The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  Gerald talked more loudly. With that aristocratic Englishman observing him, he could not remain at ease. And not only did he talk more loudly; he brought into his conversation references to money, travels, and worldly experiences. While seeking to impress the Englishman, he was merely becoming ridiculous to the Englishman; and obscurely he was aware of this. Sophia noticed and regretted it. Still, feeling very unimportant herself, she was reconciled to the superiority of the whiskered Englishman as to a natural fact. Gerald’s behaviour slightly lowered him in her esteem. Then she looked at him—at his well-shaped neatness, his vivacious face, his excellent clothes, and decided that he was much to be preferred to any heavy-jawed, long-nosed aristocrat alive.

  The woman whose vermilion cloak lay around her like a fortification spoke to her escort. He did not understand. He tried to express himself in French, and failed. Then the woman recommenced, talking at length. When she had done he shook his head. His acquaintance with French was limited to the vocabulary of food.

  “Guillotine!” he murmured, the sole word of her discourse that he had understood.

  “Oui, oui! Guillotine. Enfin . . . !” cried the woman excitedly. Encouraged by her success in conveying even one word of her remarks, she began a third time.

  “Excuse me,” said Gerald. “Madame is talking about the execution at Auxerre the day after tomorrow. N’est-ce-pas, madame, que vous parliez de Rivain?”

  The Englishman glared angrily at Gerald’s officious interruption. But the woman smiled benevolently on Gerald, and insisted on talking to her friend through him. And the Englishman had to make the best of the situation.

  “There isn’t a restaurant in Paris tonight where they aren’t talking about that execution,” said Gerald on his own account.

  “Indeed!” observed the Englishman.

  Wine affected them in different ways.

  Now a fragile, short young Frenchman, with an extremely pale face ending in a thin black imperial, appeared at the entrance. He looked about, and, recognizing the woman of the scarlet cloak, very discreetly saluted her. Then he saw Gerald, and his worn, fatigued features showed a sudden startled smile. He came rapidly forward, hat in hand, seized Gerald’s palm and greeted him effusively.

  “My wife,” said Gerald, with the solemn care of a man who is determined to prove that he is entirely sober.

  The young man became grave and excessively ceremonious. He bowed low over Sophia’s hand and kissed it. Her impulse was to laugh, but the gravity of the young man’s deference stopped her. She glanced at Gerald, blushing, as if to say: “This comedy is not my fault.” Gerald said something, the young man turned to him and his face resumed its welcoming smile.

  “This is Monsieur Chirac,” Gerald at length completed the introduction, “a friend of mine when I lived in Paris.”

  He was proud to have met by accident an acquaintance in a restaurant. It demonstrated that he was a Parisian, and improved his standing with the whiskered Englishman and vermilion cloak.

  “It is the first time you come Paris, madame?” Chirac addressed himself to Sophia, in limping, timorous English.

  “Yes,” she giggled. He bowed again.

  Chirac, with his best compliments, felicitated Gerald upon his marriage.

  “Don’t mention it!” said the humorous Gerald in English, amused at his own wit; and then: “What about this execution?”

  “Ah!” replied Chirac, breathing out a long breath, and smiling at Sophia. “Rivain! Rivain!” He made a large, important gesture with his hand.

  It was at once to be seen that Gerald had touched the topic which secretly ravaged the supper-world as a subterranean fire ravages a mine.

  “I go!” said Chirac, with pride, glancing at Sophia, who smiled, self-consciously.

  Chirac entered upon a conversation with Gerald in French. Sophia comprehended that Gerald was surprised and impressed by what Chirac told him and that Chirac in turn was surprised. Then Gerald laboriously found his pocket-book, and after some fumbling with it handed it to Chirac so that the latter might write in it.

  “Madame!” murmured Chirac, resuming his ceremonious stiffness in order to take leave. “Alors, c’est entendu, mon cher ami!” he said to Gerald, who nodded phlegmatically. And Chirac went away to the next table but one, where were the three lorettes and the two middle-aged men. He was received there with enthusiasm.

  Sophia began to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was not quite his usual self. She did not think of him as tipsy. The idea of his being tipsy would have shocked her. She did not think clearly at all. She was lost and dazed in the labyrinth of new and vivid impressions into which Gerald had led her. But her prudence was awake.

  “I think I’m tired,” she said in a low voice.

  “You don’t want to go, do you?” he asked, hurt.

  “Well—”

  “Oh, wait a bid!”

  The owner of the vermilion cloak spoke again to Gerald, who showed that he was flattered. While talking to her he ordered a brandy-and-soda. And then he could not refrain from displaying to her his familiarity with Parisian life, and he related how he had met Hortense Schneider behind a pair of white horses. The vermilion cloak grew even more sociable at the mention of this resounding name, and chattered with the most agreeable vivacity. Her friend stared inimically.

  “Do you hear that?” Gerald explained to Sophia, who was sitting silent. “About Hortense Schneider—you know, we met her tonight. It seems she made a bet of a louis with some fellow, and when he lost he sent her the louis set in diamonds worth a hundred thousand francs. That’s how they go on here.”

  “Oh!” cried Sophia, farther than ever in the labyrinth.

  “’Scuse me,” the Englishman put in heavily. He had heard the words “Hortense Schneider,” “Hortense Schneider,” repeating themselves in the conversation, and at last it had occurred to him that the conversation was about Hortense Schneider. “ ’Scuse me,” he began again. “Are you—do you mean Hortense Schneider?”

  “Yes,” said Gerald. “We met her tonight.”

  “She’s in Trouville,” said the Englishman, flatly.

  Gerald shook his head positively.

  “I gave a supper to her in Trouville last night,” said the Englishman. “And she plays at the Casino Theatre tonight.”

  Gerald was repulsed but not defeated. “What is she playing in tonight? Tell me that!” he sneered.

  “I don’t see why I sh’d tell you.”

  “Hm!” Gerald retorted. “If what you say is true, it’s a very strange thing I should have seen her in the Champs Elysées tonight, isn’t it?”

  The Englishman drank more wine. “If you want to insult me, sir—” he began coldly.

  “Gerald!” Sophia urged in a whisper.

  “Be quiet!” Gerald snapped.

  A fiddler in fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at that moment and began to play wildly. The shock of his strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music—the common, tedious, tippler’s quarrel. It rose higher and higher. The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The English voices grew more menacing.

  Then suddenly the whiskered Englishman, jerking his head towards the door, said more quietly:

  “Hadn’t we better settle this outside?”

  “At your service!” said Gerald, rising.

  The owner of the vermilion cloak lifted her eyebrows to Chirac in fatigued disgust, but she said nothing. Nor did Sophia say anything. Sophia was overcome by terror.

  The swain of the cloak, dragging his coat after him across the floor, left the restaurant without offering any apology or explanation to his lady.

  “Wait here for me,” said Gerald defiantly to Sophia. “I shall be back in a minute.”

  “But, Gerald!” She
put her hand on his sleeve.

  He snatched his arm away. “Wait here for me, I tell you,” he repeated.

  The doorkeeper obsequiously opened the door to the two unsteady carousers, for whom the fiddler drew back still playing.

  Thus Sophia was left side by side with the vermilion cloak. She was quite helpless. All the pride of a married woman had abandoned her. She stood transfixed by intense shame, staring painfully at a pillar, to avoid the universal assault of eyes. She felt like an indiscreet little girl, and she looked like one. No youthful radiant beauty of features, no grace and style of a Parisian dress, no certificate of a ring, no premature initiation into the mysteries, could save her from the appearance of a raw fool whose foolishness had been her undoing. Her face changed to its reddest, and remained at that, and all the fundamental innocence of her nature, which had been overlaid by the violent experiences of her brief companionship with Gerald, rose again to the surface with that blush. Her situation drew pity from a few hearts and a careless contempt from the rest. But since once more it was a question of ces Anglais, nobody could be astonished.

  Without moving her head, she twisted her eyes to the clock: half-past two. The fiddler ceased his dance and made a collection in his tasselled cap. The vermilion cloak threw a coin into the cap. Sophia stared at it moveless, until the fiddler, tired of waiting, passed to the next table and relieved her agony. She had no money at all. She set herself to watch the dock; but its fingers would not stir.

  With an exclamation the lady of the cloak got up and peered out of the window, chatted with waiters, and then removed herself and her cloak to the next table, where she was received with amiable sympathy by the three lorettes, Chirac, and the other two men. The party surreptitiously examined Sophia from time to time. Then Chirac went outside with the head-waiter, returned, consulted with his friends, and finally approached Sophia. It was twenty minutes past three.

  He renewed his magnificent bow. “Madame,” he said carefully, “will you allow me to bring you to your hotel?”

  He made no reference to Gerald, partly, doubtless, because his English was treacherous on difficult ground.

  Sophia had not sufficient presence of mind to thank her saviour.

  “But the bill?” she stammered. “The bill isn’t paid.”

  He did not instantly understand her. But one of the waiters had caught the sound of a familiar word, and sprang forward with a slip of paper on a plate.

  “I have no money,” said Sophia, with a feeble smile.

  “Je vous arrangerai ça,” he said. “What name of the hotel? Meurice, is it not?”

  “Hotel Meurice,” said Sophia. “Yes.”

  He spoke to the head-waiter about the bill, which was carried away like something obscene; and on his arm, which he punctiliously offered and she could not refuse, Sophia left the scene of her ignominy. She was so distraught that she could not manage her crinoline in the doorway. No sign anywhere outside of Gerald or his foe!

  He put her into an open carriage, and in five minutes they had clattered down the brilliant silence of the Rue de la Paix, through the Place Vendôme into the Rue de Rivoli; and the night-porter of the hotel was at the carriage-step.

  “I tell them at the restaurant where, you gone,” said Chirac, bare-headed under the long colonnade of the street. “If your husband is there, I tell him. Till tomorrow . . .!”

  His manners were more wonderful than any that Sophia had ever imagined. He might have been in the dark Tuileries on the opposite side of the street, saluting an empress, instead of taking leave of a raw little girl, who was still too disturbed even to thank him.

  She fled, candle in hand, up the wide, many-cornered stairs; Gerald might be already in the bedroom . . . drunk! There was a chance. But the gilt-fringed bedroom was empty. She sat down at the velvet-covered table amid the shadows cast by the candle that wavered in the draught from the open window. And she set her teeth and a cold fury possessed her in the hot and languorous night. Gerald was an imbecile. That he should have allowed himself to get tipsy was bad enough, but that he should have exposed her to the horrible situation from which Chirac had extricated her, was unspeakably disgraceful. He was an imbecile. He had no common sense. With all his captivating charm, he could not be relied upon not to make himself ridiculous, tragically ridiculous. Compare him with Mr Chirac! She leaned despairingly on the table. She would not undress. She would not move. She had to realize her position; she had to see it.

  Folly! Folly! Fancy a commercial traveller throwing a compromising piece of paper to the daughter of his customer in the shop itself: that was the incredible folly with which their relations had begun! And his mad gesture at the pit-shaft! And his scheme for bringing her to Paris unmarried! And then tonight! Monstrous folly! Alone in the bedroom she was a wise and disillusioned woman, wiser than any of those dolls in the restaurant.

  And had she not gone to Gerald, as it were, over the dead body of her father, through lies and lies and again lies? That was how she phrased it to herself . . . Over the dead body of her father! How could such a venture succeed? How could she ever have hoped that it would succeed? In that moment she saw her acts with the terrible vision of a Hebrew prophet.

  She thought of the Square and of her life there with her mother and Constance. Never would her pride allow her to return to that life, not even if the worst happened to her that could happen. She was one of those who are prepared to pay without grumbling for what they have had.

  There was a sound outside. She noticed that the dawn had begun. The door opened and disclosed Gerald.

  They exchanged a searching glance, and Gerald shut the door. Gerald infected the air, but she perceived at once that he was sobered. His lip was bleeding.

  “Mr Chirac brought me home,” she said.

  “So it seems,” said Gerald, curtly. “I asked you to wait for me. Didn’t I say I should come back?”

  He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man who is ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others that he has recently behaved like an ass.

  She resented the injustice. “I don’t think you need talk like that,” she said.

  “Like what?” he bullied her, determined that she should be in the wrong.

  And what a hard look on his pretty face!

  Her prudence bade her accept the injustice. She was his. Rapt away from her own world, she was utterly dependent on his good nature.

  “I knocked my chin against the damned balustrade, coming upstairs,” said Gerald, gloomily.

  She knew that was a lie. “Did you?” she replied kindly. “Let me bathe it.”

  CHAPTER III

  AN AMBITION SATISFIED

  I

  She went to sleep in misery. All the glory of her new life had been eclipsed. But when she woke up, a few hours later, in the large, velvety stateliness of the bedroom for which Gerald was paying so fantastic a price per day, she was in a brighter mood, and very willing to reconsider her verdicts. Her pride induced her to put Gerald in the right and herself in the wrong, for she was too proud to admit that she had married a charming and irresponsible fool. And, indeed, ought she not to put herself in the wrong? Gerald had told her to wait, and she had not waited. He had said that he should return to the restaurant, and he had returned. Why had she not waited? She had not waited because she had behaved like a simpleton. She had been terrified about nothing. Had she not been frequenting restaurants now for a month past? Ought not a married woman to be capable of waiting an hour in a restaurant for her lawful husband without looking a ninny? And as for Gerald’s behaviour, how could he have acted differently? The other Englishman was obviously a brute and had sought a quarrel. His contradiction of Gerald’s statements was extremely offensive. On being invited by the brute to go outside, what could Gerald do but comply? Not to have complied might have meant a fight in the restaurant, as the brute was certainly drunk. Compared to the brute, Gerald was not at all drunk, merely a little gay and talkative. Then Gerald’s fib
about his chin was natural; he simply wished to minimize the fuss and to spare her feelings. It was, in fact, just like Gerald to keep perfect silence as to what had passed between himself and the brute. However, she was convinced that Gerald, so lithe and quick, had given that great brute with his supercilious ways as good as he received, if not better.

  And if she were a man and had asked her wife to wait in a restaurant, and the wife had gone home under the escort of another man, she would most assuredly be much more angry than Gerald had been. She was very glad that she had controlled herself and exercised a meek diplomacy. A quarrel had thus been avoided. Yes, the finish of the evening could not be called a quarrel; after her nursing of his chin, nothing but a slight coolness on his part had persisted.

  She arose silently and began to dress, full of a determination to treat Gerald as a good wife ought to treat a husband. Gerald did not stir; he was an excellent sleeper: one of those organisms that never want to go to bed and never want to get up. When her toilet was complete save for her bodice, there was a knock at the door. She started.

  “Gerald!” She approached the bed, and leaned her nude bosom over her husband, and put her arms round his neck. This method of being brought back to consciousness did not displease him.