Damaged Goods Part 7

There was his friend, Gustave, for example. He had been a friend of Henriette's before her marriage; he had even been in love with her at one time. And now he came sometimes to the house--once or twice when George was away! What did that mean? George wondered. He brooded over it all day, but dared not drop any hint to Henriette. But he took to setting little traps to catch her; for instance, he would call her up on the telephone, disguising his voice. "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! Is that you, Madame Dupont?" And when she answered, "It is I, sir," all unsuspecting, he would inquire, "Is George there?"

"No, sir," she replied. "Who is this speaking?"

He answered, "It is I, Gustave. How are you this morning?" He wanted to see what she would answer. Would she perhaps say, "Very well, Gustave.

How are you?"--in a tone which would betray too great intimacy!

But Henriette was a sharp young person. The tone did not sound like Gustave's. She asked in bewilderment, "What?" and then again, "What?"

So, at last, George, afraid that his trick might be suspected, had to burst out laughing, and turn it into a joke. But when he came home and teased his wife about it, the laugh was not all on his side. Henriette had guessed the real meaning of his joke! She did not really mind--she took his jealousy as a sign of love, and was pleased with it. It is not until a third party come upon the scene that jealousy begins to be annoying.

So she had a merry time teasing George. "You are a great fellow!

You have no idea how well I understand you--and after only a year of marriage!"

"You know me?" said the husband, curiously. (It is always so fascinating when anybody thinks she know us better than we know ourselves!) "Tell me, what do you think about me?"

"You are restless," said Henriette. "You are suspicious. You pa.s.s your time putting flies in your milk, and inventing wise schemes to get them out."

"Oh, you think that, do you?" said George, pleased to be talked about.

"I am not annoyed," she answered. "You have always been that way--and I know that it's because at bottom you are timid and disposed to suffer.

And then, too, perhaps you have reasons for not having confidence in a wife's intimate friends--lady-killer that you are!"

George found this rather embarra.s.sing; but he dared not show it, so he laughed gayly. "I don't know what you mean," he said--"upon my word I don't. But it is a trick I would not advise everybody to try."

There were other embarra.s.sing moments, caused by George's having things to conceal. There was, for instance, the matter of the six months' delay in the marriage--about which Henriette would never stop talking. She begrudged the time, because she had got the idea that little Gervaise was six months younger than she otherwise would have been. "That shows your timidity again," she would say. "The idea of your having imagined yourself a consumptive!"

Poor George had to defend himself. "I didn't tell you half the truth, because I was afraid of upsetting you. It seemed I had the beginning of chronic bronchitis. I felt it quite keenly whenever I took a breath, a deep breath--look, like this. Yes--I felt--here and there, on each side of the chest, a heaviness--a difficulty--"

"The idea of taking six months to cure you of a thing like that!"

exclaimed Henriette. "And making our baby six months younger than she ought to be!"

"But," laughed George, "that means that we shall have her so much the longer! She will get married six months later!"

"Oh, dear me," responded the other, "let us not talk about such things!

I am already worried, thinking she will get married some day."

"For my part," said George, "I see myself mounting with her on my arm the staircase of the Madeleine."

"Why the Madeleine?" exclaimed his wife. "Such a very magnificent church!"

"I don't know--I see her under her white veil, and myself all dressed up, and with an order."

"With an order!" laughed Henriette. "What do you expect to do to win an order?"

"I don't know that--but I see myself with it. Explain it as you will, I see myself with an order. I see it all, exactly as if I were there--the Swiss guard with his white stockings and the halbard, and the little milliner's a.s.sistants and the scullion lined up staring."

"It is far off--all that," said Henriette. "I don't like to talk of it.

I prefer her as a baby. I want her to grow up--but then I change my mind and think I don't. I know your mother doesn't. Do you know, I don't believe she ever thinks about anything but her little Gervaise."

"I believe you," said the father. "The child can certainly boast of having a grandmother who loves her."

"Also, I adore your mother," declared Henriette. "She makes me forget my misfortune in not having my own mother. She is so good!"

"We are all like that in our family," put in George.

"Really," laughed the wife. "Well, anyhow--the last time that we went down in the country with her--you had gone out, I don't know where you had gone--"

"To see the sixteenth-century chest," suggested the other.

"Oh, yes," laughed Henriette; "your famous chest!" (You must excuse this little family chatter of theirs--they were so much in love with each other!)

"Don't let's talk about that," objected George. "You were saying--?"

"You were not there. The nurse was out at ma.s.s, I think--"

"Or at the wine merchant's! Go on, go on."

"Well, I was in the little room, and mother dear thought she was all alone with Gervaise. I was listening; she was talking to the baby--all sorts of nonsense, pretty little words--stupid, if you like, but tender.

I wanted to laugh, and at the same time I wanted to weep."

"Perhaps she called her 'my dear little Savior'?"

"Exactly! Did you hear her?"

"No--but that is what she used to call me when I was little."

"It was that day she swore that the little one had recognized her, and laughed!"

"Oh, yes!"

"And then another time, when I went into her room--mother's room--she didn't hear me because the door was open, but I saw her. She was in ecstasy before the little boots which the baby wore at baptism--you know?"

"Yes, yes."

"Listen, then. She had taken them and she was embracing them!"

"And what did you say then?"

"Nothing; I stole out very softly, and I sent across the threshold a great kiss to the dear grandmother!"

Henriette sat for a moment in thought. "It didn't take her very long,"

she remarked, "today when she got the letter from the nurse. I imagine she caught the eight-fifty-nine train!"

"Any yet," laughed George, "it was really nothing at all."

"Oh no," said his wife. "Yet after all, perhaps she was right--and perhaps I ought to have gone with her."

"How charming you are, my poor Henriette! You believe everything you are told. I, for my part, divined right away the truth. The nurse was simply playing a game on us; she wanted a raise. Will you bet? Come, I'll bet you something. What would you like to bet? You don't want to? Come, I'll bet you a lovely necklace--you know, with a big pearl."