Martyrdom

A story in condensed form

By the French novelist Gérard François Courtois

The author of this engaging story takes up the character of a homeless, cast-off girl who could not live within the family circle; she guarded her honor and struggled to live, but in the end she fell victim to the selfishness of her parents.

Rose said, looking at her mother with a gaze full of grief and sorrow:

"No. I am not asking you, Mother, to sacrifice your youth for my sake. I ask nothing. I want nothing. And yet I had believed that selfishness would never carry you this far, and that your merciful heart would feel its duty of its own accord. Now you are free, and you may dispose of your life exactly as you please!"

Madame Marchand bowed her head a moment and said:

"And what life could I love after today? Your father turned away from me, fell madly in love with that woman, divorced me, and then married her. How am I to live, and on whom am I to lean?... On you?... Your salary hardly suffices to buy a dress and a hat... No... I am not used to living in this atmosphere of misery... I have lived in comfort and luxury, and I cannot bear to see my rival, your father's wife, sweeping about in splendid gowns while I die here of rage and grief and wretchedness and want."

Rose shot her a sharp glance and said:

"If there were in your heart, Mother, an atom's weight of tenderness for me, you would never have thought of abandoning me, and the simple, modest life at my side would not have frightened you. My father has married Madame Béjouard, and you are about to marry Monsieur Raymond. Each of you thought of yourself before all else. Each of you thought of your own love and your own happiness. Each of you turned away from me and paid me no heed, as though I were a creature foreign to you both — as though I were a foundling girl you had sheltered for a stretch of time, until your hearts turned from her and left her prey to a blind, thankless fate. Go... go, Mother, you too, and marry the man you love. And be assured that all I long for is to see you happy, even upon the ruins of my love!"

Madame Marchand laughed, patted her daughter's arm, and said:

"Your feelings are running away with you, Rose, and the realities of life escape you. I am going to marry a rich man, and this man can shower money on you without reckoning. Thus I save myself, take my revenge on your father who betrayed us, and turn his wife's scheming back upon her own throat. So come to your senses, do not cling to illusions, and resign yourself to living with me in the company of my new husband."

Rose cried out, her breath heaving:

"Your husband-to-be, Monsieur Raymond, hates me — hates me already; he is irritated by me, cannot bear the sight of me, considers me an intruder between you. Yes. He hates me just as my father's second wife hates me. And tomorrow, once I come between you, I shall feel that I am an outcast girl — the very feeling that steals over me today whenever I visit my father's house!"

The blood rose to Rose's face, and she went on, on the verge of tears:

"Stay with me, Mother!... Stay with me!... We shall live poor, but we shall be happy... I will do my utmost to perfect my work, and my superiors will reward me and double my salary... They have promised it, I swear it to you... So stay with me, and give up this marriage. You are forty years old, and you have enjoyed life and..."

Her mother cut her off, crying:

"Not that — never!... I have never enjoyed life, and you know it perfectly well. How often your father deceived me and cheated me and preferred the basest and lowest of women over me. No. I will not be deceived any longer. I will not give up, for anyone's sake, what remains to me of my youth... I shall marry Raymond and I shall live... I want... I want to live... and there is no power on earth that can stand between me and the renewal of my life!"

The girl trembled, and silence reigned for a moment. The pale, dreaming moon went on sending its light down upon them through the open window that overlooked the broad street.

Suddenly, after a long interval had passed, Rose murmured, panting:

"So then, everything is over?"

The mother answered: "Yes."

The girl said in a trembling voice:

"And the date of the wedding? Sunday... next Sunday?..."

Madame Marchand's eye gleamed, and she answered, struggling to hide her delight:

"At ten in the morning, at the Church of the Madeleine...

Raymond loves me, and therefore he cannot hate you. You will live with me. With us. Near us?"

The girl raised her wandering eyes to her and answered:

"I will try... I will try, Mother!..."

The tears ran down from her eyes in spite of herself; she was ashamed of herself, turned, and fled in haste to her chamber, despair storming within her.

*

The wedding was held on Sunday at the Church of the Madeleine, and Rose watched her mother before the altar in her bridal gown, on Raymond's arm. The bouquets of flowers offered by the guests were beautiful, and the wedding banquet was delightful; and the laughter and the good wishes and the toasts cut into the girl's breast and filled her soul with rancor against her lot, against people, and against the human heart and all the cruelty and selfishness it carries.

Rose could not spend the night of her mother's wedding at home, so she stayed with a friend. The next day, after the newlyweds had departed for one of the suburbs of Paris to spend their honeymoon, she gathered her bags, bade farewell to the household servants, and rented a room from an old woman in a distant workers' quarter of the capital.

And Rose began a life of poverty, homelessness, and martyrdom. She became a creature with no family, no friend, no beloved, and no hope.

Her father's wife had taken possession of his mind, and her mother's husband had taken possession of every fiber of his wife, and father and mother alike forgot the existence of their daughter.

And Rose set out across the breadth of life alone, struggling to work, to eat, to keep her chastity, and to be safe from the calamities and dangers that lie in wait for every beautiful girl who is alone.

She hardly ever left the bank, where she spent the length of her day at the typewriter, except to return to her room, prepare her food, and stretch out on the bed like a lifeless corpse.

Her splendid beauty made everyone covet her. Her colleagues at the office lay in wait for her; they knew she lived alone, and they vied with one another in attempting to seduce her. Her immediate superior persecuted her and was bent on nothing less than humbling her in the end and bringing her to heel. He fabricated accusations against her, ascribed to her the errors of the office, intrigued against her and informed on her, and threatened her with dismissal if she persisted too far in her reserve and went too far in rebuffing and repelling him.

She met all this with astonishing patience, deep calm, consummate wisdom, enchanting gentleness, and a humble, innocent smile that shook the soul and seized the whole heart, disarming her enemies and shaming them out of trying to entrap her — she, a wretched, weak human being with no power and no strength.

Nor could she hold her ground against some of the young workmen of the quarter where she lived and of the lodging house she occupied; they harassed her, stirred up the landlady against her, burst into her room, and could not conceive how a girl could be young and beautiful and live thus without a husband or a lover.

One of them pressed her hard. He was honorable, and he offered to marry her; but she did not love him, so she dismissed him politely. He bore a grudge against her and swore to himself that he would subdue her by force; terror crept into her heart, and she hastened to move to another room in the students' quarter.

Whenever loneliness grew unbearable, and pain and torment wore her down, and she longed to visit her father or her mother, her father's wife would receive her with a mocking, tepid smile, make her feel that she was an intruder and a stranger, and hurry her departure, for fear that the sight of her might awaken a feeling of pity in her father's soul and he might give her a little money.

As for Raymond, her mother's husband, he had hardly caught sight of her entering before he would answer her with distaste and excuse himself to go out.

As for her mother, she would receive her with the smile of bliss and joy upon her lips; and Rose would be troubled, and complaint would stick in her throat, and she could not bring herself to spoil her mother's happiness; so she would go away disappointed, her feeling deepening that everyone had cast her off and abandoned her and given themselves over to their pleasures, savoring them in a kind of mad self-love, heedless and unconcerned.

In those hours, after she had bolted the door of her room upon herself, she would weep as much as her pent-up griefs desired, and pace the room in feverish anguish, and open her window, and look out upon the street, and gaze down at the young men and girls frolicking, giddy and gay; then she would bite her lips, twist her face away, and go back and shut the window, and take refuge in the depths of her prison like a wild sparrow shut up in a narrow, dark cage — the strength of its wings withered, its spirit invaded by despair, the taste of freedom lost, the blue of the sky and the reaches of the vast, beautiful open air forgotten, or willfully forgotten.

★

Her days passed in this fashion, until the fates took pity on her and awakened in her heart the emotion of love.

She sensed, coming from Albert, a junior clerk among her colleagues at the bank, a certain agitation mingled with perplexity and sorrow.

Albert resembled his fellows in nothing. He respected her, showed her every courtesy, was quick to defend her, and sprang to serve her whenever she needed help. He was a young man of handsome countenance, black-eyed, clear of gaze, broad of brow, upright of character; so she inclined toward him, felt at ease in his friendship, and woke one day to find his love filling her heart and pouring over her life that light of which she had so long dreamed, and that warmth without which the flower of her youth could not live and grow and bear its fruit.

Love wrought in the soul of the homeless, cast-off girl a wondrous transformation that astonished and startled her, and brought her near to the great happiness of which she had despaired.

She began to live for Albert, to think for his sake, to save money for his sake, to adorn herself for his sake.

She began to go out to the public gardens in his company, and to frequent the theaters and places of amusement with him; and he was happy in her, proud of her love, never thinking of violating the sanctity of that love; never for a single moment did it cross his mind to deceive the innocent girl who trusted his honor and believed in his integrity.

He promised to marry her the following year, once he had won the annual raise and could carry the burdens of marriage, and could rescue his wife from the duty of daily work and guarantee her a life in her own home, safe and secure.

Rose nearly went mad with joy and rapture; love shook her as spring shakes the verdant tree. Her body filled out, her cheeks grew rosy, her spirit was illumined, and hope shed over her a sudden magic that made of her a woman captivating in appearance, perfect in womanliness, her soul and body straining toward strength and happiness and life.

But her excess in expressing her happiness, her inability to keep her love hidden, and her secret desire to double her delight by proclaiming her great joy — all these signs drew attention to her, betrayed the secret of her heart, and inflamed the passion of jealousy in the soul of her immediate superior, whom she had spurned. He set about persecuting her and tyrannizing over her, pouring out the full measure of his wrath upon her beloved, fabricating accusations against her as was his old habit, magnifying errors, and working upon the board of directors so as to take his revenge on her — and in the end to have them both dismissed from the staff of the bank.

Rose had scarcely fastened onto hope, and come within sight of certainty, and drawn near to a life of stability and safety, when fate turned against her once again, dealt her a crushing blow, and in the twinkling of an eye flung her back into the life of misery and vagrancy which seemed to have been created for her alone.

Paris swallowed her into its deep maw, and the waves of humiliation and want tossed her about. Albert set out to look for new work, and Rose began to spend from what she had saved and to look for work herself, never ceasing to encourage her beloved, spurring his energy, rousing his resolve, and holding before him a bright future.

But the calamities of unemployment worsened, the remnants of the money melted away, the weight of debts piled up, and hunger showed its black head and its sharp fang; and it seemed to Rose that Providence had cast her out, and that she stood between two courses: either to sell her virtue in order to live, or to make haste and throw herself into the river Seine.

Then she remembered her father, and his life of ease rose up before her eyes; and for the first time since her independence, for the first time since her flight, for the first time since her mother's wedding, she resolved to go to him and appeal to his fatherly feeling to save her and protect her — to save her from the grip of want, lest her foot slip and she lose herself, and lose her beloved, and lose everything.

Her father, Monsieur Bonnard, had married his second wife out of greed for her money and intense admiration for her beauty. When the intoxication of admiration had passed, the greed for money still held him fast, and the woman became in his eyes a stumbling block in the path of his pleasures.

So he set about treating her as he had treated his first wife.

He wrung her money from her, then turned away from her; then he felt himself unable to go on with his pleasures for lack of means, so he grew irritable with her and cruel toward her, persecuting her and tyrannizing over her, and driving her, against her will, to seek help from her wealthy brother Armand.

He himself drew close to Armand, courted him, humored his base inclinations and his flagrant arrogance, and made of him an intimate friend.

Thus the ties between the two men grew firm, and Monsieur Bonnard went on scooping from Armand's pocket and spending on the actresses and dancing girls to whom he was introduced through Armand himself.

But Bonnard yearned to subjugate Armand — to place his money at his own disposal, to possess him and exploit him so that the young man could neither escape him nor refuse him a request. So when Rose came seeking her father's help, entreating him to find work for her and for her beloved, he was struck by her bewitching beauty, her enchanting sorrow, and her fully ripened womanliness; and there rose in his soul a satanic idea in which he fancied lay his own salvation and his daughter's deliverance.

He was certain that Rose's beauty was bound to captivate Armand's heart the moment he saw her. So he made up his mind to exploit his daughter and marry her to his wife's brother, his companion in dissipation and debauchery. He welcomed her, treated her with honor, gave her the highest place in his house, and lavished money upon her; the girl was dazzled, grew attached to him, and imagined that her future would be realized at his hands.

She presented her fiancé Albert to him, and he at once assisted him with money as well, showed appreciation of his character, and held out to him the hope of obtaining work that would enable him to venture upon marriage.

Rose took to frequenting her father's house, spending days there, courting Madame Bonnard and her brother so as to win everyone's affection, to draw them into taking an interest in her, and to crown this victory by marrying her beloved.

And what Monsieur Bonnard had expected came to pass.

Armand was taken by the charm of this pure, innocent, ill-starred girl.

He found in her what he had never found in his loose, wanton mistresses.

He fell madly in love with her, and his soul yearned to try this kind of woman; so he was gentle with her, exercised all his art in tempting her, offered her all manner of gifts, and wished to make of her a mistress. And Rose, in the excess of her love for Albert and her absorption in thoughts of her future and the fate of her marriage, paid no close attention to Armand's ways; evil never crossed her mind, and she believed nothing except that she was living among the members of her own family.

But Monsieur Bonnard's eye was watchful, following the growth of the passion in Armand's soul and biding its time to exploit it. When the burden of love became too much for the young man, and Bonnard sensed in him a genuine resolve to declare his passion to the girl, he hurried to him, scowled in his face, turned cold toward him and stopped asking him for money; then he waved before him the duty of honor, and gave him the choice between marrying his daughter or turning away from her and leaving her to her fate.

Bonnard followed this measure with another: he advised his wife to spend a few days in one of the suburbs of Paris with a friend of hers, and then led his daughter to believe that he was going to join his wife. So Rose stopped coming; Armand's passions blazed up, his vexation doubled, and his anger at himself and at Bonnard grew fierce; and in the end, to ease his anguish and to win the one he loved, he could do nothing but bow to Bonnard's will and consent to marry Rose.

Hardly had the hard-hearted father — corrupt of nature, criminal in his impulses — felt assured of his success, when the second obstacle rose before him, the one that still remained for him to clear away.

How was he to be rid of Albert?... How was he to drive this young man away from his daughter? How was he to destroy this love, nourished by sufferings and forged in the fire of shared torment?

Not the least pity for his daughter stirred in him at that moment. He showed her no mercy. He gave no thought to the fate that awaited her. On the contrary, he hated her. He hated her because, in his view, she was a fool who could not tell love from life, and had built the edifice of her passion upon the shoulders of a poor, penniless man.

This thought inflamed him, and he feared he might collide with a strong emotion that would demolish all he had built; so he began to turn the matter over in his mind, pondering the surest blow that could strike this love in a mortal spot.

He did not hesitate. He rose at once, sat down at his desk, and set about practicing the disguising of his handwriting and the distortion of its features, in preparation for composing the terrible letter whose phrases filled his imagination and gladdened his breast. And while he was exercising himself in the arts of forgery and fraud, suddenly the telephone bell rang; he started, and a shudder ran through him.

It was Albert speaking to him. He informed him that he had found work at one of the companies, and asked him to convey the news to Rose.

This unexpected event doubled Bonnard's fear and made him feel the possibility of failure; so he grew all the more determined and stubborn, and bent over the composition of the letter until he had finished it.

His wife was still at her friend's, and he had an appointment with his daughter for the evening of that same day. He smiled a faint smile, bent over the telephone, spoke to Armand, and invited him to take supper with him; then he arranged his papers, tore up some of them and hid the rest, and rose.

He knew in Armand his great longing for a moment alone with Rose; he knew in him, too, the violence of his passion, the coarseness of his feeling, and the dullness of his conscience. So he felt assured of his plan and set out, his face lit up, a fearful gleam flashing in his eyes.

He hurried outside and sent the letter, by express, addressed to Albert. When he had dropped it into the letter box, he breathed a deep sigh of relief, shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and went straight off to where one of the dancing girls among his friends lived.

There he took to amusing himself and drinking wine, having resolved to avoid returning home before midnight.

The house, in the stillness of evening, was quiet, an awful silence brooding over it. In its far right wing there were only a few servants preparing the supper. Toward eight o'clock Rose arrived; the head servant received her; she was surprised at her father's absence, and went on into the great hall.

She was deep in her thoughts, contemplating the splendid furniture, the sumptuous furnishings, the beautiful pictures, and the rare works of art, when Armand entered, greeted her, and inquired about her father's absence; then he sat down beside her, easy in his movements and his talk, trying to conceal his joy and hide his delight at this opportunity he had so long awaited.

The breeze blew in through the window, soft and gentle, toying with the curtains, refreshing the soul, lulling the nerves, and inviting reverie and dream.

Armand began to speak with politeness and reserve; then his voice inclined toward sorrow; then his tones grew tremulous; and Rose was taken aback and felt a certain unease, and thought it her duty to leave. But the young man tightened the noose about her with his honeyed words and his ardent entreaties, so she submitted reluctantly, reproaching him for his words, seized by astonishment and possessed by bewilderment.

Suddenly she fancied she heard the fall of light footsteps and something like a movement near the door;

she turned around and made to rise. Armand laughed, drew her back by the arm, and listened; but nothing reached his ear, so he returned to his laughter and returned to his flirting. The girl's nerves grew taut, fear took hold of her, and she rose a second time and insisted on leaving the house.

In truth, her agitated imagination had given body to the sound of the wind striking the curtains. She sprang to the door, and Armand followed her; and when the young man was certain there was no one there, he drew her to him once more. She cried out in protest and tried to slip free of him; but he, roused by her resistance, embraced her and pressed her violently to his breast, kicked the door shut with his foot, and then rained kisses upon her, soothing her, promising her everything, and expressing with ardor his desire to marry her.

At that very moment, before she could push him off, the door opened and Albert came in.

He had hardly taken a single step when he froze where he stood, his mouth agape like a simpleton, and began staring at her like a madman, certain in the depths of his soul that the unknown friend who had sent him the letter had been faithful and had told the truth.

Silence reigned for a while; stupefaction crushed the girl's soul and tied her tongue, so that at first she could not utter a word. But then she came to herself, gathered her strength, and cried, almost weeping:

"Albert... do not accuse me... this man..."

And before she could finish, Armand seized the opportunity to destroy his rival, and shouted:

"She is my mistress!"

Rose went wild and said, trembling:

"He is lying... lying..."

And before she could speak, before she could defend herself, she recoiled, her eyes starting from her head, as she saw Albert cast upon her a look of terrible contempt, turn, and rush out of the room.

Then her reason fled, the blood rushed to her head, she let out a torn cry and followed him outside; he pushed her away violently and departed without a backward glance...

She pressed after him, and pursued him as far as the street, screaming and calling to him; but he ran like a man fleeing from certain danger, and kept running while she pursued him, until he came upon one of the public motor-cars and boarded it. Rose waited until another came along and sprang into it, resolved to go to where Albert lived.

When she arrived and asked for him, she was told that he had gone out and had not come back. She hurried quickly down to the street and remained standing near the house, staring at the passers-by, sighing, waiting.

Hours passed, and fatigue exhausted her strength; the landlady took pity on her and invited her to spend the night with her. She complied, and remained awake, watching the street through the chinks of the window, until the darkness shrank away, dawn appeared, the sun rose, and movement and life flared up. Then a boy arrived, carrying from Albert to the landlady a sum of money and a letter, in which he asked her to tell Rose frankly that everything between them was over; that he had secured a post in one of the companies; that he had asked the company's management to appoint him to one of its branches outside Paris; that it had agreed; and that he would leave the capital that very day.

The news fell upon Rose like a thunderbolt and stunned her, and in a lightning-flash turned her into a creature stripped of all energy and strength.

Her hopes collapsed; she was certain of her evil star; her belief deepened that life had not been created for her, and that some evil power was hunting her. She forced herself to keep up appearances, thanked the landlady, and went out with wandering eyes, robbed of strength, her will in disarray, and turned her face toward the river Seine.

And before the sovereignty of reason could return and weaken her resolve, she advanced with rapid steps, unnoticed by the passers-by, and in the fever of despair and madness threw herself into the river; and it embraced her and hid her within its folds, and let fall over her the curtain of grace and rest and oblivion!