Original Short Stories – Volume 09

“I am going there also, madame.”

“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders, and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their exasperation.

She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her upper lip.

As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly a little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted and distressed.

“But, my dear friend, it was you – ” he murmured.

She did not allow him to finish his sentence.

“It was I! Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without getting any information, pretending that I knew how to find my way? Was it I who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill, insisting that I recognized the road? Was it I who undertook to take charge of Cachou – ”

She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a long, wild cry that could not be described in any language, but which sounded like ‘tuituit’.

The young woman did not appear to be surprised or moved and resumed:

“No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know everything. Was it I who took the train to Dieppe last year instead of the train to Havre – tell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M. Letourneur lived in Rue des Martyres? Was it I who would not believe that Celeste was a thief?”

She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating the most varied, the most unexpected and the most overwhelming accusations drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life, reproaching her husband for all his actions, all his ideas, all his habits, all his enterprises, all his efforts, for his life from the time of their marriage up to the present time.

He strove to check her, to calm her and stammered:

“But, my dear, it is useless – before monsieur. We are making ourselves ridiculous. This does not interest monsieur.”

And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to sound its peaceful and mysterious depths, in order to flee thither, to escape and hide from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh scream, a prolonged and shrill “tuituit.” I took this to be a nervous affection.

The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone with singular rapidity, said:

“If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so as not to lose our way again, and be obliged, possibly, to sleep in the wood.”

I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things – about herself, her life, her family, her business. They were glovers in the Rue, Saint-Lazare.

Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood and screaming “tuituit” every few moments.

At last I inquired:

“Why do you scream like that?”

“I have lost my poor dog,” he replied in a tone of discouragement and despair.

“How is that – you have lost your dog?”

“Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I wanted to take him to have a run in the woods. He had never seen the grass nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and bark and he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly afraid of the train. That may have driven him mad. I kept on calling him, but he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there.”

Without turning towards her husband, the young woman said:

“If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people are as stupid as you are they do not keep a dog.”

“But, my dear, it was you – ” he murmured timidly.

She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going to tear them out, she began again to cast in his face innumerable reproaches.

It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk was slowly rising and there was a poetry in the air, induced by the peculiar and enchanting freshness of the atmosphere that one feels in the woods at nightfall.

Suddenly the young man stopped, and feeling his body feverishly, exclaimed:

“Oh, I think that I – ”

She looked at him.

“Well, what?”

“I did not notice that I had my coat on my arm.”

“Well – ?”

“I have lost my pocketbook – my money was in it.”

She shook with anger and choked with indignation.

“That was all that was lacking. How stupid you are! how stupid you are! Is it possible that I could have married such an idiot! Well, go and look for it, and see that you find it. I am going on to Versailles with monsieur. I do not want to sleep in the wood.”

“Yes, my dear,” he replied gently. “Where shall I find you?”

A restaurant had been recommended to me. I gave him the address.

He turned back and, stooping down as he searched the ground with anxious eyes, he moved away, screaming “tuituit” every few moments.

We could see him for some time until the growing darkness concealed all but his outline, but we heard his mournful “tuituit,” shriller and shriller as the night grew darker.

As for me, I stepped along quickly and happily in the soft twilight, with this little unknown woman leaning on my arm. I tried to say pretty things to her, but could think of nothing. I remained silent, disturbed, enchanted.

Our path was suddenly crossed by a high road. To the right I perceived a town lying in a valley.

What was this place? A man was passing. I asked him. He replied:

“Bougival.”

I was dumfounded.

“What, Bougival? Are you sure?”

“Parbleu, I belong there!”

The little woman burst into an idiotic laugh.

I proposed that we should take a carriage and drive to Versailles. She replied: