The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett [147]
The knock was repeated. He gave a grunt.
"Some one's knocking at the door," she whispered.
"Then why don't you open it?" he asked dreamily.
"I'm not dressed, darling."
He looked at her. "Stick something on your shoulders, girl!" said he.
"What does it matter?"
There she was, being a simpleton again, despite her resolution!
She obeyed, and cautiously opened the door, standing behind it.
A middle-aged whiskered servant, in a long white apron, announced matters in French which passed her understanding. But Gerald had heard from the bed, and he replied.
"Bien, monsieur!" The servant departed, with a bow, down the obscure corridor.
"It's Chirac," Gerald explained when she had shut the door. "I was forgetting I asked him to come and have lunch with us, early. He's waiting in the drawing-room. Just put your bodice on, and go and talk to him till I come."
He jumped out of bed, and then, standing in his night-garb, stretched himself and terrifically yawned.
"Me?" Sophia questioned.
"Who else?" said Gerald, with that curious satiric dryness which he would sometimes import into his tone.
"But I can't speak French!" she protested.
"I didn't suppose you could," said Gerald, with an increase of dryness; "but you know as well as I do that he can speak English."
"Oh, very well, then!" she murmured with agreeable alacrity.
Evidently Gerald had not yet quite recovered from his legitimate displeasure of the night. He minutely examined his mouth in the glass of the Louis Philippe wardrobe. It showed scarcely a trace of battle.
"I say!" he stopped her, as, nervous at the prospect before her, she was leaving the room. "I was thinking of going to Auxerre to-day."
"Auxerre?" she repeated, wondering under what circumstances she had recently heard that name. Then she remembered: it was the place of execution of the murderer Rivain.
"Yes," he said. "Chirac has to go. He's on a newspaper now. He was an architect when I knew him. He's got to go and he thinks himself jolly lucky. So I thought I'd go with him."
The truth was that he had definitely arranged to go.
"Not to see the execution?" she stammered.
"Why not? I've always wanted to see an execution, especially with the guillotine. And executions are public in France. It's quite the proper thing to go to them."
"But why do you want to see an execution?"
"It just happens that I do want to see an execution. It's a fancy of mine, that's all. I don't know that any reason is necessary," he said, pouring out water into the diminutive ewer.
She was aghast. "And shall you leave me here alone?"
"Well," said he, "I don't see why my being married should prevent me from doing something that I've always wanted to do. Do you?"
"Oh NO!" she eagerly concurred.
"That's all right," he said. "You can do exactly as you like. Either stay here, or come with me. If you go to Auxerre there's no need at all for you to see the execution. It's an interesting old town—cathedral and so on. But of course if you can't bear to be in the same town as a guillotine, I'll go alone. I shall come back to-morrow."
It was plain where his wish lay. She stopped the phrases that came to her lips, and did her best to dismiss the thoughts which prompted them.
"Of course I'll go," she said quietly. She hesitated, and then went up to the washstand and kissed a part of his cheek that was not soapy. That kiss, which comforted and somehow reassured her, was the expression of a surrender whose monstrousness she would not admit to herself.
In the rich and dusty drawing-room, Chirac and Chirac's exquisite formalities awaited her. Nobody else was there.
"My husband …" she began, smiling and blushing. She liked Chirac.
It was the first time she had had the opportunity of using that word to other than a servant. It soothed her and gave her confidence. She perceived after a few moments that Chirac did genuinely admire her; more, that she inspired him with something that resembled awe. Speaking very slowly and distinctly she said that she should travel with her husband to Auxerre; as he saw no objection to that course; implying that if he saw no objection she was perfectly satisfied. Chirac was concurrence itself. In five minutes it seemed to be the most natural and proper thing in the world that, on her honeymoon, she should be going with her husband to a particular town because a notorious murderer was about to be decapitated there in public.