Roger was waiting with the carriage at the little Burgundy station, where Annette arrived the following day. The instant she saw him, her cares took flight. Roger was so happy! And she was no less so. She was grateful to the Brissot ladies for having found weak excuses for not coming to meet her.
It was a clear spring evening. The golden horizon encircled the gentle undulations of pale, new grass and red, plowed land. Larks were chirping. The two-wheeled cart flew over the white road, which rang under the hoofs of the spirited little horse, and the sharp air whipped Annette's red cheeks. She sat pressed against her young companion, who, even while he drove, laughed and talked with her, and, suddenly bending over her lips, took and gave a kiss in mid-flight. She did not resist. She loved him, she loved him! But this did not prevent her realizing that she would soon begin to judge him again, to judge herself. It is one thing to judge, and another to love. She loved him as she loved this air, this sky, this breath from the fields, like a bit of spring. To-morrow was time enough to clarify her thoughts! To-day she gave herself a holiday. Let us enjoy this delicious hour! It will not come again. . . . It seemed to her that she was flying above the earth, with her beloved.
They arrived only too soon, although they went slowly at the last turning, when they were ascending the poplar-lined road, and even though, when they stopped to rest the horse beneath the shadow of the high hedges that masked the front of the château, they embraced for a long time without speaking.
The Brissots put their best foot forward. They knew how to find delicate words by which tactfully to evoke the memory of her father. That first evening in the family circle, Annette let herself be mothered, grateful and touched; she had so long been deprived of the affectionate warmth of a home! She wanted to delude herself. Everyone helped her to do this. Her resistance slumbered. . . .
But when she awoke in the middle of the night, and listened to the gnawing of a mouse in the silence of the old house, the idea of a mouse-trap came into her mind; and she said to herself:
"I am caught. . . ."
She felt a pang, she tried to reason with herself.
"No, no, I don't want to be; I am not . . ."
A nervous sweat moistened her shoulders. She said:
"To-morrow I shall talk to Roger seriously. He must know what I am like. We must see each other honestly if we are going to live together. . . ."
But when the next day came, she was so glad to see Roger again, to let herself be enveloped in his warm affection, to breathe with him the intoxicating sweetness of the spring countryside, to dream of happiness—(impossible perhaps, but who knows, who knows? . . . perhaps it is close . . . one need only stretch out a hand . . .)—that she put off explanations until the next day. . . . And then, to the next. . . . And then, to the day after. . . .
And each night she was seized anew by piercing pangs, by heart burnings. . . .
"I must. . . . I must speak. . . . It has to be done for Rogers sake. Every day he is more enchained, and enchains me more. I have no right to keep silent. It is deceiving him. . . ."
Heavens, heavens! How weak she was!
. . . Yet she was not so, in ordinary life. But the breath of love is like those hot winds whose burning languor breaks your joints and makes your heart faint. An extreme lassitude of obscure pleasure. A fear of stirring. A fear of thinking. . . . The soul, cowering in its dream, fears awakening. Annette knew perfectly well that at her first gesture the dream would be shattered. . . .
But even if we do not move, time moves for us; and the flight of days is sufficient to carry away the illusion that we would preserve. In vain one watches oneself; two persons cannot live together from morn till evening without, at the end of a short time, showing themselves as they really are.
The Brissot family revealed its true colors. The smile was façade. Annette had become part of the household. She saw busy, morose, middle-class people, who administered their wealth with a bitter pleasure. There was no question here of socialism. Of immortal principles, they invoked only the Declaration of the Landlord's Rights. It was not good to attack this. Their watchman was ceaselessly occupied in setting up barriers against trespassing. They personally exercised a strict surveillance that was to them a kind of sorry delectation. They seemed to be carrying on a guerrilla warfare with the servants, their farmers, the grape gatherers, and with all their neighbors. The spirit of sharp practice, that was native to the family and to the province, flourished here. When father Brissot succeeded in trapping someone he had his eye out for, he laughed heartily. But he did not laugh last: his adversary was made of the same Burgundian clay, not to be caught napping; the next day he retaliated by a trick of his own. And then it began all over again. . . .
Of course, Annette was not invited to participate in these ructions; the Brissots talked about them among themselves, in the drawing-room or at table, when Roger and Annette seemed occupied with each other. But Annette's keen attention followed everything that was said around her. Besides, Roger would interrupt the most loving dialogue to take part in the discussion that passionately interested them all. Then they grew heated, they all talked at once, they forgot Annette. Or they called upon her to witness facts of which she was ignorant.—Until finally, Madame Brissot, recalling the listener's presence, cut short the colloquy, and, turning her melting smile upon Annette, shifted the conversation into more flowery paths. Then, with no transition, they returned to affable good fellowship. There was in the general tone of the conversation a curious alloy of prudery and frankness,—just as liberality and stinginess were mingled in the château life. Lively Monsieur Brissot made puns. Mademoiselle Brissot talked poetry, and on this subject everyone had his say. They all pretended to a knowledge of it. Their taste dated back some twenty years. On everything to do with art, they had fixed opinions. They relied on the tried and true opinions of their "friend so and so" who belonged to the Institute and was much decorated. No more timid minds, in the face of authority, could be imagined than these big bourgeois who thought that they were as advanced in art as in politics, and who were advanced in neither one nor the other; for in both they never, wittingly, arrived on the field until after the battle had been won.
Annette felt herself far away from them. She looked, listened, and asked herself:
"What have I to do with these people?"
The idea that one or another of them might presume to act as her guardian did not even repel her any more, it made her want to laugh. She asked herself what Sylvie would have thought, had she been blessed with a family of this sort. What shouts, what bursts of laughter! . . .
Annette answered them sometimes, when she was all alone in the garden. And it happened that Roger heard her one day, and asked in astonishment:
"What in the world is making you laugh?"
To which she replied:
"Nothing, dear. I don't know. Nonsense. . . ."
And she tried to reassume her soberest expression. But it was stronger than she: she began laughing harder than ever, even in front of the Brissot ladies. She begged pardon, and the Mesdames Brissot, indulgent and a little vexed, said:
"The child! She has to get rid of her laughter!"
But she was not always laughing. Shadows passed abruptly over her good humor. After hours of radiant tenderness and confidence with Roger, she experienced, without transition, and for no cause, attacks of melancholy, doubt, and anxiety. The instability from which her thoughts had suffered since last autumn, far from being calmed, was accentuated during these months of requited love. There came, in flurries, an invasion of strangely unharmonious instincts: irritability, grotesque humor, malignant irony, umbrageous pride, inexplicable fits of spite. Annette found it hard to put a damper on them. And the result was not so splendid, for when she did she seemed plunged in a hostile and disquieting taciturnity. As her intelligence remained clear, she was astonished at these sudden changes, and reproached herself for them. That didn't improve matters. But the realization of her own imperfections gave her a certain indulgence—more wished for than sincere—towards those of these "clowns." . . . (Again! . . . Impertinent girl! . . . Forgive me! I won't do it again! . . .) Since they were Roger's relations, she ought to accept them, if she accepted Roger. The rest, Good Heavens, the rest is of no great importance when there are two to defend each other.
Only, were there two? Would Roger defend her? And, even before considering whether she would accept Roger, would Roger accept her sincerely and with a generous heart when he finally saw what she was like? For up to date he had seen only her mouth and eyes. As regarded what she thought and wished—the true Annette—it did not seem that he had tried very hard to become acquainted with her; he found it more comfortable to invent her. However, Annette cradled herself in the hope that, with the aid of love, it would not be impossible, after bravely looking into each other's hearts, for them to say to each other: "I take you, I take you as you are. I take you with your faults, your demons, with your little demands, with your law of life. You are what you are. As you are, I love you."
She knew that, for her part, she was capable of this act of love. During the last days she had observed Roger at length, with her bright eyes in which, unknown to him, everything was mirrored. Roger, no long unsure of himself, had frequently shown himself to be more of a Brissot than she would have wished; he was obsessed by the interests and the quarrels of his tribe, and even brought to them the same tricky spirit. Certain little hard, crafty sides of him did not please her. But she did not wish to judge them severely, as she would have done in the case of others. To her these traits seemed imitative. In many things, Roger appeared to her still an uncertain child, under the thumb of his family, whom he religiously copied, with marked timidity of spirit, despite all his big words. Although she began to perceive a lack of consistency in his projects for social reform, and although she was no longer completely duped by his eloquent idealism, she bore him no grudge for that, for she knew that he was not trying to deceive her, and that he was his own first dupe; she was even ready, with a tender irony, to remove from his path all that might disturb the illusion by which he had to live. And even his naïve egotism, which he sometimes displayed in a cumbersome fashion, did not repel her; it seemed to her devoid of evil intention. At bottom, all his faults were faults of weakness. And the amusing thing was that he posed as strength itself. . . . The man of bronze. . . . Æs triplex. . . . Poor Roger! . . . It was almost touching. Annette laughed very softly, but she reserved for him a wealth of indulgence. She loved him dearly. Despite everything, she saw him as good, generous and ardent. She was like a mother who treats with a gentle hand the little, and to her eyes not very serious, vices of a dear child: she does not hold him responsible for them, she is only the more disposed to fuss over him and coddle him. Ah! and then Annette had for Roger not merely the indulgent eyes of a mother! She had the very partial eyes of a lover. The body was speaking; and its voice was very strong. The voice of reason could say what it pleased: there was a way of hearing that made these very faults set fire to desire. Annette saw everything clearly. But just as one may bend one's head and squint one's eyes in order to harmonize the planes of a landscape, so Annette, when she looked at Roger's unpleasant traits, viewed them from an angle that softened them. It would have not been much beyond her to love even deformities: for one gives more of oneself when one loves the faults of one's beloved; in loving what is fine, one does not give, one takes. Annette thought:
"I am glad that you are imperfect. If you knew what I see, it would annoy you. Forgive me! I have seen nothing. . . . But I, I am not like you; I want you to see me as imperfect! I am what I am, and I hold to it; my imperfections are myself, more than the rest. If you take me, you take them. Do you take them? . . . But you don't wish to know them. When will you finally take the trouble to really look at me?”