A New Year’s Gift
Jacques de Rayndal, having dined alone at home, told the manservant that he might go out, and settled down to write some letters.
He always ended the year this way: alone, writing letters and dreaming. He reviewed everything that had happened since the last New Year’s Day, things that were done with, things that were dead, and as the faces of his friends appeared before him he wrote a few lines to each one, sending his cordial wishes for the 1st of January.
So he sat down, opened a drawer, from which he took a woman’s photograph, which he kissed after gazing at it for a few seconds. Then, placing it beside the sheet of notepaper, he began:
“My Dear Irène,
“You will have received the little souvenir which I sent to the woman you are; I have shut myself up this evening to tell you—”
here the pen stopped and Jacques got up and began to walk up and down.
For the last ten months he had had a mistress—not a mistress like the others: adventuresses, actresses, streetwalkers, but a woman he had loved and conquered. He was not a young man, although he was still youthful; he looked at life seriously from a positive and practical point of view.
So he started to draw up the balance sheet of his love affair, just as he drew up the yearly accounts of his new or discarded friendships, of things that had happened and of people who had come into his life.
The first ardour of his love had calmed down and he asked himself, with the precision of a shopkeeper making out his accounts, what his feelings were towards her, and tried to guess what they would be in the future. He found a great and deep affection, composed of tenderness, gratitude, and of thousands of trifles from which spring close and lasting intimacies.
A ring at the bell made him start. He hesitated about opening the door, but decided that on New Year’s night one must always open to the Unknown (whoever it may be) who knocks in passing by. He therefore took a candle, crossed the anteroom, shot back the bolt, turned the key, opened the door, and saw his mistress as pale as death, standing there with her hands against the wall.
He stammered: “What’s the matter?”
She replied: “You’re alone?”
“Yes.”
“No servants?”
“Yes.”
“You were not going out?”
“No.”
She entered the flat as if she were quite familiar with it. When she reached the drawing room she sank upon the couch and, covering her face with her hands, she burst into sobs. Instantly he was on his knees beside her, trying to move her arms away so as to see her eyes, saying again and again:
“Irène, Irène, what’s the matter with you? I implore you to tell me what’s the matter.”
In the midst of her sobs she murmured:
“I can’t go on living like this.”
He did not understand what she meant, and said:
“Like what?”
“Yes. I can’t go on living like this—at home—you don’t know—I never told you—it’s terrible—I can’t go on—I suffer too much—he struck me a short time ago.”
“Who—your husband?”
“Yes, my husband.”
“Ah!”
He was surprised, for he had never suspected that this husband could be brutal. He was a man of the world, of the best circles, a clubman, a frequenter of the races and the stage-door, and a fencer. He was known, appreciated, quoted everywhere, for he had very courteous manners, a very commonplace mind, and that lack of instruction and real intelligence which is the indispensable requirement for thinking as all well-brought-up people think. He also respected all the prejudices of his set.
He seemed to devote as much time to his wife as the rich and well-bred consider correct. He was sufficiently anxious about her wishes, her health, her clothes, and, moreover, left her her full freedom.
As Irène’s friend, Rayndal had the right to the welcome which every well-mannered husband owes to his wife’s friends. Then, when Jacques became the lover, after having been the friend, he was on the most cordial terms with the husband, as was fitting and proper.
He had never seen or suspected outbursts of temper in that house, and was quite dismayed at the unexpected revelation.
“How did it all happen, tell me?” he said. And she told him a long story, the story of her life since the day she was married; from the first misunderstanding, caused by a trifle, to the great rift, widening day by day, between two characters in opposition. Then there were quarrels and a complete separation—not only apparent but real—then her husband turned aggressive, sulky, violent, and now he was jealous of Jacques, and had that very day struck her, after making a scene.
She added firmly: “I will never go back. You can do what you like with me.”
Jacques was sitting opposite her, their knees touching. He took hold of her hands and said:
“My dear, dear friend, you are going to make a great, an irreparable mistake. If you want to leave your husband, put him in the wrong, so that your position as a woman, as an irreproachable woman of the world, may be
