At the sight of her mother, who had come with all speed, Hortense had shed floods of tears. Fortunately, the nervous crises then took a different turn.
‘Deceived, dear Mama!’ she said. ‘After giving me his word of honour not to go to Madame Marneffe’s, Wenceslas had dinner there yesterday and didn’t get home till a quarter past one in the morning. If only you knew—the evening before we had had not a quarrel but an explanation. I had said such touching things to him. I was jealous; an infidelity would kill me; he ought to respect my weaknesses, since they stemmed from my love for him; I had my father’s blood in my veins as well as yours; on first learning of an infidelity, I would be crazy enough to do anything, to take my revenge, to dishonour all of us, him, his son, and myself; and in the end I might kill first him and then myself—and more besides. But he went there and he’s there now. That woman has made up her mind to torment us all. Yesterday my brother and Célestine pledged themselves to take up notes of hand for seventy-two thousand francs signed for the benefit of that good-for-nothing…. Yes, Mama, they were going to sue my father and put him in prison. Hasn’t that horrible woman got enough with my father and your tears? Why take Wenceslas from me! I’ll go to her house and stab her with a dagger!’
Madame Hulot, cut to the heart by the terrible secret that Hortense, in her furious outburst, had unwittingly revealed, conquered her own grief with a heroic effort of the kind great mothers are capable of and drew her daughter’s head to her breast, covering it with kisses.
‘Wait till Wenceslas comes in, my child, and all will be explained. Things may not be as bad as you think. I’ve been betrayed too, my dear Hortense. You think I’m beautiful; I’m faithful; and yet for the last twenty-three years I’ve been deserted for women like Jenny Cadine and Josépha and Marneffe. Did you know?’
‘You, Mama, you! You’ve put up with that for twenty …?’
She stopped short, appalled by her own thoughts.
‘Do as I have done, my child,’ continued her mother. ‘Be gentle and kind and you’ll have an easy conscience. If, on his deathbed, a man says, “My wife has never caused me the least sorrow”, God, who hears these last whispered words, counts them in our favour. If I had given way to rages, like you, what would have happened? Your father would have become embittered. Perhaps he would have left me, and he wouldn’t have been held back by the fear of distressing me. Our ruin, which today is complete, would have come ten years earlier. We’d have presented to the world the spectacle of a husband and wife living apart—a dreadful and heart-breaking scandal, for it means the death of the family. Neither you nor your brother would have been able to be settled in marriage. I sacrificed myself and put such a brave face on it that, but for this last liaison of your father’s, the world would still think I was happy. My opportunist but brave deception has protected Hector up till now; he is still respected. But I can see that this old man’s passion is making him go too far. I fear his folly will destroy the screen that I placed between the world and us. But for twenty-three years I’ve kept up this curtain, weeping behind it, without a mother or anyone to confide in, with no help but religion, and I’ve maintained the family honour for twenty-three years.’
Hortense listened to her mother with glazed eyes. Her calm voice and the resignation of her acute suffering eased the pain of the young wife’s first wound. Tears overwhelmed her and they returned in floods.
In an access of filial piety, overcome by her mother’s sublime attitude, she knelt before her, seized the hem of her dress, and kissed it as pious Catholics kiss the holy relics of a martyr.
‘Get up, my dear Hortense,’ said the Baroness. ‘Such a manifestation of my daughter’s love and respect wipes out many unhappy memories. Let me hold you to my heart, which is burdened only with your grief. My little girl’s happiness was my only happiness, and her despair has broken the tomb-like seal that nothing should have removed from my lips. Yes, I wanted to take my sorrows to the grave like an extra shroud. To soothe your rage, I have spoken. God will forgive me. Oh, if your life were to be like mine, what would I not do? Men, society, luck, nature, even God I think make us pay for love with the cruellest torments. For ten happy years I shall have paid twenty-four years of despair, of never-ending sorrows, of bitterness.’
‘You’ve had ten years, dear Mama, but I’ve only had three,’ said Hortense in the egoism of her love.
‘All is not lost yet, dear. Wait for Wenceslas.’
‘Mother,’ she said, ‘he lied, he deceived me. He told me he wouldn’t go there and he went. And that in front of his child’s cradle.’
‘For the sake of their pleasure, my love, men commit the most dastardly actions, infamous deeds, and even crimes. It’s in their nature, so it seems. We women are doomed to sacrifice. I thought my misfortunes had come to an end, but they are just beginning, for I didn’t expect to suffer all over again in my daughter’s suffering. Be brave and say nothing! Swear to me, my dear Hortense, to talk of your sorrows to no one but me, not to let any of them be seen by a third person. Oh, be as proud as your mother!’
Just then Hortense started, for she heard her husband’s step.
‘It appears that Stidmann came here while I was going to see him,’ said Wenceslas, coming in.
‘Really?’ cried poor Hortense with the savage irony of an injured woman using words as a dagger.
‘But yes. We’ve just run into each other,’ replied Wenceslas, pretending to be surprised.
‘But yesterday?’ Hortense went on.
‘Well, I deceived you, my darling, and your mother shall judge between us.’
This frankness was a relief to Hortense’s spirit. All really noble women prefer truth to falsehood. They do not want to see their idol degraded. They want to be proud of the man whose domination they accept.
Russians have something of this feeling about their Czar.
‘Listen, Mother dear,’ said Wenceslas, ‘I love my good, sweet Hortense so much that I kept the full extent of our financial difficulties from her. What else could I have done? She was feeding the baby and worries would have been very bad for her. You know what risks a woman is exposed to at that time. Her beauty, her bloom, her health are all in danger. Was that wrong? She thinks we owe only five thousand francs, but I owe five thousand more. The day before yesterday we were in despair. No one in the world will lend money to an artist. People have no more faith in our talents than they have in the products of our imaginations. I knocked in vain on every door. Lisbeth offered us her savings.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Hortense.
‘Poor woman,’ said the Baroness.
‘But what’s Lisbeth’s two thousand francs? Everything to her, but nothing to us. And then, as you know, Hortense, our cousin told us about Madame Marneffe who, out of self-respect, since she owes so much to the Baron, won’t accept any interest at all. Hortense wanted to pawn her diamonds. That would have given us a few thousand francs, but we needed ten thousand. And those ten thousand were to be had there for a year, without interest! I said to myself, “Hortense won’t know anything about it. I’ll go and take them.” That woman got my father-in-law to invite me to dinner there yesterday, giving me to understand that Lisbeth had spoken to her and I would have the money. Between Hortense’s despair and that dinner, I didn’t hesitate. How could Hortense at 24, lovely, pure, and virtuous, she who is all my joy and pride, whom I have never left since our marriage, how could she imagine that I would prefer to her—what!—a jaded, faded, seedy woman?’ he said, using a horrible studio-slang expression to encourage belief in his contempt, by exaggerating in the way that women like.
‘Oh, if your father had only spoken to me like that!’ exclaimed the Baroness.
Hortense flung her arms in gracious forgiveness round her husband’s neck.
‘Yes, that’s what I would have done,’ said Adeline. ‘Wenceslas, my dear, your wife almost died,’ she continued in a serious tone. ‘You see how much she loves you. She is yours, alas!’ And she sighed deeply. ‘He can make a martyr or a happy woman of her,’ she said to herself, thinking what all mothers think when their daughter’s marry. ‘It seems to me’, she added aloud, ‘that I suffer enough to be allowed to see my children happy.’
‘Don’t worry, dear Mama,’ said Wenceslas, overjoyed at seeing the crisis brought to a happy end. ‘In two months I’ll have given back the money to that horrible woman. What else could I have done!’ he went on, repeating with Polish charm this essentially Polish expression. ‘There are times when one would borrow from the devil. After all, it’s the family’s money. And once I’d been invited, would I have got that money, which is costing us so dear, if I’d responded to her courtesy by being rude?’
‘Oh, Mama, what harm Papa has done to us!’ cried Hortense.
The Baroness put a finger to her lips and Hortense regretted her complaint, the first words of blame she had ever uttered about a father so heroically protected by a sublime silence.
‘Goodbye, children,’ said Madame Hulot. ‘The fine weather’s returned. But don’t quarrel again.’