"Believe me, Sophie; it will depend on you to make me forgotten, as it was entirely your own fault that your husband ever thought of me a single instant."
"What do you mean?"
"Just now I provoked your confidence by a.s.suring you that, doubtless, some happy result to you and your husband would be the consequence of it. I was not mistaken."
"Explain, if you please."
"Let us see now. Imagine, dear Sophie, that you are in a confessional,"
replied Madeleine, smiling, "yes, in the confessional of that great fat abbe, Jolivet, you know, the chaplain of the boarding-school, who put such strange questions to us when we were young girls. So, since that time I have often asked myself why there were not abbesses to confess young girls; but as, without being an abbess, I am a woman," added the marquise, smiling again, "I am going to risk some questions which would have been very tempting to our old confessor. Now, tell me, and do not blush, your husband married you for love, did he not?"
"Alas! yes."
"Well, you need not groan at such a charming recollection."
"Ah, Madeleine, the sadder the present is, the more certain memories tear our hearts."
"The present and the future will all be what you would like to have it.
But, answer me, during the first two or three years of your marriage, you loved each other as lovers, did you not? You understand me?"
The young woman looked downwards and blushed.
"Then by degrees, without any diminution of love, that pa.s.sionate tenderness gave place to a calmer sentiment, that your love for your children has filled with charm and sweetness; and, finally, the two lovers were only two friends united by the dearest and most sacred duties. Is that true?"
"That is true, Madeleine, and if I must say it, sometimes I have regretted these days of first youth and love; but I reproached myself for these regrets, with the thought that perhaps they were incompatible with the serious duties imposed by motherhood."
"Poor Sophie! But, tell me, this coolness, or rather this transformation of married lovers to friends, if you choose, was not sudden, was it? It came insensibly and almost without your perceiving it."
"Practically, yes; but how do you know?"
"One more question, Sophie, dear. In the period of your early love, you and you husband were, I am certain of it, very anxious to please each other. Never could a toilet be fresh or pretty enough. You heightened by painstaking and agreeableness every charm you possessed; indeed, your only thought was to please your husband, to captivate him always, and to keep him always in love. Your Charles, no doubt, preferred some delicate perfume, and your beautiful hair, your garments, exhaled that sweet odour, which, in time of absence, materialises, so to speak, the memory of a beloved woman."
"That is true; we adored the odour of the violet and the iris. That perfume always recalls to me the happy days of our past."
"You see plainly, then. As to your husband, I do not doubt, he vied with you in the care and elegance and taste of the most trifling details of his toilet. In short, both of you, ardent and pa.s.sionate, guarded with strictest attention all the delights of your young love. But, alas!
from the bosom of this happiness, so easily, so naturally, issued by degrees habit,--that fatal precursor of familiarity, lack of ceremony, neglect of self, habit!--all the more dangerous because it resembles, even so as to be mistaken for it, a sweet and intimate confidence. So, one says: "I am sure of being loved, what need of this constant care and painstaking? What are these trifles to true love?" So, my good Sophie, there came a day when, entirely absorbed by your tenderness for your children, you no longer occupied yourself in finding out if your hair were arranged becomingly, in a style suited to your pretty face, if your dress hung well or badly from your graceful waist, if your little foot were coquettishly dressed in the morning. Your husband, on his part, absorbed in his work as you were by the cares of maternity, neglected himself, too. Unconsciously, your eyes grew accustomed to the change, scarcely perceiving it; as in the same way, so to speak, people never see each other grow old when they live continually together. And it is true, dear Sophie, that if at this moment you should evoke, by memory, the care, the elegance, and the charms with which you and your husband surrounded yourselves in the beautiful time of your courtship, you would be startled with surprise in comparing the present with the past."
"It is only too true, Madeleine," replied Sophie, throwing a sad, embarra.s.sed look on her careless attire and disordered hair. "Yes, by degrees I have forgotten the art, or, rather, the desire to please my husband. Alas! it is now too late to repent!"
"Too late!" exclaimed the marquise. "Too late! With your twenty-five years, that attractive face, too late! With that enchanting figure, that magnificent hair, those pearly teeth, those large, tender eyes, that hand of a d.u.c.h.ess, and those feet of a child, too late! Let me be your tirewoman for a half-hour, Sophie, and you will see if it is too late to make your husband as pa.s.sionately in love with you as he ever was."
"Ah, Madeline, you are the only one in the world to give hope to those who have none; nevertheless, the truth of your words frightens me. Alas, alas! You are right. Charles loves me no longer."
"He loves you as much and perhaps even more than in the past, poor foolish child, because you are the wife whose fidelity has been tested, the tender mother of his children; but you are no longer the infatuating mistress of the past, nor has he that tender, pa.s.sionate love for you he felt in the first days of your wedded bliss. What I say to you, my good Sophie, may be a little harsh, but the good G.o.d knows what he has made us. He has created us of immaterial essence. Neither are we all matter, but neither are we all mind. It is true, believe me, that there is something divine in pleasure, but we must guard it, purify it, idealise it. Now, pray pardon this excessive management on my part, as you see that a little appreciation of the sensuous is not too much to awaken a nature benumbed by habit, or else the seductive mistress always has an advantage over the wife; for, after all, Sophie, why should the duties of wife and mother be incompatible with the charms and enticements of the mistress? Why should the father, the husband, not be a charming lover? Yes, my good Sophie, I am going, in a few words, with my usual bluntness, to sum up your position and mine: your husband loves you, but desires you no longer; he does not love me, and he desires me."
Then the marquise, laughing immoderately, added:
"Is it not strange that I, a young lady, alas! with no experience in the question,--for I am like a gourmand without a stomach, who presumes to talk of good cheer,--is it not strange that I should be giving a lesson to a married woman?"
"Ah, Madeleine," exclaimed Sophie, with effusion, "you have saved us twice to-day, because what my husband feels for you he might have felt for a woman less generous than yourself; and then think of my sorrow, my tears! Oh, you are right, you are right. Charles must see again and find again in his wife the beloved mistress of the past."
The conversation of the two friends was interrupted by the arrival of Antonine.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The conversation of Madeleine and Sophie was interrupted by the arrival of Antonine, who, impetuous as joy, youth, and happiness, entered the room, saying:
"Sophie, I knew yesterday that Madeleine would be here this morning, and I ran in to tell you that--"
"Not a word more, little girl!" gaily replied the marquise, kissing Antonine on the forehead; "we have not a moment to lose; we must be to-day as we used to be in school, waiting-maids for Sophie."
"What do you mean?" said the young woman.
"But, Madeleine," replied Antonine, "I have come to inform you that my contract has been signed by the prince and my uncle, and that--"
"Your contract is signed, my child! That is important and I expected it.
You can tell me the rest when we have made our dear Sophie the prettiest and most captivating toilet in the world. It is very important and very urgent."
Then the marquise whispered in the ear of Madame Dutertre:
"Your husband may come at any moment; he must be charmed, fascinated, and he will be."
Then turning to Antonine, Madeleine added:
"Quick, quick, my child; help me to place this table before the window, and we will first arrange Sophie"s hair."
"But really, Madeleine," said Madame Dutertre, smiling, for she was awakening in spite of herself to hope and happiness, "you are silly."
"Not so silly," replied the marquise, making Sophie sit down before the toilet-table.
Uncoiling her friend"s magnificent hair, she said:
"With such hair, if I were as ugly as a monster, I would make myself attractive in the highest degree; judge for yourself, Sophie. Here, help me, Antonine, this hair is so long and so thick, I cannot hold it all in my hand."
It was a charming sight to see the three friends of such diverse beauty, thus grouped together. The pure face of Antonine expressed an innocent astonishment at this improvised toilet; Sophie, touched, and distressed by the tender recollections of other days, felt under her veil of brown hair her lovely face, sad and pale up to that moment, colour with an involuntary blush; while Madeleine, handling her friend"s superb hair with marvellous skill, was making a ravishing coiffure.
"Now," said the marquise to Sophie, "what gown are you going to wear?
But now I think of it, they all fit you horribly, and all of them are cut on the same pattern."
"They are, unfortunately," said Sophie, smiling.
"Very well," replied the marquise, "and all are high-necked, I warrant."
"Yes, all are high-necked," replied poor Sophie.
"Better and better," said Madeleine, "so that these dimpled shoulders, these beautiful arms are condemned to perpetual burial! it is deplorable! Let us see, you have at least some elegant morning gown,--some coquettish dressing-gown,--have you not?"