The Greenhouse
M. and Mme. Lerebour were the same age. But Monsieur seemed the younger, although he was the more infirm. They lived near Mantes in a pretty country place they had built, after making a fortune selling printed calicoes.
The house was surrounded by a fine garden containing a poultry-run, Chinese kiosks, and a little greenhouse at the far end of the grounds. M. Lerebour was short, fat, and jovial, with the manners of a convivial shopkeeper. His wife, thin, wilful, and always discontented, had not succeeded in conquering her husband’s good humour. She dyed her hair, and sometimes read novels which put dreams into her head, although she affected to despise books of that sort. She was declared to be a passionate woman, without ever having done anything to justify the opinion. But her husband sometimes said: “My wife’s hot stuff!” with a certain significant air which gave rise to conjectures.
But for some years she had been behaving unkindly to M. Lerebour, always irritable and harsh, as though she were tormented by a secret sorrow she could not confess. A sort of misunderstanding resulted. They hardly spoke to one another, and Madame, whose name was Palmyre, was constantly loading Monsieur, whose name was Gustave, with disagreeable remarks, wounding illusions, and sharp words, without apparent reason.
He bowed under it, worried, but still gay, blessed with such a fund of contentment that he could shoulder these intimate bickerings. Yet he wondered what unknown cause could be making his wife grow more and more bitter, for he felt sure that her irritation had a cause which was not only hidden, but so difficult to discover that all his efforts were wasted.
He often asked her:
“Look here, dear, do tell me what grievance you have against me. I can feel you are concealing something.”
“No, nothing, absolutely nothing,” she invariably replied. “And anyhow, if I had any reason for being unhappy, it would be your business to guess it. I don’t like men who never realise anything, men who are so slack and incapable that you have to go and help them understand the smallest trifle.”
“I see you don’t mean to tell me,” he would murmur, discouraged, and would go off, searching for the mystery.
The nights especially became very painful for him; for they still shared the same bed, as in happy and simple homes. At these times there were no vexations with which she did not harass him. She would choose the moment when they were lying side by side to load him with her cruelest sneers and insults. Principally, she reproached him for growing fat:
“You take up all the room, you’re getting so fat. And you perspire in the back like melted lard. Do you suppose I like it!”
She made him get up on the slightest pretexts, sending him downstairs to get a newspaper she had forgotten, or the bottle of orange-flower water, which he could not find because she had hidden it. And she would exclaim in a furious and sarcastic tone:
“But you ought to know where to find it, you great booby!”
And when he had prowled for an hour all over the sleeping house and returned empty-handed, all the thanks he would get was:
“Come on, get back into bed; a little walking will make you thinner; you’re getting as flabby as a sponge.”
She was always waking him up, saying she had cramp in the stomach and insisting on his rubbing her with flannel soaked in eau de cologne. And he would do his best to cure her, miserable at seeing her ill, and would suggest rousing Céleste, their maid. Then she would lose her temper, and shout:
“Is the dolt quite off his head! It’s all over, I’m all right now! Go to sleep again, you great ninny!”
“You’re quite sure you’re all right?” he would ask.
“Yes, keep quiet, and let me go to sleep,” she flung at him harshly. “Don’t bother me any more. You’re no good at anything, you can’t even rub a woman.”
“But … darling …” he would begin, desperately.
“No buts,” she would interrupt in exasperation. “That’s enough, isn’t it? Now do shut up …” and she would turn to the wall.
One night she shook him so abruptly that he started with fright and found himself sitting up with a rapidity unusual for him.
“What? … What is it? …” he stammered.
She was holding him by the arm and pinching hard enough to make him cry out.
“I heard a noise in the house,” she whispered in his ear.
Accustomed to Mme. Lerebour’s frequent alarms, he was not excessively uneasy, and asked calmly:
“What sort of noise, darling?”
She was trembling as though out of her wits, and replied:
“A noise … well, a noise … a noise of footsteps. … There is someone about.”
He was incredulous:
“Someone about? Do you think so? No; you must be mistaken. Who do you think it could be?”
She shook with rage:
“Who? … Who? … Why, thieves, you fool!”
He calmly snuggled under the sheets again.
“No, darling, there’s no one. You must have been dreaming.”
At this she threw back the coverlet and jumped out of bed, exasperated.
“So you’re as cowardly as you are useless! At all events, I won’t let myself be murdered in my bed on account of your cowardice.”
And snatching up the tongs from the fireplace, she settled herself at the bolted door in an attitude of combat.
Stirred by this example of valour, and perhaps ashamed, he rose sulkily and, without taking off his cotton nightcap, he took the shovel and placed himself opposite his better half.
For twenty minutes they waited in the deepest silence. No fresh sound disturbed the repose of the house. Then Madame, furious, went back to bed, declaring:
“But I was certain there was someone.”
To avoid any quarrel, he made no allusion during the day to her panic.
But the following night, Mme. Lerebour woke her husband with even more violence than on the previous night, and, gasping, faltered:
“Gustave, Gustave, someone has just opened the garden gate.”
Astonished at this persistence, he thought his wife a prey to somnambulism, and he was on the point of trying to break this dangerous slumber, when he fancied he really did hear a faint noise under the walls of the house.
He rose, ran to the window, and saw, yes, really saw a white shadow hurrying across a path.
“There is someone,” he murmured, with a sickening qualm.
Then he regained his senses, pulled himself together, and, suddenly exalted by the formidable fury of a landowner whose property is not being respected, said:
“Wait, wait, and you shall see.”
He rushed to the writing-table, opened it, grabbed his revolver, and dashed towards the stairs.
His frantic wife followed, screaming:
“Gustave, Gustave, don’t desert me, don’t leave me alone, Gustave! Gustave!”
But he paid no attention to her; his hand was already on the garden gate.
Thereupon she hastily went back upstairs and barricaded herself in the conjugal apartment.
She waited five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. A wild panic attacked her. Without any doubt they had killed him, had seized him, garrotted him, and strangled him. She would have preferred to hear the six revolver shots ring out, to know that he was fighting, defending himself. But the utter silence, the terrifying silence of the country was too much for her.
She rang for Céleste. Céleste did not come, did not reply. She rang again, swooning, on the point of losing consciousness. The entire house remained dumb.
She pressed her burning brow against the windowpane, trying to penetrate the darkness outside. She could make out nothing but the blacker shadows of the copses beside the grey lines of the paths.
A clock struck half past twelve. Her husband had been gone three-quarters of an hour. She would never see him again! She would certainly never see him again! She fell on her knees, sobbing.
Two faint knocks on the door of the room made her leap up. M. Lerebour was calling:
“Open the door, Palmyre, it’s me.”
She ran to it and opened it, then stood in front of him, her hands on her hips, her eyes still filled with tears.
“Where have you been, you beast! Leaving me like this to die of fear all by myself! You take no more thought for me than if I didn’t exist. …”
He had closed the door, and was laughing, laughing like a madman, his two cheeks split by his wide-open mouth, his hands on his paunch, his eyes moist.
Mme. Lerebour, utterly bewildered, was silent.
He faltered:
“It was … it was … Céleste, who had a … a … an appointment in the greenhouse. … If you only knew what … what … what I saw …”
She had gone white, choking with indignation:
“What? … You mean to say … Céleste … in my house … my … my … my house … in my … my … in my greenhouse! And you never killed the man, her accomplice! You had a revolver and never killed him. … In my house … my house. …”
She sat down, at the end of her strength.
He cut a caper, snapped his fingers, clicked his tongue, and stammered, still laughing:
“If you knew … if you knew …”
Suddenly, he kissed her.
She pushed him away, and, in a voice strangled with rage, said:
“I will not have that girl stay another day in the house, do you hear? Not one day … not one hour. When she comes in, we’ll throw her out. …”
M. Lerebour had grasped his wife by the waist and was planting rows of kisses on her neck, noisy kisses, as in the past. She fell silent again, dumbfounded and bewildered. And, holding her in his arms, he led her gently to the bed. …
At about half past nine next morning, Céleste, surprised at not having yet seen her master and mistress, who always rose early, came and knocked gently at their door.
They were in bed, and were chatting gaily side by side. She stood still in amazement, and asked:
“Madame, the coffee.”
“Bring it here, my girl,” said Mme. Lerebour in a very gentle voice; “we are rather tired; we slept very badly.”
The maid had barely withdrawn when M. Lerebour burst out laughing again, tickling his wife and repeating:
“If you knew! Oh! if you knew!”
But she took his hands:
“Now do keep quiet, darling; if you laugh as much as that, you’ll do yourself harm.”
And she kissed him, gently, on the eyes.
Mme. Lerebour has no more bad tempers. Sometimes, on clear nights, the two of them creep furtively past the thickets and flowerbeds to the little greenhouse at the far end of the garden. And they stay there, huddled close together against the panes as though they were gazing at some strange, absorbing thing inside.
They have raised Céleste’s wages.
M. Lerebour has grown thinner.