A New Year’s Gift

Jacques de Rayndal, having dined alone at home, told the manservant that he might go out, and settled down to write some letters.

He always ended the year this way: alone, writing letters and dreaming. He reviewed everything that had happened since the last New Year’s Day, things that were done with, things that were dead, and as the faces of his friends appeared before him he wrote a few lines to each one, sending his cordial wishes for the 1st of January.

So he sat down, opened a drawer, from which he took a woman’s photograph, which he kissed after gazing at it for a few seconds. Then, placing it beside the sheet of notepaper, he began:

“My Dear Irène,

“You will have received the little souvenir which I sent to the woman you are; I have shut myself up this evening to tell you⁠—”

here the pen stopped and Jacques got up and began to walk up and down.

For the last ten months he had had a mistress⁠—not a mistress like the others: adventuresses, actresses, streetwalkers, but a woman he had loved and conquered. He was not a young man, although he was still youthful; he looked at life seriously from a positive and practical point of view.

So he started to draw up the balance sheet of his love affair, just as he drew up the yearly accounts of his new or discarded friendships, of things that had happened and of people who had come into his life.

The first ardour of his love had calmed down and he asked himself, with the precision of a shopkeeper making out his accounts, what his feelings were towards her, and tried to guess what they would be in the future. He found a great and deep affection, composed of tenderness, gratitude, and of thousands of trifles from which spring close and lasting intimacies.

A ring at the bell made him start. He hesitated about opening the door, but decided that on New Year’s night one must always open to the Unknown (whoever it may be) who knocks in passing by. He therefore took a candle, crossed the anteroom, shot back the bolt, turned the key, opened the door, and saw his mistress as pale as death, standing there with her hands against the wall.

He stammered: “What’s the matter?”

She replied: “You’re alone?”

“Yes.”

“No servants?”

“Yes.”

“You were not going out?”

“No.”

She entered the flat as if she were quite familiar with it. When she reached the drawing room she sank upon the couch and, covering her face with her hands, she burst into sobs. Instantly he was on his knees beside her, trying to move her arms away so as to see her eyes, saying again and again:

“Irène, Irène, what’s the matter with you? I implore you to tell me what’s the matter.”

In the midst of her sobs she murmured:

“I can’t go on living like this.”

He did not understand what she meant, and said:

“Like what?”

“Yes. I can’t go on living like this⁠—at home⁠—you don’t know⁠—I never told you⁠—it’s terrible⁠—I can’t go on⁠—I suffer too much⁠—he struck me a short time ago.”

“Who⁠—your husband?”

“Yes, my husband.”

“Ah!”

He was surprised, for he had never suspected that this husband could be brutal. He was a man of the world, of the best circles, a clubman, a frequenter of the races and the stage-door, and a fencer. He was known, appreciated, quoted everywhere, for he had very courteous manners, a very commonplace mind, and that lack of instruction and real intelligence which is the indispensable requirement for thinking as all well-brought-up people think. He also respected all the prejudices of his set.

He seemed to devote as much time to his wife as the rich and well-bred consider correct. He was sufficiently anxious about her wishes, her health, her clothes, and, moreover, left her her full freedom.

As Irène’s friend, Rayndal had the right to the welcome which every well-mannered husband owes to his wife’s friends. Then, when Jacques became the lover, after having been the friend, he was on the most cordial terms with the husband, as was fitting and proper.

He had never seen or suspected outbursts of temper in that house, and was quite dismayed at the unexpected revelation.

“How did it all happen, tell me?” he said. And she told him a long story, the story of her life since the day she was married; from the first misunderstanding, caused by a trifle, to the great rift, widening day by day, between two characters in opposition. Then there were quarrels and a complete separation⁠—not only apparent but real⁠—then her husband turned aggressive, sulky, violent, and now he was jealous of Jacques, and had that very day struck her, after making a scene.

She added firmly: “I will never go back. You can do what you like with me.”

Jacques was sitting opposite her, their knees touching. He took hold of her hands and said:

“My dear, dear friend, you are going to make a great, an irreparable mistake. If you want to leave your husband, put him in the wrong, so that your position as a woman, as an irreproachable woman of the world, may be saved.”

Gazing at him with anxious eyes, she asked:

“Then what do you advise me to do?”

“To go home and to put up with your life until you can get either a separation or a divorce honourably.”

“Isn’t your advice rather cowardly?”

“No, it is right and reasonable. You occupy a leading position, you have a name to be saved, friends to be kept, and relations to be considered. All this must not be forgotten and lost through mere waywardness.”

She rose and said vehemently:

“Well, there, no; I can’t; it’s finished; it’s finished; it’s finished!” Then, putting her hands on her lover’s shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, she asked:

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

“Then, keep me here.”

He exclaimed: “Keep you? In my place? Here? But you must be mad! You would be done for forever; without hope of recovery! You are mad!”

She continued slowly and gravely, weighing every word:

“Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again and I am not going through the farce of clandestine meetings. You must either take me or lose me.”

“In that case, my dear Irène, get a divorce and I will marry you.”

“Yes, you’ll marry me in⁠—two years at the soonest. Yours is a patient love!”

“Come, come, think it over. If you live here, he will make you go back tomorrow, because he is your husband and the law is on his side.”

“I did not ask you to keep me here, Jacques, but to take me away, anywhere. I thought you loved me well enough to do that. I was mistaken. Goodbye.”

She turned and went towards the door so quickly that he only caught her as she was going out of the room.

“Listen, Irène⁠—”

She struggled and refused to listen to anything more; with eyes full of tears, she stammered: “Let me go⁠—let me go⁠—let me go⁠—”

He forced her to sit down and again knelt beside her, trying to make her realise the folly, the danger of her plan, by every means in his power. He omitted none of the arguments he ought to use to convince her of her folly, seeking means of persuasion even in the tenderness of his feeling for her.

As she still remained dumb and frozen, he begged her to listen to him, to believe what he said, to follow his advice. When he had finished, she only said:

“Are you ready to let me go away now? Don’t hold me, I can’t get up.”

“Come, Irène⁠—”

“Will you leave go of me?”

“Irène, is this irrevocable?”

“Will you let me go?”

“Then stay. You know you are at home here. We’ll go away in the morning.”

She forced him to let her get up, and said, in a hard voice:

“No. It’s too late. I don’t want sacrifice, I don’t want devotion.”

“Stay. I have done all that I ought to have done, I have said all that I ought to have said. I have no further responsibility for you; my conscience is at ease. Tell me your wishes and I will obey.”

She sat down again, looked at him steadily, then asked quietly:

“Well, then, explain yourself.”

“What? What do you want me to explain?”

“Everything. All that you have been thinking to make you change your mind so completely. Then I shall know what I must do.”

“But I didn’t think at all. It was my duty to warn you that what you were bent on was madness. You won’t give in, so I ask for my share in this madness; more than that, I claim my share.”

“It isn’t natural to change one’s mind so quickly.”

“Listen, my dear, dear friend. It is not a question of sacrifice or devotion. The day I knew that I loved you, I said to myself⁠—and every lover should say the same thing in the same circumstances⁠—the man who loves a woman, who sets out to make a conquest, who is successful and makes her his, contracts a solemn obligation which includes not only himself but the woman he loves. I am referring, of course, to a woman like you, and not to those of easy approach.

“Marriage, with its great social and legal value, is only of very slight moral value in my eyes, taking into consideration the prevailing conditions. Therefore when a woman who is bound by this legal tie does not love her husband and cannot love him, whose heart is free, meets a man she loves and gives herself to him, when a man without other ties takes possession of a woman in this way, I say that this free and mutual consent constitutes a much more binding obligation than the ‘yes’ uttered before the Registrar. I say that if they are both honourable their union must be closer, stronger, saner than if it had been consecrated by every sacrament of the Church.

“The woman takes every risk, and it is because she knows this, because she gives all⁠—her heart, her body, her soul, her honour, her life⁠—because she foresees the wretchedness, the danger, the trouble, because she dares to act boldly, firmly, because she is prepared, determined to face anything⁠—the husband who may kill her, and society who may turn its back on her⁠—these are the reasons why she is worthy of respect in her conjugal infidelity, this is why the lover, in taking possession of her, must also have foreseen every possible complication and must cling to her no matter what may happen. I have nothing more to say. I spoke first as a reasonable man whose duty it was to warn you, now there only remains the man, he who loves you. Give your orders.”

Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips and whispered:

“Darling, it was not true, nothing has happened, my husband does not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know what you would do⁠—I wanted a New Year’s gift⁠—the gift of your love⁠—another gift besides the necklace you sent me. You have given it to me. Thanks⁠—thanks⁠—Oh, God! how happy I am!”