TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
FRANÇOIS MAURIAC published his first book in 1909. It is a collection
of poems, and bears the title, _Les Mains Jointes_. Mauriac was then
twenty-one years old, and the little volume drew forth enthusiastic
praise from Maurice Barrès in _L'Echo de Paris_. The following year
brought his second book of verse, _L'Adieu à l'Adolescence_; and in
1913 and 1914 his first two novels appeared, _L'Enfant chargé de
Chaînes_ and _La Robe Prétexte_. Soon after the war he had two more
novels, _La Chair et le Sang_ and _Préséances_, to his credit, and in
1922 M. Grasset published _Le Baiser au Lépreux_ in his _Cahiers
Verts_, that interesting series of little books which includes Hémon's
_Maria Chapdelaine_ and the French versions of Logan Pearsall Smith's
_Trivia_ and George Moore's _Memoirs of My Dead Life_.
_Le Baiser au Lépreux_ achieved an immediate success, the French press
being almost unanimous in its declaration that a masterpiece had been
written; and Mauriac was at once accorded a place with Giraudoux,
Larbaud, and Morand in the first rank of his generation.
In the wide sense, _Le Baiser au Lépreux_ is not a masterpiece; its
appeal is to a restricted public, for the theme of the story is a
problem which the ordinary reader does not as a rule care to think
about. The situations are often unpleasant, sometimes even repellent,
but Mauriac's searching and relentless analysis of the minds of his
characters has resulted in a fine piece of writing. Simplicity of
language, depth of thought, and acuteness of observation are its
distinguishing qualities; less skilful hands would have made little of
a theme which required to be treated with the greatest reticence, but
Mauriac's method is one of extreme economy and non-insistence; and,
being himself a product of that bleak arid country of heather and pines,
he has been able to give his tragic picture an authentic background.
Mauriac is an earnest Catholic, and he is convinced that Christianity
presents extraordinary opportunities to novelists, because of the moral
conflicts it creates. In this story, the flavour of which I have
attempted to preserve in the version that follows, he has stated a
problem and solved it in the only way possible for his characters, and
the moral conflict arises out of the instinctive, unimaginative religion
of his heroine. A less simple girl might have conquered physical
repulsion, and, through vanity, have played the rôle of good fairy. The
story exists because she is physically incapable of embracing the leper,
and enough of a saint to renounce the fruits of his sacrifice.
J. W.
THE KISS TO THE LEPER
I
JEAN PELOUEYRE was lying on his bed. He opened his eyes and listened for
a moment to the buzzing of the grasshoppers outside. The sun was pouring
in through the blinds like some bright, hot metal, and he stood up
swallowing the bitterness in his mouth. He was so short that he could
see his wretched face in the low mirror between the windows: hollow
cheeks, a long red nose that looked as though it had been worn away to a
point like a well-sucked stick of barley-sugar, a sharp angle of
close-cut hair pointing down over a wrinkled forehead. He made a face at
the reflection and saw two rows of decayed teeth. He had never so hated
himself, but a few pitying words escaped his lips: "Out for a walk, you
poor devil," and his hand went to his ill-shaven chin. But how was he to
get out without waking his father? Between one and four, M. Jêrome
Péloueyre imposed complete silence upon the house, and these hours of
repose kept him from dying of nightly insomnia. The house was numbed; no
door could be shut or opened, not a word or a sneeze could break the
silence to which, by ten years of complaints and entreaties, he had
trained Jean and the servants. Even the people in the street lowered
their voices as they passed beneath his windows, and carriages drove a
block out of their way to avoid rattling past his door.
In spite of this conspiracy surrounding him, M. Jêrome, half awake, was
conscious of a clatter of plates, a bark and a cough. Did he think that
complete silence would procure him a death-like repose, flowing smoothly
and inevitably like a river to the ocean? His awakenings were always
unpleasant and he would go down shivering, even in the middle of summer,
to read in a chair by the kitchen fire. Its flames were reflected upon
his bald head, and Cadette, busy over her sauces, paid no more attention
to her master than to the hams hanging from the rafters. He, on the
contrary, watched the old peasant, full of wonder that she could have
been born in the reign of Louis Philippe, to live through wars and
revolutions, so much history, and yet have nothing in her head but the
pig she annually fattened, whose death at each Christmas moistened with
sparse tears her old and bleary eyes.
In spite of his father's siesta, Jean Péloueyre was unable to resist
the call of the intense heat outside; there would be nobody about, and
he could follow the thin line of shade in front of the houses without
fear of a burst of laughter from some woman sewing at an open door.
Mirth always broke forth as he sneaked past, but at two o'clock all the
women would be asleep, or at least lying on their beds perspiring and
cursing the flies. He opened a well-oiled door silently and crossed the
hall; a sweet damp smell came from the food cupboards, and the kitchen
beyond added further burdens to the musty atmosphere. The soft patter of
his slippers seemed to deepen the silence. From a rack, surmounted by a
boar's head, he took down his 24-calibre; it was well known by all the
magpies in the neighbourhood, for Jean was their sworn enemy. An
umbrella stand bristled with the property of pail generations; his great
uncle Ousilanne's gun-stick, his grandfather Lapeignine's fishing-rod
and sword-stick, and other iron-shod implements that kept alive the
memory of visits to Baguères de Bigorre. A stuffed heron stood upon a
table near the outer door.
Jean slipped out into the street. The heat, like the sun-warmed water in
a fishpond, opened and closed in again upon him, and he thought he would
visit a grove of alders where the stream that flowed through the village
loitered for a moment, breathing up the coolness of its source.
Mosquitoes, however, had bothered him the last time he had gone there,
and feeling in the mood for talking to someone, he set out for Doctor
Pieuchon's house. The doctor's son Robert, a medical student, had come
home for his holiday that morning.
The streets were empty and silent--not a sign of life, save when a ray
of sunlight struck through half-opened shutters and shone upon an old
woman's spectacles. Jean was walking now between high garden walls; he
loved this little passage because there no hidden eyes could see him,
and he could meditate to his heart's content. These meditations of his
were accompanied by frowns, gestures, laughter, and recitations--a
pantomime that never failed to amuse those who witnessed it. But here,
the walls and the branches of the trees offered a pleasant protection.
Still, he would certainly prefer the tangled confusion of the streets in
a great city, where one could talk to oneself without fear of meeting
again the people one passed. At all events, that was what Daniel Trasis
wrote him from Paris. Daniel, against the will of his family, had
launched into literature, and Jean imagined his thickset figure plunging
into the Parisian whirlpool, and disappearing from view like a diver.
But he had no doubt learned to swim now and was struggling breathlessly
towards some definite aims: Fame, Fortune, Love; fruits of which Jean
Péloueyre would never be able to partake.
With soft footsteps he entered the Pieuchons' house. The servant told
him that the doctor and his son were lunching out, but he decided to
wait and went into his friend's bedroom, which opened on to the hall. It
was the sort of room that discouraged one from wanting to know its
occupant: a pipe-rack and some posters of a students' ball on the walls;
and on the table, a death's-head made ridiculous by a short pipe stuck
between its teeth, and a pile of books for holiday reading: _Aphrodite,
l'Orgie Latine_, _Le Jardin des Supplices_, _Le Journal d'une Femme de
Chambre_. A book of selections from Nietzsche claimed Jean's attention,
and he looked at a page here and there. The smell of a student's summer
clothes came to his nostrils from an open trunk as his eyes fell upon
this passage: "What is good? Everything that increases the feeling of
power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is bad? All that
proceeds from weakness. The weak must perish, and we shall help them to
perish. What is more harmful than any vice? Pity for the weak and
helpless--Christianity."
Jean put the book down; and the phrases he had just read ran burning
through his mind like the burning afternoon sun that pours into a room
when the shutters are opened. Instinctively he went to the window and
allowed the scorching light to flow in; then he picked up the book and
re-read the appalling passage. He closed his eyes, opened them, and
looked at himself in the mirror: a poor, wretched, little, mouse-like
face, a miserable body with which adolescence had been unable to work
its customary miracle; a pitiable victim for the sacred well of Sparta.
His thoughts went back to the time he had spent with the nuns when he
was five years old; in spite of the prestige of the Péloueyres, the
attractive children were always placed above him. He remembered a
competition in reading in which he had read his composition far better
than the others, but was placed all the same at the bottom of the class.
Sometimes Jean wondered whether his mother, who had died of consumption
when he was very young, would have loved him. M. Jêrome was devoted to
this suffering projection of himself; Jean seemed to him like his own
tenuous shadow, following his slippered tread through life or waiting at
his side when he lay upon his bed, enveloped by the smell of valerian
and ether. M. Jêrome's eldest sister might have loathed her nephew were
it not that her adoration for her son, Fernand Cazenave (with whom she
lived at B----, and who was president of the Town Council) almost
prevented her from noticing him. She was scarcely aware of the existence
of anyone but her son. From time to time, however, she drew Jean into
her consciousness with a word or a smile, for she calculated that this
son of a delicate father, this poor wretch defined to celibacy and a
premature death, would contribute in some part to Fernand's acquisition
of the Péloueyre fortune. Jean looked back over the desert of his life;
his three years at school had been a succession of carefully concealed
friendships. Neither Daniel Trasis nor the priest who taught him
rhetoric had ever understood the hopeless beseeching expression in his
eyes.
Jean opened the Nietzsche book at another page and devoured Aphorism 260
from "Beyond Good and Evil" which refers to master-morality and
slave-morality. He looked at his face in the mirror again; it would
always be yellow in spite of his efforts to acquire a coat of sunburn.
He repeated Nietzsche's words over and over again, saturated himself
with their meaning until it rushed through his thoughts like an October
gale. For a moment his faith seemed shattered, lying at his feet like an
uprooted oak tree. But no, no; the tree was still upright; its countless
roots had saved it, and, after the storm was spent, Jean felt within him
the mysterious calm that he loved--the thick foliage once more hung
motionless. He was suddenly conscious of the fact that religion was, for
him, before all else, a refuge. It had saved him from his own wretched
thoughts through many a sleepless night. Hovering above the altar was
Someone who filled the gap left by the friends he had never had, and the
Virgin received the devotion that would have gone to his mother. His
confidences, never uttered to a fellow being, were poured into the
confessional, or they went into silent prayers towards evening in the
shadowy coolness of the church. At times like these his heart opened to
the pale figures of his imagination that thronged about him. If he had
had Daniel's curly hair--his friend had been from birth the object of
feminine caresses--would he too have had a following of spinsters and
maid-servants? He was one of the class denounced by Nietzsche; he knew
that with his abject appearance he was inevitably sentenced to slavery;
his personality was made for failure and defeat. His father was like
that, after all; very devout too, but better versed in theology than
Jean, and lately become a patient reader of Saint Augustine and Saint
Thomas Aquinas. Jean, who cared little for doctrine and professed a
religion of ecstasy, approved of his father's for its rational quality.
He remembered his father's pet phrase: "Without Faith what would have
happened to me?" This Faith, however, did not permit him to hear mass at
the risk of catching a cold, and at Festivals he was installed, muffled
to the eyes, in the overheated sacristy, so that he could follow the
ceremony.
Jean went out and passed again between the high walls under the
protecting foliage of the trees; he gesticulated as he went, and for a
moment he pretended that he had lost his belief, that its support had
suddenly been withdrawn. Nothing remained, nothing! School-day memories
came to his lips: _Mon malheur passe mon espérance.... Oui, je te loue,
O Ciel, de ta persévérance_. A little farther on, he addressed himself
to the trees, the walls, and the piles of pebbles, protesting that
Masters could exist among Christians, and that the Saints, the great
Orders, in fact, the whole Church, offered a splendid example of the
Will to Power.
The sound of his own footsteps in the hall brought Jean back to earth
and cleared his mind of agitating thoughts; on the first floor his
arrival occasioned a groaning complaint, and a sleepy voice called out
pitifully for Cadette. There followed rapidly a shuffling noise in the
kitchen, the barking of a dog, and the sound of shutters being opened.
The awakening of M. Jêrome lifted the bonds of silence; for him it was
a period of puffy eyes and a bad-tasting mouth, and life seemed at its
blackest. Jean took refuge in the drawing-room with its cellar-like
atmosphere, its mouldy torn paper that revealed the powdery walls, and a
clock that chimed the passing hours where no one could hear it. He sank
into a soft armchair and gave way to the anguish of an unsettled faith.
A fly buzzed for a moment and then settled. A cock crowed,--then a bird
trilled its brief song, and another cock crowed. The clock struck the
half hour,--another cock, then others.... He slept until the time when
he usually set forth through a roundabout series of little alleys to the
smallest door of the church, and glided in amongst the scented shadows.
Would he continue to keep this rendezvous,--the only one that had ever
been given him?
He went out into the garden to find the sun sinking towards the horizon;
the heat would soon be bearable. White butterflies hovered low over the
flowers, and Cadette's grandson was watering the lettuces in the kitchen
garden,--a fine-looking lad with wooden shoes on his bare feet. He was
adored by all the girls, and Jean always avoided him, ashamed of the
fact that he was the master and this young god of a gardener the slave.
Jean hadn't the courage to smile at him even from across the garden; he
was frightened almost to the point of paralysis when in the company of
peasants. He had tried many a time to help the priest with his work
among them, but always failed miserably and returned to his solitude,
overcome by shame at the peals of laughter he evoked.
In the meantime M. Jêrome was strolling up and down the little avenue
of pyramid-shaped pear trees; heliotrope, mignonette, and geraniums
bloomed under them, but their perfumes were lost in the overpowering
breath of an enormous blossoming lime tree. M. Jêrome shuffled his
feet. The ends of his trousers were tucked into his slippers and he wore
a shapeless straw hat with a ribbon round it. Hanging from his shoulders
was an old knitted cloak that had once belonged to his sister. Jean saw
that he was carrying a volume of Montaigne. Doubtless _The Essays_, like
his religion, provided subterfuges enabling him to dignify his evasion
of the problems of life with the name of wisdom. Yes, thought Jean, it
was quite true that his poor father believed the stupendous failure of
his existence to be stoicism or Christian resignation. How clearly Jean
felt he saw these things. At this moment he loved and pitied his father,
but his usual feeling for him was one of scorn.
The sick man complained of twinges in his neck, suffocation, and a
desire to vomit. One of his farmers, Duberne d'Hourtinat, had forced his
way in and wanted M. Jêrome to enlarge his cottage so that it would
house his married daughter's effects. Where could he suffer to his
heart's content? Why couldn't he be allowed to die in peace? And, to cap
the climax, to-morrow was Thursday; the market would be held in the
square and the house would be invaded by his sister Félicité Cazenave
and her son. He would be awakened at dawn by the cattle in the square,
and the roaring of the Cazenave motor at his door would announce the
advent of this weekly plague. Félicité would force her way into the
kitchen to trouble her brother's clock-like arrangement with the needs
of her son, and when evening at last came, the couple would take
themselves off, leaving Cadette in tears and her master speechless.
M. Jêrome kept his malice alive secretly; in the presence of the enemy
it was a weak and cringing thing. He had so often mumbled about having
his revenge upon the Cazenaves that Jean paid no attention this time
when his father said: "We'll get the best of them, Jean, if only you'll
help. Will you?" Jean, a thousand miles away from the Cazenaves and
their affairs, smiled vaguely. His father watched him and continued: "At
your age you ought to be more of a flirt; 'pon my word, you are badly
turned out." This was the first evidence of care on the part of his
father for Jean's appearance, but the boy made no comment and was far
from imagining what the next turning in his career might be. He took the
Montaigne from his father's hands and read this phrase: "To my mind life
should be dull, silent, and unruffled...." How exactly like this their
life was!
Father and son stopped to look at the garden tank; a puff of wind
ruffled its surface where a dead mole was being nibbled at by tadpoles.
M. Jêrome imagined the damp evening air was bad for him, and he
shuffled off towards the house, leaving his son to idle in the garden.
At the bottom, a door leading into an alley stood half open. Jean poked
his head out, and Cadette's grandson who was holding one of the village
girls pressed tightly against him dropped her like a piece of fruit.
II
JEAN scarcely closed his eyes that night; his windows were open and the
croaking of the frogs made the darkness far more clamorous than
daylight. The cocks crowed incessantly, and their mistaken salutations
of the milky light that came down from the stars caused their voices to
grow fainter and fainter with fatigue as daybreak approached. The cocks
in the village sent out the call, and the reply came back from the
neighbouring farms one after another: _A cry repeated by a thousand
sentinels_.... Jean lay awake, vaguely muttering this line. The windows
framed squares of deep blue, choked with stars. He got up and stood with
bare feet looking out at them; he called them by their names; but the
problem that had arisen the day before still gently agitated his mind.
Had he dealt with it metaphysically, or by a carefully worked out system
of self-consolation? Certainly those of the Masters who believed were
the rulers of their class. But did Chateaubriand ever hesitate to risk
his chances of salvation for a caress? And how many times did Barbey
d'Aurevilly betray the Son of Man for a kiss? Were not their triumphs
measured by the extent to which they betrayed God?
After daybreak the outrageous squealing of some little pigs kept Jean
awake; he closed the shutters in order that no one might look in upon
him. On the pavement just outside, Madame Bourideys, who kept a
haberdashery shop, stopped Noémi d'Artiailh to ask her whether she had
breakfasted. From behind the shutters Jean gazed greedily at Noémi; she
was seventeen; her head, with its brown ringlets like an angel by a
Spanish painter, seemed unsuited to such a compact body. But Jean loved
the contrast between her firm, rather badly proportioned figure and her
seraphic features which made all the ladies call her "as pretty as a
picture." A shade too thickset for a Raphael Madonna, she awakened both
the best and the worst in Jean; she induced high thoughts and incited
low gratifications. There was a sheen upon her throat and breast, and
shadowy lashes intensified the modesty of long dark eyelids. A vague
look of childish purity still hovered about her features. Then came her
surprisingly strong boyish hands, and the calves of her legs that, had
they not been pressed into laced boots, would have gone straight down to
her heels.
Jean Péloueyre watched his angel slyly; Cadette's grandson could look
at her openly whenever he liked; handsome boys, even of the peasant
class, had the right to look at any girl that pleased them. Jean hardly
dared to breathe in the puffs of air that blew across his face when her
muslin dress brushed his chair in church; a delicious odour of soap and
fresh linen. He sighed as he put on yesterday's shirt (it was also the
day before yesterday's); his body wasn't worth wasting any time over. He
used a minute jug of water and a tiny basin so that he could shut the
lid of the stand without breaking them. He went into the garden to sit
under the lime tree, and instead of saying his prayers he read a
newspaper in order to hide his face from Cadette's grandson. The brute
was whistling gaily, there was a red carnation behind his ear, and his
blue trousers were belted in tightly at his waist. He had the radiance
and robustness of a young cock, and Jean hated him and detested himself
for his hatred. There was no consolation in the knowledge that this boy
would soon turn into a gross peasant, for another just like him would
then be watering the lettuces, just as there would be other white
butterflies like those now fluttering in the sunlight. "Oh, God," Jean
said to himself, "my thoughts this morning are even uglier than my
face!"
From the house came the flute-like voice of the priest. What intrigue
had brought him at this hour of the morning? It wasn't the time for his
daily visit, and in any case how dared he risk an encounter with Fernand
Cazenave who was always furious at the sight of a priest? From behind
the lime tree Jean watched Fernand taking his customary five minutes'
constitutional before meals. His mother followed, gasping for breath: a
rotund bust supporting a majestic head; a stupendous machine of a body,
awkward from long use, but obedient to the wishes of the adored son. It
was as though he had set it in motion simply by pressing a button. The
Councillor waited for its approach; he wiped his dripping forehead and
the leather band in his straw hat. He was perspiring horribly under his
alpaca coat, and a frown wrinkled his colourless face from which two
steely eyes gazed ignorantly upon the world. It was his mother's custom
to clear his way through life for him, and she treated people like
branches obstructing his path. She was reputed to have said: "If Fernand
marries, my daughter-in-law will die." But no daughter-in-law cared to
take the chance; would any young woman have undertaken to look after a
man of settled habits, over fifty, and still accustomed to the
attentions of a nurse? The Angelus rang out and vibrated in the blazing
atmosphere. Jean heard the councillor muttering: "Blast those bells!"
Jean's aunt and Fernand were already seated at table with their napkins
about their necks when he slipped in silently and took his place. M.
Jêrome was also late and sank into an attitude that suggested great
timidity. But his eyes shone as he declared that the priest had detained
him. Father and son sat, heads sunk between shoulders, waiting for the
usual outburst; it came with the mutton. Fernand was helped first and,
with fork in air, he interrogated the maternal countenance. Félicité
tried a piece, put it back on her plate, and uttered a single word:
"Overdone." The Cazenaves pushed away their plates simultaneously and
Cadette emerged from the kitchen with a wailing defence of her
handiwork--a useless uproar, for the Councillor proceeded to appease the
clamourings of his stomach by devouring the overdone meat. More than
satisfied, he asked to be forgiven for not having gone at once to greet
his Uncle Péloueyre. He had seen an ecclesiastical hat in the vestibule
and his uncle knew that the sight of a priest caused him physical
horror. M. Jêrome addressed his son in a colourless voice, without
raising his eyes from his plate: "He came to talk to me about you, Jean;
does it surprise you that he wants you to get married?" Fernand remarked
with a sneer that the priest must have been joking. "Why?" asked his
uncle, "Jean is twenty-two!" Then Fernand broke out: What had this
ecclesiastic got to do with it! By what right did he put his nose into
their family affairs? But his whisper as to whether after all Jean could
marry, drew a frantic signal of warning from his mother who felt that
this was going too far. "It would be very nice for Jean to marry," she
said, "this house needs a mistress. Oh, of course, young women have
peculiar ideas, and no doubt Jêrome's mechanical existence would have
to be somewhat changed." Fernand, cooled by his mother's reprimand,
declared that Jean could of course found a family, but wouldn't he make
himself miserable by so doing? The dear boy already had the habits and
whims of an old bachelor. Aunt Félicité hinted that her brother would
be well advised, in any such event, not to live with the young people.
Naturally it would be a severe blow, and she spoke of the numerous
occasions when Jean had been on the point of departing for school, his
tickets taken, his box packed, and the cab at the door; at the last
moment his father had always been unable to let him go.
Jean felt certain that this idea of marriage was all an invention of his
father for the annoyance of the Cazenaves, but he experienced a vague
uneasiness; he remembered those October evenings and the old-fashioned
landau that should have carried him across the _Bazadais_ to the pious
establishment where the children of _Les Landes_ dream of playtime over
their dictionaries. His trunk, the former property of a great-uncle,
still retained some of its flowered paper lining. M. Jêrome had wept on
those occasions, pretending that a stroke was imminent; always a coward
when it came to the distressful moment of separation. It was in all
probability after the last of these frustrated departures that the poor
man had laid down rules for his hours of silence, destined always to be
troubled by the suffering presence of his little son. And so it was that
Jean studied with the priest till he was fifteen, and only went to
school in order to matriculate.
What could be the meaning of this sudden madness to marry him off? Jean
remembered his father's strange talk the day before, in the garden; but
there had been nothing in it to worry about. His cousin's question as to
whether he was capable of marriage kept running through his head. It was
stupid of the Cazenaves to take the joke seriously. And now he heard
them demanding to know the name of the young woman who had been chosen
for him. M. Jêrome's siesta, however, relieved him of the necessity of
replying, and the Cazenaves wandered out into the garden in spite of the
scorching heat; Jean watched them in conference.
M. Jêrome was awakened by the noise of their departure and as soon as
Jean heard the shuffling of slippers he penetrated the drug-laden
atmosphere of his father's room. In this place which smelt for all the
world like a laboratory, Jean learned that he was, in absolute
seriousness, to be given a wife, Noémi d'Artiailh. He saw his body in
the mirror, as dry and shrivelled as a piece of scorched heather on the
heath, and he stuttered out: "She won't have me!" The astonishing reply
caused him to tremble: "She's been sounded and is quite willing." The
d'Artiailhs were in the seventh heaven, and could scarcely believe their
good fortune. But Jean shook his head, and with outstretched hands
seemed to be warding off what surely was a delusion: a young girl in his
arms, and of her own free will. Noémi, who walked past him at High
Mass; Noémi, into whose dark, flower-like eyes he had never permitted
himself to gaze! When the air stirred by her passage down the nave of
the church caressed his cheek, it was the nearest thing to a kiss he had
ever known. Meanwhile, his father declared himself to be of the same
mind as the priest. The Péloueyres were to found a family, so that
nothing might go to Aunt Félicité or Fernand Cazenave, and M. Jêrome
added: "You know, Jean, when the priest wants something he is generally
in dead earned about it." Jean smiled a wry smile, and his lips trembled
as he said, "I would disgust her." His father did not think of
protecting; he himself had never been loved, and it never occurred to
him that his son could know such happiness, so he complacently
enumerated the virtues of Noémi, upon whom the priest's choice had
fallen--she was a splendid example to the parish. She belonged to a
family who never looked for physical enjoyment in married life. She
would be a dutiful wife, obedient to God and her husband, one of those
mothers who are still to be found, whose ignorance in spite of
innumerable confinements remains unenlightened. M. Jêrome gave a
nervous little cough, and in a softer voice he said: "Once you are
married, and thus protected from the Cazenaves, I can die in peace."
The priest wanted to avoid all delay, and Jean would be able to see
Noémi the next day. She would be waiting for him after lunch at the
presbytery, and Mme. d'Artiailh would find an excuse for leaving them
alone together. M. Jêrome began to speak rapidly, in order to combat
Jean's refusal. The prospect of a discussion unnerved him slightly, and
made his fingers tremble. Jean was speechless with terror, and filled
with shame at finding himself in such a state. Had not the moment come
for him to shake off his slavery and become a Master? This was his
chance to break the chains that held him back from manhood! A vague
gesture of consent escaped him, and his father's nervous discourse came
to an end. Afterwards, when thinking of this moment in which his fate
had been settled, he admitted to himself that the deciding factor had
been those ten half-understood pages of Nietzsche. He made his escape
now, leaving M. Jêrome mystified at an easy victory, and burning to
carry the good news to the priest.
By the time Jean reached the bottom of the stairs he was getting used to
the extraordinary thing that had happened to him. He experienced ever so
slightly the feeling that he was no longer quite chaste; it became clear
that the days of his purity were numbered, and he looked steadfastly
into the dark eyes of an image, boldly evoked. Ah! He could have
fainted! Then a desire to bathe himself caused him to summon Cadette,
for, as is generally the case in that Gironde country, the Péloueyre
bath was full of potatoes.
After dinner Jean walked out into the village. He was careful not to
wave his arms about or talk to himself. At several doorways he bowed
stiffly to groups of people, silenced like frogs in a pool by his
approach, and there were no bursts of laughter after he had passed by.
Soon the last house was behind him, and the road stretched away between
two black armies of pine trees, a faint grey ribbon in the fading light.
The trees breathed softly upon him, and thousands of sprouting needles
scented the woodland cathedral like censers. He could laugh now, shake
his shoulders, snap his fingers and shout, "I'm a Master, a Master, a
Master!" and repeat this distich, pausing at the cesuras: _Par quels
secrets ressorts--par quel enchaînement--le ciel a-t-il conduit--ce
grand événement_?
III
JEAN was afraid that the talk would lag, and the fear of silence caused
the priest and Mme. d'Artiailh to squander thoughtlessly and rapidly all
possible topics of conversation. Soon there would be no more to say.
Noémi's dress overflowed her chair, as a magnolia flower its vase, and
the perfume of her young body, like that of some heavy-scented flower
that one removes from one's room at night, filled the little parlour
whose walls were covered with religious pictures. Noémi had at last
descended from her pedestal, and Jean darted furtive glances at her. It
seemed to him that he had her under a magnifying glass, and he searched
eagerly for faults, for "defects" in this humanly vibrating metal: at
either side of her nose there were little black dots; at the base of her
neck the skin must have been burnt by stale tincture of iodine. A
fleeting smile at something the priest was saying gave Jean a glimpse of
the white shining line of teeth, and he noticed one dull one that looked
questionable. His scrutiny of her prevented the big dark eyes from being
raised to meet his--perhaps this was his way of warding off her
examination of himself. What a mercy that the priest could sermonize
without assistance from anyone. In spite of his little round body, there
was nothing jovial about him; his corpulence could not mask his
austerity, and thus he was popular with the town people, but
misunderstood by the farmers. Several of the former had, with his help,
reached a high state of holiness. As often happens, he attained to power
by meekness. He was always pleasant and apologetic, but his will could
not be withstood. He kept the prettiest girls of the town from going to
the Sunday dance, and he stood sanctimoniously in the way of the young
men's love affairs. And no one knew that it was he who, at the eleventh
hour, had kept the postmistress from adultery. He had now made up his
mind that it was bad for Jean to remain single, and he was especially
anxious that the house of Péloueyre should not become one day the house
of Cazenave, that the wolf should not hide in the fold.
Jean had never noticed how deeply women breathed; Noémi's breast almost
touched her chin when she drew in her breath. Without further efforts to
make conversation, the priest got up, saying that these young people
would perhaps like to be left to themselves, and he begged Madame
d'Artiailh to accompany him into the garden; his greengages were doing
wonderfully.
Now, as though in preparation for an experiment in entomology, there
were in the shadowy room only this little black frightened male and the
resplendent female. Jean neither moved nor raised his eyes; he couldn't
now, for she was watching him. The girl looked at this larva that was
her fate, while the youth she had dreamed of, that all girls dream
of--he whose strong arms and firm flesh they conjure up through
sleepless nights--faded into the obscurity of the priest's parlour,
melted away until there was only Jean cringing in his dark corner like a
frightened cricket. She saw her fate, and knew that she could not avoid
it. The son of the Péloueyres could not be refused. Noémi's parents
might have feared that Jean would slip through their fingers, but they
dreamed less of their daughter objecting than she did herself. For a
quarter of an hour the centre of her future existence had been sitting
on the edge of a chair, squirming and biting his nails. He stood up,
looking shorter standing than when sitting, and stammered out a phrase
that had to be repeated before it was intelligible to Noémi: "I know
I'm not worthy to..." She protested, "Oh, Monsieur!" But Jean plunged
into an orgy of humility. He knew no one could love him, and only asked
to be allowed to love. Words and phrases poured logically from his lips.
For twenty-three years he had been waiting for the chance to open his
heart to a woman. His eloquence and his gesticulating showed that he
felt there was no one but himself who could set forth the beauty of his
soul, and in this as a matter of fact he was right. Noémi looked at the
door. She wasn't surprised, for she had heard a great deal about Jean
Péloueyre. People had told her of his peculiarities; "a bit cracked"
was the general opinion.
The door remained closed and Jean talked on and on; the room seemed full
of him and his gestures, and Noémi became uncomfortably conscious of a
desire to cry. At last he came to an end, and she was frightened as
though imprisoned in a room that contained a hidden bat. When Madame
d'Artiailh and the priest came back she flung her arms about her
mother's neck without dreaming that such a gesture might be taken for
acquiescence. The priest and Jean touched cheeks, and the two ladies
walked out of the presbytery alone, so as not to awaken the curiosity of
the neighbours. Through a crack in the shutters, perhaps Jean saw
Noémi's slightly rumpled dress glide past after Madame d'Artiailh's
slim mincing figure; the magnolia flower had wilted almost
imperceptibly, seemed less alive. It had already been cut.
Most of Jean's time was spent in cringing concealment; his one great
concern was to avoid being seen, and for several days now he was
confused and stupefied by the unavoidable fluttering and commotion
around him. Fate had drawn him out of obscurity, and Nietzsche's words,
like some magical incantation, had turned his world upside down. He was
like a little night-bird, stranded in daylight, its eyes blinking and
its head sunk between its wings. The people about him had changed too:
M. Jêrome's régime went to pieces--he often cut short his siesta now,
in order to accompany the priest back to the presbytery. The Cazenaves'
Thursday visits came to an end, but they made known their existence by
circulating infamous stories about Jean's personality and certain of his
peculiarities which, it was said, rendered him unfit for matrimony.
In his excessive humility, Jean wondered how it was that the d'Artiailhs
could be envied on his account; everyone was saying that Noémi well
deserved the happiness that was in store for her. The ancient house of
d'Artiailh was on the rocks; M. d'Artiailh, having been fleeced in
several financial enterprises, was now an industrious and unashamed
employé at the Town Hall, and it was common knowledge that they had had
to dispense with the services of their servant.
Jean looked at himself in his mirror, and concluded that he was not
hideous. The priest was spreading his opinion abroad that, though young
Péloueyre was not much to look at, he was at least very intelligent;
and every evening Noémi's respectful silence before Jean's eloquence
from the couch in the drawing-room inclined him to agree with the priest
that serious young women appreciated the intellectual accomplishments of
their fiancés. Speaking to her now, he dropped into his old habit of
making faces and gestures and reciting verses without warning, and
Noémi, though pushing herself farther and farther towards the other end
of the couch, seemed to him as lenient to his outpourings as the trees
along the empty road had been. He shared his inmost thoughts with her
now, even to a discussion of this Nietzsche, who would perhaps cause a
complete readjustment of his life. Noémi wiped the perspiration from
her hands with a tiny handkerchief, and her eyes never left the door
leading to the room where her parents were conversing in tones
fortunately low enough to prevent her from understanding anything. M.
d'Artiailh was uneasy at what people were saying about his future
son-in-law. He had been robbed and cheated throughout his life, and was
certain now that, behind what seemed to be a turn in his fortunes, a
disaster was lurking. His wife assured him, however, that the only
foundations for the slanderous gossip were the ill-will of the
Cazenaves, and Jean's avoidance of women for religious reasons or out of
shyness.
Eleven o'clock chimed in the moonlight, and Madame d'Artiailh entered
without a cough, or a knock, or any hope of surprising the young people
in a compromising attitude. She excused herself for disturbing the
"turtledoves," and made a pointed reference to the curfew. Jean touched
Noémi's hair with his lips, and took his leave. He strode down the
silent street, followed by his shadow. His firm step stirred the
watch-dogs from their sleep, and the moonlight kept them noisily awake.
It was strange that he no longer felt agitated in Noémi's presence.
Before, at High Mass, when she had glided past him in her carefully
ironed frock, it had been otherwise. He shook his head to rid himself of
the thought of that approaching night in September when she would be
his. Of course, that night would never come; war would break out,
someone would die, or an earthquake....
Noémi looked out at the stars while she said her prayers. She was in a
long chemise, and the tiled floor felt pleasantly cool under her bare
feet. The soothing breath of the night caressed her white throat, and a
tear ran down over her face into her mouth. The leaves of the scented
lime-tree trembled against the Milky Way, and Noémi bade farewell to
the dreams in which she had wandered along this lane of silver in the
sky. The crickets chirping in the grass reminded her of her master. One
hot airless night as she lay uncovered upon her sheets, she sobbed
quietly and then wept aloud as she gazed with pitying eyes at her
unsullied body, full of ardent life, but cool with the coolness of
forest leaves. What would the cricket do with her? She knew that she
could forbid him nothing; not even that mysterious and terrible act
after which a baby would be born--a wretched little black Péloueyre.
The cricket would be with her for the rest of her life, even in her bed.
Madame d'Artiailh--scalloped nightdress and scanty braid of hair--found
her daughter in a flood of tears, and was told that the idea of marriage
filled her with horror; she now wanted to be a Carmelite nun. Madame
d'Artiailh held the girl in her arms until the sobbing was less violent;
then she assured her that matters like this ought to be discussed with
her spiritual director. Had not the priest himself chosen the path of
matrimony for her?
Noémi was silent; how could she reply, pre-eminently fitted as she was
to be a wife and a mother, and full of piety and tenderness? She never
read novels; she waited upon her parents, obeyed them. She was told that
a man did not have to be handsome, that marriage produced love just as
surely as a peach tree bore peaches. But Noémi needed only to be
reminded of the obvious truth of the phrase: _The son of the Péloueyres
is not to be refused_, or the farms, or the flocks of sheep, or the
family plate, or the linen of ten generations neatly piled in lofty
scented cupboards, or a social standing unequalled in _Les Landes_. No,
he could not be refused!
IV
THERE was no earthquake, no omen in the sky, when that Tuesday dawned in
September, and Jean had to be shaken out of a deep sleep. The flagstones
in the hall were covered with box, laurel and magnolia, and the smell of
the trampled leaves predominated. The bridesmaids stood about in
whispering groups; they could not sit down for fear of rumpling their
frocks. The reception room at the _Cheval Rouge_ was festooned with
paper chains, and the wedding breakfast was to come from B---- by the
ten o'clock train. The streets were full of victorias bringing
white-gloved guests to the feast; top hats gleamed in the sunlight, and
swallow-tail coats filled the watching peasants with admiration.
M. Jêrome showed his true feelings by staying in bed; in this way he
could face the weddings and funerals of his family, and when these
momentous crises arrived, he swallowed a chloral cachet and drew his
curtains. During his wife's last illness, he retired to a room at the
top of the house, lay with his nose to the wall, and consented to open
one eye only when he was certain that the last bit of earth had been
shovelled on to the coffin, and the train had carried off the last
guest. On the day of the wedding, when Jean, green and shrivelled in his
dress coat, came to get his father's blessing, Cadette was not allowed
to open the shutters.
It was a terrible day. All Jean's humiliation and shame came flooding
back. In spite of the tumult of bells, his quick sportsman's ear missed
none of the sympathetic undertones that were uttered in the crowded
church, as the procession passed up the aisle. He heard a young man
murmur: "What a pity!" Little girls, perched up on the backs of chairs,
giggled when they saw him. When he faced the blazing altar, with the
whispering crowd behind him, his legs weakened and he grasped the velvet
praying-stool for support. He was conscious, without looking, of the
trembling, mysterious body of a woman at his side,--the priest read on
and on; if only he would never stop! But the sun that now sprinkled the
old flagstones with golden confetti would set,--then, the night and its
revelations.
The heat had spoiled the luncheon; one of the lobsters smelt horribly,
and the _bombe glacée_ had melted into a yellow cream. Instead of
making their escape, flies allowed themselves to be crushed while
feasting upon the cakes, and corpulent women suffered in their tight
clothes, perspiring helplessly. Shouts of joy came from the children's
table, but from no other. In his misery Jean watched the faces of
Fernand Cazenave and one of Noémi's uncles; what were they whispering
about? Like a deaf mute he guessed this phrase by the movement of their
lips: "If they had only listened to us, this misfortune might have been
avoided, but our position made it very difficult to interfere...."
V
THE bedroom in the Family Hotel at Arcachon was furnished in imitation
bamboo; no curtain concealed the utensils under the wash-hand stand, and
the wallpaper was soiled by crushed mosquitoes. Through the open window
came a salt breeze from the harbour, smelling of fish and seaweed, and
the purring of a motor-boat grew fainter and fainter as it neared the
channel. Two guardian angels hid their ashamed faces in the folds of the
cretonne curtains. When the numbed senses of the man at last awoke, he
found beside him a woman still as lifeless as a corpse. At dawn a faint
moan marked the end of the struggle. Jean lay motionless now, bathed in
perspiration--the worm had finally abandoned the corpse.
She lay there like a sleeping martyr, her face thin and drawn like that
of a beaten child, and her hair matted upon her brow as though she had
been struggling with death. Her hands, crossed upon her breast, clutched
a faded scapular and some blest medals. Someone should have kissed those
white feet, lifted that young body without breaking the magic of sleep,
borne it out to the open seas and surrendered it to the pure waves.
VI
IN spite of a three weeks' excursion for which the couple had taken
tickets, they returned unexpectedly to the Péloueyre house ten days
after the wedding. Tongues began to wag, and the Cazenaves hastened,
though it was not Thursday, to call and draw their own conclusions, but
Noémi's face revealed nothing of her private thoughts. The d'Artiailhs
and the priest did their best to stop the flow of gossip: the young
people preferred the peaceful atmosphere of home to the hubbub of hotels
and stations. After High Mass, Noémi, well dressed and smiling, greeted
her friends. She laughed; therefore she was happy. Her attendance at
daily mass, however, was strange. Some of the women noticed that she
kept her face covered for a long time after Communion, and that it
showed obvious signs of suffering when she removed her hands. From this
they deduced that Noémi was pregnant. Aunt Félicité appeared one day
to make a furtive estimate of the size of the young woman's waist, but
Cadette was able to put her mind at rest and she refrained from further
visits, being, as she said, unwilling to create the impression that she
approved of this monstrous union contrived by priests. Her reappearance
at her brother's house, however, occurred simultaneously with the first
warnings of an unavoidable domestic drama.
To M. Jêrome's astonishment, his daughter-in-law cared for him with the
devotion of a Sister of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. At the appointed moments
she administered his medicines, ordered meals in strict accordance with
his diet, and with gentle firmness succeeded in producing absolute
silence for his afternoon nap. Jean, following his former custom on such
occasions, slipped out of the house and made his furtive way through
little winding streets to the edge of a field of millet. From his
hiding-place behind a pine tree he watched for magpies. If only he could
have held back each passing minute; if only evening would never come
again! But the shade thickened, and in the pines, twisted by equinoctial
gales, there was a faint echo of the rolling surf upon the sands of
Mimizan and Biscarosse. Little cabins of heather rose up out of a thick
growth of ferns, from which the sportsmen of _Les Landes_ shot
ring-doves. The smell of rye-bread came from the farm, and as the sun
sank from view, Jean brought down his last lark. He made his way back to
the village with increasingly slower steps; only a few moments more and
Noémi would be unpleasantly conscious of his presence in the house. He
tip-toed across the hall, but she was waiting for him and came forward
carrying a lamp and smiling a welcome. She bent her forehead for a kiss,
and felt the weight of the game-bag: the gestures of a wife, happy at
the return of her beloved. But the mask was discarded after a few
moments, for it had not served its purpose, and during dinner, M.
Jêrome took pity on the silent couple. Now that there was a young nurse
under his roof to care for him, he no longer felt the need of
elaborating his symptoms, but Noémi had also undertaken to interview
his farmers, so the running of his estate formed a subject for
conversation. M. Jêrome was amazed to find that she was the only person
in the house who understood how to check the bailiff's figures and keep
an eye on the sale of timber for pit-props, and he gave her the full
credit for the four pounds' weight he had put on since his son's
marriage.
When dinner was over, M. Jêrome dozed with his feet against the
fire-dogs, leaving the two young people to face one another helplessly.
Jean, sitting as far from the lamp as possible, tried to obscure
himself--scarcely breathed. But he was unalterably there, and Cadette
would certainly bring the candles at ten o'clock. Oh, that dreadful
climbing of stairs!
A fine rain hissed upon the tiles, a shutter flapped, and a cart jolted
down the street. Noémi knelt by the dreaded bed and prayed in a low
voice: "Oh, God, I thank Thee for giving me the power to know and love
Thee...." In the darkness, Jean was conscious that the adored body was
drawing away from him, and he kept to his side of the bed. Sometimes
Noémi, laying her hand upon his face--less hateful when she could not
see it--felt hot tears upon his cheeks and, filled with remorseful
sympathy, eyes closed and lips tight together, she clasped the wretched
boy in her arms like a Christian Virgin in the arena who throws herself
with sudden resignation into the jaws of death.
VII
THE shooting of wood pigeons provided Jean with an excuse for spending
his days away from her to whom his mere presence was a torture. He got
up so quietly in the mornings that Noémi did not wake, and when she
opened her eyes he had left the house and was driving in a little cart
over the muddy roads. He unharnessed his horse at a farm, hid himself
close to the hut, and whittled a signal, fearing lest some doves might
already be in sight. Cadette's grandson replied that all was clear, and
the waiting began. Long, mist-wrapped, dreaming hours: tinkling
sheep-bells, shepherds calling faintly, rooks cawing in the tree-tops.
At four o'clock Jean started for home, but in order to arrive as late as
possible he went for a moment into the church. His lips did not form any
prayer, but his heart bled before a hidden presence. Tears came
frequently, and it seemed to him that his head was resting upon
invisible knees. Later, Jean threw his day's bag of slate-coloured birds
upon the kitchen table, their crops still swollen with acorns. His boots
smoked when he stretched them towards the fire, and the warm tongue of
a dog touched his hand. Cadette was putting bread in the soup, and Jean
followed her into the dining-room. Noémi spoke to him: "I didn't know
you had come back...." Then--"Aren't you going to wash your hands?" The
shutters of his room were still open, and in the rain-water in the ruts
the reflection of a lantern glittered coldly. Jean washed his hands
without cleaning his fingernails, and at first the edge of the dining
table prevented Noémi from seeing them. He watched her furtively; how
white her ears were!
Noémi's appetite had gone, and Jean insisted clumsily upon her taking a
second helping of mutton: "But I tell you I'm not hungry!" A little
smile of apology, or perhaps the pouting suggestion of a kiss calmed his
brief impatience. Noémi looked at her husband with the eyes of a
God-fearing person at the point of death, and the smile that played
about her mouth was forced as though to cheer a dying friend. It was
Jean, Jean Péloueyre, who had banished the gleam from her eyes, and the
colour from her cheeks, her lips, and her ears. His mere presence was
cutting at the roots of her life, and he loved her the better for the
suffering he caused her. No victim had ever been so adored by its
tormentor.
M. Jêrome alone flourished. Troubles other than his own were not
apparent to him, and his announcement that he was conscious of a
definite improvement in the state of his health abounded everyone. His
asthma allowed him a certain freedom, and he could now sleep until dawn
without the help of a narcotic. To have denied admittance to Dr.
Pieuchon whose son was spitting blood and undergoing treatment from his
father had, M. Jêrome said, brought him good luck. He had broken with
his old friend through fear of contagion, and he declared that his
daughter-in-law could minister to all his needs--she was more competent
than a doctor. Nothing, not even the ceremonies of his toilet, dismayed
her. Under her supervision his loathsome diet became quite delicious.
The juice of an orange or a lemon and sometimes a spoonful of old
_Armagnac_ filled the gaps left by forbidden condiments, and produced a
thing which M. Jêrome swore he had lacked for fifteen years--an
appetite. And after a few shy attempts, Noémi was able to establish the
habit of encouraging her father-in-law's digestion by reading aloud to
him. She was indefatigable, and could carry it through to a finish
without showing that she heard his short regular breathing, the overture
to sleep. One o'clock would strike; an hour less of shuddering disgust
in the darkness of the room above, of waiting for the loathsome body
beside her to move from the sleep simulated out of pity for her. Often
the touch of a leg waked her, and she would creep into the crevice
between the bed and the wall where the slightest touch made her tremble
with apprehension. Then Jean, believing her to be asleep, would risk a
furtive caress, and it was Noémi's turn to pretend, left he should be
tempted to go further.
VIII
THERE were no lovers' quarrels; they had already wounded each other too
deeply for that, and the smallest transgression would have meant the
end. Each one was careful not to hurt the other's feelings--their lives
were planned carefully to this purpose. While Noémi was undressing,
Jean looked away, and he was careful never to be present while she was
washing. He was more particular about his toilet, ordered some _eau de
Lubin_ with which he drenched himself, and every morning went shivering
to his tub. Jean believed himself to be entirely to blame for the
catastrophe, and Noémi hated herself for not being a wife pleasing to
God. They never exchanged reproachful glances, but there was always a
mute yearning for pardon in the eyes of each. They decided to say their
prayers together; though enemies in the flesh they could unite in their
nightly prostrations before their Creator. Their two voices at least
might mingle and rise together into the Infinite.
One morning they met quite by chance at the bedside of an old cripple,
and this common interest was eagerly made use of. It was the first bond
between them, and thenceforth every week they visited the sick together,
each giving the other the credit for the idea. During the other six
days, Noémi avoided Jean, or rather her body sought to escape his, and
Jean sought to escape the disgust that Noémi tried in vain to conquer.
One mournful November morning, though she hated walking, Noémi forced
herself to follow Jean across the sandy heathland to the edge of the
marshes where, in the silence that precedes a tempest, one could hear
the dull thunder of the Atlantic on the shore. Noémi saw that there
were no more blue-eyed gentians in the heather; she ran ahead as though
trying to lose Jean, and left him to follow after her.
The shepherds of Béarn, from whom Jean was descended, had possessed the
right of pasture over these waste lands, and, at the muddy opening of a
well they had dug for their flocks centuries before, he came up with her
and stood thinking of the old shepherds who were afflicted with
pellagra, that mysterious disease of _Les Landes_, and were found at the
bottom of a well or with their heads plunged in the mire at the edge of
a pond. Ah, if only he too might embrace this greedy soil that had
moulded him in its likeness, and breathe out his last breath in a long
stifling kiss.
IX