“You mean?” she breathed.
“I mean that I must now take measures to live my own life. It is
impossible for me to live in his house any longer.”
It was then that she made one of her quick, characteristic mental turns.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a monstrous house. I don’t wonder you detest it.”
I almost smiled, but I was determined to get to the point. “Dear
_Belle-Mère_,” I insisted, “that is neither here nor there. What I mean
is that I must be legally free from Philibert.” I hesitated, I saw her
face whiten, but I pressed the point. “It is best for me to tell you
that I have decided to divorce your son.”
I don’t know what effect I had expected and feared to produce. It may
be that I thought she would break down or faint dead away, or something
of that kind. She had seemed so frail that I had been really afraid of
the effect of my words. But nothing of this sort happened. The blow I
had dealt seemed to spend its force in the air. It glanced off and went
shivering into the rich, cold atmosphere of the room.
“My dear,” she said, enunciating her words very precisely, “_on ne
divorce pas dans notre monde_.” And she looked away from me, coolly
taking in the room with its priceless objects as if summoning them
to witness to the truth of her statement. She was right to look round
that room. It was her room, not mine. It understood her, not me. She
had called it a moment before a detestable house, but that made no
difference. Its magnificence was to be made use of all the same. We
were in the room that Philibert always referred to when he took people
over the house as “_le salon de Madame de Joigny_,” or “_le boudoir de
ma femme_.” It was the nicest room in the house. You remember it well,
with its pearly grey boiseries fine as lace, its Frangonard panels,
its green lacquer furniture, the three windows on the garden where a
stone fountain lifted its fine sculptured figures from the lawn. The
light in the room was silvery green and translucent as the light seen
beneath the surface of clear water, and in that dim radiance the fine
precious objects floated above the polished floor as if even the laws
of gravitation had been circumvented in the fine enclosed space. The
boiseries had been in the Trianon--you remember Philibert had procured
them after much bargaining. They had been designed and executed for
Madame de Montespan. Their perfect beauty constituted a document, a
testimony to the marvellous taste and finished craftsmanship of an
epoch. France, in all its delicate dignity, existed in that room. It
is no wonder that your mother looked about her for moral support. The
rest of the immense house might have belied her, here she could place
her faith without hesitation. I opposed to it the profession of my own
faith.
“In my country,” I said dully, for I was beginning to feel baffled and
confused, “we are not afraid to admit errors, to put away the past and
begin something new.”
“But this, my dear child, is your country,” she said more gently. “You
are a Frenchwoman now.”
I smiled. “Do you really think so?” I asked her. She drew a sharp
breath. “Ah, if you only were,” she cried softly, “you would know how
impossible it is to do what you want to do, and how useless.”
My attention closed sullenly like a clamp on the words “impossible,”
“useless.” I stared at the floor. Why impossible? Why useless? Why
did I listen to this woman who did not love me, and who told me that
my longing to live was useless? How was it she made me listen to her?
Where was her advantage? She was certain and I was uncertain, that
was it. I was not quite sure, but she was sure. Her definite idea was
projected out at me and into me like a hook. It took hold of me. I
felt myself wriggling on it, and I heard, through the confusion of my
own ideas that seemed to buzz audibly in my head, your mother’s voice
talking.
“You are young,” it said. “You come of a young people. You believe
in miracles. You seek perfection on earth. Believe me, I am old and
wise, ideals are all very well, but one must be practical about life.
Philibert has behaved very badly. He has made a scandal, but you can
remedy that and maintain your dignity by disregarding his escapade, or
at any rate treating it as nothing more than an escapade. And such it
is, nothing more, believe me. The acts of men are never anything more.
_Mon Dieu_, if we took what they did seriously, where should we be, we
women? We must take them for what they are. _Il le faut bien._ We must
never count on them. We must count on ourselves.”
But I seemed gradually to lose track of her words. It was strange,
but the sound of her voice was conveying a meaning more profound and
more direct than her spoken phrases. The sound of her voice rang in
my ears like a light, mournful, warning bell, high metallic, hollow
and sweet. It was old, an old sound much older than the lips through
which it issued. It seemed to come from a far distance, from the
distant past. Hollow and sweet and measured, its monotony insisted on
the fine tried truths of the past, it called up proud, faded images
of old resignations and compromises and lost illusions, and sounded
constantly the note of the persistent obstinacy of pride. The words “we
women” reached me. I was a woman, she was a woman. We were together.
There were men in the world and women. When one reduced things to their
last simplicity all women were bound together in the same bundle,
dealing with the same problem. She, the older woman, was wise, I was
foolish; but we were sisters in disappointment, we were weak, we must
be proud. We had both loved Philibert, but even I had never loved him
as she loved him. And he had broken her heart. The dignity of our
life depended on our pride, to hide our hurt, to make no sound, no
complaint, to arrange silently to make things bearable, to influence
men without their knowing it. Our advantage lay in our clairvoyance.
We could see through them when they could not see into us beyond our
skins. We were weak if we treated them as they treated us, but we were
strong if we remained mysterious, mute, proud. The children were ours.
Everything we did was for our children. Philibert was her child. She
must remember, she could not forget, he was her son. If we destroyed
the family we destroyed our children. Even when the men destroyed it
we must hold it together. We must pretend, for our children. When the
man was gone we must pretend he was still there. Truth and beauty
and dignity lay behind the pretence. We must pretend obstinately. If
we pretended well enough it became true. We must not endanger our
children’s lives, anything but that.
Little Geneviève came dancing into my vision, her hair flying, her
little skirts blowing, her toes dancing; a shadow fell on her, she
stopped her gay jumping about. She was all at once pale. Her eyes gazed
at me reproachfully, mournful eyes of a child, suffering. Something
about her was wrong, twisted, maimed. I shuddered. Your mother’s voice
was still going on. The words she spoke were concise, delicate little
pieces of sound strung together close like beads, they made a long,
pale, shining chain that reached from the beginning of time out into
the future. Over and over again I heard the same words. It seemed to me
that she was endlessly repeating the same thing as if it were a bit
of magic, of hoodoo. I wondered if she were hypnotizing me. Women must
pretend--women, the protectors--the strong foundation--the family the
basis of life. Women must keep the family intact. If we destroyed the
family we destroyed our children--Philibert her child--Geneviève my
child.
I looked up and saw your mother as I had never seen her before--she was
bare--she was stark naked--she was fighting for her child, for her son,
for what he was to her, for him as he must and should be to her and to
the world, for his safety, and his dignity. There was nothing between
us. We were together, two women. She was appealing to me as a woman
like herself. Philibert was her child. Even if she were deceiving me,
pretending to care for me, what did it matter? I understood her--she
was there in the great simplicity of her pretence assuming me to be
like herself, proud, gentle, sure, a woman like herself. Vulgar! I was
vulgar; my struggling for freedom was coarse; I was making an ugly
disgusting fuss; I was ashamed.
A sensation of warmth and delight crept over me--and I knew that I had
decided to do what she wanted. It seemed to me that she became my own
then, and that I belonged to her and she to me. It was impossible to
wound her. The most important thing in the world was not to disappoint
her. She expected something of me, renouncement. She expected me to
spare her son. She asked for my life, my freedom, two little things I
could give her, so that she would not be disappointed. I must give them
to her. It would be beautiful to make her happy. That was wonderful.
Whatever happened she would always know. There would be something fine
between us. We would be together. I would belong to her and she to me:
two women who had understood something together.
I touched her hand. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Her
fingers clutched mine. “_Ma pauvre enfant, ayez pitié de moi_,” she
quavered.
“There dear, don’t think of it any more.”
“Wait, at least, until I am dead,” she whispered. I knelt beside her,
just touching her hand. I was weeping, too, now, silently as she was,
gently, mute tears.
“I will never do it,” I said. It seemed to me wonderful to give her my
freedom, gently, like that, in a whisper, kneeling close to her, not
frightening her, asking nothing, putting things right, easily, at the
cost of all my life.