An Apology of Sorts

"Are you all right? Should we leave for some air?" I asked. "I could prepare you some laudanum if you like."

"No, no. I'm fine. Let's please stay here," she answered, smiling into my eyes.

"We're missing curtain call," I noted, inclining my head toward the velvet drapes closing off our box.

"Bah, as if we haven't scene them before," she replied. "The tenors making their sweeping and extravagant bows and the sopranos flirtatiously winking at the comtes in their seats."

I laughed. "I'm one of those comtes," I observed.

"Yes, you are," she agreed, placing her hand on my cheek. "You're my big strong Comte d'Argentile, my handsome prince, and chevalier in shining armor. I only aspire to be your charming little chorus girl even though I can't sing. Ma foi, even I injure my ears when I attempt to act the chanteuse."

I smiled roguishly at her until she clutched my sleeves and commenced coughing again. It was a dry hacking sound that I could hear over the enthusiastic audience beyond the curtain of our box. No amount of applause could drown out such a harsh cacophony of the human throat when the lyric strains of opera singers triumphed above the orchestra.

"Corinne," I said. "Corinne, chérie, I think we must leave."

She sighed and breathlessly fell into my chest. "No, Raoul. Let's stay here. It's so cold outside," she said. "And you're so close, and all this velvet is so warm. Please, let's stay here until we absolutely must get up."

"Ah, chérie, you make it so hard to love you sometimes," I stated. "But we shall remain if it pleases you--but on condition."

"Condition?" she echoed, looking up from my jabot. Her fingers toyed with the ruffle as her eyes shone with defiance. "Why, dictate your terms, Monsieur."

I took a deep breath, hesitant as to the best way to approach what was weighing on my mind. "Corinne," I began. "I wish for you to answer truthfully. Don't conceal anything from me. I would want to know everything, so I entreat your honesty."

"What is it, Raoul?" she continued, her fingers fluttering above my heart.

I closed my eyes and deliberately opened them. "How long?" I inquired.

"How long, what?" she answered, tightening her hold on my ruffle.

"Corinne, please. I beg of you," I said. "You perfectly well know about what I am asking. How long did you have the baby? How many months were you?"

She lowered her head in an attitude that could best be described as shame, though such a reaction was unwarranted. I softly tilted her chin up to see her face better. She was pale and wore an expression of deepest anguish. "Come, Corinne, even if I'm not the father, I still hope I'm sufficiently in your confidence to be trusted with such knowledge."

"How can you say that, Raoul?" she retorted, her hands curling into small fists, one on each side of my neck. She was breathing hard now. "He was yours. I never ... I never saw anyone else since I met you."

"He was ours," I corrected in a low voice. My eyes were big with compassion for the woman on my chest and expressed the still as of yet unanswered question.

"Three, perhaps three and a half months," she stated, gazing back with suppressed anxiety. "Maybe four. I can't remember now."

"Ah chérie, you silly little girl," I lamented. "You had a child, another living being of my flesh and yours, growing inside you, and you didn't tell me? You had our child with you, and you neglected to inform me of a future son or daughter? Corinne. Oh, Corinne, why? Why? You should have told me."

Her fists relaxed into elegant triangles with the thumb encased in the other fingers that curled about the axis of her hand. "I--I was scared," she confessed in a whisper.

"Scared," I repeated mechanically. "Of what? Did you think I would leave you?" I squeezed her reassuringly. "I would never abandon you with an infant, especially if the infant is ours."

"I wasn't sure," she admitted in a pained voice. "I couldn't be certain. I would've perhaps exposed it or induced an abortion with some herbs."

"Mon dieu, Corinne!" I said. "Did you think I would be displeased with it? Is that why you would've killed it?"

"I--I ... Perhaps," she ventured. I raised my eyebrows, still in shock and disbelief. As I shook my head regretfully, she continued, "I--I. Raoul, I was a courtesan before I married you."

"And now you're a comtesse," I reminded her. "What difference does it make if you were a demimondaine at one point. That part of your life is over."

"Yes, financially and physically it is," she conceded. "I'm a comtesse with money and one lover, just one who doesn't owe me anything for—”

"Hush," I commanded. "I've made you into a comtesse, but you're still the same creature with whom I fell in love."

"And so I am still the silly little girl who thinks like a courtesan," she continued.

"What? Explain yourself," I instructed.

"Raoul," she commenced. "Courtesans just provide pleasure and companionship. We seek only to serve the purely superficial delights. We do so in the expectation of money. Our greatest insurance is our beauty, our clothes, and our jewels. Our most fearful liability is a pregnancy that is desired by neither party involved."

"Oh, stop. We've married," I insisted, placing my palm on her mouth.

"Yes," she said, removing my gloved hand from her face. "I know it is no longer client and courtesan, but I still fear the prospect of carrying a man's seed. Forgive me, but it's an instinctual repugnance that I have cultivated. I can't help it. It has become so automatic now."

"Even when that man's seed is my own?" I questioned, injured to the quick.

"Raoul," she returned. "Raoul. I only neglected to tell you, but I never wanted that miscarriage."

"You didn't?" I asked, my features softening.

"No," she replied. "I loved our son because he was a part of you, and you're my other half now. That child meant so much more than I can tell."

She buried her face in my jabot and sobbed once. I could see her shoulders quivering with the violence of her emotion. "Oh Corinne," I said quietly, stroking her hair. "Ma petite fille."

And then, she started coughing. It was wretched to hear. She was spluttering and choking for breath. "Ma chérie, please," I said impotently. I felt a dampness suddenly on my skin, a moisture which no doubt penetrated through my thin shirt. "Corinne, ma chérie." I lifted her face with each of my hands on her cheeks.

"Raoul," she stuttered. "I lost him." There were no tears in her eyes, and I knew that wetness was blood, her blood. "I lost our son."

"How do you know he was a boy?" I inquired, trying to distract her from the full magnitude of the miscarriage. "She could've been a charming little girl, like you."

"No," she insisted. "I just know. He was a boy. He would've grown up to be just like you, with golden hair and big beautiful silver eyes." Her hands had moved to my arms, and she clove to my sleeves with a vise-like grip.

I grew wistful, thinking about our would-be son, but she continued despite the far-away look on my face. "He would've been tall and handsome and gallant. And I would name him Raoul after his father, and he would call me maman. And he would grow up to be a little vicomte and go about Paris in his carriage with his little épée, like you." Her words pained me. How could I endure them? They stung and smote me, so I felt an insidious constriction of my chest, a slow numbness that fell over me.

"You would teach him how to fence, wouldn't you? You'd teach him in the old Louis the Fourteenth style to make him like one of the three musketeers. I know you would. You'll teach him how to parry, ripost, and a little sabrage," she went on.

"Corinne," I stammered. "Please. Please spare me."

"Raoul, I lost him!" she repeated in a broken voice. "Forgive me. I lost your son. I'm sorry I lost him." She sobbed once again, and a tear threatened the smooth satin of her cheek.

"No, no, it wasn't your fault," I consoled, one hand at her back, the other at her breast, just atop her heart which I felt beating through my glove.

"But I was carrying him," she noted, her sad eyes focused on the ceiling of the box. "I'm a bad mother. Tell me I'm a bad mother."

"No, Corinne. Stop this nonsense," I half scolded, half reasoned with the distressed woman in my arms. "It was an accident. You're not a bad mother. Don't ever think that. There was nothing you, or I, could've done."

She swallowed, whether her fears or her guilt I don't know, and hung down her head dejectedly. She cradled her face in her hands and gave way to a torment of grief, more vehement and agonized than before. I held her closer to me, feeling now a mixture of her great tears and bloody coughing wet my chest. I attempted to rise with her in my arms, but she pulled down on my collar.

"I'm sorry, Raoul. I'm sorry for everything," she choked out, coughing on the linen napkin I provided her.

"Chérie," I hissed. It was the only word I could say coherently I think.

"I'm sorry," she continued. "I'm sorry for being a filthy courtesan who you had to marry in secret." I was taken aback. "I'm sorry for getting you into debt. I'm sorry for being so frivolous and unreasonable. I'm sorry for losing our child. Sorry for being so weak and feeble with this wretched consumption. I'm sorry for any grief I might've caused you in the past. Everything--I'm sorry."

"Grief?" I responded, shocked. "The only grief you've caused me is right now. I've known nothing but happiness from you. Grief? Corinne, no, never."

The linen napkin was nearly stuffed in her mouth as she coughed more blood onto its white folds, gradually staining it a rich crimson from which I recoiled in fear. Her sobs echoed in my ears, and I knew we were the only ones left in the auditorium. The silence of the other balconies and terrace below accentuated our loneliness, and I clung to Corinne all the more intimately to shake off a vague feeling of dread.

"I'm sorry, Raoul. I'm sorry," she wheezed breathlessly. "You're too kind in saying I caused you no grief before. If I haven't then, I'm sorry for the present. Raoul, Raoul, please forgive me. I'm dying, and I'm sorry I must leave you."

"No," I retorted. "You won't." As best I could, I tried to reach for the laudanum in my breast pocket, but Corinne refused to let go of my shirt front.

"Raoul, mon chéri, I'm dying," she went on.

"You're not. You'll be fine. Just allow me to get to the laudanum," I replied, gently coaxing her to move.

"Raoul," she began. "I love you." And with that, she shuddered convulsively, her coughing subsiding into a final, excruciating yell of primal pain, and then a sigh of the most sublime suffering that became her last exhalation which I felt on my cheeks.

"I love you, Corinne," I returned weakly. She had expired in my arms, she, the woman whom I loved more than life itself lay dead in my hold. The linen napkin was a sanguine rag beside me, and my gloves smelled of the vervain she always wore. With the hand that was still at her heart, I could feel the last vital pulse and knew she had joined my son.

Corinne, my Corinne, the courtesan and the countess, was dead, and I, Raoul, was alive.