Beside the Bed
A great fire blazed on the hearth. On the Japanese table two teacups faced each other, and the teapot steamed on one side, near a sugar-basin flanked by a decanter of rum.
The Comte de Sallure threw his hat, his gloves, and his fur coat on a chair, while the Comtesse, her evening cloak flung off, smoothed her hair lightly in front of the mirror. She was smiling happily to herself, and tapping the hair that curled above her temples with the tips of her slender fingers, gleaming with rings. Then she turned towards her husband. He looked at her for some minutes, in a hesitant sort of way, as if a secret thought were troubling him.
At last he said:
“And are you satisfied with the homage paid to you this evening?”
She gave him a direct glance, a glance on fire with triumph and defiance, and answered:
“I should hope so!”
Then she seated herself in the chair. He sat down facing her and, crumbling a soft roll, went on:
“It was almost ridiculous … for me.”
She asked:
“Is this a scene? Do you intend to reproach me?”
“No, my dear, I am only saying that this Monsieur Burel has been dancing attendance on you in a rather unnecessary way. If … if … if I had any rights in the matter, I should be angry.”
“My dear, be honest. It is merely that you do not feel today as you felt last year. When I discovered that you had a mistress, a mistress of whom you were very fond, you did not trouble yourself whether anyone paid homage to me or not. I told you how grieved I was; I said, as you have said this evening, but with more justice on my side: ‘My friend, you are compromising Madame de Servy, you are hurting me and you are making me ridiculous.’ What did you reply? Oh, you gave me quite clearly to understand that I was free, that between intelligent people marriage was only an association of common interests, a social tie, but not a moral tie. Isn’t that so? You gave me to understand that your mistress was infinitely better than I, more seductive, more a woman. That is what you said: more a woman. This was all hedged about, of course, with the tact of a well-bred man, wrapped up in compliments, conveyed with a delicacy to which I offer my profound respect. It was not any the less perfectly clear to me.
“We agreed that thenceforward we would live together, but quite separated. We had a child who formed a link between us.
“You almost allowed me to suppose that you cared only for appearances, that I could, if I pleased, take a lover, so long as the liaison remained a secret one. You held forth at great length and quite admirably on woman’s subtle tact, on the ease with which they steered their way through the decencies of society.
“I understood, my friend, I understood perfectly. In those days you loved Madame de Servy so very passionately, and my legitimate affection, my legal tenderness, bored you. I relieved you, no doubt, of a share of your means. Since then we have lived separate lives. We go about together, we return together, and then we go each our own way.
“And now, for the past month or two, you have assumed the airs of a jealous man. What does it all mean?”
“My dear, I am not at all jealous, but I am afraid of seeing you compromise yourself. You are young, gay, adventurous. …”
“Pardon me, but if we are talking of adventures, I insist upon a balance being struck between us.”
“Come now, don’t joke about it, I beg you. I am speaking to you as a friend, your true friend. As for all that you have just been saying, it is very exaggerated.”
“Not at all. You confessed, you confessed your liaison to me, which is equivalent to giving me leave to go and do likewise. I have not done it. …”
“Allow me!”
“Please let me speak. I have not done it. I have no lover, and I have not had one … yet. I wait … I look … I find no one. I must have someone really splendid, finer than you. … I am paying you a compliment, and you do not seem to appreciate it.”
“My dear, all these witticisms are quite out of place.”
“But I am not attempting to be witty at all. You talked to me about the eighteenth century. You gave me to understand that you had the morals of the Regency. I have forgotten nothing. On the day when it suits me to cease being what I am, whatever you do will be quite useless, you understand, you will be a cuckold like the others, and you won’t even be in any doubt about it.”
“Oh … how can you take such words on your lips?”
“Such words! … But you laughed madly when Madame de Gers swore that Monsieur de Servy had the air of a cuckold in search of his horns.”
“What may seem witty in the mouth of Madame de Gers becomes unseemly in yours.”
“Not at all. But you find the word ‘cuckold’ very amusing when it is applied to Monsieur de Servy, and you consider that it has an ugly sound when it is applied to yourself. Everything depends on the point of view. Besides, I don’t insist upon the word, I only threw it out to see if you were ripe.”
“Ripe … for what?”
“To be it, of course. When a man is annoyed at hearing that word spoken, it means that he … is asking for it. In two months’ time you will be the first to laugh if I speak of a … headdress. Then … yes … when one actually is it, one doesn’t feel it.”
“You are behaving in the worst possible taste this evening. I have not seen you like this.”
“Ah, well, you see … I have changed … for the worse. It is your fault.”
“Come, my dear, let us talk seriously. I beg you, I implore you not to permit Monsieur Burel’s unpleasant assiduity, as you did this evening.”
“You are jealous. I was quite right.”
“No: not at all. I am only anxious not to look ridiculous. I don’t want to look ridiculous. And if I see that gentleman making further conversation against your … shoulders, or rather between your breasts …”
He was looking for a channel to make his words carry.
“I … I shall box his ears.”
“Are you by any chance in love with me?”
“A man might be in love with far less attractive women.”
“Stop where you are, please. To tell the truth, I’m no longer in love with you.”
The Comte stands up. He makes his way round the little table and, walking behind his wife, presses a kiss on the nape of her neck. She jumps to her feet with a movement of repulsion, and giving him a penetrating glance:
“No more of these pleasantries between us, please. We live apart. It’s all over.”
“Come now, don’t be offended. I have been finding you adorable for a long time.”
“Then … then … it means that I have improved. You too … you find me … ripe.”
“I find you ravishing, my dear; you have arms, a skin, shoulders …”
“Which will please Monsieur Burel.”
“You are cruel. But there … frankly … I don’t know another woman so uncommonly attractive as you are.”
“You have been fasting.”
“What?”
“I say, you have been fasting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When a man fasts, he is hungry, and when he is hungry, he is prepared to eat things that at any other time he could not stomach. I am the dish, previously rejected, that you would not be sorry to feel between your teeth … this evening.”
“Oh, Marguerite! Who has taught you to speak like this?”
“You. Think: since your break with Madame de Servy, you have had, to my knowledge, four mistresses, cocottes all of them, and perfect of their kind. So how do I suppose I can explain your … airy nonsense of this evening, except as the consequence of a temporary abstinence?”
“I will be brutally frank, without mincing words. I have fallen in love with you again. Really and madly. That’s all.”
“Oh, indeed! Then you would like to … begin again?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“This evening!”
“Marguerite!”
“Good. You shall be still further scandalised. My dear, let us understand each other. We are no longer anything to each other, are we? I am your wife, it is true, but your wife … set free. I am about to take up an engagement elsewhere; you demand to be given preference. I will give it you … at the same price.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me make myself clear. Am I as good as your cocottes? Be honest about it.”
“A thousand times better.”
“Better than the best of them?”
“A thousand times.”
“Well, how much did the best of the lot cost you in three months?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I say, how much did three months of your most charming mistress cost you, in money, jewellery, suppers, dinners, theatres, etc.—the whole business, in short?”
“How on earth do I know?”
“You must know. Let’s see now, the average cost, a moderate estimate. Five thousand francs a month: is that about right?”
“Yes … just about.”
“Well, my friend, give me five thousand francs now, and I am yours for a month, including this evening.”
“You are mad.”
“So you look at it that way: good night.”
The comtesse goes out of the room into her bedroom. The curtains of the bed are half drawn. A dim fragrance fills the air, it clings to the coverings of the bed itself.
The Comte appears in the doorway.
“That’s a delightful scent.”
“Really? … It’s no different, you know. I always use peau d’Espagne.”
“Amazing! … It smells delightful.”
“Possibly. But do me the kindness of leaving me now, because I am going to bed.”
“Marguerite.”
“Go at once.”
He comes right into the room, and sits down in the armchair.
The Comtesse:
“So that’s it. … Well, so much the worse for you.”
She slowly puts off her dance-frock, slipping out her bare white arms. She lifts them above her head to take down her hair before the glass; and something rosy gleams under a froth of lace at the edge of her black corset.
The Comte springs to his feet and comes towards her.
The Comtesse:
“Don’t come near me, or I shall be angry.”
He takes her bodily into his arms and feels for her lips.
Then, with an agile twist of her body, she snatches from her dressing-table a glass of the perfumed water she uses for her mouth and flings it over her shoulder full in her husband’s face.
He leaps back, dripping with water, furious, murmuring:
“That’s a silly trick.”
“That may be. But you know my conditions, five thousand francs.”
“But that’s absolutely insane.”
“Why insane?”
“What, why? A husband to pay for sleeping with his wife!”
“Oh … what unpleasant words you use!”
“Possibly. I repeat that a man would be insane to pay his wife, his legal wife.”
“It is much stupider, when one has a legal wife, to pay cocottes.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t care to be ridiculous.”
The Comtesse is sitting on a couch. She draws her stockings slowly down, turning them inside out like the skin of a snake. Her rosy leg emerges from its sheath of mauve silk, and her adorable little foot rests on the carpet.
The Comte draws a little nearer, and in a soft voice:
“What has put this mad idea into your head?”
“What idea?”
“To ask me for five thousand francs.”
“Nothing could be more natural. We are strangers to each other, aren’t we? And now you want me. You can’t marry me, since we are married. So you buy me, a little more cheaply than anyone else perhaps.
“Think now. This money, instead of passing into the hands of a hussy to be used for goodness knows what, will remain in your own house, in your household. Moreover, an intelligent man should find it rather original to pay for his own wife. In an illicit love-affair, the sweetest pleasures are those that cost dearly, very dearly. You give your love … your quite legitimate love, a new value, a savour of vice, a spice of … dissipation, when you … put a price on it as if it were bought love. Isn’t that so?”
She rises to her feet, almost naked, and turns towards a bathroom.
“Now, sir, please go at once, or I shall ring for my maid.”
The Comte stands still, puzzled, ill at ease, and looks at her, and abruptly, throwing his pocketbook at her:
“There you are, you baggage, there’s six thousand in it. … But you understand?”
The Comtesse picks up the money, counts it, and drawls:
“What?”
“Don’t make a habit of this.”
She breaks into laughter, and going towards him:
“Every month, sir, five thousand, or back I send you to your cocottes. And … if you are satisfied … I shall even demand a rise.”