Saint Clair! They would soon be there.
Thérèse measured with her eye the distance that her thought had
traversed; could she get Bernard to follow her so far? She did not dare
to hope that he would consent to move so slowly along that tortuous
road. And yet the essential had not yet been spoken:
“Even when I have brought him as far as this, I shall still have
everything to tell him.” She brooded over the enigma that was herself,
she passed in review the young married women of her class whose virtues
were so highly praised by every one, at the time she settled down at
Saint Clair; and she reconstructed the first weeks of her life in the
cool dark house of her parents-in-law. The shutters were always closed
on the side looking on to the Market Square; but, on the left, through
a barred window, could be seen the garden, on fire with heliotrope,
geraniums, and petunias. Thérèse came and went, a confidant and an
accomplice, between the La Trave couple ambushed in the depths of a
little dark sitting-room, on the ground floor, and Anne wandering in
the garden which she was forbidden to leave. She said to the La Traves:
“Try and conciliate her by giving way a little, suggest that you should
all go abroad for a time before anything is settled: I’ll see that she
obeys you on this point: and while you are away, I’ll do what I can.”
What would she do? The La Traves gathered that she would strike up an
acquaintance with young Azévédo: “A direct attack is hopeless, mother.”
So far as Madame de la Trave knew, nothing had come out as yet, thank
Heaven. The postmistress, Mademoiselle Monod, was the only person in
the secret: she had intercepted several of Anne’s letters: “but that
girl’s like a grave.... Anyhow, she daren’t give anything away.”
“Let us try to give her as little pain as possible....” Hector de la
Trave used to say: but he who used to give way to Anne’s absurdest
caprices, could only agree with his wife, saying: “You can’t make
omelettes without breaking eggs ...”: and again: “She’ll be grateful
to us one day.” Yes, but before that day came, wouldn’t she collapse?
And the pair sat in silence with troubled eyes: they pictured their
child wasting away in the blazing sunshine, and turning with loathing
from all food: trampling on the flowers that she could not see and
pacing back and forwards along the railings like a fawn looking for a
way of escape.... Madame de la Trave shook her head: “I can’t drink her
meat-juice instead of her, can I? She stuffs herself with fruit in the
garden so as to be able to leave her plate empty at meals.”
And Hector de la Trave: “She would blame us later on for having given
our consent ... even if only for the sake of the unhappy children that
she might bring into the world....”
His wife was annoyed with him for seeming to try and find excuses for
the girl: “Fortunately the Deguilhems are not back yet. We may think
ourselves lucky that they’re most anxious for the marriage....”
They waited until Thérèse had left the room to ask each other: “But
what can they have put into her head at the Convent? She has had
nothing but good examples here; we have supervised her reading....
Thérèse says that there is nothing worse for turning young girls’ heads
than the love stories in the Sunday Reading Series ... but then she’s
so paradoxical.... Besides, I’m thankful to say Anne never did care
about reading: she is quite domesticated on that point. I believe if
we could only manage to get her a change of air. Do you remember how
much good Salies did her when she had bronchitis after the measles? We
will go wherever she likes, I can’t say more than that. Really, I’m
truly sorry for the child.” Monsieur de la Trave sighed dubiously:
“Well, but a holiday with us.... Nothing, nothing,” he added hurriedly
in answer to his wife who, being a little deaf, had asked him what he
had said. From the refuge of his wife’s fortune, in which he had come
so comfortably to rest, what memories of passionate pilgrimages did the
old gentleman suddenly call to mind, what hallowed hours of his amorous
youth?
Thérèse had then gone out into the garden to Anne, whose last year’s
dresses had already grown too loose for her. “Well?” cried the girl,
as soon as her friend came up. The ashes on the garden paths, the dry
harsh grass of the lawns, the smell of the parched geraniums, and Anne
herself more wasted than any plant on that August afternoon,--Thérèse
could recall every detail of the scene. Sometimes stormy showers forced
them to take refuge in the hot-house, while the hailstones rattled on
the glass roof.
“Why do you mind going away, since you don’t see him?”
“I don’t see him, but I know he is living and breathing four miles
away. When the wind is in the east, I know he hears the church bell
at the same time as I do. Would you not care whether Bernard was at
Argelouse or Paris? I don’t see Jean, but I know he’s not far off. On
Sunday, at Mass, I do not even try to turn my head, because we can
only see the altar from where we sit, and we are shut off from the
congregation by a pillar. But as we go out....”
“Wasn’t he there on Sunday?”
Thérèse knew it; she knew that as Anne was being led away by her mother
she had searched in vain among the crowd for a face that was not there.
“Perhaps he was ill.... They stop his letters. I’m not allowed to know
anything.”
“Still, it’s strange he can’t find some means of getting a word to you.”
“If you only would, Thérèse.... Yes, I know your position is
delicate....”
“Agree to go away, and then, perhaps....”
“I can’t go away from him.”
“But he’ll go away in any case, darling. He’ll be leaving Argelouse in
a few weeks.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t. It’s too dreadful. And not a word from him to help
me to live. I can’t bear it much longer: every moment I can’t help
remembering the words of his that made me happiest: but I have said
them over to myself so often, I’ve begun to be not quite sure whether
he really did say them. Why, I can still hear his voice as he said to
me, when we last met: ‘There is no one in my life but you....’ That is
what he said,--or it may have been:--‘You are what is dearest to me in
life.’ I can’t remember exactly.”
And with knitted brows she tried to recall the echo of those consoling
words whose meaning seemed to her so overwhelming.
“Well, tell me what the young man is like.”
“You can’t imagine.”
“Is he so unlike the others?”
“I should like to describe him ... but he is so much beyond anything I
could say.... After all, you might think him quite ordinary.... But I’m
sure you wouldn’t.”
She could no longer see any individual traits in the youth whose image
glowed with all the love she bore him. “Passion,” thought Thérèse,
“would make me more clear-sighted: nothing would escape me in the human
being I wanted for my own.”
“Thérèse, if I gave in about this trip, you would see him, wouldn’t
you, and tell me exactly what he said? And you would take my letters
to him? If I go away, if I can bear to go away....” Thérèse left
the kingdom of light and fire and penetrated once more, like some
ill-omened wasp, into the study where the parents waited until the heat
had passed, and their daughter’s resistance had broken down. It was not
until after many such comings and goings that Anne finally consented
to go away. And Thérèse would no doubt never have succeeded had it not
been for the imminent return of the Deguilhems. The girl trembled at
this further danger. Thérèse said to her more than once that, “for a
rich young man, Deguilhem wasn’t at all bad.”
“But, Thérèse, I’ve hardly looked at him: he wears glasses, he’s
bald,--why, he’s an old man.”
“He’s twenty-nine.”
“Exactly what I said, he’s an old man,--and besides, old or not....”
* * * * *
At dinner in the evening, the La Traves were talking about Biarritz,
and began to consider the question of hotels. Thérèse watched Anne, a
body without movement and without soul. “Make an effort”; Madame de la
Trave kept on saying: “you can if you try.” Anne raised the spoon to
her lips with a mechanical gesture. There was no light in her eyes.
Nothing and nobody had any existence for her except the one who was not
there. Sometimes a smile wandered over her lips at the recollection of
a word or caress of Jean Azévédo at the time when they used to sit in
that hut with its walls of heather, and those strong fingers, stronger
than he knew, tore her blouse a little....
Thérèse looked at Bernard’s head and shoulders bent over his plate: as
he was sitting with his back to the light she could not see his face;
but she heard him slowly masticating, ruminating that sacred substance,
his food. She left the table. Her mother-in-law said: “She would sooner
we did not take any notice of her: I should like to make a fuss of her,
but she does not care to be looked after. These feelings of sickness
are the least she can expect in her condition. But she may say what she
likes; she does smoke too much.” And the good lady recalled her own
memories of pregnancy. “I remember when I was expecting you, I had to
sniff an india-rubber ball: it was the only thing that would settle my
stomach.”
“Thérèse, where are you?”
“Here, on the seat.”
“Ah, yes; I can see your cigarette.”
Anne sat down, leaned her head against a motionless shoulder, looked
up at the sky, and said: “He sees these very stars, he hears the
Angelus....”
And she asked Thérèse to kiss her. But Thérèse did not bend down to
that confiding little face. She merely asked:
“Are you unhappy?”
“Not this evening: I have realised that by some means or another I
shall come to him again. The main thing is that he should know it; and
he will know it through you: I have made up my mind to go away. But
when I return, no walls shall keep me back: sooner or later, I shall
lay my head upon his heart: I am as sure of that as I am that I’m
alive. No, Thérèse, no: you, at least, must not talk morality to me, or
about the family....”
“I’m not thinking of the family, darling, but of him: you can’t drop
into a man’s life just like that: he has his family, too, his own
interests, his work, a love-affair perhaps....”
“No, he once said to me: ‘There is only you in my life ...’ and another
time: ‘Our love is the only thing I care for now....’”
“Yes, now....”
“You don’t suppose he was only thinking of the present moment, do you?”
Thérèse had no longer any need to ask her if she was unhappy. She could
feel her misery in the darkness: but she did not pity her. Why should
she? How delightful it must be to repeat a name, a Christian name, that
stands for a certain being to whom one’s heart is bound so closely! The
mere thought that he is living, breathing, and sleeping at night with
his head upon his folded arm; that he wakes at dawn, and his young body
moves through the mists of morning....
“Why, you’re crying, Thérèse: is it because of me? You must be fond of
me.”
The child had knelt down and laid her head against Thérèse’s side,
when she suddenly started back:
“I felt something moving against my forehead....”
“Yes, it began to move a few days ago.”
“The little one?”
“Yes, it’s alive already.”
They had come back to the house, with their arms round each other
as they used to do along the road to Nizan, or Argelouse. Thérèse
remembered that she had been afraid of that fluttering burden. How many
passions were to make their way into that as yet unformed flesh. She
saw herself as she had sat that evening in her bedroom, by the open
window (Bernard had shouted up from the garden: “Don’t light the lamp
because of the mosquitoes”). She counted the months before the birth,
she would have liked to have known a God who might answer her prayer
that this unknown creature, still intermingled with her body, might
never see the light.