father-in-law. He called her "my child," and she offered him a glass of
sloe gin, but for some reason he and M. Jêrome no longer indulged in
their customary theological discussions, nor did the priest produce his
usual diverting series of clerical anecdotes. The Péloueyres wore masks
against his scrutiny, and three pairs of expressionless eyes met and
baffled his prying gaze. He no longer felt at ease with these people who
rarely spoke; everything he said seemed to lead up to a door
mysteriously closed, and, stretching his short fat legs towards the
fire, he shot rapid searching glances at the silent couple. He spoke
with less than his habitual positiveness, seemed much less sure of
himself, and it had been a long time since he had told the story, as he
loved to do, of his latest argument with a certain Rationalist of his
acquaintance in which this phrase was often to be heard: "And I replied
crushingly...." M. Jêrome declared that he had never known the priest
in such despair since the time when the former Mayor had proposed to
have the bells rung for civil burials, and to use the hearse that
belonged to the church. The priest wanted Jean to continue his research
work in local history; it had been undertaken with avidity, but
neglected during the past year. The young man made out that some
important documents were inaccessible, but the truth was that he could
never carry any work through to a finish. The early pages of his books
were crowded with notes, but the rest were not even cut. The perpetual
need to walk and think things out at his leisure took him away from his
work. One evening after M. Jêrome had retired, the priest brought the
subject up again and insisted upon a hearing. Jean declared himself
incapable of proceeding without access to some special notes in the
National Library; but how was he to go to Paris? "And why couldn't you
go, my dear child?" The priest put this question in a low voice; his
fingers played with the fringe of his belt, and his eyes never left the
fire. A weak voice murmured: "I don't want Jean to leave me." But the
priest was firm; it would be a sin not to develop Jean's talents. He was
incapable of holding a class for study, or of organizing any charitable
work, and it would not do for him to be idle any longer. The holy man
went on developing his argument, and the low sad voice at his elbow
murmured again with apparent effort: "If Jean goes to Paris, I will go
with him." But the priest shook his head: Noémi was indispensable to
the dear invalid, and in any case the separation need only be a short
one: a few weeks, at most a month or two. Noémi was powerless to
protest. No further word was spoken, and the priest put on his padded
overcoat and his sabots. Jean threw his cloak about his shoulders and
preceded his guest with a lantern.
The short days of a rainy December prevented the young people from
escaping one another except when Jean went out after woodcock, and on
these occasions he had no excuse to remain out after four. Indoors,
their two bodies were drawn together in the sitting-room by the lamp and
the fire. A gentle rain whispered about the house, and the acuteness of
the pain in M. Jêrome's left shoulder was obvious from the continued
complaints it occasioned. Noémi seemed in better spirits; she made
daily efforts to dissuade Jean from his idea of a journey to Paris. She
had vowed to heaven to do everything in her power to keep him with her.
Her pleadings prevented the unfortunate Jean from falling into a
permanent state of indecision and, by giving him the idea that she did
not want him to go, forced him to make up his mind. He looked up at her
with the eyes of a punished dog: "But I must go, Noémi." And she
protected, but if he showed signs of giving in, she never pressed the
point, and soon changed the subject. M. Jêrome, though the line from
_The Two Pigeons_, "Absence causes the worst suffering of all," was
seldom out of his mind, experienced a secret joy when he imagined
himself living alone with his daughter-in-law. And at every meeting with
Jean the priest continued to plague him. What chance had the poor boy
against such a conspiracy? He was really pleased with the verdict of
banishment; except for a pilgrimage to Lourdes and the honeymoon at
Arcachon, he had never left his niche, and to submerge himself in the
tumult of Paris would be like foundering in a human ocean more
terrifying than the Atlantic. But there were too many minds set upon his
plunging into the abyss, and his departure was fixed for the second week
in February.
Long before that date Noémi began to occupy herself with his trunk and
the clothes that were to be packed in it, and she had partially
recovered her appetite before the day arrived. Her cheeks recaptured
their colour, and one afternoon from the first floor window Jean watched
her making snowballs to throw at Cadette's grandson. He completely
understood this resurrection. The earth was freeing itself from the
clutches of winter, and Noémi was freeing herself of him. He was
leaving her to blossom again in the spring.
Jean lowered the dirty window of the railway carriage so that he might
see the last wave of Noémi's handkerchief. How gaily it fluttered, this
signal of farewell and joy! During the last week she so overwhelmed him
with feigned affection that one night, when he thought she responded
faintly to his touch, he murmured: "Noémi, suppose I don't go after
all!" Though the room was dark, and though she almost stifled her
answering exclamation, he knew that he had terrified her and could not
help adding: "Don't worry. I'll go." This was all he said, Noémi knew
that she had not deceived him. She turned her face to the wall, and he
heard her crying.
Jean watched the familiar pines passing the window, and he recognized a
thicket where he had once missed a woodcock. The railway followed the
road over which he had so often driven in his cart, and a farm that he
knew by name--the tenant was a friend of his--glided past in mist and
smoke. It was at the edge of an empty field, and he caught a glimpse of
the bread-oven, the stable and the well. Then he changed to another
train which carried him across a barren stretch of land unknown to him,
and at Langon he saw the last pines; they were like friends who had come
with him as far as they could, and were finally obliged to stop and
bellow a last blessing with their outspread arms.
X
HE took a room at the first hotel he encountered on the Quai Voltaire.
In the mornings, he looked out through the rain at the river he had not
yet dared to cross; at midday he ventured into the restaurant at the
Gare d'Orléans where he could listen to the soothing roar of trains
carrying happy travellers to the south-west. When his lunch was eaten
and his bottle of white wine empty, he drank two liqueurs, not daring to
remain at his table without reason, and his nimble mind skipped off into
the Absolute. His peculiarities sometimes brought smiles to the faces of
those about him, but for the most part he was unnoticed in his corner
between the vestibule and a pillar. He read the newspapers,
advertisements and all: murders, suicides, crimes of jealousy and
madness--all these things helped to satisfy his appetite for the tragic
facts of life. After dinner Jean bought a platform ticket and sought out
the carriages that bore the name Irun. The next morning its windows
would hold the reflection of monotonous heather-covered plains. He had
calculated that this carriage would pass within fifty miles, as the crow
flies, of his father's house, and he laid his hand upon it. When the
train began to move out of the station he watched it with the eyes of a
man who sees half of himself vanishing into space. Later at his table
again, he abandoned himself despairingly to the influence of the
restaurant orchestra. The ghost of Noémi took possession of him, and
his thoughts thronged about her body which he had only seen while she
slept. Through those long September nights when the moonlight fell upon
the bed, Jean had probably come to know this body more intimately than
if he had been her chosen lover and they had clasped each other in
mutual ecstasy. She was always like a corpse in his arms, and his visual
possession was therefore complete. Perhaps we know the woman who does
not love us better than any other.
At that very moment, Noémi lay in the great cold bedroom, happy, and
untroubled by a repulsive presence,--asleep in the bed he had deserted.
Jean, still at his table, was acutely conscious of the joy and relief
that his absence had brought her; anger flamed up within him, and he
pressed his hands to his head. He would go back and compel her to submit
to his desires, and insist upon enjoying himself at whatever the cost to
her. He would make use of her. Then her face rose up in his mind; the
same submissive expression, the same inanimate whiteness, the same
passive surrender--a tree offering its fruit. He remembered her
speechless horror; her wishes for death.... Paying for his drinks, he
hurried along the quay to his hotel, and undressed in the dark in order
not to see himself in the mirror.
Every three days he found an envelope on his breakfast tray which he
sometimes did not open until evening. What did these hypocritical wishes
for his return matter to him? The only pleasure these letters brought
him was the fact that Noémi's hand had touched them, that her little
finger-nail had scratched a faint line beneath each word. Towards the
end of March he thought he could detect a trace of sincerity in the
lines she wrote him: "If you don't believe I want to see you again, it
is because you do not know your wife." And again: "I miss you." Jean
crumpled her letter in his hand, and re-read one from his father that
had come by the same post: "You will find Noémi changed for the better;
she has put on weight and is in superb health. She is spoiling me to
such an extent that I can hardly remember to thank her for her
attentions. The Cazenaves never come here, but I know they think you two
have quarrelled. Let them say what they please. I am very fit, unlike
young Pieuchon who can only go out in a carriage and who is thought by
everyone to be dying in spite of a doctor from B---- who pretends he is
curing him with iodine and water. The old outlast the young."
With the first spring days Jean took courage and crossed one of the
bridges. Just after the sun had set, he stood looking into the river,
and his hands caressed the warm stone parapet as though it were a human
being. Someone whispered at his shoulder; she called him "darling" and
asked him to come with her. He turned and saw a young face close to his,
pale under its paint. A swollen nailless hand sought his, but he turned
and fled along the quay to the gate of the Louvre where he flopped,
breathing hard. Could he have answered the summons of such a creature?
For the first time he indulged himself with thoughts of a woman other
than Noémi. He could not expect to thrill her, but she would at least
be indifferent and not disgusted with him. Even as slight an enjoyment
as that was inconceivable, he reflected bitterly, and anger again flamed
within him. Why not give in to-night, and lose himself in the indulgent
and willing embraces of one of these women? Were they in the world for
everyone but a Péloueyre, these dispensers of love? At eight o'clock he
watched the sky trembling in the pond in the Tuileries gardens; a
laughing crowd of children gathered to watch his strange gesturings, and
he hurried away. In the rue Royale he courageously crossed the threshold
of a famous cabaret. He sat close to the door facing the bar to which a
chattering throng attached itself as to a mahogany drinking-trough. He
was delighted to find that his appearance caused no surprise to the
women, or to the fat black-haired head waiters--the rats that infest
expensive restaurants. In this glittering resort there were too many
queer-looking savages from across the Atlantic, too many farmers and
provincial notaries for anyone to laugh at Jean Péloueyre. Some Vouvray
brought colour to his cheeks, and he smiled at the cattle round the
mahogany trough. A big blonde woman left her stool and asked him for a
light, drank from his glass, promised to make him happy for five louis,
and then went back to her perch expectantly. An old man at the next
table urged him to wait till the closing hour "because those who are
left make you better prices then," but Jean paid his bill, and the woman
joined him on the pavement outside. She called a taxi and drove her
client to a house behind the Madeleine. The door opened directly on to
the street as though to draw in all its odours. The tinkle of hairpins
on marble awoke Jean from his lethargy; her arms were enormous at the
point where they joined her shoulders, and bows of pink ribbon adorned a
broad expanse of trembling flesh. She called him her wolf, and with
infinite care began to remove her artificial silk stockings. Before this
quick consent, this surrender without any trace of disgust, Jean
experienced more acute agony of mind than when Noémi's body cried "No!"
to him in the stillness.
The stupefied woman saw him throw a note upon the table, and before she
could protest he was gone, speeding down the street like a robber.
People were streaming along the boulevards, and Jean was filled with the
happiness that comes after some great danger has been averted. Then the
lure of gaunt leafless chestnut trees enticed him to the Champs
Elysées, and he sat upon an empty bench, breathless and coughing a
little. The arc-lights outshone the waning moon, but he knew that its
quiet gleam fell upon the sombre uplands between the Pyrenees and the
Atlantic. His agony had passed from him and his purity remained; he
revelled in his wretched chastity. Sometime he and Noémi would love
each other all through an endless summer's day, and he imagined what
this exalted union of the flesh would be like. Ah, that bright shining
light in which their immortal, their incorruptible bodies would come
together! Jean spoke aloud: "There are no masters; we are all born
slaves to be emancipated by Thee, Lord." A policeman approached the
bench, looked at him for a moment, and passed on with a shrug of his
shoulders.
Jean installed himself every afternoon at one of the little tables in
front of the Café de la Paix, on the edge of a melancholy river of
faces. Degrading diseases, alcohol and drugs had produced an
unimaginably loathsome similarity in the features of the multitude that
passed him, and these had once been children's faces. Jean counted the
prostitutes eagerly hunting for employment, and tried to amuse himself
by guessing what vice one particular man with an eyeglass and a sagging
lower lip sought to satisfy. Anxiously he searched the crowd for a face
bearing the mark of a Master. The sight of just one of these elect
beings would have caused him to jump from his chair in eager pursuit.
But he saw only shifting eyes, trembling hands and faces polluted by
unnatural lust. If such a Master had existed, would he have been
immortal? Jean, waving his arms and gesticulating at his table on the
boulevard as wildly as in one of the back streets of his own town, took
to himself Pascal's phrase about the end of the most brilliant career in
the world: "One always loses the game!" One always loses the game; even
your brain, Nietzsche!
The people about him began to nudge one another; a woman spoke to him
and he leapt from his seat, threw some coins upon the table, and hurried
away. But he could hear the woman's words: "You don't often see anything
as soft as that!" He scampered like a rat along the inner edge of the
flowing tumult, close to the shop windows, and all the time he was
working out a plan for a decisive essay which he would call: _The Will
to Power and Holiness_. Every now and then a mirror presented him with a
reflection that he did not recognize; bad food was making him thinner
than ever, and the dust of Paris irritated his throat. He should have
given up cigarettes altogether, but he now smoked more than ever and was
continually coughing and spitting. Attacks of dizziness often obliged
him to cling to lamp posts, and he usually preferred starving himself to
suffering a burning pain in his stomach. Would he be picked out of the
gutter one day like a dead cat? Then Noémi would be free of him....
Such were his thoughts as he sat in a cinema where the uninterrupted
music rather than the screen had drawn him. He often went into Turkish
bath establishments, feverish and exhausted: the light behind calico
curtains, the dripping of taps, and then the fading of consciousness.
Jean's reason for seeking the protection of places like this was that
the only church he knew in Paris was the Madeleine; there was no other
on his way from the hotel to the Café de la Paix. But one day he took a
less roundabout route and discovered Saint-Roch: its shadowy interior
became his daily refuge. Even the smell of it was like his own church,
and the Presence was there close to one of the great city's crowded
thoroughfares, as definitely as in the obscure town from which he came.
Not once did he cross the threshold of a library.
He might have existed in this way till the end of his life, had not a
letter from the priest arrived one morning to call him home. The letter
was a pressing one in spite of the fact that it contained the most
satisfactory news of M. Jêrome and Noémi. Greatly distressed, Jean
took his place in the carriage bearing the name Irun, a part of the
train he had so often watched gliding slowly and then more rapidly out
of the station, feeling that a part of himself went with it towards the
South-West.
XI
THIS summons was not occasioned by any special event; the priest had
resolved to write one day after Noémi had confessed her weekly
collection of venial sins, and had begged for her preceptor's spiritual
assistance in withstanding certain temptations and disturbances whose
exact nature she did not divulge.
Jean's departure had afforded her a certain delicious languor, a sort of
convalescence. To her, solitude was an endless joy, and she allowed
herself full enjoyment of it. Although incapable of self-analysis, she
felt herself to be another person. She was living her old life again,
but she knew perfectly well that she was no longer a girl. Her disgust
with matrimony had kept her from realizing that it had made her a woman;
this stranger within her was now beginning to make mysterious demands.
She was so disconcerted at her inability to recover the peace of mind
she had known before her marriage that she could not explain to herself
the struggle between her dormant thoughts and her half-awakened flesh.
Her mental horror had been intense, certainly, but the flesh never
forgets the ordeals to which it has been submitted. Noémi's prayer book
represented the extent of her reading, and her state of poverty and
gentle birth deprived her of intimate friendships; there was nothing in
her life that could explain this insistent craving. And then Chance
enlightened her.
The March sunlight flashed in the pools of rain water that dappled the
square. During M. Jêrome's siesta the house lay under a spell of
silence; even the furniture refrained from cracking. Noémi, like all
the other women in the town, sat sewing just inside one of the ground
floor windows; the shutters were half closed. Her work-table was covered
with mending, some of which had fallen to the floor. There was a noise
of wheels outside, and she saw that a light gig had drawn up close to
the window. A young man sat holding the reins, obviously in search of
guidance, but the square was empty. Noémi pushed the shutters wide open
and the young man turned towards her, took off his hat, and asked to be
directed to Dr. Pieuchon's house. She told him the way, and he bowed,
touched his horse with the whip, and disappeared. Noémi took up her
mending again and spent the rest of the day plying her needle, her
thoughts far from the face that had left its image in her mind. The next
day, at the same time, the unknown young man drove by again. He did not
stop, but, as he passed, drew in the reins slightly and looked in
through the half-closed shutters. He bowed.
At the evening meal, M. Jêrome said he had it from the priest that Dr.
Pieuchon's son was worse, and that a young doctor whose method was
highly thought of had been called in from the sub-prefecture. He treated
tuberculosis with tincture of iodine in heavy doses; the patient had to
swallow hundreds of drops diluted with water. M. Jêrome expressed his
doubts as to whether young Pieuchon's stomach could cope with such a
mixture.
Every day the gig drove by, and every day it slowed down in front of the
Péloueyre house, but the shutters always remained half-closed. The
young doctor bowed to the strip of shadow where Noémi sat unseen. The
town became interested in the iodine cure, and all the consumptives in
the district adopted it; people said that young Pieuchon was improving.
Spring came before its appointed time, and at the end of March the
warmth broke the bonds of winter. One evening Noémi undressed with her
window open; she rested her elbows on the sill and looked out into the
darkness in a state of melancholy happiness that precluded sleep. At
night, by some secret process, this man's face, hitherto little more
than a vague impression, became almost a visual revelation. For the
first time, she deliberately allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it: this
stranger had bowed to her each day without even seeing her. Would it not
be more suitable if, the next morning, she were to open the shutters and
return his greeting? A decision to do this produced a pleasant emotion,
and she stood awhile at the window before getting into bed. She evoked
what she had seen during the few seconds of their only conversation:
black curly hair beneath the raised hat; a short moustache and thick red
lips; a rough tweed suit, and from its pocket the clasp of a fountain
pen shining; no tie, but a soft tussore shirt, open at the neck.
Noémi, whose impulses were generally instinctive, was, however,
accustomed to examining her conscience. She was on her guard now, and
the first alarm came when she was kneeling by her bed; she had to begin
her prayers over and over again, for a sunburnt smiling face intruded
itself into her communion with God. She lay for some time, a prey to
this apparition, and upon waking the first clear thought that rose out
of her dream-troubled consciousness was that she would soon be seeing
him again. All through mass that morning, Noémi kept her face hidden in
her hands. During M. Jêrome's siesta the gig drove past, and slackened
speed, but the shutters on the ground floor of the Péloueyre house were
all closed.
It was then that the disquieting letter was sent to Jean in Paris;
Noémi had written, "I miss you." Lately she had been sitting in the
dark room until the gig drove past, and then had pushed open the
shutters and taken up her mending. One afternoon, she came to the
conclusion that over-scrupulousness was a sin like any other. "I'm
getting worked up over nothing at all," she thought, and decided to lean
out of the window and return the young doctor's greeting. She thought
she heard the rattle of wheels and her hand went to the fastening, but
for the first time for a fortnight the gig did not drive past.
When the time came to give M. Jêrome his valerian, Noémi could not
help telling him that the new doctor had not visited the Pieuchons, and
she learned that the invalid had had a relapse the day before, that he
could no longer take the iodine. The priest had brought the news of a
bad hemorrhage; the spring was a dangerous time of the year for
consumptives. He also reported that Dr. Pieuchon had quarrelled with his
young colleague, who no doubt would not dare to show himself in the
neighbourhood again. Noémi interviewed one of the farmers, helped
Cadette to fold up the washing, and at six o'clock went to her
devotions. On her way home, she called in as usual at her parents'
house. After dinner, she complained of a headache, and went to her room.
She began to lead a more active life, and occupied herself with the
poultry; her broods were a great success. Then she remembered social
obligations and, in her best clothes, made her annual round of visits,
the solemn practice of all the ladies of the town. After that came the
farmers. She enjoyed driving along the forest roads that had been opened
up by heavy farm carts. Cadette's grandson sat beside her, acting as
coachman on these occasions. There were splashes of yellow gorse in the
dried bracken; a few dead leaves clung to the oaks in trembling
resistance to the warm southerly breeze. A round pool held the
untroubled reflection of tall reddish trunks, dark feathery green
foliage, and the blue of the sky. Resin was oozing from innumerable
freshly made incisions in the pines, and the heat of the sun filled the
air with its pungent odour. The cuckoo's soft notes recalled other
springs, and the two young people laughed lightheartedly as the jolting
of the cart bumped them against each other. The next morning, Noémi was
so tired that the bailiff had to be asked to finish the round of the
farms. Except at mass, no one saw her again till the morning of Jean's
return.
XII
SHE went to the station and waited for him in the sunlight on the
platform. She wore a low-necked muslin frock and cotton mittens, and
round her neck hung a medallion upon which were painted two cupids
struggling with a goat. Some children were trying to walk upon one of
the rails; the whistle of the little train could be heard long before it
appeared. Noémi was determined that her emotion at the approaching
moment should be one of joy. In Jean's absence, her memory of his
features had undergone certain modifications; she had as it were
re-created him in a form that was no longer repulsive, and her mental
image of him was insidiously redrawn. She was so intent upon loving him
that she believed herself to be only waiting for the train's arrival
that she might clasp this unreal Jean in her arms. It was true that the
ghost of a longing glance might have fluttered against her will towards
another face, but before God there had never once entered her mind even
the suggestion of indiscretion. And in return for this, she felt sure
she would be granted the relief of seeing a husband get out of the train
quite different from the one whose departure had been a deliverance.
Jean made his appearance upon the step of a second-class carriage. He
was indeed a different Jean now, and Cadette's grandson eagerly took the
valise from his thin white hands. He walked unsteadily down the platform
on Noémi's arm: "But Jean, dear, you're ill!" and he saw as much change
in her as she did in him. How she had improved because of his absence!
She was even more the resplendent female and he the wizened stunted male
than in the priest's parlour not so many months ago. The couple caused a
good deal of whispering at the station, and the presence of the
newsagent, the station master, and the porter, filled Jean with shame.
Noémi said: "I should have driven to meet you in the carriage. Why
didn't you write me that you were ill?" And when they reached the house,
she prepared his bed and washed his face and hands; she put a table at
his elbow, covered it with a white napkin, and gave him the pile of
reviews that had accumulated, unread, in his absence. Jean watched her
with his sharp little eyes, as a child watches its nurse.
M. Jêrome was against calling in Doctor Pieuchon; he was exasperated at
the idea of anyone in the house being ill but himself. His son was
barely in bed when he too retired to his, declaring himself to be
suffering agonies of pain in every part of his body and loudly refusing
the proffered attentions of Cadette. Noémi went to him as soon as she
could, not to see how he was, but to get his permission to call in the
doctor. He refused point-blank. Pieuchon would not leave the bedside of
his germ-ridden son. If she wanted to see a doctor, why not send for the
young man with the iodine? Noémi looked away, saying that she had no
confidence in him, and anyhow, speaking of germs, wasn't he attending
all the consumptives in the district? M. Jêrome silenced her angrily:
he had said all he had to say and would thank her to stop pestering him;
whereupon he turned his nose to the wall, and at regular intervals came
the sighing and the "Oh, God! Oh, God!" that used to waken Jean in the
silence of the night.
Noémi found the housemaid unfolding an emergency bed. All that could be
seen of Jean was a pair of bright feverish eyes, two flaming cheeks, and
a nose that seemed more pointed than ever. He stuttered out his
complaints: he was cold in the big bed; he had always preferred a narrow
one and now, at least until after the doctor had examined him, it would
be unwise for them to sleep together. She would have liked to protest,
to pretend that his objections had deceived her; but the words would not
come. She leaned over and kissed his moist forehead, but he turned away;
the gratitude that had prompted the kiss was horrible to him.
The day drew peacefully and dismally to a close. Jean slept in the
silent room, only waking when the spoon tinkled against the saucer. He
was not very ill, but Noémi supported him while he drank, and he
swallowed slowly in order to keep her cool arm behind his neck as
long as possible. At dusk the church bells began to ring, and from the
court came the voice of Cadette's grandson: "Hue! Dia!"; he was
harnessing one of the horses. M. Jêrome half opened the door; his bare
feet were slippered, and he wore an old dressing gown spotted with
medicine. He was ashamed of his behaviour an hour or two since, and
wanted to be forgiven for it, but the pretended reasons for his visit
were anxiety and a desire to be reassured as to his son's condition.
Cadette had been ordered to send her grandson to fetch the young doctor
with the iodine. Jean objected that he was only a little tired--a few
days' rest was all he needed--and when he came the doctor would find no
justification for such an urgent call.
Noémi sat silently in her shadowy corner; she listened to the rattle of
cart-wheels growing fainter and fainter and, without a sob or any
movement of her body, she wept. A sudden shower pelted against the
windows, hastening the fall of night, and neither she nor Jean thought
of lighting the lamp until Cadette came to lay a table for supper near
Jean's bed. While they ate, Noémi asked him whether he had finished the
work for which he had gone to Paris. Jean shook his head, and she asked
no further questions.
The cart clattered again in the court. "There's the doctor," Jean said,
and Noémi stood up and edged away out of the lamplight. The sound of
his voice and footsteps were to her ears like the rumbling of an
imminent storm. Cadette opened the door and he entered the room looking
stouter than Noémi had expected; people called him a "handsome devil."
He had black hair and a high colour; his eyes boldly sought Noémi's and
then slowly followed every contour of her body. He too had been thinking
about her! Noémi trembled in her haven of obscurity while the doctor
examined the invalid. "Please unbutton your shirt. A handkerchief will
do, Madame. Now count thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three...." In the
lamplight Jean's protruding bones were pitifully evident. No, there was
nothing alarming in M. Péloueyre's condition, but they would have to
keep an eye on his lungs. A tonic was prescribed, and some injections of
cacodyl. From time to time during the examination the young doctor
glanced at Noémi. How could he help thinking that it was she who had
contrived to get him into the house? If not, it was absurd to have asked
a doctor to drive four miles in the evening to examine a young man who
was suffering from fatigue.
He sat for a while with them, ponderously denying that he had ever
pretended he could cure such an advanced case as young Pieuchon with his
iodine treatment. His rustic drawl made a deep masculine sound in the
room. Noémi felt herself being watched, but the young man saw only a
silent shadowy form. He spoke of forestalling the disease, and explained
that M. Péloueyre was like soil specially prepared for the growth of
bacilli: "I might call him 'tuberculisable' soil. Didn't the late Mme.
Péloueyre die of consumption?" The technical jargon fell strangely from
lips that were made for kissing.
M. Péloueyre would have to be watched, the doctor said, and he stood up
expecting the usual request to call again to see his patient. But Noémi
was silent, and he asked bluntly whether M. Péloueyre would like him to
continue his visits, if only to give him the injections. "What do you
think, Noémi?" No reply was forthcoming and Jean asked again, thinking
she had not heard. "Say what you think, Noémi; shall the doctor come
again?" This time she brought out a reply: "It will be quite
unnecessary," and Jean was afraid that he would take offence at the tone
of her voice. He put the burden of the decision upon the doctor, who
replied without embarrassment that he would come the moment he was sent
for. Noémi took the lamp and preceded him out of the room; then she
felt his warm breath upon her neck as she rapidly descended the stairs.
The cart was waiting at the door, and he took his seat beside Cadette's
grandson without receiving a single glance from her. The boy clucked to
the horse whose hind quarters were visible in the gleam of the carriage
light. Then the wind blew out the lamp Noémi was holding, and she stood
in the darkness upon the threshold of that lifeless house, listening
while the noise of the wheels died away in the night. She could not
sleep, for Jean was tossing feverishly and muttering unintelligible
phrases in his iron bed. She got up to tuck in the bedclothes, and laid
her hand upon his forehead as though he were the baby that would never
be born to her.
XIII
TWO days later Jean was himself again and he dropped back into his old
life. He stole out of the house during M. Jêrome's siesta to carry on
his old warfare against the magpies, and when the light failed he
entered the church and waited until there was nothing for it but to go
home. Noémi's lately acquired radiance had already begun to fade, and
Jean saw the dark rings appearing under those eyes that looked at him so
sadly and with such submissive tenderness. He had hoped that his exile
from the nuptial bed would enable Noémi to get used to having him at
home again. She was desperately fighting down her disgust, and the
mental struggle was telling on her. Sometimes she called him in the
night to come to her, and when he pretended to be asleep she got up and
kissed him as he lay in his narrow bed--a kiss like those given to
lepers by the saints of long ago. No one can say whether the lepers were
refreshed by the breath of saints upon their sores, but Jean Péloueyre
had reached the point of wrenching himself free from these embraces, and
it was he who cried in horror: "Let me alone!"
Tangled masses of lilac spread their disorder dark against the high
garden walls; the evening air was heavy with the scent of syringas, and
as the daylight faded, the may-beetles began their humming. It was the
month of May and after the Litany the priest said: "Your prayers are
requested for the success of the examinations of several young people;
the marriages of several young women; the conversion of a father of a
family; the health of a young man who is dangerously ill...." Everyone
knew that he referred to Dr. Pieuchon's son who was now past recovery.
The June lilies bloomed, and Noémi wondered why Jean no longer took his
gun with him when he left the house after lunch. Replying to her
question, he said that the magpies had got to know him too well; the
cunning devils wouldn't let him come anywhere near them. She feared that
his rambles were too much for him: he had usually come back with a trace
of animation in his face, but now he was always white and dejected,
pretending that the heat had taken away his colour. One night Noémi
heard him cough several times and asked in a low voice: "Are you asleep,
Jean?" He told her his throat was bothering him a little; it was nothing
serious. But she knew that he was trying not to cough. Lighting a
candle, she found him bathed in perspiration, and an agony of
apprehension took possession of her. His eyes were closed, and he gave
her the impression of being intent upon some mysterious process that was
going on within him. Then he opened his eyes and smiled up at her
tenderly, and into the confusion of her mind wrought by this unwonted
show of affection came a whispered request for a drink of water.
The next morning his temperature was sub-normal and Noémi was
reassured. She tried to persuade him not to go out after lunch, but her
efforts were of no avail and only displeased him. He took out his watch
as though afraid of being late for an appointment, and M. Jêrome
remarked jokingly that Noémi would be justified in thinking he was
hurrying off to some assignation. Jean said nothing, and his quick steps
echoed in the hall. Storm clouds began to spread over the sky, and the
leaves hung motionless as though fixed by the silence of the birds. All
through the afternoon Noémi sat by the window looking on to the street,
a prey to dark fears. At four o'clock a measured succession of subdued
notes came from the church bell, and she crossed herself for she knew
someone was at the point of death. She heard a voice in the square:
"It's for young Pieuchon; he almost died this morning." Big raindrops
fell into the hot dust, and the smell of the approaching storm came in
through the window. M. Jêrome was still asleep, so she went to the
kitchen to talk about Robert Pieuchon with Cadette. The old woman was
deaf, and had not heard the bell tolling. She said that Monsieur Jean
would tell them all about it, and, noticing Noémi's blank look, she
sighed and the tears rolled down over her cheeks. She was quite sure
that her mistress did not know it or she would have stopped poor
Monsieur Jean, delicate as he was, from spending so much time with young
Monsieur Pieuchon; every afternoon for the last month! He had forbidden
his old Cadette to mention it to anyone. Noémi pretended not to be
surprised; but she left the house at once. It had stopped raining, and a
dust-laden wind was dispersing the heavy storm clouds. The shutters of
the Pieuchon house had already been closed, and as Noémi drew near Jean
appeared at the front door. He was blinking his eyes in spite of the
half-light and, without seeing her, he turned instinctively towards the
church. His face was the colour of clay and there was something
unearthly in his expression. Noémi went down the steps into the church
after him and shivered in an earthy dampness as of a newly dug grave. It
was the chill that seizes the living when they go down into churches
which have been gradually sinking into the ground for centuries beneath
the heavy hand of time. And again Noémi heard the cough that had waked
her the night before; but this time it reverberated under the grey
arches endlessly.
XIV
JEAN'S bed had been moved down to one of the ground floor rooms that
looked on to the garden; when he had difficulty in breathing they pushed
it out upon the veranda, and he could watch the wind swaying green
branches against a blue sky. An ice machine stood near by, for almost
the only thing he could swallow except cold milk was a little faintly
flavoured water-ice. M. Jêrome came to see him, but stood smiling at a
safe distance. Jean would no doubt have preferred to hide his sufferings
in the bedroom upstairs, but he had chosen to die in the garden so that
Noémi might run the smallest possible risk of contagion. Injections of
morphine made him drowsy. Rest! Rest after those hideous afternoons
spent at the bedside of Robert Pieuchon, in agonies of despair at having
to abandon his life: lurid evenings at Bordeaux; dancing to the music of
barrel-organs in little suburban cafés; cycle rides in the country,
with dusty legs and delicious fatigue afterwards; and best of all:
amorous adventures with young women.
The Cazenaves were spreading the gossip that M. Jêrome's stinginess was
depriving Jean of the benefit of a milder climate and a higher altitude.
But Jean was the sort of person who preferred to die at home, and Doctor
Pieuchon professed that there was no climate for consumptives like the
forests of _Les Landes_. He hung the walls of the sick room with young
pines as though for Corpus Christi day, and placed jars overflowing with
resin by the bed. When he could think of nothing more to do, he called
in his young colleague, certain that Jean was now incapable of taking
iodine in heavy doses. Noémi's indifference when she received the
handsome youth was not complete enough to prevent her from noticing that
he paled slightly when their eyes met and their hands touched. After
each visit the pleasant realization came to her that nothing in the
world mattered but her husband lying there in the bed. Possibly, well
hidden at the back of her mind, there was the feeling that she had this
young male securely caught, and her calmness may have been due to the
knowledge that she would one day land him, alive and quivering.
Jean had forbidden Noémi to kiss him, but he gratefully accepted the
coolness of her hand upon his forehead. He must have thought that she
loved him, for he murmured: "I bless Thee forever, O God, for giving me
a woman's love before I die." And, as in the days of his solitary
wanderings, he turned the same line over and over again in his mind.
Noémi was counting his pulse, and, tired of his rosary, he repeated
Pauline's cry in a low voice: _Mon Polyeucte touche à son heure
dernière_. Then he smiled. He did not consider himself a martyr: people
had always called him: "Poor fellow," and he had believed they were
right. Backward glances over the grey waters of his life had always fed
his self-contempt. What stagnation! But now, under the leaden surface,
there was a secret welling up of vividly clear water, and for him who
had known little more of life than a corpse the gates of death would
open upon a new existence.
One evening Noémi found Doctor Pieuchon and the priest talking in the
hall, and she asked bitterly of them the reasons for their silence: why
hadn't they told her of Jean's daily visits at the bedside of the
consumptive? The doctor bowed his head, pleading ignorance of Jean's
condition. He was a man of unbounded kindness himself; why should he
have been surprised at devotion like his own in another, and devotion to
his own son? The priest defended himself more vigorously: Jean had
insisted upon silence, and the rôle of spiritual director necessitated
scrupulous discretion. "But it was you, Father, who were determined upon
that fatal journey to Paris." "Was it I alone, Noémi?" She leaned
against the wall, digging with one of her fingers at a little hole in
the marbled plaster. Jean's coughing sounded through the bedroom door,
and Cadette's dragging footsteps could be heard in the kitchen. The
priest spoke again: "I prayed for guidance, Noémi; we must praise the
ways of God." He put on his coat and departed, his mind full of
conflicting emotions; in hours of sleeplessness he wept over Jean
Péloueyre. To no purpose did he repeat to himself that Jean had made
his will in favour of Noémi, and that it was M. Jêrome's intention,
after his son's death, to give the house and as much as possible of his
property to his daughter-in-law--providing she did not re-marry. The
priest, though perhaps too apt to interfere in the lives of others, was
a conscientious man, and he questioned himself searchingly. He had never
thought that the marriage could be anything but happy--and, _sub specie
aeterni_, could anyone help wondering at the success of it? What profit
was there for him in the affair? He was a good shepherd whose one
concern was the welfare of his flock. Whenever he indulged in
self-judgement he invariably absolved himself, but his absolution was
never final. The dread of losing the power to discriminate between
justice and injustice was ever with him, and hesitation preceded all his
actions. As his humility increased, he pontificated less; he no longer
let fall the train of his cassock, and he gave up wearing the
three-cornered hat that distinguished him from his brother priests. He
gradually freed himself from all his pettiness, and was quite
indifferent when the news came that, though he was not a senior priest,
the bishop had granted him the right to wear a hooded cloak over his
surplice. How could he have cared for these trifles, he, a keeper of
souls? The only thing for him to do now was to extricate himself from
this drama. Had he been the humble instrument of God, or had a poor
country priest been trying to take his Creator's place?
Meanwhile, every evening, the young doctor drove away in his gig over
the frozen roads. The moonlight flooded through the interlacing branches
of the pines and their dark round tops hovered in the sky like an
immovable flock of huge birds. On several occasions the shadowy form of
a wild boar crossed the road a few hundred paces ahead of the house. The
line of pines widened suddenly and skirted a meadow hidden by
low-hanging mist; then the road sank between two high banks and one felt
the icy breath of a stream. Wrapped in his goat-skin coat, and enveloped
in a thick cloud of mist and tobacco smoke, the young man did not know
that the stars were shining above the tree-tops. He was thinking of his
kitchen fire at which he would soon be drying himself, and the soup that
he would pour some wine into; and when his thoughts wandered from food
and warmth they clung about the figure of Noémi, so close to his hand
every day, but scarcely ever touched by him. "Still," the sportsman said
to himself, "I haven't missed her; she's winged." He knew instinctively
when the feminine quarry had been run down and was imploring mercy; it
was as though Noémi had cried out. Many women had been his, and they
were the wives of men, not of poor broken things like Jean Péloueyre.
Caught and more defenceless than any of these, would Noémi prove after
all the only one not to give in? Naturally, during her husband's
illness, common decency was keeping her straight, but, before that, what
had prevented him from entirely fascinating his prey? What stronger
influence had kept her just out of his reach? Another love, perhaps? He
did not believe she was very devout; he imagined he knew that sort when
he saw it, for he had already measured his strength with the priest's
over the conquest of a sheep from the fold. Pious women enjoyed the
game, allowed themselves to be kissed, fluttered close to the flame,
even singed their wings; but at the last moment they slipped through
one's fingers, back to the confessional as though drawn by an invisible
wire. He laid his plans for the day of Jean Péloueyre's death, saying
to himself, "I'll get her," and he laughed, for he had the patience of
the sportsmen of _Les Landes_ who lie in wait for their prey.
About that time, the pious people of the town who went to church in the
middle of the day, and believed themselves to be alone there, were
startled by the sound of sighing that came from the choir. The priest
spent almost all his spare moments there before his Judge. In no other
place could he find peace; not the peace that is afforded by the
stillness of country churches, thick with shadows, like caves under the
sea, but the peace that the world cannot give. He understood that the
wretched little Jean, who had scarcely been able to polish the crystals
of the chandeliers before high festivals or to gather moss for the
ladies to make into garlands, that poor hunter of magpies, was a vastly
different person from the man who was now offering his life for the
salvation of others. The priest was overwhelmed in the presence of Him
who possessed the power to make slaves equal unto Himself.
XV
FORTUNATELY for Jean, the summer was a mild one; in September frequent
storms turned the leaves red. Cadette's grandson brought in the first
mushrooms, smelling of forest loam, and diverted him with ortolans taken
at dawn, which he would fatten in the dark and serve to Monsieur Jean
soaked in old armagnac. Flights of wood-pigeons foretold an early
winter, and soon the decoys would be prepared.
Jean had always loved the autumn; he felt a secret affinity with the
fields of harvested millet, with the tawny heather-lands known only to
solitary ring-doves, to sheep, and to the wind. The scent that came in
through the window, opened at dawn to make his breathing easier,
reminded him of those melancholy October afternoons when he used to come
slowly back from his shooting. He was not allowed to wait peacefully for
his release. Noémi did not understand that silence is due to the dying,
and just as in the early days she had been unable to conceal her
disgust, she could not now spare him the sight of her remorse. Her
thirst for his forgiveness was insatiable, and as she bent over his
hands, wet with her tears, he whispered: "I am the one who chose you,
Noémi. I was the one who should have considered you ..."; but his words
were in vain. She shook her head; Jean was dying for her sake; this
thought banished everything else from her mind. Oh, the bigness, the
nobility of him! How she would love him if he were to recover! She would
pay back a hundredfold any affection that he might show her now. How was
she to know that the moment when Jean became convalescent must mark the
beginning of a fresh desire to be rid of him, and that he had to be at
the point of death before she could love him? Young, ignorant and
sensual, she could not possibly know her own mind, but her desires were
sincere and she had communicated them to God. She kept clumsily
insisting that Jean should set her free from remorse and he soon lost
heart; his one idea now was to avoid being left alone with her. This
would have been difficult to manage, a host of imagined ills having
rivetted M. Jêrome to his bed, but for the frequent visits of the young
doctor. Jean wondered at such extraordinary attention from a stranger,
and, though unable to converse with him, enjoyed his presence.
One afternoon late in September he roused himself after a long period of
inertia and saw that Noémi was sitting in a chair by the window asleep,
with her head resting on her shoulder. He listened for a moment to her
regular breathing, and then closed his eyes. The door-latch clicked, the
doctor came in softly, but Jean, too weak to utter a single word of
greeting, pretended to be asleep. There was a squeak of hunting boots,
and then the room was still. The silence excited Jean's curiosity and he
opened his eyes again; the doctor was standing near his sleeping wife,
he was leaning ever so slightly towards her, and his big hand
trembled.... Then Jean shut his eyes and heard Noémi's low voice: "Oh,
do forgive me, doctor; I didn't hear you come in. I must have been
asleep. Our patient is having a bad day to-day; the weather is so
oppressive. Look at the leaves; they're not moving." He answered that
there was a breath from the South-West; then Noémi went on: "It comes
from Spain; there'll be a storm...." The man's pale face and his burning
eyes were the portents of the storm that was imminent, and they were as
clear to Noémi as any thunder-cloud. She got up and walked across the
room in order to put Jean's bed between her body and those devouring
eyes. The doctor stuttered: "You should take great care of yourself, if
only for his sake." "Oh, I can withstand anything. I'm strong; I eat and
sleep like an animal.... I envy people who can die of grief." They sat
at opposite sides of the room, and Jean, apparently asleep, sang to
himself without moving his lips, pausing at the cesura: _Mon Péloueyre
touche à son heure dernière_....
Autumn with its veils of mist and its scent of tears folded him in her
arms, and he was able to breathe more easily and eat a little. But
during these days his mental agony was at its height. Lingering on the
borderland between life and death, without distrusting Noémi he could
not help wondering how, when he had gone, she would defend herself
against this young man's irresistible beauty. Two persons predestined to
love each other are not kept apart by the wretched ghost of a dead man.
But there was no trace of these tormenting thoughts upon Jean's face and
he smiled as he shook hands with the doctor. Ah, that he might live to
conquer in the battle for Noémi's love! What obscure madness had
produced his desire for death? Even without Noémi, even without any
wife, he would have the caresses that were worth more to him than any
others, those of the wind at dawn. Pouring with perspiration and
sickened by the smell of the sick room, he looked with envious eyes at
Cadette's grandson who had brought him the first woodcock of the season.
What joy those mornings had been: dull grey pine-tops high in the blue
sky, like the meek who will be exalted to glory; the strip of green
grass and alders and mist in the heart of the forest that marked the
wandering course of a stream whose clear waters flowed over a bed of
brown sand. These pines beloved by Jean Péloueyre were the vanguard of
a great army that stretched between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic,
overlooking Sauternes and the hot valley where the sun warms every stem
of every cluster of grapes.
With the passing of the years Jean would have become less and less a
prey to emotions, and his ugliness, like all ugliness and all beauty,
would have lost itself in old age. At least, he would have had the long
days of hunting and gathering mushrooms. In bottles of Yquem are
imprisoned the burning summers of long ago, and the sunsets of
yesteryear redden the Gruau-Larose; one sits reading before the kitchen
fire when the heather lands are bathed in rain and mist.... "It's not
necessary for you to come to-morrow," Noémi said to the doctor, and he
replied: "Oh, yes, I had better come." Was it possible that she did not
understand? Had he never declared himself? Would death carry him off
before he knew the result of this contest at his bedside? It was as
though someone who thought the unhappy boy was leaving the world without
enough suffering had hastened to bind him with the earthly ties that
require the severest exertion to break. However, these fell from him one
by one before his last day; peace settled upon him, and he had the same
grateful smile for everyone. He no longer repeated lines of poetry, but
words like these: "It is I. Fear not."
They had to keep the windows of Jean's dismal room closed on account of
the late winter rains; but why did they trouble themselves about Jean's
suffering, when suffering was a joy to him? The only signs of the life
about him that penetrated his consciousness were the crowing of cocks,
the jolting of farm carts, the church bells, and the endless patter of
rain upon the tiles; and at night he heard the savage screams of birds
of prey and the cries of their victims. The dim light of his last dawn
came in at the windows. Cadette lit the fire, and the room was filled
with resinous fumes. Through many hot summers this scent of burning pine
had blown from the parched heather lands upon his face. The d'Artiailhs
thought he could still hear, but no longer could see. M. Jêrome, in his
soiled dressing gown, stood near the door weeping, and Cadette knelt
with her grandson at the foot of the bed. The voice of the priest seemed
with propitiatory phrases to be pushing open an invisible door: "Depart
from this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty,
Who created you in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Who
suffered for you; in the Name of the Holy Ghost Who came down upon you;
in the name of Angels and of Archangels; in the name of Thrones and of
Dominions; in the name of Principalities and of Powers...."
Noémi gazed at him earnestly and she said softly to herself: "He was
beautiful."
The people in the town mistook the bell that tolled while he was dying
for the morning Angelus.
XVI
M. JEROME went to bed. The mirrors in which Jean had so often seen his
wretched face were covered with dustsheets. His body had been dressed as
though for high mass, and Cadette had even put a soft felt hat upon his
head and a prayer book in his hands. The kitchen was all bustle and
confusion for there would be forty people in the dining-room, and a
group of farmers standing round the hearse groaned uncontrollably, like
the mourners of ancient days. It was the first time that the priest had
officiated at a funeral of such magnificence. Each guest was given a
pair of gloves and a sou wrapped in paper. It rained during the service,
but afterwards the sun broke through the clouds and shone until the
funeral procession had left the cemetery. Jean Péloueyre awaited the
resurrection of the dead, his body lying uncorrupted in the dry
embalming sand. Noémi Péloueyre shrouded herself in crêpe for three
years and her deep mourning enabled her to be almost literally
invisible. She only went out to go to mass, and always before crossing
the square made certain that no one was in sight. Even through the heat
of summer she wore a high black collar edged with white, and in order to
protect herself against the comments of the severe she refused to wear
dresses made of a too silky material.
About this time a report of the young doctor's conversion went the
rounds. He went to mass, and was seen in the church on week-days as
well. When the priest was approached on the subject of this event which
must have been such a satisfactory one to him, a smile played about his
thin-lipped mouth, but he said nothing.
He seemed to have lost his influence and his power of persuasion, for he
was unable to find out from M. Jêrome whether he had taken out of his
will the clause which obliged Noémi not to re-marry. He failed, too,
when he expressed his disapproval of the mourning and insisted that they
should relax the strictness with which it was being carried out. M.
Jêrome was proud of belonging to a family whose widows never went out
of mourning, and the d'Artiailhs were most anxious for Noémi to
continue wearing it. And this was why, in the early winter mornings, the
young doctor was no more able to see the widow in her shadowy retreat
than she to see her husband through the flagstone that sealed his grave,
upon which she knelt every day. At times, however, he caught glimpses of
her face, youthfully radiant in spite of her secluded life and of her
fasts before Communion. The day after the Anniversary Mass, when it
became known in the town that Noémi would stay in mourning, the
doctor's Christian resolutions broke down. He neglected his patients as
well as his religious duties, and Doctor Pieuchon was told that his
young colleague had taken to drink, that he even kept a bottle at his
bedside for nocturnal consumption. M. Jêrome's health was excellent, so
his daughter-in-law had a good deal of leisure; she occupied herself
with the estate, but the timber cutting required little supervision. Her
religion was a cut-and-dried, mechanical affair, took up a very small
part of her time and was not strengthened by reading. She was scarcely
capable of meditation, so her faith rested almost entirely upon formula.
In a country flowing with resin there is scarcely any poverty; and only
a few moments are necessary once a week to collect the bleating flock of
the Children of the Virgin about a harmonium. The only thing left for
Noémi to do was to interest herself mildly, as did most of the women of
_Les Landes_, in cooking. After the third year of her mourning she began
to put on flesh, and Doctor Pieuchon had to prescribe an hour's walk
every day.
One warm afternoon in the early spring she went as far as the farm
called Tartehume and sank down exhausted on the bank that ran along the
side of the road. Bees hummed in the broom; horseflies stung her ankles.
Noémi's heart was beating rapidly and she could think of nothing but
the dusty road that led back to the house; there were two miles of
blazing sun, for the trees that bordered the road had recently been cut
down. She felt that she would be forever hemmed in by these endless
pines with their sticky red gashes, and in these dreary stretches of
sand and burnt heather. In her slow uncultivated mind there was a
confused echo of the conflict that had tortured Jean Péloueyre in the
days of his bachelorhood. The aridity of her country and the solitude of
her life parched her soul with mortal thirst and forced the wretched
girl to raise her eyes and stretch out her hands towards the Living
Water which is perpetual refreshment.
Noémi dried the perspiration from her hands with a black-bordered
handkerchief. She looked at her dusty shoes and at a tuft of young ferns
whose fronds were opening out like fingers. Then she raised her eyes
slowly and the smell of rye bread came drifting across to her like the
very breath of the farm. Suddenly she stood up, trembling. A gig that
she easily recognized was standing in front of the farmhouse. How often
through half-opened shutters she had gazed at its polished axle-caps,
more thrilling to her than the stars in the heavens! Noémi shook the
sand from the folds of her dress; the wheels of a farm cart creaked; a
jay cried. A swarm of horseflies enveloped her as she stood watching the
farmhouse door. Her mouth was open, her breath came quickly, and she
waited and waited--a meek submissive animal. Then the door swung
half-way back, and she tried to see into the dim hall where he was
standing. A familiar voice was prescribing in peasant dialect enormous
doses of tincture of iodine. He appeared; and every button on his
hunting jacket gleamed in the sunlight, as the farmer accompanied him to
the gate and held his horse, remarking that this was the season for
forest fires; everything was dry; there was no green undergrowth and no
rain to ease the situation. The young man picked up the reins.
Noémi drew back; her impulsive movement towards him was checked by a
hidden force. She plunged into a thicket of tall heather bushes,
scratching her hands on the brambles, and listened for a moment as the
gig rattled away down the road. No doubt she was thinking, as she hid
from him, of the town's disapproval of all lapses from respectable
widowhood; and then there was the clause in M. Jêrome's will, which
would always prevent her parents from giving their consent to what
Madame d'Artiailh called a crazy match. Noémi would have instinctively
swept aside such obstacles as these, had not her instinct been stifled
by something still more powerful. Her trifling personality was condemned
to greatness; her slavery had become authority. This commonplace girl
could not help transcending herself; no road was open to her save that
of renunciation, and in this moment she knew that her fidelity to the
dead was a humble glory from which her destiny forbade her to escape.
So Noémi ran on through the scorched heather, till at last breathless,
exhausted, and her shoes full of sand, she faltered and grasped a
stunted oak whose withered leaves rustled in the hot wind--a stunted
blackened tree that reminded her of Jean Péloueyre.
_La Motte_, _Vémars_, July;
_Johannet_, _Saint-Symphorien_, September 1921.