The Test
I
A pleasant couple the Bondels, though a little bellicose. They often quarrelled, from trivial causes, and then were reconciled. A retired tradesman who had given up business after amassing enough to live on in accordance with his simple tastes, Bondel had rented a little cottage at Saint Germain, and settled down there with his wife.
He was a placid-natured man, whose firmly rooted ideas reorientated themselves with difficulty. He had some education, read the more serious papers and had, however, an understanding of the finer shades of Gallic culture. Gifted with reason, logic, and the practical good sense that is the supreme quality of the hardworking French bourgeois, his thoughts were few but sure, and he made resolutions only on grounds that his instinct assured him to be infallible.
He was a man of middle height, and distinguished appearance, and he was going a little grey.
His wife, endowed with real qualities, had also some faults. Of a passionate nature, with a frankness of bearing that bordered on the violent, and obstinate to a degree, she cherished undying resentments against people. Once a pretty woman, she had become too plump and too highly coloured, but she passed even now, in their circle at Saint Germain, for a very lovely woman, though too miraculously healthy for genteel taste.
Their disputes almost always began at lunch, in the course of some quite unimportant discussion, and then they remained estranged until the evening, often until the next day. Their life, simple and limited as it was, lent a gravity to their lightest concerns, and every subject of conversation became a subject of dispute. It had not been so in other days, when they had a business that absorbed them, joined them in mutual anxieties, gripped their hearts, confined and imprisoned them both in bonds of partnership and a common interest.
But at Saint Germain they saw fewer people. It had been necessary to make new friends, to build for themselves, in a society of strangers, a life at once new and totally empty of occupation. Then, too, the monotony of hours that were all alike had made them a little bitter against each other, and the peaceful happiness for which they had hoped and which they had expected leisure to bring them, did not materialise.
They had just sat down to table one morning in the month of June, when Bondel asked:
“Do you know the people who live in the little red cottage at the end of the Rue de Berceau?”
Mme. Bondel must have got out of bed on the wrong side. She replied:
“Yes and no. I know them by sight, but I don’t care to know them.”
“But why? They look very pleasant.”
“Because …”
“I met the husband this morning on the terrace and we took a couple of turns together.”
Realising that there was danger in the air, Bondel added:
“It was he who accosted me and spoke first.”
His wife regarded him with displeasure. She replied:
“You could easily have avoided him.”
“But why?”
“Because people are talking about them.”
“Talking! Good heavens, people are always talking.”
M. Bondel made the mistake of becoming quite emphatic:
“My dearest, you know that I have a horror of talk. The fact that they are being talked about is enough to make me take a liking to people. As for these people, I find them very pleasant, myself.”
She demanded furiously:
“The wife too, I suppose?”
“God, yes, the wife too, although I’ve hardly seen her.”
And the discussion continued, becoming slowly more and more venomous and implacably fastened on one subject from sheer lack of other interests.
Mme. Bondel obstinately refused to say what sort of talk was going the rounds about these neighbours, leaving it to be understood that quite dreadful things, which she did not specify, were being said. Bondel shrugged his shoulders, sneered, exasperated his wife. She ended by shouting:
“Well, your gentleman is a cuckold, that’s what!”
Her husband answered unemotionally:
“I don’t see in what way that affects a man’s good name.”
She seemed stupefied.
“What, you don’t see it? … you don’t see it? … upon my word, that’s too much … you don’t see it? But it’s a public scandal: he’s hurt by the mere fact of being a cuckold!”
He answered:
“Not at all. Is a man hurt because he’s deceived, hurt because he’s betrayed, hurt because he’s robbed? … Not at all. I agree with you as far as his wife is concerned, but as for him …”
She became furious.
“He’s as much in it as she. They’re ruined, it’s a public disgrace.”
Bondel, very calm, asked:
“First, is it true? Who can assert such a thing, short of taking them in the act?”
Mme. Bondel bounced in her chair.
“What? Who can assert it? Why, everyone! everyone! A thing like that is as plain as the nose on your face. Everyone knows it, everyone talks about it. There’s no question about it. It’s as well known as a public holiday.”
He sniggered.
“And for a long time people believed that the sun moved round the earth, and a thousand other equally well-known things, which were untrue. This man adores his wife; he talks about her with affection and respect. It’s not true.”
She stammered, stamping her foot:
“And considering what he knows, fool, half-wit, defrauded wretch that he is!”
Bondel did not lose his temper; he argued:
“Pardon me. The man is not stupid. He seemed to me, on the contrary, exceptionally intelligent and very acute; and you won’t make me believe that an intelligent man would not notice such a thing in his house when his neighbours, who are not there in his house, are conversant with every detail of this adultery, for I’ll warrant they are conversant with every detail.”
Mme. Bondel gave way to a spasm of angry mirth that jarred her husband’s nerves.
“Oh! oh! oh! You’re all alike, all of you! As if there was a single man in the world who would find it out, unless one rubbed his nose in it.”
The discussion took another form. She became heated on the question of the blindness of deceived husbands, which he called in doubt and she asserted with an air of such personal scorn that he finally lost his temper.
The quarrel became a violent one in which she took the side of women and he defended men.
He had the folly to declare:
“Well, I take my oath that if I had been deceived, I should have seen it, and at once too. And I would have cured you of your fancy in such a fashion that it would have needed more than a doctor to put you on your feet again.”
She was transported with rage and shouted in his face:
“You? You! Why, you’re as stupid as any of them, do you hear?”
He asserted again:
“I take my oath I’m not.”
She burst into so impudent a laugh that he felt his pulses quicken and his skin creep.
For the third time, he said:
“I should have seen it, I should!”
She got up, still laughing in the same way.
“No, it’s too much,” she got out.
And she went out, slamming the door.
II
Bondel felt baffled, very ill at ease. That insolent provocative laughter had affected him like the sting of one of those venomous flies which we do not feel at first, but which very soon begin to smart and hurt intolerably.
He went out, and walked about, brooding over it. The solitary nature of his new life disposed him to think unhappy thoughts and to take a gloomy view of things. The neighbour whom he had that morning met suddenly approached him. They shook hands and began to talk. After touching on various subjects, they began to talk about their wives. Each of them seemed to have something to confide, some inexpressible, vague and painful thing concerning the very nature of this creature associated with his life: a woman.
The neighbour said:
“You know, one would really think that women sometimes feel a kind of peculiar hostility against their husbands, for no other reason than that they are their husbands. Take me. I love my wife. I love her dearly. I appreciate her and respect her. Well, she sometimes seems to feel more at home and intimate with our friends than with me.”
Bondel thought at once: “There you are, my wife was right.”
When he had parted from the man, he began thinking again. He was conscious of a confused medley of contradictory thoughts in his mind, a sort of unhappy agitation, and his ear still rang with that impudent laughter, an exasperated laughter that seemed to say: “You’re in the same boat as the others, you fool.” Of course it was nothing but a gesture of defiance, one of those insolent gestures typical of women, who will venture anything, take any risk, to wound and humiliate the man against whom they are irritated.
So that poor fellow must be a deceived husband, too, like so many others. He had said wistfully: “She sometimes seems to feel more at home and intimate with our friends than with me.” It showed how a husband—the blind sentiment that the law calls a husband—formulated his reflections on the particular attentions his wife shows another man. That was all. He had seen nothing more. He was like all the rest. … All the rest!
His own wife, too, had laughed at him, Bondel, laughed strangely: “You too … you too.” The mad imprudence of these creatures who could put such suspicions into a man’s heart for sheer pleasure in defying him!
He went back in thought over their life together, trying to remember whether, in their former relationship, she had ever seemed more at home and intimate with anyone else than with him. He had never suspected anyone, so placid he had been, sure of her, trustful. Yes, she had had a friend, an intimate friend, who for almost a whole year had dined with them three times a week, Tancret, good honest Tancret, whom he, Bondel, loved like a brother, and whom he continued to see in secret since the time when his wife for some unexplained reason had fallen out with the pleasant fellow.
He stood still to think about it, staring into the past with uneasy eyes. Then he suffered an inward revulsion against himself, against this shameful insinuation put forward by the defiant, jealous, malicious self that lies buried in all of us. He blamed himself, accused and insulted himself, even while he was recalling all the visits and the behaviour of this friend whom his wife had valued so highly and had expelled for no grave reason. But abruptly other memories came to him, of similar ruptures due to the vindictive nature of Mme. Bondel, who never forgave an affront. Thereupon he laughed frankly at himself, and at the pricks of anguish that had assailed him; and remembering his wife’s malignant expression when on his return in the evenings he remarked to her: “I met old Tancret, and he asked me for news of you,” he was completely reassured.
She always replied: “When you see the gentleman, you can tell him that I do not trouble to concern myself with him.” Oh, with what an air of irritation and vindictive fury she used to utter these words! How obvious it was that she did not forgive, would not forgive! … And he had found it possible to suspect? even for a second? God, what a fool he was!
But why was she so vindictive? She had never told him the exact starting-point of this quarrel, and the reason for her resentment. She owed him a rare grudge, a rare grudge! Could it be? … But no—no. … And Bondel declared that he was degrading himself by thinking of such things.
Yes, there was not the least doubt that he was degrading himself, but he could not refrain from thinking about it, and he asked himself in terror whether this thought that had come into his mind was not going to stay there, whether in this thought he had not admitted to his heart the germ of an abiding torture. He knew himself: he was the sort of man who would brood over his doubt, as he had formerly brooded over his commercial transactions for days and nights, weighing pros and cons, interminably.
Already he was becoming agitated, he was quickening his step and losing his peace of mind. No one can fight against Thought. It is impregnable, it can neither be cast out nor killed.
And abruptly he conceived a plan, an audacious plan, so audacious that he doubted at first whether he could carry it out.
Each time that he met Tancret, the latter demanded news of Mme. Bondel; and Bondel answered: “She’s still a little annoyed.” That was all. God! … had he himself been the typical husband! Perhaps. …
So he would take the train to Paris, go and see Tancret, and bring him home with him this very evening, assuring him that his wife’s inexplicable resentment was over. Yes, but what a state Mme. Bondel would be in … what a scene! what fury! … what a scandal! So much the worse, so much the worse … that would be a rare revenge, and seeing them suddenly face to face, she altogether unprepared, he would easily be able to read the truth in the emotions written on their faces.
III
He went at once to the station, took his ticket, climbed into a carriage and when he felt himself being swept along by the train which was running down hill at Pecq, he felt a stab of fear, a sort of giddiness at the thought of his audacity. To keep himself from weakening, from backing out of it and returning alone, he strove to give up thinking about it any more, to seek distraction in other thoughts, to do what he had planned to do with a blind determination, and he set himself to hum songs from the operettas and the music-halls all the way to Paris in order to stifle his thoughts.
He became the prey of impulses to withdraw from the affair as soon as he had in front of him the pavements that would lead him to Tancret’s street. He loitered in front of several shops, priced some of the things, took an interest in various new things, was seized with a desire to drink a bock, which was hardly one of his habits, and as he approached his friend’s house, he felt the strongest possible wish not to meet him.
But Tancret was at home, alone, reading. He was surprised, jumped up, cried:
“Ah! Bondel! What luck!”
And Bondel, embarrassed, answered:
“Yes, old man, I came to do a little business in Paris and I came along to shake you by the hand.”
“That’s good of you, very good of you. All the more so because you’ve rather lost the habit of coming to see me.”
“Well, what could I do? There are certain kinds of pressure you can’t resist, and as my wife seemed to be annoyed with you …”
“Damn it … seemed to be annoyed … she went farther than that, seeing that she turned me out of the house.”
“But what was it all about? I myself have never known that.”
“Oh, about nothing! … a silly affair … a discussion in which I failed to agree with her.”
“But what was the discussion about?”
“About a lady whom you may know by name; Mme. Boutin, a friend of mine.”
“Oh, yes! Well, I believe that my wife is tired of it now, for she spoke to me about you this morning in the friendliest possible terms.”
Tancret started violently, and seemed so astounded that for some instants he found nothing to say. Then he replied:
“She spoke to you about me … in friendly terms?”
“Of course.”
“You’re sure of it?”
“Bless my soul … I’m not given to daydreams.”
“Well?”
“Well … as I was coming to Paris, I thought it would please you to hear about it.”
“Of course … of course.”
Bondel seemed to hesitate; then, after a brief silence:
“I even had an idea … an original idea.”
“What was it?”
“To take you back with me to dine at the house.”
At this suggestion, Tancret, who was temperamentally cautious, seemed uneasy.
“Oh, do you think … is it possible … aren’t we letting ourselves in for … for … for recriminations?”
“Not at all … not at all.”
“It’s just that … don’t you know … she’s inclined to bear a grudge, is Mme. Bondel.”
“Yes, but I assure you that she’s tired of it now. I am quite convinced that it would give her great pleasure to see you like that, unexpectedly.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, come along, old man. I’m only too delighted. Believe me, this upset has been causing me great unhappiness.”
And they set off towards the Gare Saint-Lazare arm in arm.
The journey was made in silence. Both seemed lost in profound reveries. Seated facing one another in the carriage, they looked at each other without talking, each observing that the other was pale.
Then they left the train and took each other by the arm again, as if they were standing together against a common danger. After a few minutes’ walking, they halted, both a little out of breath, before the Bondel house.
Bondel ushered his friend in, followed him into the drawing room, summoned the maid, and said to her:
“Is your mistress at home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ask her to come down at once, please.”
They sank into two armchairs and waited, filled now by a mutual longing to get away as quickly as ever possible, before the dreaded personage appeared in the doorway.
A familiar tread, a firm tread, was descending the steps of the staircase. A hand touched the lock, and the eyes of both men saw the copper handle turning. Then the door opened wide, and Mme. Bondel stood still, with the intention of seeing who was there before coming in.
Then she stared, blushed, trembled, recoiled half a step, and then remained motionless with flaming cheeks and hands pressed against the wall at each side of the doorway.
Tancret, now as pale as if he were going to faint, rose, dropping his hat, which rolled across the floor. He stammered:
“Heavens. … Madame. … It’s I. … I thought … I ventured … I was so unhappy …”
As she did not reply, he went on:
“Have you forgiven me … at last?”
At that, abruptly, carried away by some inward impulse, she walked towards him with both hands outstretched; and when he had taken, clasped and held her two hands, she said in a small voice, a moved, faltering voice that her husband had never heard:
“Oh, my dear! I am so glad.”
And Bondel, who was watching them, felt his whole body grow icy cold, as if he had been drenched in a cold bath.