“So you are opening the door, now,” she said with an air of astonishment in which a trace of irritation was apparent; “then where is Julie?”
His throat was contracted and his breathing hurried; he strove to answer, unable to utter a word. “Have you gone dumb?” she continued. “I asked you where Julie was.”
At that he stammered:
“She … she … she has gone.”
His wife was beginning to be angry.
“What, gone? Where? Why?”
He was gradually regaining his balance, and felt stirring in him a mordant hatred of this insolent woman standing before him.
“Yes, gone for good. … I dismissed her.”
“You have dismissed her? … Julie? … You must be mad. …”
“Yes, I dismissed her because she was insolent … and because she … because she ill-treated the child.”
“Julie?”
“Yes. … Julie.”
“What was she insolent about?”
“About you.”
“About me?”
“Yes … because dinner was burnt and you had not come in.”
“She said … ?”
“She said … offensive things about you … which I should not … which I could not listen to. …”
“What things?”
“It is of no use to repeat them.”
“I want to know.”
“She said that it was very sad for a man like me to marry a woman like you, unpunctual, with no sense of order, careless, a bad housekeeper, a bad mother, and a bad wife. …”
The young woman had entered the hall, followed by Limousin, who remained silent before this unexpected situation. She shut the door abruptly, threw down her coat on a chair, and walked up to her husband, stammering in exasperation:
“You say … you say … that I’m … ?”
He was very pale, very calm.
“I say nothing, my dear,” he replied; “I am only telling you what Julie said, because you wanted to know; and I want you to realise that it was precisely on account of these remarks that I dismissed her.”
She trembled with her violent desire to tear out his beard and rend his cheeks with her nails. She felt his revulsion from her in his voice, in his expression, in his manner, and she could not outface it; she strove to regain the offensive by some direct and wounding phrase.
“Have you had dinner?” she asked.
“No, I waited.”
She shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“It is stupid to wait after half past seven. You ought to have known that I was detained, that I was busy, engaged.”
Then, suddenly, she felt the need to explain how she had passed the time, and related, in short, haughty words, that, having been obliged to get some articles of furniture a long way off, a very long way, in the Rue de Rennes, she had met Limousin, after seven o’clock, in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, on her way home, and had asked him to come in with her and have something to eat in a restaurant which she did not like to enter by herself, although she was faint with hunger. That was how she came to have dinner with Limousin, if it could be called a dinner, for they had only had soup and half a chicken, they were in such haste to get home.
“But you were quite right,” replied Parent simply; “I was not blaming you.”
Then Limousin, who had remained silent hitherto, almost hidden behind Henriette, came up and offered his hand, murmuring:
“You are well?”
“Yes, quite well,” replied Parent, taking the outstretched hand and shaking it limply.
But the young woman had seized upon a word in her husband’s last sentence.
“Blame … why do you say ‘blame’? One might think you meant …”
“No, not at all,” he said, excusing himself. “I simply meant to say that I was not at all uneasy at your lateness and was not trying to make a crime of it.”
She took it haughtily, seeking a pretext for a quarrel:
“My lateness? … Anyone would think it was one o’clock in the morning and I had been out all night.”
“No, my dear, I said ‘lateness’ because I had no other word. You should have been home by half past six, and you come in at half past eight. That is lateness! I quite understand; I … I’m not … not even surprised. … But … but … it is difficult for me to use any other word.”
“But you pronounce it as though I had slept away from home.”
“No … not at all.”
She saw that he meant to go on yielding the point and was about to enter her room when at last she noticed that Georges was crying.
“What is the matter with the child?” she asked, with a troubled look on her face.
“I told you that Julie had been rather rough with him.”
“What has the creature been doing to him?”
“Oh, hardly anything! She pushed him and he fell.”
She was eager to see her child, and rushed into the dining room; then stopped dead at sight of the table covered with spilt wine, broken bottles and glasses, and overturned saltcellars.
“What is the meaning of this scene of destruction?”
“Julie …”
But she cut short his utterance in a rage:
“This is too much, the last straw! Julie treats me as though I were a dissolute woman, beats my child, breaks my crockery, and turns my house upside down, and you seem to think it perfectly natural.”
“No, I don’t. … I dismissed her.”
“Really! … You actually dismissed her! Why, you ought to have put her in charge. The police are the people to go to on these occasions!”
“But, my dear,” he stammered, “I … couldn’t very well … there was no reason. … It was really very awkward.”
She shrugged her shoulders in infinite contempt.
“Ah, well, you’ll never be anything but a limp rag, a poor, miserable creature with no will of your own, no energy, no firmness. Your precious Julie must have been pretty outrageous for you to have made up your mind to get rid of her. How I wish I could have been there for a minute, just a single minute!”
She had opened the drawing room door, and ran to Georges, lifted him up, and clasped him in her arms, kissing him and murmuring: “Georgy, what’s the matter, my lamb, my little love, my duck?”
He stopped crying, at his mother’s caresses.
“What’s the matter?” she repeated.
The frightened eyes of the child perceived that
