“How could I remember what sort of man the clerk was?”
“And yet it was at your dictation he wrote the address, 18 Rue de Laval.”
“How do you know?” said Arnoux in amazement.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh! ’tis very simple: I went to get my cashmere altered, and the superintendent of the millinery department told me that they had just sent another of the same sort to Madame Arnoux.”
“Is it my fault if there is a Madame Arnoux in the same street?”
“Yes; but not Jacques Arnoux,” she returned.
Thereupon, he began to talk in an incoherent fashion, protesting that he was innocent. It was some misapprehension, some accident, one of those things that happen in some way that is utterly unaccountable. Men should not be condemned on mere suspicion, vague probabilities; and he referred to the case of the unfortunate Lesurques.
“In short, I say you are mistaken. Do you want me to take my oath on it?”
“ ’Tis not worth while.”
“Why?”
She looked him straight in the face without saying a word, then stretched out her hand, took down the little silver chest from the mantelpiece, and handed him a bill which was spread open.
Arnoux coloured up to his ears, and his swollen and distorted features betrayed his confusion.
“But,” he said in faltering tones, “what does this prove?”
“Ah!” she said, with a peculiar ring in her voice, in which sorrow and irony were blended. “Ah!”
Arnoux held the bill in his hands, and turned it round without removing his eyes from it, as if he were going to find in it the solution of a great problem.
“Ah! yes, yes; I remember,” said he at length. “ ’Twas a commission. You ought to know about that matter, Frederick.” Frederick remained silent. “A commission that Père Oudry entrusted to me.”
“And for whom?”
“For his mistress.”
“For your own!” exclaimed Madame Arnoux, springing to her feet and standing erect before him.
“I swear to you!”
“Don’t begin over again. I know everything.”
“Ha! quite right. So you’re spying on me!”
She returned coldly:
“Perhaps that wounds your delicacy?”
“Since you are in a passion,” said Arnoux, looking for his hat, “and can’t be reasoned with—”
Then, with a big sigh:
“Don’t marry, my poor friend, don’t, if you take my advice!”
And he took himself off, finding it absolutely necessary to get into the open air.
Then there was a deep silence, and it seemed as if everything in the room had become more motionless than before. A luminous circle above the lamp whitened the ceiling, while at the corners stretched out bits of shade resembling pieces of black gauze placed on top of one another. The ticking of the clock and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness.
Madame Arnoux had just seated herself in the armchair at the opposite side of the chimneypiece. She bit her lip and shivered. She drew her hands up to her face; a sob broke from her, and she began to weep.
He sat down on the little couch, and in the soothing tone in which one addresses a sick person:
“You don’t suspect me of having anything to do with—?”
She made no reply. But, continuing presently to give utterance to her own thoughts:
“I leave him perfectly free! There was no necessity for lying on his part!”
“That is quite true,” said Frederick. “No doubt,” he added, “it was the result of Arnoux’s habits; he had acted thoughtlessly, but perhaps in matters of a graver character—”
“What do you see, then, that can be graver?”
“Oh, nothing!”
Frederick bent his head with a smile of acquiescence. Nevertheless, he urged, Arnoux possessed certain good qualities; he was fond of his children.
“Ay, and he does all he can to ruin them!”
Frederick urged that this was due to an excessively easygoing disposition, for indeed he was a good fellow.
She exclaimed:
“But what is the meaning of that—a good fellow?”
And he proceeded to defend Arnoux in the vaguest kind of language he could think of, and, while expressing his sympathy with her, he rejoiced, he was delighted, at the bottom of his heart. Through retaliation or need of affection she would fly to him for refuge. His love was intensified by the hope which had now grown immeasurably stronger in his breast.
Never had she appeared to him so captivating, so perfectly beautiful. From time to time a deep breath made her bosom swell. Her two eyes, gazing fixedly into space, seemed dilated by a vision in the depths of her consciousness, and her lips were slightly parted, as if to let her soul escape through them. Sometimes she pressed her handkerchief over them tightly. He would have liked to be this dainty little piece of cambric moistened with her tears. In spite of himself, he cast a look at the bed at the end of the alcove, picturing to himself her head lying on the pillow, and so vividly did this present itself to his imagination that he had to restrain himself to keep from clasping her in his arms. She closed her eyelids, and now she appeared quiescent and languid. Then he drew closer to her, and, bending over her, he eagerly scanned her face. At that moment, he heard the noise of boots in the lobby outside—it was the other. They heard him shutting the door of his own room. Frederick made a sign to Madame Arnoux to ascertain from her whether he ought to go there.
She replied “Yes,” in the same voiceless fashion; and this mute exchange of thoughts between them was, as it were, an assent—the preliminary step in adultery.
Arnoux was just taking off his coat to go to bed.
“Well, how is she going on?”
“Oh! better,” said Frederick; “this will pass off.”
But Arnoux was in an anxious state of mind.
“You don’t know her; she has got hysterical now! Idiot of a clerk! This is what comes of being too good. If I had not given that cursed shawl to Rosanette!”
“Don’t regret having done so a bit. Nobody could be more grateful to you than she is.”
“Do you really think so?”
Frederick
