The Confession
When Captain Hector-Marie de Fontenne married Mlle. Laurine d’Estelle, parents and friends were of the opinion that it was a most unsuitable match.
Mlle. Laurine, pretty, slender, fragile, fair and self-possessed, had at twelve the assurance of a woman of thirty. She was one of those precocious little Parisians who seem to have been born with a perfect understanding of the art of life, equipped with every feminine wile, every intellectual audacity, and with the profound guile and subtlety of mind that makes certain men and women seem fated, however they may act, to trick and deceive others. Their every action seems premeditated, their every move calculated, their every word carefully weighed; their existence is only a part that they play to an audience of their fellow creatures.
She was charming too: bubbling with laughter, laughter that she could neither restrain nor moderate when she came across anything amusing or odd. She laughed in people’s faces in the most impudent way in the world, but so charmingly that no one was ever offended.
She was rich, immensely rich. A priest acted as intermediary to arrange her marriage with Captain de Fontenne. Educated in a seminary, in the most austere fashion, this officer had brought to the regiment the manners of the cloister, the strictest principles and an armour-plated intolerance. He was one of those men who become by an inevitable fate either saints or nihilists, over whose minds ideas exercise an absolute tyranny, whose beliefs are never shaken nor their resolutions broken.
He was a tall dark youth, grave, austere, ingenuous, single-minded, curt and obstinate, one of those men who go through life with not the least understanding of its hidden meanings, its halftones and its subtleties, guessing nothing, suspecting nothing, never admitting that anyone thinks, judges, believes or acts otherwise than they do themselves.
Mlle. Laurine saw him, read his character at a glance, and agreed to take him for her husband.
They got on splendidly together. She was tactful, quick-witted and subtle, able to adapt herself to any role circumstances demanded of her, diligent in good works and ardent in pleasure, assiduous in her attendance at church and theatre, urbane and correct, with a delicate suggestion of irony and a gleam that lurked in her eye when she was holding grave converse with her grave husband. She related to him the charitable enterprises she undertook with all the priests of the parish and the neighbourhood, and these pious occupations provided her with an excuse for staying out from morning till night.
But sometimes, in the very middle of reciting some charitable deed, she fell abruptly into a wild fit of laughter, nervous and quite irrepressible laughter. Captain de Fontenne was surprised and uneasy and a little shocked by the spectacle of his wife choking with mirth. When she was recovering her self-control he would ask: “Well, what is it, Laurine?” “It’s nothing,” she answered; “I just thought of an odd thing that happened to me.” And she would proceed to tell him some tale or other.
Well, during the summer of 1883, Captain Hector de Fontenne took part in the grand manoeuvres of the 32nd Army Corps.
One evening, when they were camping in the outskirts of a town, after ten days of living under canvas and in the open country, ten days of hard work and rough living, the captain’s comrades determined to stand themselves a good dinner.
At first M. de Fontenne refused to accompany them; then, as his refusal caused surprise, he agreed.
His neighbour at table, Major de Faure, under cover of talking about military operations, the only thing in which Captain de Fontenne was passionately interested, filled his glass again and again. The day had been very warm, with a heavy, scorching, thirsty heat; and Captain de Fontenne went on drinking without thinking what he did: he did not notice that, little by little, an unwonted gaiety was taking possession of him, a sharp heady excitement. He was glad to be alive, full of wakening desires, new appetites, vague longings.
With the dessert, he was drunk. He talked, laughed, gesticulated, completely and clamorously drunk, with the mad drunkenness of your habitually quiet and abstemious man.
It was proposed to finish the evening at the theatre: he accompanied his comrades. One of them recognised an actress whose lover he had been; and a supper party was arranged that included part of the feminine personnel of the company.
Captain de Fontenne woke up next morning in a strange bedroom and in the arms of a little, fair-haired woman, who greeted him with: “Good morning, dearie,” when she saw him opening his eyes.
At first he did not realise what had happened; then, slowly, things came back to him—a little confusingly, however.
Then he got up without saying a word, dressed, and emptied his purse on the mantelpiece.
He was overwhelmed with shame at the vision of himself standing, in uniform, sword at his side, in this apartment room, with its shabby curtains and a stain-mottled couch of dubious aspect: he dared not go away, nor walk down the staircase where he would meet people, nor pass the concierge, and above all he dared not walk out into the street under the eyes of passersby and neighbours.
The woman continued to reiterate: “What’s got you? Have you lost your tongue? You wagged it freely enough last night. You are a freak, you are!”
He saluted her ceremoniously, and summoning up courage to get away, he strode back to his lodging, convinced that everyone knew by his manner, his bearing and his face that he was coming from a prostitute.
And he was torn by remorse, the torturing remorse of an austere and scrupulous man.
He confessed and took the sacrament; but he was still sick at heart, obsessed by the remembrance of his fall and a feeling that he owed a debt, a sacred debt, to his wife.
He did not see her until a month later, for she had been staying with her parents, while the grand manoeuvres took place.
She came to him with open arms and a smile on her lips. He received her with the embarrassed air of a guilty man, and almost refrained from speaking to her until the evening.
As soon as they were alone together, she asked him:
“Well, what’s the matter, darling? I find you very changed.”
He answered awkwardly:
“There’s nothing the matter with me, my dear, absolutely nothing.”
“I beg your pardon, but I know you very well, and I’m sure there’s something the matter with you, some trouble or grief or annoyance or other.”
“Well, yes, I am troubled.”
“Ah! And by what?”
“I can’t possibly tell you about it.”
“Not tell me? Why not? You alarm me.”
“I have no reason to give you. I can’t possibly tell you about it.”
She was sitting on a low couch and he was striding up and down the room, hands behind his back, avoiding his wife’s eye. She went on:
“Very well, so I must hear your confession—that’s my duty—and require the truth from you—that’s my right. You can no more have secrets from me than I can have them from you.”
He turned his back on her and stood framed in the tall window.
“My dear,” he said solemnly, “there are things it is better not to tell. The thing that worries me is one of them.”
She rose, crossed the room, took him by the arm and forced him to turn round. She put her two hands on his shoulders; then, smiling, coaxing, her eyes lifted to him, she said:
“Come, Marie” (she called him Marie when she loved him very much), “you can’t hide anything from me. I believe you’ve done something wicked.”
He murmured:
“I’ve done something very wicked.”
“Oh, as bad as that?” she said gaily. “You of all people! You astonish me.”
“I won’t tell you anything more,” he answered sharply. “It’s no use your insisting.”
But she led him to an armchair, made him sit in it, rested herself on his right knee and dropped a small swift kiss, a light-winged kiss, on the upturned end of his moustache.
“If you don’t tell me anything, we shall never be friends again.”
Torn by remorse and in an agony of grief, he murmured:
“If I told you what I had done, what I had done, you would never forgive me.”
“On the contrary, darling, I would forgive you at once.”
“No, it’s impossible.”
“I promise I will.”
“I tell you it’s impossible.”
“I swear I’ll forgive you.”
“No, my dear Laurine, you couldn’t.”
“How childish you are, darling, not to say silly. By refusing to tell me what you’ve done, you leave me to believe abominable things; and I shall always be thinking about it, and I shall bear you as deep a grudge for your silence as for your unknown crime. While if you tell me about it quite frankly, I shall have forgotten it tomorrow.”
“Well, I …”
“What?”
He crimsoned to the ears, and said gravely:
“I confess to you as I would confess to a priest, Laurine.”
Her lips curved in the swift smile that sometimes hovered there, as she listened to him; in a half-mocking voice she said:
“I am all ears.”
He went on:
“You know, my dear, how little I ever drink. I never drink anything but water with a dash of light wine, and never liqueurs, as you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, do you know, towards the end of the grand manoeuvres, I allowed myself to drink a little one evening when I was very thirsty, very exhausted, very tired, and …”
“You got drunk? How horrid of you!”
“Yes, I got drunk.”
She had adopted an air of severity:
“There now, you were quite drunk, own up, too drunk to walk, weren’t you?”
“No, not so drunk as that. I lost my senses, not my balance. I talked and laughed, I was mad.”
As he was silent, she asked:
“Is that all?”
“No.”
“Ah! and … then?”
“Then … I … I did a very shameful thing.”
She looked at him, uneasy, a little troubled and moved, too.
“What did you do, darling?”
“We had supper with … with some actresses … and I don’t know how it happened, I’ve been unfaithful to you, Laurine.”
He had made his confession in a grave solemn voice.
She started slightly, and her eyes gleamed with swift amusement, an overwhelming and irresistible amusement.
She said:
“You … you … you have …”
A little, mirthless laugh, nervous and broken, escaped between her lips three times, choking her speech.
She tried to recover her gravity; but each time she opened her mouth to utter a word, laughter bubbled at the bottom of her throat, leaped forth, was stifled, and broke out again and again, like the gas of an uncorked bottle of champagne from which the froth is pouring. She pressed her hand on her lips to calm herself and to stifle this misplaced outburst of amusement in her mouth; but her laughter slipped between her fingers, came in choking gasps from her breast, escaped in spite of her. She babbled: “You … you … you have deceived me. … Oh! … oh! Oh! oh! … oh! oh! oh!”
And she gazed at him with a strange expression that she could not keep from being so mocking that he was thunderstruck and stupefied.
And abruptly she gave up her attempt at self-control and broke down completely. Then she began to laugh, and laughed like a woman with an attack of nerves. Little sharp broken cries came between her lips, sounding as though they came from the very depths of her breast; with both hands pressed on the pit of her stomach, she abandoned herself to long drawn spasms of laughter that almost choked her, like the spasms of coughing in whooping-cough.
And every effort she made to control herself brought on a fresh attack, every word she tried to say convulsed her the more.
“My … my … my … my poor darling … oh! oh! oh! … oh! oh! oh! …”
He stood up, leaving her sitting alone in the armchair; he had suddenly turned pale and he said:
“Laurine, you are worse than vulgar.”
In an ecstasy of amusement, she stammered:
“Well … well, what do you expect? … I … I … I can’t help it … you’re so funny … oh! oh! oh! oh!”
He had grown livid and he was looking at her now with a steady glance that revealed the strange thoughts stirring behind it.
Suddenly he opened his mouth as if to shout something, but said nothing, turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door.
Laurine, bent double, exhausted, faint, continued to laugh, in dying spasms of laughter that rose and fell like the flame of a half-extinguished blaze.