Du Roy would not answer, but he was inwardly furious, and a sullen wrath sprang up in him against the dead man. Daddy Walter himself had declared, when astonishment was expressed at the flagrant similarity in style and inspiration between the leaders of the new political editor and his predecessor: "Yes, it is Forestier, but a fuller, stronger, more manly Forestier."
Another time Du Roy, opening by chance the cupboard in which the cup and b.a.l.l.s were kept, had found all those of his predecessor with c.r.a.pe round the handles, and his own, the one he had made use of when he practiced under the direction of Saint-Potin, ornamented with a pink ribbon. All had been arranged on the same shelf according to size, and a card like those in museums bore the inscription: "The Forestier-Du Roy (late Forestier and Co.) Collection." He quietly closed the cupboard, saying, in tones loud enough to be heard: "There are fools and envious people everywhere."
But he was wounded in his pride, wounded in his vanity, that touchy pride and vanity of the writer, which produce the nervous susceptibility ever on the alert, equally in the reporter and the genial poet. The word "Forestier" made his ears tingle. He dreaded to hear it, and felt himself redden when he did so. This name was to him a biting jest, more than a jest, almost an insult. It said to him: "It is your wife who does your work, as she did that of the other. You would be nothing without her."
He admitted that Forestier would have been no one without Madeleine; but as to himself, come now!
Then, at home, the haunting impression continued. It was the whole place now that recalled the dead man to him, the whole of the furniture, the whole of the knicknacks, everything he laid hands on. He had scarcely thought of this at the outset, but the joke devised by his comrades had caused a kind of mental wound, which a number of trifles, unnoticed up to the present, now served to envenom. He could not take up anything without at once fancying he saw the hand of Charles upon it. He only looked at it and made use of things the latter had made use of formerly; things that he had purchased, liked, and enjoyed. And George began even to grow irritated at the thought of the bygone relations between his friend and his wife. He was sometimes astonished at this revolt of his heart, which he did not understand, and said to himself, "How the deuce is it? I am not jealous of Madeleine"s friends. I am never uneasy about what she is up to. She goes in and out as she chooses, and yet the recollection of that brute of a Charles puts me in a rage." He added, "At the bottom, he was only an idiot, and it is that, no doubt, that wounds me. I am vexed that Madeleine could have married such a fool."
And he kept continually repeating, "How is it that she could have stomached such a donkey for a single moment?"
His rancor was daily increased by a thousand insignificant details, which stung him like pin p.r.i.c.ks, by the incessant reminders of the other arising out of a word from Madeleine, from the man-servant, from the waiting-maid.
One evening Du Roy, who liked sweet dishes, said, "How is it we never have sweets at dinner?"
His wife replied, cheerfully, "That is quite true. I never think about them. It is all through Charles, who hated--"
He cut her short in a fit of impatience he was unable to control, exclaiming, "Hang it all! I am sick of Charles. It is always Charles here and Charles there, Charles liked this and Charles liked that. Since Charles is dead, for goodness sake leave him in peace."
Madeleine looked at her husband in amazement, without being able to understand his sudden anger. Then, as she was sharp, she guessed what was going on within him; this slow working of posthumous jealousy, swollen every moment by all that recalled the other. She thought it puerile, may be, but was flattered by it, and did not reply.
He was vexed with himself at this irritation, which he had not been able to conceal. As they were writing after dinner an article for the next day, his feet got entangled in the foot mat. He kicked it aside, and said with a laugh:
"Charles was always chilly about the feet, I suppose?"
She replied, also laughing: "Oh! he lived in mortal fear of catching cold; his chest was very weak."
Du Roy replied grimly: "He has given us a proof of that." Then kissing his wife"s hand, he added gallantly: "Luckily for me."
But on going to bed, still haunted by the same idea, he asked: "Did Charles wear nightcaps for fear of the draughts?"
She entered into the joke, and replied: "No; only a silk handkerchief tied round his head."
George shrugged his shoulders, and observed, with contempt, "What a baby."
From that time forward Charles became for him an object of continual conversation. He dragged him in on all possible occasions, speaking of him as "Poor Charles," with an air of infinite pity. When he returned home from the office, where he had been accosted twice or thrice as Forestier, he avenged himself by bitter railleries against the dead man in his tomb. He recalled his defects, his absurdities, his littleness, enumerating them with enjoyment, developing and augmenting them as though he had wished to combat the influence of a dreaded rival over the heart of his wife. He would say, "I say, Made, do you remember the day when that duffer Forestier tried to prove to us that stout men were stronger than spare ones?"
Then he sought to learn a number of private and secret details respecting the departed, which his wife, ill at ease, refused to tell him. But he obstinately persisted, saying, "Come, now, tell me all about it. He must have been very comical at such a time?"
She murmured, "Oh! do leave him alone."
But he went on, "No, but tell me now, he must have been a duffer to sleep with?" And he always wound up with, "What a donkey he was."
One evening, towards the end of June, as he was smoking a cigarette at the window, the fineness of the evening inspired him with a wish for a drive, and he said, "Made, shall we go as far as the Bois de Boulogne?"
"Certainly."
They took an open carriage and drove up the Champs Elysees, and then along the main avenue of the Bois de Boulogne. It was a breezeless night, one of those stifling nights when the overheated air of Paris fills the chest like the breath of a furnace. A host of carriages bore along beneath the trees a whole population of lovers. They came one behind the other in an unbroken line. George and Madeleine amused themselves with watching all these couples, the woman in summer toilet and the man darkly outlined beside her. It was a huge flood of lovers towards the Bois, beneath the starry and heated sky. No sound was heard
save the dull rumble of wheels. They kept pa.s.sing by, two by two in each vehicle, leaning back on the seat, silent, clasped one against the other, lost in dreams of desire, quivering with the antic.i.p.ation of coming caresses. The warm shadow seemed full of kisses. A sense of spreading l.u.s.t rendered the air heavier and more suffocating. All the couples, intoxicated with the same idea, the same ardor, shed a fever about them.
George and Madeleine felt the contagion. They clasped hands without a word, oppressed by the heaviness of the atmosphere and the emotion that a.s.sailed them. As they reached the turning which follows the line of the fortification, they kissed one another, and she stammered somewhat confusedly, "We are as great babies as on the way to Rouen."
The great flood of vehicles divided at the entrance of the wood. On the road to the lake, which the young couple were following, they were now thinner, but the dark shadow of the trees, the air freshened by the leaves and by the dampness arising from the streamlets that could be heard flowing beneath them, and the coolness of the vast nocturnal vault bedecked with stars, gave to the kisses of the perambulating pairs a more penetrating charm.
George murmured, "Dear little Made," as he pressed her to him.
"Do you remember the forest close to your home, how gloomy it was?" said she. "It seemed to me that it was full of horrible creatures, and that there was no end to it, while here it is delightful. One feels caresses in the breeze, and I know that Sevres lies on the other side of the wood."
He replied, "Oh! in the forest at home there was nothing but deer, foxes, and wild boars, and here and there the hut of a forester."
This word, akin to the dead man"s name, issuing from his mouth, surprised him just as if some one had shouted it out to him from the depths of a thicket, and he became suddenly silent, a.s.sailed anew by the strange and persistent uneasiness, and gnawing, invincible, jealous irritation that had been spoiling his existence for some time past.
After a minute or so, he asked: "Did you ever come here like this of an evening with Charles?"
"Yes, often," she answered.
And all of a sudden he was seized with a wish to return home, a nervous desire that gripped him at the heart. But the image of Forestier had returned to his mind and possessed and laid hold of him. He could no longer speak or think of anything else and said in a spiteful tone, "I say, Made?"
"Yes, dear."
"Did you ever cuckold poor Charles?"
She murmured disdainfully, "How stupid you are with your stock joke."
But he would not abandon the idea.
"Come, Made, dear, be frank and acknowledge it. You cuckolded him, eh?
Come, admit that you cuckolded him?"
She was silent, shocked as all women are by this expression.
He went on obstinately, "Hang it all, if ever anyone had the head for a cuckold it was he. Oh! yes. It would please me to know that he was one.
What a fine head for horns." He felt that she was smiling at some recollection, perhaps, and persisted, saying, "Come out with it. What does it matter? It would be very comical to admit that you had deceived him, to me."
He was indeed quivering with hope and desire that Charles, the hateful Charles, the detested dead, had borne this shameful ridicule. And yet--yet--another emotion, less definite. "My dear little Made, tell me, I beg of you. He deserved it. You would have been wrong not to have given him a pair of horns. Come, Made, confess."
She now, no doubt, found this persistence amusing, for she was laughing a series of short, jerky laughs.
He had put his lips close to his wife"s ear and whispered: "Come, come, confess."
She jerked herself away, and said, abruptly: "You are crazy. As if one answered such questions."
She said this in so singular a tone that a cold shiver ran through her husband"s veins, and he remained dumbfounded, scared, almost breathless, as though from some mental shock.
The carriage was now pa.s.sing along the lake, on which the sky seemed to have scattered its stars. Two swans, vaguely outlined, were swimming slowly, scarcely visible in the shadow. George called out to the driver: "Turn back!" and the carriage returned, meeting the others going at a walk, with their lanterns gleaming like eyes in the night.
What a strange manner in which she had said it. Was it a confession? Du Roy kept asking himself. And the almost certainty that she had deceived her first husband now drove him wild with rage. He longed to beat her, to strangle her, to tear her hair out. Oh, if she had only replied: "But darling, if I had deceived him, it would have been with yourself," how he would have kissed, clasped, worshiped her.