Her Husband

Further Evidence Pointing to the Fact That Women's Ways Are Dark and Incomprehensible

HENRI DUVERNOIS

SHE was a charming little woman who had style without knowing it and seemed not to be aware of her charm. Attracting people was as natural to her as breathing. She did so ingenuously so that even women did not hold it against her, and one knew that she hurried away, with an annoyed pout, when she was followed in the street.

On this dull family beach, however, where she now was, she found herself subject to importunate attentions, for other reasons. At the sea-side she did not linger among those dangerous reflections from which one emerges with a heart heavy with vain hopes and confused regrets. She would take from a large bag a dignified piece of work—not some useless trifle, but a pillow case or a napkin, which she would embroider in red or white.

And Gaston Fidonneau observed these details as attentively as if this were his only object in life. A woman's whim had exiled him to this dreary little beach, which happened to adjoin a luxurious and fashionable watering place. He lived there in seclusion. Occasionally a telephone call bade him to stay in his room in which, very soon, a pretty woman would appear, like a perfumed tempest.

"Do you love me? How bored you must be here, poor darling! So much the better, though—when one is bored one does get some rest. Oh, be still—he didn't want me to go! I think he suspects something. He said to me, so oddly: 'I win as I please at baccarat!' No— I don't dance—or only a very little—nothing but waltzes. What time have I, do you suppose? Still, it has its advantages; one doesn't have to be always powdering one's nose. I've only an hour for you. You haven't told me yet if you love me. What? Hush? Are you going to insinuate again that I can't talk in a whisper? When I think that to come here I had to take a wretched tram, an abominable train and a dirty road all littered up with rubbish!"

AFTER having delivered this monologue the young lady took account of the more tender duties that did, after all, devolve upon her. She tried to explain it all.

"I get dressed when I get up. Good. Then I get undressed again to go in bathing, and, dress again, and I never stop dressing and undressing! To say nothing of the days when I come here!"

Gaston Fidonneau agreed. He asked himself how he could bear waiting, sometimes a whole week, for a pleasure so transient and so dubious.

But soon he stopped asking himself that question, for he knew that it was because of the other woman—the unknown one—that he stayed, the wise and mysterious one. He chose a table next to hers, and, in order to make himself conspicuous, since he knew that he was a personable young man but too much like all other personable young men, he placed a dark red carnation in his buttonhole every day. This caused much gossip among the worthy families in the hotel.

"Must he wear one, indeed? A carnation! not particularly suitable at the sea-shore!"

Gaston soon learned that his neighbour was a Madame Jules Paqueret, and that she came from Paris. By way of opening his attack, one morning, he put a red carnation like the ones he was accustomed to wear in his buttonhole, in each of the little white slippers he found outside Mme. Paqueret's door.

She did not wear the carnations the next day at luncheon—but he had not quite hoped for that. She appeared, impassive, and went to the beach, as usual, as soon as she had finished her dessert. That evening he made his great gesture.

"Madame" he said to her, "I think the cream has turned a little sour. I take the liberty of warning you. . . ."

"Thank you, Monsieur"

"That might be disagreeable, don't you think?"

"No doubt, Monsieur"

"In this stormy weather, no one is to blame." "No, Monsieur"

AT nine o'clock they were talking earnestly together, on the terrace. Mme. Jules Paqueret referred frequently to her husband.

"Important business keeps him in Paris. He is in the leather goods business. It's frightful, the way he works, and even during his fortnight's vacation, mind you, his mind is never at rest. But he's promised me absolutely to come on Saturday."

Gaston felt that from Thursday to Saturday scarcely gave him time to make much progress. He was about to give up when a vague hope led him to persist. He might be able to ingratiate himself with this business man. On Friday Mme. Paqueret told him that her husband was a very handsome man, who understood all games without playing them and all the arts without having studied them, that he was courageous, intelligent, and witty....

"You'll see him, my Jules. He's arriving to-morrow at ten minutes to four. He's just telegraphed to let me know. I shall meet him at the station, of course. Excuse me, Monsieur —if the question is not too indiscreet—I'd like to know where you get the lovely carnations."

"Oh, at the florist's, Madame—a place called Painfroid's, in the rue des Bains " Gaston answered, paling a little.

The next day, at half-past-twelve, his new friend arrived breathless, dressed all in white; she was happy and very lively.

"I want my luncheon served quickly!" she exclaimed. "I don't want to be late. Tell me, waiter, is the three-fifty train on time today?"

Just then the porter brought her a telegram, which she read. She sighed.

"He isn't coming!"

"Monsieur, your husband—"Gaston asked. "No, he isn't coming. An appointment. He'll come next Saturday."

Three times in that same fashion, M. Jules Paqueret sent telegrams countermanding his plans, and three times, uselessly, his wife put on her pretty white dress. She seemed terribly upset, the prey of intolerable suspicions....

Gaston Fidonneau was no better than most people, as need hardly be explained. He was an idler who had made love his avocation, since love is the one career in which idleness is well rewarded. But he could not bear to see a woman unhappy. So he said nothing, but thought inwardly: "I must do something for this little one!"

What he did was a really heroic feat. He wrote an anonymous letter, a thing he had never imagined he would do in his life. He addressed it to M. Jules Paqueret, whose address he had obtained from the hotel clerk. This is what he wrote:

"Poor dolt,

A woman who takes an interest in you warns you, out of charity, that while you are amusing yourself in Paris your wife is being besieged by attentions to which she will eventually succumb if you persist in staying away from her.

An Unknown Friend."

This letter brought the result he had hoped for. Forty-eight hours later, with no warning of his coming, M. Paqueret arrived quite beside himself, flushed, panting, his clothes unpressed, a M. Paqueret who brandished an inoffensive satchel like a weapon, and who, half bear, half frog, bore no resemblance at all to the portrait of him drawn by his wife. Moreover, she was dumb with amazement, as if she could not recognize him. He had to repeat, again and again:

"It's I! Go up to your room. I want to talk to you. It's I! I want to talk to you! Go up to your room! Go up to your room. I tell you! It's I. I want to talk to you! "

"OTEADY!" thought Gaston. "This man is O going to annoy me. Oh, well! I've done a good deed. Just the same, he looks like a terrible bounder, this husband of hers! And she's in love with him! How can one understand such things?"

The next day, his bags packed, Gaston was paying his bill in the lobby when Madame Paqueret passed through. It was eight o'clock. The fat little man was obviously still in his room. Seeing Gaston, she was startled; then: "You're going away, Monsieur?" she asked. He smiled, sadly.

"Oh, well—there's nothing to keep me here now."

She looked at him thoughtfully.

"I understand," she said. "My husband must have seemed very coarse to you. Alas! I was so peaceful! Some mischief maker—I can't imagine who it could have been!—sent him a ridiculous letter. And now—here he is, jealous, if you please! He insists on my going home with him ..."

And, as he tried to discern, in her clear eyes, the secret of the insoluble mystery of the feminine soul, she threw him, by way of good bye, as she might have tossed him a rose:

"What a pity that our romance should have ended so soon!"