IV
As soon as Marie had got over her confinement, which compelled her to live quietly for a time, she was seized with a craving for excitement. Under the pretext of studying her art, she visited the theatres and went to public entertainments while I stayed at home and worked. Protected by the title of a married woman, she was received in circles which had been closed to the divorced wife. She was anxious that I should accompany her, for she considered the fact of her husband’s absence prejudicial to her best interests. But I resisted, and while claiming for myself personal freedom, according to our verbal agreement, I allowed her absolute liberty, and let her go where she pleased.
“But no one ever sets eyes on the husband,” she objected.
“People will understand him,” I replied.
The husband! The very way in which she pronounced the word conveyed opprobrium; and she fell into the habit of treating me with a certain amount of superciliousness.
During the solitary hours which I spent at home I worked at my ethnographical treatise, which was to be the ladder on which I hoped to climb to promotion at the library. I was in correspondence with all the learned authorities in Paris, Berlin, Petersburg, Irkutsk and Peking, and, seated at my writing-table, I held in my hand the threads of a perfect net of inter-relations which stretched all over the world. Marie did not approve of this work. She would have preferred to see me engaged in writing comedies, and was angry with me. I begged her to await results, and not condemn my work prematurely as waste of time. But she would have none of these Chinese researches which brought in no money. A new Xanthippe, she severely tried my Socratic patience by reiterating that I was frittering away her dowry—her dowry!
My life was a strange mingling of sweetness and bitterness, and one of my greatest worries was Marie’s theatrical career. In March it was rumoured that the company of the Royal Theatre would be reduced at the end of May, the period when contracts were renewed. This gave rise to fresh floods of tears during the next three months, in addition to the usual every-day grievances. The house was overrun by all the failures from the Royal Theatre. My soul, broadened and uplifted by the knowledge I had acquired, and the growth and development of my talent, rebelled against the presence of these unfit ones, these incapables who possessed no culture, who were detestable on account of their vanity, their ceaseless flow of banalities, uttered in the slang of the theatre, which they called new truths.
I became so sick of the torture of their tittle-tattle that I begged to be in future excused from my wife’s parties. I urged her to cut her connection with those mental lepers, those disqualified ones, whose presence must of necessity depress us and rob us of our courage.
“Aristocrat!” she sneered.
“Aristocrat, if you like, but aristocrat in the true sense of the word,” I replied; “for I yearn for the summits of genius, not for the mole-hills of the titled aristocracy. Nevertheless, I suffer all the sorrows of the disinherited.”
When I ask myself to-day how I could have lived for years the slave of a woman who treated me disgracefully, who shamelessly robbed me in company of her friends and her dog, I come to the conclusion that it was thanks to my moderation, to my ascetic philosophy of life, which taught me not to be exacting, especially in love. I loved her so much that I irritated her, and more than once she plainly showed me that my passionate temperament bored her. But everything was forgotten and forgiven at those rare moments when she caressed me, when she took my throbbing head into her lap, when her fingers played with my hair. This was happiness unspeakable, and like a fool I stammered out the confession that life without her would be impossible, that my existence hung on a thread which she held in her hand. In this way I fostered a conviction in her that she was a higher being, and the consequence was that she treated me with flattery and blandishments as if I were a spoilt child. She knew that I was in her power, and did not scruple to abuse it.
When the summer came she went into the country and took her maid with her. She moreover persuaded her friend to accompany her, for she was afraid of feeling lonely during the week when my work kept me at the library. It was in vain that I objected, that I reminded her that her friend was not in a position to pay, and that our means were limited; Marie looked upon me as a “spirit of evil,” and reproached me with speaking ill of everybody. I gave in eventually, in order to avoid unpleasantness. I gave in—alas! I always gave in.
After a whole week’s loneliness I welcomed Saturday as a red-letter day. With a jubilant heart I caught an early train and then set out joyfully for half-an-hour’s walk under the scorching sun, carrying bottles and provisions for the week. My blood danced through my veins, my pulse throbbed at the thought of seeing Marie in a few moments; she would come to meet me with open arms, her hair flying in the breeze, her face rosy with the sweet country air. In addition I was hungry and looking forward to a gay little dinner, for I had eaten nothing since my early breakfast. At last the cottage among the fir-trees, close to the lake, came in sight. At the same time I caught a glimpse of Marie and her friend, in light summer dresses, stealing away to the bathing vans. I shouted to them with all the power of my lungs. They could not help hearing me, for they were well within earshot. But they only hastened their footsteps, as if they were running away from me, and disappeared into a bathing van. What did it mean?
The maid appeared as soon as she heard my footsteps in the house; she looked uneasy, afraid.
“Where are the ladies?”
“They have gone to bathe, sir.”
“When will dinner be ready?”
“Not before four o’clock, sir. The ladies have only just got up, and I have been busy helping the young lady to dress.”
“Did you hear me call?”
“Yes, sir.”
... So they had really run away from me, driven from my presence by an uneasy conscience, and, hungry and tired as I was, I had to wait for a couple of hours for my dinner.
What a reception after a week full of hard work and longing! The thought that she had run away from me like a school-girl caught breaking the rules stabbed me like a dagger.
When she returned to the house I was fast asleep on the sofa, and in a very bad temper. She kissed me as if nothing had happened, trying to prevent the storm from breaking. But self-control is not always possible. A hungry stomach has no ears, and a distressed heart is not soothed by deceitful kisses.
“Are you angry?”
“My nerves are on edge, don’t irritate me.”
“I’m not your cook!”
“I never said you were, but don’t prevent the cook we have from doing her work!”
“You forget that Amy, as our paying guest, is entitled to the services of our maid.”
“Didn’t you hear me calling?”
“No!”
She was telling me lies.... I felt as if my heart would break.
Dinner—my eagerly-looked-for dinner—was a long torture. The afternoon was dismal; Marie wept and inveighed against matrimony, holy matrimony, the only true happiness in the world, crying on the shoulder of her friend, covering her villainous little dog with kisses.
Cruel, false, deceitful—and sentimental!
And so it went on during the whole summer in infinite variety. I spent my Sundays with two imbeciles and a dog. They were trying to make me believe that all our unhappiness was due to my irritable nerves and persuade me to consult a doctor.
I had intended to take my wife for a sail on Sunday morning, but she did not get up before dinner time; after dinner it was too late.
And yet this tender-hearted woman, who tortured me with pin-pricks, cried bitterly one morning because the gardener was killing a rabbit for dinner, and confessed to me in the evening that she had been praying that the poor little beast’s sufferings might be short.
Not long ago I saw somewhere a statement made by a psychopathist to the effect that an exaggerated love for animals combined with indifference towards the sufferings of one’s fellow-creatures is a symptom of insanity.
Marie could pray for a rabbit and at the same time torment her husband with smiling lips.
On our last Sunday in the country she took me aside, talked in flattering terms of my generosity, appealed to my kind heart and begged me to cancel Miss Amy’s debt to us, pleading her very small means.
I consented without discussing the matter, without telling her that I had anticipated the suggestion, foreseen the trick, the inevitable trick. But she, armed to the teeth with arguments, even when she was unopposed, continued—
“If not, I could, if necessary, pay her share for her!”
No doubt she could have done so. But could she have paid for the annoyance and trouble caused by her friend?...
Ah, well—husband and wife must not fall out over trifles.