Indiscretion
Before marriage, they had loved each other with a pure love, their heads in the stars.
It had begun in a pleasant acquaintance made on a sea front. He had found her entirely charming, this young girl, like a rose, with her transparent sunshades and her pretty gowns, drifting past the vast background of the sea. He had loved her, fair and delicately slender, in her frame of blue waves and illimitable sky. And he confounded the compassionate tenderness roused in him by this virginal child, with the vague powerful emotion stirred in his soul, his heart, his very veins by the sharp salt air and the wide countryside filled with sun and sea.
The girl herself had loved him, because he wooed her, because he was young, rich enough, well-bred and fastidious. She had loved him because it is natural for young girls to love young men who speak to them of love.
Then for three months they had spent their time together, eyes looking into eyes and hand touching hand. The mutual happiness that they felt—in the morning before the bath, in the freshness of a new day, and their farewells at night, in the shore, under the stars, in the soft warm of the quiet night, farewells murmured softly, very softly—had already the character of kisses, though their lips had never met.
They dreamed of one another in the instant of sleep, thought of one another in the instant of waking, and, without a word exchanged, called to each other, and desired each other with all the force of their souls and all the force of their bodies.
After their marriage, their adoration had come to earth. It had been at first a kind of sensuous and insatiable fury of possession, then an exalted affection wrought of flesh and blood romance, of caresses already a little sophisticated, of ingenious and delicately indelicate lovemaking. Their every glance had a lascivious significance, all their gestures roused in them thoughts of the ardent intimacy of their nights.
Now, without acknowledging it, perhaps without yet realising it, they had begun to weary of one another. They loved each other dearly, still; but there were no longer any revelations to share, nothing to do that they had not done many times, nothing to discover about one another, not even a new word of love, an unpremeditated ecstasy, an intonation that might make more poignant the familiar words, so often repeated.
None the less they made every effort to feed the dying flame of their first fierce caresses. Every day they invented affectionate pretences, artless or subtle little comedies, a whole series of desperate attempts to reawake the insatiable ardour of first love in their hearts, and the burning desire of the bridal month in their blood.
Sometimes, by dint of exciting their passions, they enjoyed again an hour of unreal ecstasy, followed at once by a mood of fatigue and aversion.
They had tried moonlit nights, walks under the trees in the gentle air of evening, the poetry of riversides veiled in mist, the excitement of public festivities.
Then, one morning, Henrietta said to Paul:
“Will you take me to dine in a cabaret?”
“Of course, darling.”
“In a really well-known cabaret?”
“Of course.”
He looked at her, with a questioning air, quite aware that she was thinking of something that she did not care to say aloud.
She added:
“You know, in a cabaret … how shall I put it? … in a really gay cabaret … in the sort of cabaret where people arrange to meet each other alone?”
He smiled.
“Yes, I understand. In a private room of a fashionable café.”
“That’s it. But a fashionable café where you are known, where you have perhaps already had supper … no … dinner … and don’t you know … you know … I should like … no, I’ll never dare say it.”
“Tell me, darling; what can anything matter, between you and me? We don’t hide little things from each other.”
“No, I dare not.”
“Really now, don’t pretend to be shy. What is it?”
“Well … well … I would like … I would like to be taken for your mistress … and that the waiters, who don’t know that you are married, should suppose me your mistress, and you too … that you should think me your mistress, for one hour, just in that room which must have memories for you. … Don’t you see? And I shall believe, myself, that I am your mistress … I shall be doing a dreadful thing … I shall be deceiving you … with yourself. Don’t you see? It is very wicked. … But I should like … don’t make me blush … I feel myself blushing. … You can’t imagine how it would … would excite me to dine like that with you, in a place that’s not quite nice … in a cabinet particulier where people make love … every evening. … It is very wicked … I’m as red as a peony. Don’t look at me.”
He laughed, very amused, and answered:
“Yes, we’ll go, this evening, to a really smart place, where I am known.”
About seven o’clock they walked up the staircase of a fashionable boulevard café, he all smiles like a conqueror, she shy, veiled, delighted. As soon as they had entered a private room furnished with four armchairs and a vast couch of red velvet, the head waiter, black-clad, came in and presented the card. Paul offered it to his wife.
“What would you like to eat?”
“Oh, but I don’t know what’s the right thing to order here.”
So he read down the list of dishes as he took off his overcoat, which he handed to the footman. Then he said:
“A very spicy dinner—potage bisque—poulet à la diable, râble de lièvre, bomard à l’américaine, salade de légumes bien épicée, and dessert. We will drink champagne.”
The head waiter turned a smiling regard on the young woman. He picked up the card, murmuring:
“Will Monsieur Paul have sweet or dry?”
“Champagne, very dry.”
Henrietta was delighted to observe that this man knew her husband’s name.
They sat side by side on the couch, and began to eat.
They had the light of ten wax candles, reflected in a large mirror marked all over by thousands of names traced on it by diamonds: they flung over the gleaming crystal what looked like an immense spider’s web.
Henrietta drank steadily, to enliven her, though she felt giddy after the first glass. Paul, excited by his memories, kissed his wife’s hand every moment. His eyes shone.
She was oddly excited by this not very reputable place, disturbed, happy, a little wanton but very thrilled. Two grave silent footmen, accustomed to see all and forget all, to present themselves only when necessary, and to remove themselves at moments when emotions ran dangerously high, came and went swiftly and deftly.
By the middle of dinner Henrietta was half drunk, more than half drunk, and Paul, very merry, was madly pressing her knee. She was babbling wildly now, impudently gay, with flushed cheeks and suffused burning eyes.
“Now, Paul, own up, don’t you know I simply must know everything?”
“Well, darling?”
“I daren’t say it.”
“Say anything you want to.”
“Have you had mistresses … many mistresses … before me?”
He hesitated, a little dubious, not sure whether he ought to keep quiet about his triumphs or boast of them.
She added:
“Oh, I implore you, do tell me, have you had ever so many?”
“Well, I’ve had several.”
“How many?”
“Well, I really don’t know … a man can’t really be sure about these things, don’t you know?”
“You didn’t keep count of them?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, so you must have had ever so many.”
“Of course.”
“But about how many? … only just about?”
“But I haven’t the least idea, darling. Some years I had ever so many, and there were other years when I had very few.”
“How many a year, do you suppose?”
“Sometimes twenty or thirty, sometimes only four or five.”
“Oh, that makes more than a hundred women altogether.”
“Well, yes, about that.”
“Oh, it’s revolting!”
“Why do you call it revolting?”
“Because of course it is revolting, when you think of it … all those women … naked … and always … always the same thing. Oh, how revolting it is, all the same, more than a hundred women!”
He was shocked that she found it disgusting, and answered her with that superior manner which men assume to make women realise that they are talking nonsense.
“Well, upon my word, that’s a queer thing to say; if it’s disgusting to have a hundred women, it is just as disgusting to have one.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind.”
“Why not?”
“Because one woman, that is a real union, a real love which holds you to her, while a hundred women is just lust or misconduct. I don’t understand how a man can press himself against all those dirty wenches …”
“They’re not, they are very clean.”
“It’s impossible for them to be clean, living the life they do.”
“But, on the contrary, it is just because of the life they live that they are so clean.”
“Oh, fie, when you think that only the night before they were doing the same thing with another man! It’s shameful.”
“It’s no more shameful than drinking out of this glass which was drunk from this morning by goodness knows who, and which you may be sure has at any rate been well washed. …”
“Oh, be quiet, you disgust me.”
“Then why did you ask me if I had had mistresses?”
“Tell me, these mistresses of yours, were they all girls of that sort?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“What were they, then?”
“Well, actresses … some … some little shopgirls … and some … several society women.”
“How many society women?”
“Six.”
“Only six?”
“Yes.”
“Were they pretty?”
“Of course.”
“Prettier than the girls?”
“No.”
“Which did you like best, the girls or the society women?”
“The girls.”
“Oh, what nasty tastes you have! Why?”
“Because I don’t care for amateur performers.”
“Oh, horrible! You really are detestable, you know. But tell me, did it amuse you to go from one to the other?”
“Of course.”
“Very much?”
“Very much.”
“What is it that amused you? Aren’t they all alike?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, women are not all alike?”
“Not at all alike.”
“Not in anything?”
“Not in anything.”
“How odd! How do they differ?”
“Altogether.”
“In their bodies?”
“Yes, of course, in their bodies.”
“All over their bodies?”
“All over their bodies.”
“And what else?”
“Well, in their way of … of making love, of talking, of saying even little things.”
“And … and it is very amusing to have change?”
“Of course.”
“And do men, too, vary?”
“I couldn’t tell you that.”
“You can’t tell me?”
“No.”
“They must vary.”
“Yes … no doubt. …”
She sat sunk in thought, the glass of champagne in her hand. It was full, she drank it off at a gulp; then, placing it on the table, she flung both arms round her husband’s neck, murmuring against his heart:
“Oh, my darling, I love you so! …”
He took her in a passionate embrace. A waiter who was entering withdrew, shutting the door; and the serving of the courses was suspended for about five minutes.
When the head waiter reappeared, solemn and dignified, carrying the sweet, she was holding another full glass between her fingers, and, peering into the tawny translucent depths of the liquid, as if she saw there strange imagined things, she was murmuring in a reflective tone:
“Yes, it must be very amusing, all the same.”