putting his question with that incapacity for
dissimulation which is characteristic of very sincere people, and which
causes them almost involuntarily to continue outwardly and verbally
their inmost thoughts.
"I suppose you have some little service to ask of me," replied the
other, "and I am quite ready to perform it."
Then to himself: "Poor Alfred is too ingenuous. He wants to know why I
am not astonished. Well, I certainly ought to be so, and should be
expecting a question from him about Helen--what else could it be about?
She would not believe me when I told her that he was growing jealous.
Well, we'll lie as well as we can, since so much is due to her and he
buttered a slice of toast, not without a certain melancholy at this
necessity for lying, for he had preserved the haughtiness of personal
pride which so often outlives true loftiness of feeling.
"Yes," Alfred resumed, in a tone of voice the seriousness of which
revealed how deeply he felt the present interview, "you are my
friend--my friend. Yes, I believe it, I know it."
It might have been thought that he was questioning himself the better to
assure himself of his own sincerity. He again repeated, "I believe it,"
looking at Armand as he had never ventured to look at him in his life
before. His eyes no longer expressed anything of that awkward timidity
which in all arguments caused Alfred to feel beaten beforehand, even
when he was right a hundred times over.
"And it is because you are my friend," he went on, "that I came to you
to-day. Armand, you see in me the most unhappy of men."
The other raised his head, which, as though to pour some more tea into a
cup that was already half full, he had bent down beneath his friend's
gaze. He looked straight at the loyal man whom, in that very room on the
eve of the first assignation, he had in thought held so cheap. Chazel
had allowed his eyeglass to fall. His clear eyes showed the very depths
of his soul. In them there was legible pain, so terrible and so genuine
that it rendered touching and tragic a situation which, at any other
moment, Armand would have considered very ridiculous--that, namely, of a
deceived husband suffering from suspicion of the deception in the
presence of the very man who has deceived him. No, it was simple, naked
human suffering--that real suffering which grips your vitals like the
shriek of a passer-by when crushed by a carriage at a street-corner.
Armand suddenly felt this sympathy of humanity, then immediately
afterwards a secret feeling of uncomfortableness at the thought that he
was himself the cause of this visible suffering; and he listened to
Alfred, who continued speaking.
"I have come to tell you things that people do not talk about, but you
must listen to me. I am very unhappy, my friend, and for very vulgar
reasons. Ah! there is nothing romantic in my story. It is comprised in a
single line: I love my wife and my wife does not love me. How and how
greatly I love her you cannot understand--no, not even you. I am a
timid, awkward fellow, I know, and have always known. When quite a young
man, I pictured in my dreams the ideal face of a woman. I called her my
madonna--but I am talking nonsense to you. Let me go on. It was she who
comforted me for the rest--those who all treated me with scorn--and it
was she that I loved. When I saw Helen, I found in her a likeness to
this chimera such as I had never met with. Do not smile. Just understand
me. I married her. At first I was quite sensible of the fact that she
was not very happy. I said to myself: Time will bring everything right.
Time has brought nothing right. The martyrdom that it has been to me to
see her dull, wearied, and sad, and to be able to do nothing for
her--ah! no one shall ever know. Especially since we have been living in
Paris, I can see that she is sinking into still greater melancholy, that
her poor face is growing thin and her eyes hollow. She is suffering and
wasting away before my eyes, every day a little more, and I am unable to
do anything and am ignorant of the cause. Can you understand what a
torture it is to see a woman loved as I love her passing away hour by
hour by my very side, and not even to know the reason?"
He had risen as he uttered these words. In proportion as the phrases
came to him, they swept away the plan of discourse which he had prepared
on his way from the Rue de La Rochefoucauld to the Rue Lincoln. He had
allowed himself to feel aloud. He passed his hand across his eyes and
went on:
"I am wandering. Why do I tell you all these things? I have come to ask
you whether you know what is the matter with her."
And he stopped in front of Armand, who also rose. The latter was trying
to guess the object of his old companion's tirade. He was aware that in
a conversation of this kind the chief point is to abstain from informing
one's interlocutor of what he may not know. To Alfred's abrupt question
he replied in the vaguest of formulas:
"Why, how could I know any more than yourself?"
"Armand," said the other, going up to him and laying his hands upon his
shoulders, "do not deceive me. I am able to hear anything; I am ready
for anything. Yes, if Helen loved some one, I should efface myself, I
should go away. I should take my son with me, and allow her to begin her
life anew. A revengeful husband--how I despise such a man as that!
Either he does not love--and then for what does he take revenge? For a
wound dealt to his pride? What pitifulness! Or else he does love, and
has only to bring about the happiness of the woman he loves at the cost
of his own. Ah, I have not the ideas of the world! Answer me, Armand, is
Helen in love with any one?"
"I tell you again. How should I know?"
"Ah!" exclaimed Chazel, taking his friend's arm and grasping it with all
his strength, "who can know if not you? Did you consider me blind to
such a degree as not to see that you were becoming her most intimate
confidant? If she does not talk to you about herself, her life, her
feelings, what do you say to each other in your endless conversations?
Why do you become silent when I appear, if you are not speaking of
things that you do not want me to hear? Why do you hide from me?" he
continued violently.
"We hide from you?" said Armand.
"Be silent," returned Alfred, laying his hand upon his friend's mouth,
"do not say what is false. I can endure falsehood no longer. I must have
the truth, whatever it may be. I saw you yesterday in the Jardin des
Plantes, in the main avenue. I was there--I saw you. You were walking
together, and in the evening she said to you: 'How have you been since
yesterday?' You do not hide from me? Repeat that now. Ah, why have you
both lied to me?"
"You are right," replied Armand, "we ought to have spoken to you about
it immediately. That is the way in which the most innocent things assume
an appearance of mystery."
While affecting the most absolute calmness, he said to himself: "Helen
is saved." Logical on this point with his everlasting distrust, he used
at every meeting to agree with his mistress upon a common explanation to
be given in case of surprise, and he went on aloud:
"Madame de Chazel was returning from a visit of charity; I met her in
the garden, and we walked together for a little because the weather was
fine. She asked me to say nothing about it to you, because you would
scold her for going in that way into the low quarters of the town."
And it was true that Alfred, still a provincial in this respect, used
often to speak of the dangers that a woman might incur alone in out of
the way corners in Paris.
"You have the means of ascertaining whether I am telling you the truth,"
added De Querne. "Take a cab, go home, and ask Madame Chazel. I shall
not have time to forewarn her, shall I? You will see whether she makes
you the same reply."
"For what do you take me?" said Alfred, "I have a horror of such spying
ways. I am already too much ashamed of having spoken to you in this
way.--Armand," he said, advancing towards his friend, "give me your word
of honour that Helen and you are not in love with each other."
"Madame Chazel and I!" exclaimed De Querne, "nay, I give you my word of
honour that not a word has passed between us that was not one of simple,
honourable friendship. In my turn I will ask you: 'For what do you take
me?'" And with the secret loathing of all his pride he added inwardly;
"What mean actions a woman can make a man commit!"
"Then I ask your forgiveness," returned Alfred, "for I suspected you.
Ah! I am not wronging you; I did not believe that there was anything
between you. No, I think too highly of you both. But I thought that she
might have formed an affection for you and you for her. She is charming,
and you, Armand--why you have all that I have not! You are handsome,
refined, witty. And I, I have only this," he said with a heart-broken
gesture, striking his breast above his heart.
"Heavens! what I should have suffered had it been true! Just think, to
have lost both her who is my entire life, and you whom I liked so much!
You do not know, Armand, how sincerely I am your friend--just let me
tell it you for once. At our age these protestations are ridiculous--but
what is ridicule to me? With my father, and before I knew Helen, you are
the person I loved most. I am of the Newfoundland breed; I must have
some one to be attached to. Throughout my youth you were that some one
to me. When we were children, I should have liked you to have a
sacrifice to ask of me, something very difficult, almost impossible of
execution. You were in my eyes like a more fortunate brother. I was not
jealous of all your superior qualities; I was proud of them. When I got
married you were not able to come to Bourges. Well! will you believe it,
my heart throbbed when I introduced you to my wife in Paris? If you had
not been pleased with her I should have been so unhappy. Think of that
my friend, my dear friend," and he clasped his hands, "and you will
excuse me for having said anything painful, or wounding to you. You and
she, to lose you both! Ah! I should have gone away. I should have
sacrificed everything to your happiness. But it would have killed me!"
He sank into the easy chair as though exhausted by the emotions that he
had just experienced. His agitated face revealed too clearly the
excessiveness of his grief, and Armand felt unspeakably moved by looking
upon such a spectacle of sorrow and weakness. By truthfulness of soul,
Alfred had just re-established between them the true nature of the
situation. Husbands are not so often ridiculous, as the proverb says,
but by reason of the deceived vanity which is at the bottom of nearly
all their bitterness, or of the triumphant vanity which is at the bottom
of their fancied security. But Alfred, face to face with Armand, was
trust face to face with treachery, serious love, ready for the most
tragic sacrifices, face to face with the depraved fancy of pride and
sense that scruple had restrained.
And Armand was silent. Alfred's affection and esteem smote him as with a
hand. Ah! how he would have liked to have said to this man:
"Yes, I have lied to you. I have robbed you of your wife. I had the
excuse that I did not know how much you loved her and how much you loved
me. Choose now the reparation that it may please you to require, and I
will grant it you. Let us put an end to it."
Yes, but what of Helen? The secret of adultery does not belong to a
single individual. To his duty towards Alfred was opposed another
duty--a duty of honour also, and one freely contracted--and he was
silent, feeling a very child in the presence of this honesty which
suffered and wept before him, honesty possibly deceived and certainly
simple. But a man who entrusts you with his pocket-book, and whom you
rob of the bank-notes in one of the pockets of it, is also deceived and
simple; only, on the other hand, you are a thief. Whatever Armand's
superiority to Alfred might be, he found himself, by the mere fact of
his own treachery and his friend's good faith, in that condition of
humiliation which is intolerable to all higher natures. It was an
experience that lasted for only a few minutes, but it was a very bitter
one.
"Do not pay any attention to this complaining of mine," Alfred resumed;
"my nerves are unstrung. I really do not know why I am like this, seeing
that I have found with you the certainty that I needed. Ah! thank
you!"--and he sprang forward to kiss his friend as brother kisses
brother. Under this kiss Armand could feel the blood rising to his face.
"Come," he said in confusion, "calm yourself."
"Nay, I am calm," said Alfred; "you have been so good, you have listened
to me with so much heart. Alas!" he added mournfully, "how is it that I
cannot have an explanation with Helen like that which I have had with
you? In her presence I feel so embarrassed, so constrained."
"And," replied Armand, who perceived the possibility of sparing his
mistress a cruel scene, "you also take an exaggerated view of trifles.
Shall I tell you my opinion about Madame Chazel? And this opinion has
been confirmed by all the conversations that I have had with her. What
she is suffering from is the change in her mode of life. The atmosphere
of Paris, the habits of Paris, the people of Paris, are all enervating
to her. She needs great consideration. Take my advice and spare her all
discussion. Be gentle with her."
"You are right," said Alfred, who remembered having heard almost the
same words in the mouth of the doctor, and this coincidence succeeded in
momentarily tranquillising him. He shook his head, and uttered the
following words, at which Armand felt no inclination to smile:
"I am an egotist; I see nothing but my own grief. But Helen has
confidence in me. You see that I am jealous no longer. Speak to her of
me; tell her how much I love her, how I desire only her happiness.
Explain it all to her; she will believe you. God! I would give my whole
life for a glance of tenderness in her eyes when she looks at me."