A Cry of Alarm
I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be of help to many of my readers, I hasten to make it known to them.
Paris, .
Sir:
In short stories or newspaper articles you often write about subjects connected with what I shall call “current morality.” I wish to submit some ideas which I think you could use for one of your articles.
I am not married. I am a bachelor, and apparently rather naive, but I think most men are naive in the same way. Being very trustful, it is difficult for me to recognise the natural astuteness of my neighbours. I go straight ahead, open-eyed, and don’t look keenly enough behind either things or motives.
Most of us are in the habit of taking appearance for reality—of accepting people at their own valuation; very few possess the intelligence that enables them to detect the real secret character of others. The consequence of this particular and conventional way of looking at life is that we go through the world like moles; that we never believe what really is, but only what seems to be; that we exclaim: “How incredible!” when the truth is exposed, and that everything displeasing to our idealistic code of morality is classified as an exception without realising that nearly all the cases in point are due to these exceptions. A further consequence is that credulous fools, like myself, are the dupes of everybody—more especially of women who are clever at the game.
I have gone far afield before reaching the particular fact that is of interest to me.
I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many other men, I thought I had found the exception—a poor unhappy woman who was deceiving her husband for the first time. I had been—or rather I thought I had been—courting her for some time; I thought I had won her by my love and consideration, had triumphed by dint of my perseverance. I had indeed taken thousands of precautions, used thousands of tricks, and thousands of exquisite hesitations in order to overcome her resistance.
Well, this is what happened last week:
Her husband being away for some days, she asked if she could come and dine with me alone, asking me to wait upon her so that we could dispense with the servant. She had been obsessed for the last four or five months by the idea that she wanted to get drunk, completely drunk, without any cause for fear—without having to go home, speak to her maid, or walk in the presence of witnesses. She had often been what she called “cheerfully confused” without going any further, and had found it extremely pleasant, therefore she had promised herself to get thoroughly drunk, once, and only once. She told them at home that she was going to spend the night and following day with some friends near Paris, and arrived at my flat at dinnertime. Of course a woman can only get drunk on iced champagne! She drank a large glassful fasting, and had begun to ramble on before the oysters were served. I could reach the plates and dishes by stretching out my arm and I did the waiting with more or less success while listening to her chatter.
She drank glass after glass, obsessed by her one idea. She began to tell me interminable, wishy-washy accounts of her feelings as a girl. She went on and on, her eyes bright but vague, her tongue untied, her feather-headed ideas rolling on interminably like the telegraphic bands of blue paper to which there seems no end, and which run on to the tapping of the electric machine that covers them with unknown words. Occasionally she would ask me: “Am I drunk?” “No, not yet!” And she would start again. Soon she was drunk, not blind drunk but drunk enough, it seemed to me, to tell the truth. Her account of her girlhood’s emotions was followed by more intimate confidences about her husband which were very complete and uncomfortable to listen to, on the following pretext repeated over and over again: “I can say everything to you—to whom could I say everything if not to you?”
So I was made acquainted with her husband’s habits and defects, all his little manias, and his most secret tastes.
She would say, asking for approbation: “Isn’t he a bore? Say—isn’t he a bore? You know how he has bored me to death—eh? So the very first time I saw you I said to myself: ‘Halloa, I like that man. I’ll have him as my lover.’ After that you began to make love to me.”
I must have looked rather queer, for she noticed my expression in spite of her drunkenness, and said, bursting with laughter: “Ah! booby, what precautions you did take—but when men make love to us, you dear old stupid, it is because we are willing—and then you must do it quickly or else you make us wait—you must be an idiot not to understand, not to see by our looks, that we are saying ‘yes.’ Ah! I had to wait for you, you softy! I didn’t know how to make you understand that I was in a hurry—ah! yes, all right—flowers—poems—compliments—still more flowers—and then nothing more—I nearly gave you up, old man, you took so long to decide. And only to think that half the men in the world are like you, but the other half—ah!—ah!—ah!”
Her laugh made me shiver. I stammered: “The other half—well, the other half?”
She was still drinking, her eyes clouded by the wine, and her mind driven by the imperious desire to speak the truth peculiar to some drunkards.
She continued: “Ah! the other half move quickly—but all the same they’re right, they are. There are days when they are unsuccessful, but there are others when they get what they want, in spite of everything. Dear old chap—if you only knew—how funny they are—the two kinds of men! You know, the shy ones like you can’t imagine what the others are like—what they do—directly—when they are alone with us. They take risks. They get their faces slapped, it is true—but that makes no difference—they know quite well that we’ll never tell. They know us, they do.”
I was looking at her with the eyes of an inquisitor and with a wild desire to make her talk, to learn everything. How many times had I not asked myself the question: “How do other men behave to women, to our women?” I recognised, only by seeing in a drawing room, anywhere in public, two men speaking to the same woman, that if they, one after the other, were to be alone with her, they would approach her quite differently, even though they were on exactly the same footing with her. At the first glance one feels that certain men—endowed by nature with the gift of pleasing, or even only more disillusioned, bolder, than we are—will arrive in an hour’s conversation with a woman they admire at a degree of intimacy which we could not reach in a year. Very well—these men, these professional, enterprising lovers, when the occasion presents itself, do they push the boldness of hands and lips to a point which would appear to us, the bashful sort, an odious outrage, but which women perhaps only consider a pardonable forwardness, a rather unbecoming homage to their irresistible charms?
She threw herself back in her chair and burst into a fit of nervous, unnatural laughter, the laughter that leads to hysterics, and when she had calmed down a little, she said: “Ah! ah! old chap, improper?—that is to say, they stick at nothing—right away—at nothing—you understand—and still more—”
I felt as indignant as if she had unmasked some monstrous evil. “And you allow this, you women?”
“No—we don’t allow it—we hit out—but we are amused, all the same. They are much more amusing than you others! Besides, one is always afraid, one is never sure—and it’s delightful to be afraid—especially to be afraid of that. You have to watch them all the time—it is like fighting a duel. You look into their eyes to learn their thoughts, to see what they are going to do with their hands. You may say they are cads, but they love us better than you do!”
A curious unexpected sensation came over me. Although I was a bachelor and determined to remain one, these impudent confidences suddenly made me feel like a husband. I felt I was the friend, the ally, the brother of all the trustful husbands who, if not actually robbed, are at least defrauded by these ready-fingered lovers of feminine underclothing. In obedience to that strange emotion—which still persists—I am writing to beg you to send a cry of alarm out to the army of unsuspecting husbands.
Nevertheless I had doubts, the woman was drunk and must be telling lies. I returned to the subject, saying: “How is it that you never tell anybody, you women?”
She looked at me with such profound, sincere pity that, for a moment, I thought astonishment had made her sober.
“My dear fellow, how stupid you are! Does one ever talk about such things—ah! ah! ah! Does a servant tell about his little perquisites, his discount on the bills, etc.? Well, that, that’s our discount. So long as we go no further, husbands should not complain. But how stupid you are! To talk about all that would be to give the alarm to every ninny! Besides, where’s the harm so long as you do not yield?”
Quite confused, I asked another question: “So you have often been kissed?”
She replied with sovereign contempt for the man who could have a doubt on the subject: “Of course. Every woman has been kissed again and again. Try any one of them to see, you big idiot. Here, kiss Madame de X … she is quite young and straight—kiss, my dear, kiss them and run your fingers over them, you’ll see, you’ll see. Ah! ah! ah!”
Suddenly she threw her full glass at the pendant cluster. The champagne, dripping down like drops of rain, put out three candles, stained the wallpaper, and wet the table, while the broken bits of crystal were scattered about the room. Then she tried to do the same thing with the bottle but I stopped her; then she began to shout at the top of her voice—the attack of hysterics had begun—just as I expected.
I had almost forgotten this drunken woman’s confession when, a few days later, I found myself by chance at the same reception as that Madame de X … whom my mistress had advised me to kiss. We lived in the same district, so I offered to take her home, as she was alone that evening. She accepted the offer.
As soon as we were in the carriage I said to myself: “Now then, go ahead,” but I dared not. I didn’t know how to start, how to begin the attack. Suddenly, filled with the desperate courage of cowardice, I said: “How beautiful you were this evening.”
Laughingly she replied: “So this evening was an exception, since you noticed it for the first time?”
I had no reply ready. It is quite clear that I am no good in the warfare of gallantry. However, after a few moments’ reflection I hit upon the following remark: “No, but I never dared to tell you.” She was astonished and said: “Why?” “Because it’s—it’s rather difficult.” “Difficult to tell a woman she’s pretty? Where do you come from? You must always say it—even if you don’t mean it—because it is always a pleasure to hear.”
Seized by a sudden fit of fantastic audacity, I caught her by the waist and tried to find her mouth with my lips. However, I must have been trembling and could not have appeared very terrible to her. I must also have made a mess of the attempt, for she only turned her head away and said:
“Oh! no! that’s too bad, too bad. You go too quickly—take care of my hair. You can’t kiss a woman who wears her hair as I do!”
Desperate and heartbroken at my failure, I had sunk back into my seat when the carriage stopped at her door. She got out, shook hands with me, and said most graciously: “Thanks for bringing me home, dear Monsieur, and don’t forget my advice.”
Three days after, I met her again. She had forgotten all about it.
As for me, I am always thinking about those other men who know how to treat a woman’s coiffure with consideration, and how to seize every opportunity.
I hand this letter, without any addition, over to the meditation of my men and women readers, married or single.