“I’ve caught you! He is still alive, and getting better.”
They all stared at me in the utmost amazement.
“He is better,” I said gravely; “he recognized me and even smiled at
me.”
They all believed me, but were extremely indignant. Giovanni announced
that if he had not been afraid of straining himself, he would have
flung a plate at my head. It was of course unpardonable of me to harrow
the party by inventing such a piece of information. If it had been true
there would have been no harm in it. Wouldn’t it be better for me to
tell them the truth even now? Copler was dead, and directly I was left
alone I should find plenty of tears to shed for him; I felt they would
flow abundantly now. I tried to find words, but Signora Malfenti, with
her air of _grande dame_, interrupted me:
“Let us leave that unfortunate Copler in peace,” she said. “To-morrow
will be time enough for us to think about him.”
I instantly obeyed, even to the point of dismissing the dead man from
my thoughts as well. “Farewell,” I said to him. “Wait for me! I will
come back to you later on.”
The time had come for the toast. The doctor had given Giovanni
permission to drink a glass of champagne for the occasion. He gravely
watched them pouring out the wine, and refused to touch it with his
lips till the glass was quite full. When he had proposed their health
in plain and simple terms, he drained it to the dregs. With a malicious
glance at me he said that the last drop had been dedicated to my
health. I crossed my fingers under the table to avert his wish, which I
knew boded me no good.
I have no very clear memory of the remainder of that evening. I know
that at Augusta’s instigation they said lots of nice things about me,
and quoted me as a model husband. I was quite restored to favour; even
my father-in-law became more conciliatory. He said, however, that he
hoped Ada’s husband would prove as good a one as me, and at the same
time a better business man; and above all someone who ... and he hunted
about for the right word. He could not find it, nor did anyone press
for it. Not even Señor Francesco, who as he had only seen me for the
first time that morning, could not be expected to know much about me. I
was not at all offended. The consciousness that one has great wrongs to
repair subdues one’s pride a good deal. I was ready to accept insults
readily, so long as they were accompanied by an affection which I knew
I did not deserve. My mind, confused as it was by wine and fatigue,
played cheerfully with the idea of the perfect husband which had been
conjured up, and saw no reason why that husband became less perfect by
having committed adultery. One had just got to be good, and again good:
nothing else mattered. I kissed my hand to Augusta who returned my
greeting with a grateful smile.
Seeing I was drunk, it occurred to some of the guests that it might be
amusing to call on me for a toast. I accepted, because at that moment
it seemed to me that it would set my feet firmly on the right path if I
were to make my good resolutions in public. Not that I had any doubts
of myself, for at that moment I really felt I did correspond to their
description of me, but I should be better still, I thought, if I were
to state my good resolutions in front of so many people who would act,
as it were, as my witnesses.
And this was how I came only to talk about Augusta and myself in my
toast. For the second time that day I told the story of my marriage.
In telling it to Carla I had misrepresented it, because I had not
said anything about loving my wife; now I misrepresented it in the
other direction, by saying nothing at all about the two people who
played such an important part in the story--Ada and Alberta. I told
of my hesitations and scruples, which I now bitterly regretted because
they had robbed me of months of happiness. Then, out of gallantry, I
attributed like hesitations to Augusta, which she laughingly denied.
I had some difficulty in finding the thread again. I related how we had
at last come to the honeymoon, and how I had made love to her in all
the museums of Italy. I was so up to my neck in lies that I even threw
in that mendacious detail, though it served no purpose whatever. And
yet they say, “_In vino veritas_.”
Augusta broke in a second time to put things right, and said that
she had been obliged to avoid museums, because of the danger the
masterpieces were in at my hands. She did not see that she thereby
threw doubt on the whole story, and not only one detail of it! If
there had been an acute observer present he would at once have drawn
his conclusions as to the kind of love I proposed making in such
surroundings.
I resumed my long, rambling speech, telling about our arrival home, and
how we had both set to work making improvements in the house, putting
in this and putting in that--amongst other things a laundry.
Augusta, still laughing, broke in again:
“This party is not being given in honour of us, you know, but for Ada
and Guido! Try and talk about them!”
This sally was received with clamorous applause. I laughed too, seeing
how I had been instrumental in bringing about that state of noisy
mirth which is _de rigueur_ on such occasions. But I could not think
of anything else to say. I felt as if I had been talking for hours. I
swallowed down several more glasses of wine, one after the other.
“To Ada!” I stood up in my place for a moment, to see whether she was
crossing her fingers under the table.
“To Guido!” and emptying my glass I added:
“With all my heart!” forgetting that I had omitted this little coda
with the first glass.
“To your first child!” I should have gone on drinking glass after glass
to each of their children in turn, if they had not ended by stopping
me. I was quite ready to drink all the wine there was left on the table
to those poor innocents.
Then everything became still more dim. I only remember clearly that
my chief concern was not to appear drunk. I sat upright and said
very little. I mistrusted myself; I felt obliged to analyse every
word before I uttered it. I was afraid to take part in the general
conversation because it gave me no time to clear up my thoughts. I
thought I would start a topic myself, and said to my father-in-law:
“Have you heard that _Extérieur_ have gone down two points?” I was
talking of something I knew nothing whatever about; in fact I was only
repeating what I had heard on the Bourse; all I wanted was to show that
I was not drunk, by talking about business, which one generally forgets
all about under those conditions. But it was clearly a more serious
matter for my father-in-law, who called me a bird of ill-omen. I had no
luck with him that day.
Then I turned to my next-door neighbour, Alberta. We began talking
about love. She was interested in it only in theory, and for the moment
I was not very interested in it in practice either. So it was nice
to talk about it. She asked me to tell her my ideas about it, and I
immediately discovered one which seemed to me to grow out of that day’s
experience. A woman, I said, varied in value much more than any share
on the Bourse. Alberta misunderstood me, and thought I meant what is
of course a common-place, that a woman of a certain age has quite a
different value from a younger woman. I tried to explain myself more
clearly; a woman might be worth a great deal at a certain hour in the
morning, nothing at all at midday, and twice as much in the afternoon,
whereas perhaps in the evening her value might be actually negative. I
explained what I meant by a negative value; a woman might be said to
have it when a man began calculating what he would be willing to pay if
she would go a very, very long way off.
The poor playwright could not see that there was any truth at all in
my discovery; whereas I, who had fresh in my mind the fluctuations in
value that Carla and Augusta had undergone this very day, was sure of
it. But when I wanted to make my meaning still clearer, the wine I had
drunk tripped me up and I made a terrible _faux pas_.
“Imagine,” I said, “that your value is _x_; if you let me press your
foot with mine, your value would be at least twice as great.”