VII
Success followed success. All our debts were paid. It rained money. But although a great proportion of my income went towards household expenses, our financial position was chaos. Marie, who kept the accounts and had the cash, was always clamouring for more money, and her constant demands were the cause of violent scenes.
Her contract with the theatre was not renewed. It goes without saying that I had to bear the consequences. It was all my fault!... If only she had never married me!... The part which I had written for her was forgotten; she had indeed completely ruined it, for she had bungled it, and played it without the slightest conception of its subtleties.
About this time much interest was aroused in what has been called the “woman question.” The famous Norwegian male blue-stocking had written a play on the subject, and all feeble minds were obsessed by a perfect mania of finding oppressed women everywhere. I fought against those foolish notions, and consequently was dubbed “mysogynist,” an epithet which has clung to me all my life.
A few home-truths on the occasion of our next quarrel threw Marie into a violent fit of hysterics. It was just after the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century in the treatment of neurotic diseases had been made. The remedy was as simple as all great truths.
When the screams of the patient were at their loudest, I seized a water-bottle and thundered the magic words—
“Get up, or I shall pour this water over you!”
She stopped screaming at once—and shot at me a look of sincere admiration, mingled with deadly hatred.
For a moment I was taken aback, but my reawakened manhood would not be denied....
Again I lifted the water-bottle—
“Stop your screaming, or I shall pour this water over you!”
She rose to her feet, called me a blackguard, a wretch, an impostor—signs that my remedy had been effective.
Husbands, duped or otherwise, believe me, for I am your sincere friend: this is the secret of the great cure for hysterics; remember it, maybe the time will come when you need it.
From that day my death was irrevocably settled. My love began to detest me. I knew too much of female cunning; there was no room for me in this world. The sex had determined my physical and mental destruction, and my own wife, as the avenging fury, had accepted the awful and difficult mission of torturing me to death.
She began her task by introducing her friend into the house as a tenant, persuading her to rent a furnished room contiguous to our flat; she did that in spite of my most violent opposition. She went to the length of suggesting that she should take her meals with us, a proposition which I fought tooth and nail. But notwithstanding my protest and all my precautions, I was constantly brought into contact with the intruder. I could almost fancy that I was a bigamist. The evenings which I should have spent in my wife’s company I spent by myself, for she remained invisible, closeted with her friend. They enjoyed themselves in her room at my expense, smoking my cigarettes and drinking my wine. I hated the woman, and since I could not hide my feelings—at any rate not sufficiently—I many a time brought on my head Marie’s wrath for having been found wanting in courtesy towards the “poor child.”
Not satisfied with having estranged Marie from husband and child—the baby was boarded out with a neighbour, a termagant of forty-five years of age—the fair friend demoralised the cook; the consumption of beer rose to the almost incredible quantity of five hundred bottles a month; my cook sat in the kitchen intoxicated, fast asleep; the food was wasted.
The fair friend was a mangeuse d’hommes, and I was her prey.
One day Marie showed me a cloak which she said she wanted to buy. I disapproved the colour and cut, and advised her to choose another. The friend, who happened to be present, kept it for herself, and I forgot all about it. Two weeks later I received a bill for a cloak bought by my wife. I inquired into the matter and found that Marie had lent herself to a trick well known by the theatrical demi-monde.
As usual, she was furious with me when I asked her to break off her connection with the adventuress....
And things grew worse and worse.
A few days later Marie, trying to work on my feelings, posing as the submissive wife, asked me, quite humbly, whether I had any, objection to her chaperoning the “poor child” on a visit to an old friend of her late father’s, whom she intended to ask for a loan. The request struck me as so strange that it set me thinking, especially when I took into account her friend’s bad reputation. I implored Marie, for our child’s sake, to open her eyes, to rouse herself from the trance in which she seemed to live, and which would surely end with her complete ruin—her only reply was a repetition of her old phrase: “Your base imagination....”
And still matters declined.
Her friend gave a luncheon for the secret purpose of beguiling on this occasion a well-known actor into making her a proposal of marriage. A fresh revelation awaited me, a revelation which effectually roused me from my lethargy.
Champagne had been drunk, and the ladies had taken more than was good for them. Marie was reclining in an arm-chair, and before her knelt her friend, kissing her on the lips. The famous actor, interested in the strange spectacle, called to one of his friends, and pointing at the couple as if he were bringing proof of an accusation, exclaimed—
“Look here! D’you see?”
Doubtless he was alluding to certain rumours, and there was a hidden meaning in the laughing words.
As soon as we arrived home, I implored Marie to shake off this fatal infatuation and be more careful of her reputation. She made no secret of the pleasure she found in kissing pretty women; her friend was not the only one of her colleagues whom she treated in this way; at the theatre, in the dressing-rooms she bestowed the same favour on others.
She had no intention of denying herself this pleasure, this innocent pleasure, which in my perverted imagination only was vicious.
It was impossible to make her see her conduct in a different light; there was but one remedy....
She was again going to be a mother; this time she was furious, but her condition kept her at home for a time.