Part 40 (1/2)
”Mother,” said she, ”he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not go,'
and he went. And that over his child's cradle.”
”For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most infamous actions--even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem.
We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were ended, and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer doubly by suffering with my child. Courage--and silence!--My Hortense, swear that you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me, never let them be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as your mother has been.”
Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.
”So it would seem,” said Wenceslas, as he came in, ”that Stidmann has been here while I went to see him.”
”Indeed!” said Hortense, with the angry irony of an offended woman who uses words to stab.
”Certainly,” said Wenceslas, affecting surprise. ”We have just met.”
”And yesterday?”
”Well, yesterday I deceived you, my darling love; and your mother shall judge between us.”
This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched; they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to.
There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to their Czar.
”Now, listen, dear mother,” Wenceslas went on. ”I so truly love my sweet and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty.
What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty, youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong?--She believes that we owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings.”
”Poor soul!” said Hortense.
”Poor soul!” said the Baroness.
”But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing to us.--Then, as you know, Hortense, she spoke to us of Madame Marneffe, who, as she owes so much to the Baron, out of a sense of honor, will take no interest. Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to the Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs, but we needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had free of interest for a year!--I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none the wiser; I will go and get them.'
”Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on the other, I could not hesitate.--That is all.
”What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous, and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her since we married, I could now prefer--what?--a tawny, painted, ruddled creature?” said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
”Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!” cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
”Yes, that is what I should have done,” said her mother. ”Wenceslas, my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it,” she went on very seriously. ”You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!”
She sighed deeply.
”He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman,” thought she to herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.--”It seems to me,” she said aloud, ”that I am miserable enough to hope to see my children happy.”
”Be quite easy, dear mamma,” said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this critical moment end happily. ”In two months I shall have repaid that dreadful woman. How could I help it,” he went on, repeating this essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; ”there are times when a man would borrow of the Devil.--And, after all, the money belongs to the family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money at all if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?”
”Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!” cried Hortense.