Secrets

Wherein a Girl's Mother Contemplates the Darker Secrets of Married Life

COLETTE

"IT'S not really a betrothal party. But, I shall have to announce generally that Claudia Gray is engaged to marry Andre' Donat or, else, there will be all sorts of gossip. The child has danced only with him the whole evening; and they have so many sympathizers among our friends. Even Charles seems to like the idea."

Mrs. Gray looked around the room for her husband and finally spotted him at a poker table. "Yes, of course, he's passing his thumb nail across his lip. He's at it again! Last week I didn't catch him at it a single time. I suppose it's because things are going so smoothly and he's bored." She sighed, and gazed thoughtfully at Andre Donat and her daughter who were dancing to the music of a pianola. Claudia looked like her mother. She was large like her and had the same blond colouring that her mother had had at her age.

"Blondness—that doesn't last long!" thought her mother. "That type of blonde fades out quickly. I ought to know something about that. But the child is really very pretty tonight. Quite worthy of her mother. It's positively disconcerting how much her face is like mine at her age, in spite of those delicate features. Her nose is smaller than mine, and, unfortunately, so are her eyes. But she has a smaller mouth, too, thank goodness! She's really lovely. I can take the credit for producing a masterpiece. And she's so dear and sweet. Ah, how well I know that life will be over for me when she goes. But there I go singing her praises as if—"

SHE called an abrupt halt to her maternal reveries and touched, with a superstitious finger, the gilded wood of an armchair.

Mrs. Gray felt for her daughter a singular devotion, a devotion so discerning that it was incapable of blindness. It had in it that element of keen criticism which a coach must always assume towards the champion whom he trains and trusts. Mrs. Gray's own abundant health, her physical and moral equilibrium had, indeed, often made her intolerant and harsh toward feminine frailties that she did not share. "You have a headache! And where in the world did you pick up a headache? 1 never had one in my life." Or again, "You want to wear your hair low, in the nape of your neck? You little fool! Nothing in the world is less becoming at your age. You should wear your hair high and leave your neck bare. That's the style for you. Just take a look at my portrait painted by Ferdinand Humbert!"

In the person of her daughter, Mrs. Gray was unconsciously cherishing those others: the child of ten years before, with short skirts and bare legs wading in icy water; the girl of just a few years past, riding horseback in the Bois with her hair in a double braid under her black derby hat. A charming little girl always, easy to bring up, a bit of a tomboy perhaps, but spirited as a pedigreed horse, and slim and straight as a young sapling, a girl who did not know what it was to have nerves and who had not been the occasion of three doctor's visits since her birth.

Mrs. Gray looked towards her future sonin-law with the disparaging and resentful eye of a mother-in-law.

"Yes; he seems a good sort. And his bread is well buttered. His father will give them a house. Other mothers will be quite envious. This marriage will create nothing but envy, I know. And if I should speak my secret thoughts, there would be a fine outcry."

Andre Donat, leaving the pianola a moment for the buffet, stopped in front of Mrs. Gray and, bending low, printed a light kiss on her hand. Then he snatched her tiny handkerchief and made off with it, laughing and showing his teeth. Mrs. Grav threatened him with her fan and smiled at him—entirely without good will.

She went outside on the terrace, sat down, and breathed in the fresh air, which was not entirely free from the evening dust of the Bois. Her fifty rigorous years had not left her quite untouched, and she gave in to them a little now and then when she felt herself quite alone. Her knees felt weak and her proud back longed for her bed with its fresh linens and for a nice soothing hot water bag.

"He plays the gallant with me, that boy! How many times he has done it! He shows me those white teeth in his upper jaw and those tiny incisors in his lower jaw. They're too small and pointed and they denote sensuality and fickleness. I pity my child if she has pretty chambermaids around. And that short nose shows a complete lack of judgment, and the lobe of his ear almost growing onto his cheek— a sure sign of degeneracy! Besides, when we have visited him, he has positively boasted of the fact that he cannot live in disorder; that he arranges his books according to the colour of the bindings and that he even gets up at night to put shoe trees in his shoes."

MRS. GRAY groaned as she rose. She recalled to her mind a scene from her own youth, the picture of a young girl completely crushed and, standing in front of her in his underwear, a young man with his bare feet on the tiles of a bath house. With complete nonchalance, the young man was about to make the horrid admission that he could not sleep unless the bath towels were all hung in an exactly even row.

"But I can't tell that to Claudia!" thought Mrs. Gray in the torment of her soul. "No! I positively cannot! If I should tell her that and also that I almost left her father because he keeps passing his thumb-nail over his lip, she would laugh. She wouldn't understand. It's just one of those things you just can't say. There are things that I must whisper in her ear on the eve of her marriage: things that are a little shocking and frightening for a young girl to hear and awkward for a mother to talk about with her daughter. But I can never tell her about the fringes of the bath towels or that thumb nail passed over his lip a hundred times a day—never! never! And she, she will conceal from me a thousand terrible little nothings, the dry rot of conjugal life, the lapses into childishness of a husband who begins to feel comfortable and relaxed.

"My poor baby!" sighed Mrs. Gray, and drew up her large form, which as it lost flexibility seemed to gain-in stateliness. As she reentered the room she made only the tiniest sign to the engaged couple who were now dancing and went straight to the poker table.

"Make room for me, Charles. There are only four of you."

She sat down opposite her husband; and her wifely hand removed with a quick significant gesture that hand which was rubbing its thumbnail slowly, slowly across the lips.