The Comtesse de Mascaret was waiting in her room for dinner time as a
criminal sentenced to death awaits the hour of his execution. What was
her husband going to do? Had he come home? Despotic, passionate, ready
for any violence as he was, what was he meditating, what had he made up
his mind to do? There was no sound in the house, and every moment she
looked at the clock. Her lady's maid had come and dressed her for the
evening and had then left the room again. Eight o'clock struck and
almost at the same moment there were two knocks at the door, and the
butler came in and announced dinner.
“Has the count come in?”
“Yes, Madame la Comtesse. He is in the diningroom.”
For a little moment she felt inclined to arm herself with a small
revolver which she had bought some time before, foreseeing the tragedy
which was being rehearsed in her heart. But she remembered that all
the children would be there, and she took nothing except a bottle of
smelling salts. He rose somewhat ceremoniously from his chair. They
exchanged a slight bow and sat down. The three boys with their tutor,
Abbe Martin, were on her right and the three girls, with Miss Smith,
their English governess, were on her left. The youngest child, who was
only three months old, remained upstairs with his nurse.
The abbe said grace as usual when there was no company, for the children
did not come down to dinner when guests were present. Then they
began dinner. The countess, suffering from emotion, which she had not
calculated upon, remained with her eyes cast down, while the count
scrutinized now the three boys and now the three girls with an
uncertain, unhappy expression, which travelled from one to the other.
Suddenly pushing his wineglass from him, it broke, and the wine was
spilt on the tablecloth, and at the slight noise caused by this little
accident the countess started up from her chair; and for the first time
they looked at each other. Then, in spite of themselves, in spite of
the irritation of their nerves caused by every glance, they continued to
exchange looks, rapid as pistol shots.
The abbe, who felt that there was some cause for embarrassment which he
could not divine, attempted to begin a conversation and tried various
subjects, but his useless efforts gave rise to no ideas and did not
bring out a word. The countess, with feminine tact and obeying her
instincts of a woman of the world, attempted to answer him two or three
times, but in vain. She could not find words, in the perplexity of her
mind, and her own voice almost frightened her in the silence of the
large room, where nothing was heard except the slight sound of plates
and knives and forks.
Suddenly her husband said to her, bending forward: “Here, amid your
children, will you swear to me that what you told me just now is true?”
The hatred which was fermenting in her veins suddenly roused her, and
replying to that question with the same firmness with which she had
replied to his looks, she raised both her hands, the right pointing
toward the boys and the left toward the girls, and said in a firm,
resolute voice and without any hesitation: “On the head of my children,
I swear that I have told you the truth.”
He got up and throwing his table napkin on the table with a movement of
exasperation, he turned round and flung his chair against the wall, and
then went out without another word, while she, uttering a deep sigh, as
if after a first victory, went on in a calm voice: “You must not pay any
attention to what your father has just said, my darlings; he was very
much upset a short time ago, but he will be all right again in a few
days.”
Then she talked with the abbe and Miss Smith and had tender, pretty
words for all her children, those sweet, tender mother's ways which
unfold little hearts.
When dinner was over she went into the drawing-room, all her children
following her. She made the elder ones chatter, and when their bedtime
came she kissed them for a long time and then went alone into her room.
She waited, for she had no doubt that the count would come, and she made
up her mind then, as her children were not with her, to protect herself
as a woman of the world as she would protect her life, and in the pocket
of her dress she put the little loaded revolver which she had bought
a few days previously. The hours went by, the hours struck, and every
sound was hushed in the house. Only the cabs, continued to rumble
through the streets, but their noise was only heard vaguely through the
shuttered and curtained windows.
She waited, full of nervous energy, without any fear of him now,
ready for anything, and almost triumphant, for she had found means of
torturing him continually during every moment of his life.
But the first gleam of dawn came in through the fringe at the bottom of
her curtain without his having come into her room, and then she awoke to
the fact, with much amazement, that he was not coming. Having locked
and bolted her door, for greater security, she went to bed at last and
remained there, with her eyes open, thinking and barely understanding it
all, without being able to guess what he was going to do.
When her maid brought her tea she at the same time handed her a letter
from her husband. He told her that he was going to undertake a longish
journey and in a postscript added that his lawyer would provide her with
any sums of money she might require for all her expenses.