on picking out on the piano of memory the song of the day passed, the
melodious thread of the hours, from the first minute that he entered
Luce's house, the slightest inflections of her voice and her gestures,
the successive images which his eyes had hastily snapped up--a shadow
under the eyelids, a wave of emotion that passed beneath the skin like a
shiver across the water, a smile just brushing against the lips like a
sun ray, and his palm pressed on, nestled against the nude softness of
the two extended hands--these precious fragments that endeavored to
reunite the magic fantasy of love in a single close embrace. He would
not permit that noises from without should enter there. The outside was
for him a tiresome visitor. The war? Oh, I know, I know. Has it come?
Let it wait.... And the war did wait at the door, patiently. War knew
that it would have its turn. He knew that also; that is why he had no
shame in his egotism. The rising billow of death was about to seize him.
So he owed death nothing in advance. Nothing. Let death come back again
at the date of the contract! Up to that day let death be silent! Ah, up
to then at least he did not want to lose anything of this marvelous
time; each second was a golden grain and he the miser who paws over his
treasure. It's mine, it's my property. Don't you dare touch my peace, my
love! It's my own up to the hour.... And when will the hour come?
Perhaps it will not come at all! A miracle? Why not?...
Meantime the stream of hours and days kept on flowing. At each new bend
of the channel the roaring of the rapids drew nearer. Stretched out in
their barque Pierre and Luce listened and heard. But they had no more
fear. Even that enormous voice like the bass notes of an organ cradled
their amorous dream. When the gulf should be there they would close
their eyes, press closer together and all would be over in one blow. The
gulf spared them the trouble of thinking about the life that was to be,
that might possibly be, afterward, about the future without an issue.
For Luce foresaw the obstacles that Pierre would have to encounter if he
wished to marry her; and Pierre less clearly (he had less taste for
clearness) feared them also. Let us not look so far ahead! Life beyond
the gulf was like that "other life" they talked about in church. They
tell you that we shall find each other again; but they are not so very
sure. One sole thing is sure: the present. Our own present. Let's pour
into it without any taking of stock the whole of our part in eternity!
Even less than Pierre did Luce inform herself about the news. The war
did not interest her in the least. It was only one misery more amongst
all the various miseries which form the web and woof of social
existence. Those who can be astonished about it are those only who stand
sheltered from naked realities. And the little girl with her precocious
experience who understood the struggle for one's daily bread--_panem
quotidianum_ ... (God does not grant it for nothing!)--revealed to her
_bourgeois_ friend the murderous war which, for poor folks and
particularly for women, reigns cunningly deep and without a truce below
the lie of peace. She did not talk too much about it, however, for fear
of depressing him: on seeing the excitement into which her accounts
threw him, she had an affectionate feeling of her own superiority. Like
most women she did not entertain with regard to certain ugly facts of
life the physical and moral disgust which upset the young fellow. There
was nothing of the rebel in her. In still worse circumstances she would
have been able to accept repugnant tasks without repugnance and quit
them quite calm and natty, without a stain. Today she could not do that
any more, for since she had come to know Pierre her love had caused her
to be filled with the tastes and distastes of her friend; but that was
not her fundamental nature. Calm and smiling by reason of her race, not
pessimistic at all. Melancholy, and the grand detached airs of life were
not her business. Life is as it is. Let us take it as it is! It might
have been worse! The hazards of an existence which Luce had always known
to be precarious, on the look-out for expedients--and particularly since
the war--had taught her to be careless of the morrow. Add to this that
every preoccupation concerning the beyond was a stranger to this free
little French girl. Life was enough for her. Luce found life delightful,
but it all hangs by a thread and it takes so little to make the thread
break that really it is not worth the trouble to torment oneself about
what may turn up tomorrow. Eyes of mine, drink in the daylight that
bathes you as you pass! As to what may come after, O, my heart, abandon
yourself in confidence to the stream!... And since anyhow we can not do
otherwise!... And now that we love each other, isn't it just delicious?
Luce well knew that it could not be for long. But neither her life nor
she herself, either, would be for long....
She did not resemble much that little fellow who loved her and whom she
loved, tender, ardent and nervous, happy and miserable, who always
enjoyed and suffered to excess, who gave himself, who flew into a rage,
always with passion, and who was dear to her just because he resembled
her hardly at all. But both of them were in accord as to a mute resolve
not to look into the future: the girl through the carelessness of the
resigned rivulet that sings on its way--the other through that exalted
negation which plunges into the gulf of the present and never desires to
emerge again.
* * * * *
THE big brother had come back again on furlough for a few days. During
the first evening at home he perceived that there was something changed
in the family atmosphere. What? He could not tell; but he was vexed. The
mind possesses antennae which perceive at a distance before
consciousness is able to touch and consider the object. And the finest
of all antennae are those of vanity. Philip's agitated themselves,
searched about and were surprised; they missed something.... Did he not
have his circle of affection which rendered unto him the customary
homage--the attentive audience to which in miserly fashion he doled out
his stories--his parents who brooded him under their touched
admiration--the young brother?... Stop there! It was he, exactly he who
was missing to the appeal.
He was present of course but he did not exert himself about his big
brother; he did not beg for confidences as was his wont, which the other
used to take pleasure in denying. Pitiful vanity! Philip, who on former
occasions affected in regard of the ardent questions of his younger
brother a sort of protective and bantering lackadaisicalness, was hurt
that he did not put them this time. It was he who tried to provoke them:
he became more loquacious and he looked at Pierre as if he wished him to
feel that his talk was meant for him. At another time Pierre would have
thrilled with joy and caught on the fly the handkerchief that was tossed
him. But he quietly permitted Philip to pick it up for himself if he had
any desire to do so. Philip, feeling piqued, tried irony. Instead of
being troubled, Pierre answered with composure in the same detached
tone. Philip wanted to discuss, became agitated, harangued. After a few
minutes he found that he was haranguing all by himself. Pierre looked on
at his efforts wearing an air of saying:
"Go ahead, my dear boy! If that is any pleasure to you! Continue! I'm
listening...."
That insolent little smile!... Their roles were reversed.
Philip stopped talking, much mortified, and observed his young brother
more attentively, who, however, did not occupy himself further with him.
How he had changed! The parents, who saw him every day, had not noticed
anything; but the penetrating and moreover jealous eyes of Philip did
not find any more the well known expression after several months of
absence. Pierre had a happy, languid, thoughtless, torpid air,
indifferent as to persons, inattentive to what is about them, floating
in an atmosphere of voluptuous dream, like a young girl. And Philip felt
that he counted for nothing in the little brother's thoughts.
Since he was no less expert in analyzing himself than in observing
others, he was quick to recover consciousness of his own vexation and
laugh at it. Vanity thrust aside, he interested himself in Pierre and
searched for the secret of his metamorphosis. He would have liked well
to have solicited his confidence, but that was a business to which he
was not habituated, and besides, little brother did not seem to have any
need of confiding; with a careless and chaffing unconstraint he looked
on while Philip attempted awkwardly to spread the net; and with his
hands in his pockets, smiling, his thoughts elsewhere, whistling a
little air, he answered vaguely, without listening carefully to what he
was being asked--then, all of a sudden, turned off to his own regions.
Good night! And he was no longer there. One caught only at his
reflection in the water, which escaped from between one's fingers.--And
Philip, like a lover disdained, felt all his value now and experienced
the attraction of the mystery in this heart which he had lost.
The key to the enigma came to him by pure chance. As he was coming home
in the evening by Boulevard Montparnasse, in the dark he passed Pierre
and Luce. He was afraid they might have noticed him. But they cared
little for what surrounded them. Closely pressed together, Pierre
supporting his arm on the arm of Luce and holding her hand with fingers
interlaced, they strolled along with short steps immersed in the hungry
and gluttonous tenderness of Eros and Psyche as they lie at length on
the nuptial couch in the Farnesina. The close embrace of their gaze
fused them into a single being like a waxen group. Philip, leaning
against a tree, looked upon them as they passed, stopped, went on and
disappeared in the dark. And his heart was full of pity for the two
children. He thought:
"My life is sacrificed. So be it! But it is not right to take those
also. If at the least I could pay for their happiness!"
The next morning, in spite of his polite inattention, Pierre noticed
vaguely--in actual fact not at once, but after some reflection--the
affectionate tone of his brother with him. And, getting half awake, he
perceived his kind eyes which he had not noticed before. Philip looked
at him with such clarity that Pierre had an impression that this gaze
was scrutinizing him; and awkwardly he hastened at once to push the
shutter over his secret. But Philip smiled, rose, and putting his hand
on his shoulder proposed that they should take a turn in the open.
Pierre could not resist the new confidence which was tendered him and
together they proceeded to the Luxembourg near at hand. The big brother
had kept his hand on the shoulder of the younger and the latter felt
himself proud of the re-established accord. His tongue was loosed. They
talked animatedly of intellectual things, of books, their reflections on
men, their new experiences--of everything except the subject both were
thinking about. It was like a tacit convention. They were happy to feel
themselves intimate, with a secret between them. While chatting Pierre
inquired of himself:
"Does he know? But how could he know?"
Philip observed him as he chattered along and kept on smiling. Pierre
ended by stopping short in the midst of a sentence.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing. I'm just looking at you. I am delighted with you."
They shook hands. While they were returning Philip said:
"Are you happy?"
Without speaking Pierre nodded with his head--yes.
"You are right, my boy. A great, beautiful thing is happiness. Take my
portion...."
In order not to trouble him, Philip during his furlough avoided making
any allusion to the near incorporation of Pierre's class in the army.
But on the day of his departure he could not prevent himself from
expressing his anxiety at seeing his young brother exposed very soon to
the trials which he knew only too well. Scarcely did a shadow cross the
brow of the young lover. He drew his eyebrows a bit together, blinked
with his eyes as if to drive off a troublesome vision, and said:
"Enough! Later on! _Chi lo sa?_"
"We know it only too well," said Philip.
"What in any case I do know," said Pierre, vexed that he should insist,
"is that when I am down there I for my part shall do no killing."
Without contradicting him, Philip smiled sorrowfully, knowing well what
the implacable power of the crowd does with weak souls and with their
will.
* * * * *
MARCH was back again with a longer day and the first songs of birds. But
along with the days increased the sinister flames of the war. The air
was feverish with waiting for springtime--and waiting for the cataclysm.
One heard the monstrous rumbling grow in intensity, the arms of millions
of enemies clashing together, heaped up for the past months against the
dyke of the trenches, and all ready to spill over like a tidal bore upon
the Ile de France and the nave of La Cite. The shadow of frightful
rumors preceded the plague; a fantastic report of poisoned gases, of
deadly venom scattered through the air, which was about, so it was said,
to descend on whole provinces and destroy everything like the
asphyxiating overflow from Pelee Mountain. Finally the visits of bombing
Gothas, coming oftener and oftener, cleverly kept up the nervousness of
Paris.
Pierre and Luce continued to refuse to recognize anything about them,
but the slow fever which they breathed in, whether they would or not,
from that atmosphere heavy with menace, kindled the desire that glowed
in their young bodies. Three years of war had propagated in European
souls a freedom of morals which reached even the most honest and
straight. And of the two children, neither one nor the other, had any
religious beliefs. But they were protected by their delicacy of heart,
their instinctive modesty. Only, in secret they had decided to give
themselves completely one to the other before the blind cruelty of
mankind should separate them. They had not spoken of this. They said it
to themselves that evening.
Once or twice during the week Luce's mother was kept at the factory by
her night work. On these nights Luce, in order not to stay alone in that
desert quarter, slept in Paris with a girl friend. Nobody kept watch
over her. The two lovers took advantage of this freedom to pass a
portion of the evening together and sometimes they took a simple dinner
in a little out-of-the-way restaurant. On leaving after dinner on this
mid-March evening they heard the bomb-alert signal sound. They took
refuge in the nearest place as if it were an affair of a rain shower,
and for some time amused themselves observing their chance comrades. But
the danger seeming distant or no longer there, although nothing had
occurred to announce the end of the bomb-warning, Luce and Pierre, who
did not want to get home too late, went on their way chatting gaily.
They followed an old dark and narrow street near Saint Sulpice. They had
just passed a hackney coach standing idle, both horse and driver asleep,
near the gate of a _porte cochere_. They were twenty steps away and on
the other sidewalk, when everything about them shuddered: a red,
blinding flash, a roll of thunder, a rain of loosened tiles and broken
windowpanes! Near the buttress of a house which made a sharp projection
into the street they flattened themselves against the wall and their
bodies interlaced. By the gleam of the explosion they had seen their own
eyes full of love and dismay. And when the darkness fell again Luce's
voice was saying:
"No, Pierre. I want no more."
And Pierre felt upon his own lips the lips and the teeth of the
passionate girl. They remained palpitating in the darkness of the
street. Some paces away some men, issuing from the houses, picked the
dying coachman from among the remnants of the smashed vehicle; they
passed quite close to them with the unfortunate man whose blood was
falling drop by drop. Luce and Pierre remained petrified; so closely
knit together that when consciousness revived in them it seemed as if
their bodies had been naked in the pressure. They loosened their hands
and lips grown together which drank of the loved one like roots. And,
both of them, they began to tremble.
"Let us go home!" said Luce, invaded by a sacred terror.
She dragged him away.
"Luce! you will not let me leave this life before ...?"
"Oh, God," said Luce, squeezing his arm, "that thought would be worse
than death!"
"My love, my love!" they kept repeating, one to the other.
Once more they came to a stop.
"When shall I be yours?" said Pierre.
(He could not have dared to ask: "When shall you be mine?")
Luce noticed this and was touched by it.
"Adored one," she said to him," ... very soon! Let's not hurry. You can
not desire it more than I wish it!... Let us stay this way a little
while.... It is splendid!... This month longer, right to the end!..."
"Until Easter?" he murmured.
(This year Easter was the last day in March.)
"Yes, at the Resurrection."
"Ah," quoth he, "there's the Death before Resurrection."
"Hush!" she interposed, closing his mouth with her own.
They drew away from each other.
"This night, it's our betrothal," whispered Pierre.
Huddled against each other while they walked in the shadows, they wept
gently with tenderness. The ground crackled underfoot with the broken
glass and the sidewalk was bloody. Death and the night were lying in
ambush round about their love. But above their heads like a magic circle
beyond the embrasure of the two black walls in the narrow street, as
through a chimney, the heart of a star throbbed against the deep pulpy
grain of the sky....
Lo and behold! The voices of the bells sing out, lights are rekindled
and the streets are animate once more. The air is free of foes. Paris
breathes again. Death has flown.
* * * * *
THEY had come to the day preceding Palm Sunday. Every day they saw each
other for hours together; and they did not even try to hide themselves
any more. They no longer had any accounts to render the world. By such
gossamer threads were they attached to it and so near to breaking!--Two
days before, the German grand offensive had been started. The wave
advanced along a front of nearly a hundred kilometers. Fast following
emotions caused the City to vibrate: the explosion of Courneuve, which
had shaken Paris like an earthquake; the incessant air-bomb alarms which
broke in on sleep and wore out nerves. And on this morning of Saturday
after a troubled night all those who were not able to close an eyelid
until very late were roused again by the thunder of the mysterious
cannon buried in the far distance, which, beyond the Somme, launched
death in trial shots, as if from another planet. In the course of the
earlier shots, which were attributed to the coming back of the aerial
Gothas, people had taken refuge in a docile way inside their cellars;
but a danger that continues becomes in time a habit to which life
accommodates itself; and the peril is not far from turning out an
attraction even, when the risks run are common to all and are not too
great. Besides, the weather was too lovely; it was a pity to bury one's
self alive: before noon all the world was out of doors; and the streets
and gardens, the terraces of the cafes had a festival air on this
radiant and burning afternoon.
It was this afternoon Pierre and Luce had selected to pass, far from the
crowd, in the forest of Chaville. For the past ten days they had existed
in an uplifted calm. Profound peace at the heart, and nerves on edge.
They had a feeling like existing on an islet, about which rushed a
frantic current: a vertigo of sight and hearing carried them away. But
with eyelids lowered and hands on ears, when the bolt is pushed on the
door, suddenly in one's inner deep there comes a silence, a blinding
silence, the moveless summer day, when Joy invisible like a hidden bird
sings its song, fresh and liquid, like a brook. O Joy! magical singer,
warblings of happiness! I know too well it suffices that a slit should
open between my lids or that my finger should cease to push a moment
against my ear, and the foam and roar of the stream will follow in.
Frail dyke! Just to know it so frail exalts the mood of Joy which I know
is threatened. Peace and silence itself take on a passionate look!...
The woods once reached, they held each other by the hand. The first days
of spring are a new wine that rises to the head. The youthful sun
intoxicates with the purest juice of its vine. Light still floats over
the leafless wood, and athwart the bare branches the blue eye of the sky
fascinates the reason and lulls it to sleep.... Scarcely did they
endeavor to exchange a few words. Their tongues declined to finish a
phrase once started. Their legs were weak and they hated to walk. Under
the sunshine and the silence of the woods they tottered. The earth drew
them. Just to lie down in the path! Just to let themselves be carried
along on the rim of the colossal wheel of the worlds....
They scrambled over the bank of the way-side, entered a thicket and,
side by side on the old dead leaves through which violets showed their
buds, they stretched themselves out. The first songs of the birds and
the distant thuds of the guns mingled with the village bells that were
proclaiming the festival of the morrow. The luminous air vibrated hope,
faith, love, death. Notwithstanding the solitude they spoke in whispers.
Their hearts were oppressed: by happiness? or by sorrow? They could not
have told. They were submerged in their dream. Lucile, immobile,
stretched out, her arms close to her body, her eyes open, absorbed and
gazing at the sky, felt rising in her a hidden suffering which since the
morning she forced herself to drive away in order not to mar the joy of
the holiday. Pierre laid his head on Luce's knees in the hollow of her
skirt like a child who goes to sleep with its face close couched against
the warmth of the stomach. And Luce without a word caressed with her
hands the ears and eyes, the nose and lips of her beloved one. Dear
spiritual hands which seemed, as in the tales about fairies, to have
little mouths at the finger-tips! And Pierre, a thinking piano, divined
the meaning of the little waves that sped under the tips, the emotions
that passed through the soul of his darling. He heard her sigh before
she had begun to sigh. Luce had raised herself with her body leaning
forward and, with breathing oppressed, she moaned in a whisper:
"Pierre, oh, Pierre!"
Pierre looked at her troubled.
"Oh, Pierre! What are we, anyway?... What is it they want of us?... What
do we want?... What is this going on within us? These guns, these birds,
this war, this love.... These hands, body, eyes.... Where am I?... and
what am I?"
Pierre, who did not recognize this expression of bewilderment in her,
wanted to take her in his arms. But she repulsed him.
"No! No!"
And hiding her face in her hands she thrust face and hands together into
the grass. Pierre was upset and begged of her:
"Luce!..."
He thrust his head close to that of Luce.
"Luce," he repeated, "what's the matter with you? Is it against me?"
She raised her head.
"No!"
And he saw tears in her eyes.
"Are you in trouble?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me...."
"Ah, I'm ashamed," she said....
"Ashamed? About what?"
"About everything."
She fell silent.
Since the morning she had been haunted by a sorrowful memory, painful
and degrading; her mother, crazed by the poison that crept about in the
promiscuous conditions of the factories made for luxury and for murder,
in those human vats, no longer kept up any restraint upon herself. At
home she had indulged in a scene of furious jealousy with her lover,
without caring if her daughter heard; and Luce had learned that her
mother was with child. For her this was like a blot that extended to
herself, whose entire love, whose love for Pierre was polluted thereby.
That is why when Pierre had approached her she had repulsed him; she was
ashamed of herself and of him.... Ashamed of him? Poor Pierre!...
He remained there, humiliated, and not daring to budge any more. She was
struck with remorse, smiled in the midst of tears and, resting her head
on Pierre's knees, said:
"It is my turn!"
Still disquieted, Pierre smoothed her hair as one pets a cat. He
murmured:
"Luce, what is all this? Tell me...."
"Nothing," she responded. "I've seen sorrowful things."
He had too much respect for her secrets to insist. But Luce went on a
few minutes later:
"Ah, there are moments.... One is ashamed to belong to mankind."
Pierre trembled.
"Yes," said he.
And after a silence, bending over, he said very low:
"Forgive me!"
Luce sprang up impetuously, threw herself on Pierre's neck, repeating:
"Forgive me!"
And their mouths found each other.
The two children felt the need of consoling one another, both of them.
Without saying it aloud they were thinking:
"Luckily we are going to die! The most frightful thing would be to
become one of those men who are proud of being man--to destroy, to
render vile...."
Lips touching lips, eyelashes brushing eyelashes, they plunged their
gaze one in the other, smiling and with a tender pity. They did not tire
of that divine sentiment which is the purest form of love. At last they
tore themselves from their contemplation and Luce, with eyes again
serene, perceived once more the gentle hue of the sky, the sweetness of
the renewing trees and the breath of flowers.
"How lovely it all is!" she exclaimed.
She was thinking: