“Why, my dear boy, she is a woman who fulfils all the promise of her girlhood. She is a thorough Grandlieu, as brown as her Portuguese mother, not to say orange-colored, and as dry as her father. To speak the truth, your wife will never be lost to you; she is just a great boy, and can walk alone. Poor Calyste! is this the wife to suit you? She has fine eyes, but such eyes are common in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Can a woman so lean be really tender? Eve was fair; dark women are descended from Adam, fair women from God, whose hand left a last touch on Eve when all creation was complete.” At about six o’clock Calyste in desperation took up his hat to go.
“Yes, go, my poor friend; do not let her have the disappointment of dining without you.”
Calyste stayed. He was so young, so easy to take on the wrong side.
“You would really dare to dine with me?” said Béatrix, affecting the most provoking surprise. “My humble fare does not frighten you away, and you have enough independence of spirit to crown my joy by this little proof of affection?”
“Only let me write a line to Sabine,” said he, “for she would wait for me till nine o’clock.”
“There is my writing table,” said Béatrix.
She herself lighted the candles, and brought one to the table to see what Calyste would write.
“My dear Sabine.”
“My dear! Is your wife still dear to you?” said she, looking at him so coldly that it froze the marrow in his bones. “Go, then, go to dine with her.”
“I am dining at an eating-house with some friends—”
“That is a lie. For shame! You are unworthy of her love or mine. All men are cowards with us. That will do, monsieur; go and dine with your dear Sabine!”
Calyste threw himself back in his armchair and turned paler than death. Bretons have a sort of obstinate courage which makes them hold their own under difficulties. The young Baron sat up again with his elbow firmly set on the table, his chin in his hand, and his sparkling eyes fixed on Béatrix, who was relentless. He looked so fine that a true northern or southern woman would have fallen on her knees, saying, “Take me!” But in Béatrix, born on the border between Normandy and Brittany, of the race of Casteran, desertion had brought out the ferocity of the Frank and the malignity of the Norman; she craved a tremendous and terrible revenge; she did not yield to his noble impulse.
“Dictate what I am to write, and I will obey,” said the poor boy. “But then—”
“Then, yes,” she replied, “for you will love me then as you loved me at Guérande.—Write, ‘I am dining in town; do not wait.’ ”
“And—?” said Calyste, expecting something more.
“Nothing.—Sign it. Good,” she said, seizing this note with covert joy. “I will send it by a messenger.”
“Now!” cried Calyste, starting up like a happy man.
“I have preserved my liberty of action, I believe,” said she, looking round, and pausing halfway between the table and the fireplace, where she was about to ring.
“Here, Antoine, have this note taken to the address.—Monsieur will dine with me.”
Calyste went home about two in the morning.
After sitting up till half-past twelve, Sabine had gone to bed tired out. She slept, though she had been cruelly startled by the brevity of her husband’s note; still, she accounted for it. True love in a woman can always explain everything to the advantage of the man she loves.
“Calyste was in a hurry!” thought she.
Next day the child had recovered, the mother’s alarms were past. Sabine came in smiling, with little Calyste in her arms to show him to his father just before breakfast, full of the pretty nonsense, and saying the silly things that all young mothers are full of. This little domestic scene enabled Calyste to put a good face on matters, and he was charming to his wife while feeling that he was a wretch. He played like a boy himself with Monsieur le Chevalier; indeed, he overdid it, overacting his part; but Sabine had not reached that pitch of distrust in which a wife notes so subtle a shade.
At last, during breakfast, Sabine asked:
“And what were you doing yesterday?”
“Portenduère,” said he, “kept me to dinner, and we went to the club to play a few rubbers of whist.”
“It is a foolish life, my Calyste,” replied Sabine. “The young men of our day ought rather to think of recovering all the estates in the country that their fathers lost. They cannot live by smoking cigars, playing whist, and dissipating their idleness by being content with making impertinent speeches to the parvenus who are ousting them from all their dignities, by cutting themselves off from the masses, whose soul and brain they ought to be, and to whom they should appear as Providence. Instead of being a party, you will only be an opinion, as de Marsay said. Oh! if you could only know how my views have expanded since I have rocked and suckled your child. I want to see the old name of du Guénic figure in history.”
Then, suddenly looking straight into Calyste’s eyes, which were pensively fixed on her, she said:
“You must admit that the first note you ever wrote me was a little abrupt?”
“I never thought of writing till I reached the club.”
“But you wrote on a woman’s paper; it had some womanly scent.”
“The club managers do such queer things—”
The Vicomte de Portenduère and his wife, a charming young couple, had become so intimate with the du Guénics that they shared a box at the Italian opera. The two young women, Sabine and Ursule, had been drawn into this friendship by a delightful exchange of advice, anxieties, and confidences about their babies. While Calyste, a novice in falsehood, was thinking to himself, “I must go to
