Solange had the small, well-rounded, rustic face of a Gothic Madonna, an oldish, infantile air, laughing, wrinkled eyes, a pretty nose, a delicate mouth, a rather heavy chin, fine skin and a ruddy complexion. She liked to discuss serious thoughts in a serious tone, very serious, contrasting comically with her kind, humorous face, which tried hard not to be so; but her words hurried along for fear of losing the thread of her sober ideas; and sometimes she actually did stop in mid-course with a void in her mind: "What was it I meant to say?"
Her auditors seldom whispered a reply, for they scarcely listened to her. But she did not irritate them, for Solange was not one of those people who hold forth and insist upon your following their insipid discourse. She had no pride and was ready to apologize affectionately for having bored you. But incapable as she was by nature of grasping an idea, she had a naïve aspiration for thought and an immense good will. Nothing very much came of it: her thoughts never quite arrived. The grave books, Plato, Guyau, Fouillée, yawned at the same page for weeks or months; and the great, beautiful projects, idealistic, altruistic—works of social aid or new systems of education—were intellectual toys that she soon forgot in their corners and under the furniture till the next chance brought them to her attention again. A good little bourgeoise, gentle, amiable, pretty, sensible, well-balanced, with a dash of pedantry, unconstrained, droll, who, without posing, imagined that she had intellectual needs and really had to talk about the ideal and many other things, all on the same plane, calm, tidy, well-dressed, polite, innocent and a nobody.
Younger than Annette by three or four years, she had once felt for her one of those paradoxical attractions that harmless natures feel for those that are dangerous. It is true that these phenomena usually manifest themselves at a distance. In fact, she had approached Annette very little at school, where they were in different classes. It was only because she saw her as she came and went and had picked up some echoes from the older girls that little Solange had conceived for her elder a timid fascination. Annette had had no suspicion of it; and since then Solange had completely forgotten her. She had married, and she was happy. Not to have been happy, she would have had to have a monster for a husband—or a passionate man. Victor Mouton-Chevallier was, heaven be praised, neither one nor the other. A sculptor by vocation, he was not tormented by inspiration, for he had an income and a rich placidity. He had no lack of taste, but he felt no pressing need of translating into his art anything different from what had already been done by this, that or the other of his illustrious confrères of all ages. And as he was innocent of ambition, as he was free from illiberal feelings (from others too, perhaps), he enjoyed an unmixed satisfaction in finding himself so well, so completely, expressed—at least, so he flattered himself in believing—by Michael Angelo, by Rodin, by Bourdelle, or by the smaller gentry; for he was eclectic and found his good things everywhere. In this happy state he would certainly not have made the effort to produce anything himself if this had not added to his pleasure one savor the more: the flattering illusion that he belonged to the family. He was willing to accept the tender respect that he felt called upon to show for the heroes of art and their misfortunes. He shared in these latter—from afar; and he forced his jovial face to assume an air of austere melancholy as he listened to his wife discreetly playing the Sonata Pathétique on the piano—for Beethoven also belonged to the family. Solange had fully responded to his domestic needs. A tranquil affection, an easy kindness, a gentle, uniform, complacent humor, an indoor idealism that did not risk itself outside when it was windy or muddy, a propensity for admiring that renders life so much more comfortable!—in short, in a word that says everything, security was their true unconfessed ideal. Their circumstances, both of fortune and of heart, permitted them to have this. They were sheltered from material cares, and there was no fear that they would introduce trouble into their household.
But they did introduce Annette. If they had known the elements this Frau Sorge carried within her, they would have been dreadfully upset. But they did not know. They were like innocent children playing with an explosive; they would have had an attack of nerves if they had guessed what they held in their hands. But guessing nothing, after having their own sport, they went and laid it down gently, without intending any harm, in the garden of a friend. . . . They laid Annette down in the garden of the Villards.
When Solange discovered Annette again, she also discovered in herself once more the old feeling she had had for her: she fell in love with her. Like everyone else, she knew about Annette's "irregular" life. But in her goodness—a goodness without depth, but also without prudery—she did not think any the worse of her. It must be said that she did not understand it very well. With her indulgent disposition, which was the most sympathetic side of her amiable nature, she supposed that Annette had undoubtedly been victimized, or perhaps that she had had her own serious reason for acting as she had done. In any case, it concerned only herself; and she was indignant at public opinion. After seeing her friend again, she made inquiries about her and learned of her courage and self-abnegation; she conceived the most exaggerated admiration for her. This was one of those periodic infatuations that left her, for a time, no room for any other feeling. Her husband, whom she fed with her enthusiasms, found in this one an opportunity for melting over Annette's nobility of heart, and that of his wife, and his own as well. (Is there anything that enables us to enjoy our own moral beauty more than to be stirred by that of a fellow-creature?) Husband and wife tried to outbid each other in their noble intentions towards Annette. They could not leave her alone, destitute of sympathy, that poor woman, the victim of social injustice! The Mouton-Chevalliers set out to find Annette, climbing all the way up to her fifth floor. They surprised her in the act of doing her housework. This struck them as all the more touching; and her coldness seemed to them an admirable dignity. They did not leave till they had won Annette's promise to come and dine with them with her little boy, en famille, the following evening.
Annette was not very much pleased by this renewed friendship. She saw how insipid it was. Her years of moral solitude had given her a savage instinct. It was not good to avoid people too much; one found it hard to get into touch with them again; one became aware of an odor of corruption under the flowers. In the quiet household of the Mouton-Chevalliers, Annette was not at her ease; their conjugal happiness did not make her envious. "Too mild, too mild, too mild!" as somebody says in Molière. "No, thank you! Not for me!". . . She had reached a time when she needed the harsh winds of life. . . .
Well, she ought to have been satisfied! The mild Solange was going to see that she got them.
Annette was dressing to go out to dinner. This evening she was to meet at the Mouton-Chevalliers those friends of whom she was sick of hearing from Solange—Doctor Villard, a fashionable surgeon with a rather garish reputation, and his brilliant young wife. She was troubled. "What if I shouldn't go?" She half thought of sending a line to excuse herself. But Marc, who was bored with being alone with his mother, was delighted at any pretext for going out. Annette did not want to deprive him of this distraction. Besides, she knew she was absurd. "What's the matter? What's troubling you?". . . It was like a presentiment of evil. . . . Silly! The rational spirit that dwelt in her, side by side with the instincts that took no account of it, made her shrug her shoulders. She finished her toilet and, taking her son's arm, set out for Solange's.
The superstitious instinct was not long in taking its revenge. It is no miracle, indeed, when a presentiment is realized. A presentiment is a predisposition towards what one is afraid of feeling. Consequently, if it comes to pass, there is nothing magical about it. It is a sort of divining-rod; as it approaches a spring, a shiver warns it that the water is eating its way under the surface.
On the threshold of the drawing-room, Annette felt the warning; but she knit her brows, and as soon as she entered the room she was reassured. Even before Solange had presented him to her, she had made up her mind at a glance about Philippe Villard: he was antipathetic to her. She had a feeling of relief.
Philippe was not handsome. He was small, thick-set, with a brow that bulged above the eyes, a strong jaw, a short, pointed beard, a steely blue glance. Very much master of himself, he was cold in a courteous, commanding way. Seated beside Annette at table, he followed two conversations: the general discussion that Solange was carrying on in her desultory manner and that which, in the intervals, he held with his neighbor. In both he had the same brief, precise, trenchant way of talking. Never a hesitation, either for a word or an idea. The more Annette listened, the more hostile she felt towards him. She replied, concealing herself under a rather dry and distant indifference. He did not seem to attach great importance to what she said. No doubt he was judging her from the silly eulogies he had heard from Solange. He was barely polite. This did not surprise anyone: they were used to his abrupt ways. But it irritated Annette to have to endure them. She observed him beside her, without appearing to see him, feature by feature; and she could find nothing about him that pleased her. But the total impression was not the total of her impressions of details; and when, without difficulty, she reached the end of her examination, she felt uneasy again. A movement of the hand, a wrinkling of the face. . . . She was afraid of him. And she thought, "Above everything in the world, he mustn't see into me!"
Solange spoke of an author who, she said, had the gift of tears.
"A pretty gift!" said Philippe. "Tears in life are not worth much. But in art I know nothing more disgusting than to collect them in a bottle."
The ladies cried out at this. Madame Villard said that tears were one of the pleasures of life, and Solange said they were an ornament of the soul.
"Well, how about you, don't you protest?" he asked Annette. "Do you too get your supplies from the property-man?"
"I have enough of my own," she said. "I have no need of other people's."
"You live on your capital?"
"Can you suggest any way for me to get rid of them?"
"Be hard!"
"I'm learning," she replied.
He threw her a brief sidelong glance.
The others continued to unbosom themselves.
"Look over there," said Philippe to Annette. "There's a good chap who ought to be taught it."
With a corner of his eye he indicated Marc, whose mobile face was naïvely betraying the various emotions which the pretty Madame Villard, sitting beside him, stirred in him.
"I'm afraid," said Annette, "that he already has too much of a tendency that way."
"All the better!"
"All the better for those who meet him along the way?"
"Let him walk over them!"
"That's easy for you to say."
"You have only to step aside yourself."
"That would be against nature."
"Oh, no, the thing that's against nature is to love too much."
"One's own child?"
"Anyone, one's own child especially."
"He needs me."
"Look at him! Is he thinking of you? He would disown you for a crumb from my wife's hand."
Annette's fingers clenched on the tablecloth. . . . Ah, how she hated him! . . . He had seen her fingers. "I didn't create him just to give him up."
"You didn't create him at all," he replied. "Nature created him. She uses you and casts you aside afterward."
"I shall not let myself be cast aside."
"A battle, then?"
"A battle!"
He looked her in the face, "You will be beaten," he said.
"I know it. One always is. But what's the difference? One fights just the same."
Under the cold mask her eyes smiled defiantly. But the blue gaze of the other penetrated her like a stab. She had given herself away.
Philippe was a forceful man. His force was part of his genius. He carried it as much into his clinic, in his terrible diagnostics and the sureness of his hand, into the operating-room, as into the acts of his life and his decisions. Accustomed to reading at a glance the depths of human bodies, he had understood Annette completely at once—Annette, her passions, her pride and her troubles, her temperament and her strong nature. And Annette felt that she had been caught. With her helmet fallen so soon, her visor broken, furiously angry, she betrayed henceforth to the eyes of her adversary only an icy armor. In the constriction at her heart, she knew now that the enemy had come. The enemy? Yes, love. . . . (Ah, that insipid word, so far from the cruel force itself! . . .) To the sudden awakening of interest which she had perceived in him, she opposed an ironical inflexibility that very inadequately concealed the hostility she felt. It only completed her self-betrayal. She was too genuine, too passionate. She could not pretend. Her very animosity revealed the depths of her being. Philippe was the only one to see this. He did not attempt to revive the conversation again; he had learned enough, and, with a detached air, recounting to the company one of those bitter, amusing stories that were stamped with his own harsh experience, he measured with his eye the woman he intended to capture.
None of the others who were present had observed anything. The Mouton-Chevalliers were regretfully convinced that Annette and Philippe were unsympathetic to each other: between their two characters there was nothing in common. However, in bringing Annette and the Villards together, they had hoped that Annette and Mme. Villard would become friends. "They were made for each other." And so far as that was concerned, they had the pleasure of seeing that they were not mistaken.
Noémi Villard was a delightful Creole, with small bones, plump flesh gilded like a roast pigeon, the eyes of a roe, a fine nose, spare cheeks, a prominent little mouth that always seemed to be ready to snap something up; round, innocent, youthful breasts, generously revealed, frail arms, a slender waist, small feet, delicate legs. She played the part of a child-woman, with her infatuations, her languors, her enthusiasms, her laughs and tears and lisping words. She seemed to be a fragile creature, expansive, sensitive, not too intelligent. In reality she was just the opposite. With plenty of brains, sensual, dry and passionate, observing everything, calculating everything, unweariable, unbreakable, fragile, yes, like a willow that bends and—bing!—comes lashing back, made of solid cement under the friable enamel. She alone could have told how much energy this delicate enamel cost. As for intelligence, she had enough of it and to spare: she kept it in the bank, but she utilized it only for the object that interested her, her husband, whom she held jealously. Theirs had been, on both sides, a passionate marriage of the head and the senses—passionate in its pleasures and its vanity. Noémi's decision had long preceded Philippe's choice, and even his attention. This man who, after the example of his illustrious Parisian confrères, carried on with equal ardor his crushing professional activity and a ceaseless social life, had found the time to indulge in many love affairs. His triumphant reputation had had a good deal to do with Noémi's mad love and her determined desire to capture him, for herself alone, and keep him. Philippe cared nothing about intelligence in women. He wanted them to be well-made, healthy, elegant and stupid. He went so far as to say that a woman could never be stupid enough. Noémi certainly was not, but that made no difference. A woman who desires a man can assume, before her mirror, the mind as well as the eyes that he likes. She intoxicated Philippe with her youthful body and her idolatry. She absorbed him greedily.
But the career of a mistress is not a sinecure. It requires the expenditure of a kind of genius. And there is never a moment of rest! After a long period of mutual amorous servitude Philippe was beginning to grow weary. Noémi, marvellously prompt in perceiving in the heart of her husband-lover the least signs of a veering of the wind, slept with one eye open; always jealously on the watch, while Philippe was unaware of it, she was able to turn danger aside with one stroke and entrap again, by the allurement of the senses and her subtle wit, the man who was about to escape her. It was a game at first, but not for long. Still more than Philippe she had to watch herself, to be always attentive, always ready to ward off the unexpected ravages of the perfidious minutes, the infallible ravages of the days and the years. Noémi no longer had all her first freshness; her complexion was mottled; the fineness of her face was turning to dryness, her throat was growing heavy, and the pure cords of her neck were menaced. Art flew to the aid of the endangered masterpiece and even added a few additional charms. But what tension this always meant! The least moment of abandon would have betrayed the secret to the keen eye of the master, who would not have forgotten it. Never to allow oneself to be taken unawares! . . . What a tragedy one morning when one of the little upper incisors broke! Noémi had remained half the day invisible at the dentist's, for if, on her return, Philippe had not seen her exhibit her impeccable smile, he would have had suspicions into which jealousy did not enter. (Though even jealousy is less terrible than a broken tooth!) She had to play a fast game. Philippe was not one of those husbands whom one can easily deceive in regard to the quality of one's physical wares. He belonged to that trade himself. Noémi always felt her heart beat a little when he turned on her one of those "X-Ray" glances (as she called them, laughing, to put him on the wrong scent) with which he made her undergo a visit of inspection. "Does he see?" she would, wonder. He saw, but he did not show it. Noémi's art seemed to him a part of nature; and so long as the effect pleased him everything went well. But look out for the day when the effect might fail! . . . She could not sleep two nights running on her laurels. She had to win them anew every morrow morning. And she was not permitted to appear anxious. To please the master she had to seem always gay, young, radiant. It was crushing at times. In moments of weariness, when she knew she was not being seen, she slid down in the hollow of a divan, with a hard wrinkle between her eyes, a shrivelled smile, her carmine lips bleeding. . . . But the attack of weakness never lasted more than a minute or two. She had to set out again. And she did set out. Young, gay, radiant. . . . Why not? She was so. And she did not slacken. . . . Besides, there are ways of avenging oneself against, a tyrant whom one cannot do without and who abuses one. Enough! She had her secrets. . . . We shall speak of them presently if she is willing. For the moment she laughs, not merely with her lips; she is satisfied with herself and with him, she is sure, she has kept him! . . . And naturally this is the hour when he escapes from her. . . . In vain all her talent! All this trouble in vain! There always comes a moment when the attention is relaxed. Even Argus slept. And the caged animal, the heart of the chambered lover, regains its liberty.
Through one of those aberrations to which nature is accustomed, which the good mediator finds to her advantage, Noémi, for once, saw a woman without distrust. And that woman was Annette.
She was relying on the deceptive assurance that Philippe abhorred intellectual women. Annette was the last one to cause her any uneasiness. From the physical portrait of her rivals in the past, from her own portrait, Noémi had made an image of the woman who might steal her husband away from her. She saw her as small, like herself, rather dark, pretty, of course, delicately made, coquettish, knowing how to make the best of her advantages. Philippe professed the humorous opinion that woman, being exclusively made for the service of man, should, in modern life, be an extremely finished drawing-room trinket, but one that was easy to handle—that, without taking up too much space, she should agreeably furnish the drawing-room and bedroom. He did not like large women and valued grace more highly than beauty. As for the qualities of the mind, he said that, when he needed them, he found them in men, and that the only mind he demanded of a woman was the "mind of the body." Noémi did not contradict him in this: she corresponded with the portrait. Annette did not correspond with it at all. Large and strong, with a heavy beauty, in repose, when nothing animated her, and (when she did not wish to have it) without grace. A Juno-heifer slumbering in a meadow—so Noémi judged her reassuringly; and the fact that Annette appeared so frigid with Philippe made her attractive. On her side, Annette, who was very susceptible to prettiness in women, and inclined to like what did not resemble herself, was charmed by Noémi; in talking with her she showed that she too, when she wished, had an enchanting smile. Philippe lost nothing of this; and his new-born flame blazed up for this Annette with her two masks, one of which was not for him. (Wasn't it for him? The love one repulses has such clever ways of re-entering the place from which it has been expelled!) At the same time that Annette was preventing Philippe from scrutinizing her mind and intrenching herself behind her most unattractive manner, she was not displeased that he should see her most captivating expression over the wall. . . . Yes, he had seen it clearly. From the opposite corner of the drawing-room, as he was describing to his hosts some recent experience, he observed his wife, who was working for him unawares. Annette and Noémi were lavishing on each other all the little graces with which Noémi was always well supplied, inspiring in Annette a complex feeling from which the uneasy thought of Philippe was not absent. And her ear followed, from the opposite corner of the room, the derisive voice that knew it was being listened to.
She hated him, she hated him. . . . He represented the deepest part of her repressed nature, the nature she wished to repress, the good and the bad, the hard, commanding pride, the need of dominating, the demands of the will, those of the intelligence, of a sensual, violent body, passion without love, stronger than love. And as she hated this faun of the soul, hated it in herself, she hated it in him. But this was to engage in an unequal combat. There were two against her—he and her own self.
Philippe Villard came from the small, independent merchant class.
His father, a printer in a little town, active, bustling, bold, had at once the energy and the freedom from scruple that are necessary for success on a vaster scene; but he did not succeed, because for success there is a line of audacity that one must be able to reach and not go beyond, and he had always gone beyond it. Managing a local newspaper that swam on the troubled waters of politics, a Gambettist republican, a tireless anti-clerical, a great hand at elections, he once exceeded the limits of libel and blackmailing that are authorized by the law (no, by custom!) and was condemned and dropped by those whom he had served. Ill in addition, he saw that he was ruined; his plant was sold and all the local hatreds were unmuzzled, now that he no longer had the means to make himself useful or feared. He fought furiously, like a wolf, against illness, poverty and misfortune. The exasperation made his condition worse, and he died, expressing with his last breath his implacable bitterness against the treason of his old companions. The son was ten years old; and none of these imprecations was lost on him.
His mother, a proud peasant woman from the slopes of the Jura mountains, accustomed to struggling with an ungrateful soil that was bitten by a harsh wind, went out by the day as a washerwoman in the canal and undertook the roughest work. She was as strong as a Percheron mare, attacking her work with her four limbs and her iron frame, greedy for gain, but painstaking, honest, hard on herself and close-fisted; she was feared and sought after; she had a redoubtable tongue, which she restrained, and people knew that, through her husband's death, she was the mistress of many family secrets. She made no use of these, but she possessed them, and it was more prudent to pay for her services than to do without them. She had no intellectual scruples and was rigorously active, rather sombre (for in this race Spain has left its blood), with a limitless passion of energy which, mingled with Gallic disillusionment, believes in nothing and yet acts as if salvation or damnation were awaiting it. She loved nothing but her son. She was ferocious in her love. She did not conceal from him any of the things about which she held her tongue with other people; she treated him as a partner. Ambitious for him alone, she sacrificed herself, and he was going to sacrifice himself—for whom? For her revenge. (Hers? Yes, her own, that of the son, that of the mother—all the same thing!) No tenderness, no indulgence—above all, no whimpering. "Go without things! You will gloat over it later." When he came home from school—heaven knew by what efforts of work and diplomacy she obtained for him a scholarship in the town grammar-school, then at the lycée in the county-town!—when he came home, thrashed and humiliated by the little bourgeois boys, the fool-hardy heirs of the hidden spite of their fathers, she said to him, "You will be stronger than they are later. They will kiss your feet. Rely on yourself! Don't rely on anyone else!"
He did not rely on anyone else, and he soon made it clear that they would have to reckon with him. She succeeded in clinging to life until her son's studies were brilliantly finished and he had taken his first term in medicine in Paris. He was in the midst of an examination when she had to take to her bed with an inflammation of the chest. She did not want to disturb him before he had finished. She died without him. In her rude handwriting, twisted like the claws of the vine in spring, with all the dots and accents well marked and in their places, she wrote to him on a blank sheet carefully cut from a letter from her son, who was reckless with his paper, "I am going. My boy, keep strong. Do not give way."
He had not given way. Returning to the country to bury his mother, he found a small sum of money, collected from day to day, which enabled him to pay his way for another year. Then, thrown upon himself, he spent half his days and sometimes his nights earning what the other half demanded for his subsistence. No task was too much for him. He worked at natural history for a taxidermist, he served as a sculptor's model, as an extra boy on Sundays in suburban cafés, or on Saturday nights at wedding-parties in restaurants. In winter, when he was hungry one morning, he even took a job under the sewerage commission in a gang of snow-sweepers. He did not hesitate to have recourse to bold-faced begging, to charity societies, to accepting humiliating loans which he could not pay back and which gave mean souls the right to treat him without consideration for a five-franc piece. . . . (The blackguards! They didn't try it again after the look he gave them! But then, since they could not repay themselves with scorn, they did so with hatred, prudently behind his back: they slandered him.) During a few months of desperate labor, he went so far as to accept the money that a girl of the neighborhood offered him. He did not blush at this, for it was not for himself (he was killing himself with privations), it was for his success. Of course he had needs! He wanted to take everything, but he repressed his desire. Later on! He must conquer first. And to conquer he must live. Live by every means. Victory cleanses everything. And it was his due. He felt he was a genius.
He attracted the attention of his masters, his comrades. He was given work to do that was signed by men at the top after they had made a pretence of touching it up a little. He allowed himself to be exploited so as to acquire a hold over those who barred the gates to new-comers. They were in no great hurry to let him in. They respected him, and respect is a kind of money that enables one to dispense with other kinds. They appreciated him, oh, yes. But he did not grow fat on this. In spite of his native strength, the strength of his mother's Jura mountains, he was on the point of going under from fatigue and malnutrition when Solange happened upon him. It was at one of those many charities which she patronized with a sincere though intermittent generosity, with her heart and her money; a children's clinic. Solange saw Philippe there, devoting himself with a rage—that rage he felt to conquer, whenever there was the least chance of it—at the beds of the little patients who were apparently doomed. He spent nights there and came away from these battles looking worn and debilitated, but with eyes flaming with fever and genius. When he had conquered he was almost handsome and seemed more than good as he sat by the little sufferer whom he had just saved. Did he love him? It was possible, not certain. But he had got the best of the disease.
Solange, when she saw Philippe's situation, passed through one of those periodical crises of "patheticness" in which her whole horizon was filled by a single object. Whoever wished to profit by this had to lose no time. Philippe did not lose it. This drowning man grasped the hand that was held out to him. He even took the arm with it, and he would have taken the rest if he had not perceived that Solange, in her infatuation, had no thought of an amorous relation. She loved to feel exalted, but this in no way disturbed her tranquillity. Philippe had never seen a woman who was interested in him without being in pursuit of some interest of her own. The good Solange found her pleasure in herself. All she asked of others was that they should not gainsay the image she had formed of them. At heart she did not really want to know them. She took pains not to see anything in the other person that might displease her, saying to herself that this was not his "real nature"; and she accepted as real only what resembled herself. Thus she succeeded in creating in her own mind a whole universe composed of good, comfortable souls after her own pattern. Philippe let her go her own way with a little contempt and a little respect. He did not like stupid people; and he regarded as such those who did not see the world as it was; but a goodness that does the good of which it speaks was for him no everyday spectacle. Whatever their value might be, moral or immoral, the essential thing was that such people counted. Solange's goodness was not fictitious. Since she had become aware of Philippe's destitution and toil, she gave him a pension till he finished his years of study; she provided him with leisure so that he might work in peace. She did more: she made use of her extensive relations to interest one of the influential masters of the Faculty in him, or rather, since this cautious man had not failed to observe the restless power of the hungry young wolf, to so arrange things that his interest should not remain confined intus et in cute, but should show itself in the open. In the end she brought him into touch with an American oil-king who wanted to immortalize himself vicariously and opened for him a rapid path to fame. He laid the foundation of this across the ocean by his audacious feats of surgery in a palatial hospital founded by this Pharaoh.
During the course of these trying years, however, Solange would sometimes totally forget her protégé for months, and as a result of her carelessness the promised pension would cease to come. With all their good will, the rich cannot understand that some people have to think of money all the time. Money is a constant anxiety with the poor. Solange would send Philippe tickets to concerts. Philippe had to swallow all his pride to remind this charming woman, in her box at the theatre, of the unpaid pension. He swallowed it. It was sometimes the only nutriment he had taken during the day. On these occasions Solange would open her big, surprised eyes: "What's that. . . . Ah, my dear friend, how astonished I am! The moment I get home . . ."
She would promise, forget it again for a day or two and finally send it, excusing herself as gracefully as possible. Philippe, maddened by the delay and the humiliation, would swear that the next time he would die rather than ask for it again. But dying is not good for people who feel the necessity of living! And he felt this necessity. . . . He would ask for it again as often as he was obliged to do so. . . . Solange was never put out with him. If she often forgot—she had "so much to think of!"—when he reminded her of it she always took the same pleasure in giving.
How strange was the relation between this man, young, ardent, hungry for all the good things of the earth, and this woman, scarcely older than himself, elegant, pretty, gentle, good enough to eat, who, as the years passed, were often alone together, without any hint of anything equivocal in their friendship! The calm Solange maternally advised Philippe about his clothes, about the little problems of society and the practical life. Philippe's pride was not ashamed to accept this, to ask advice and even make her his confidante, to tell her of his ambitions and his disappointments. He could do so without fear. Solange would hear nothing that was evil, nothing that was real. What did it matter? She listened, and she said afterwards, with her kind smile, "You want to frighten me, but I don't believe you."
For she only believed what was not true.
And this man, pitiless to everything that was mediocre, made only one exception in life: for Solange. He abstained from judging her.
Preceded by a reputation of the American kind, flashy, but substantial, and based on indisputable realities, he had come back to Paris seven or eight years before. The support of his patron, bringing official favor with it in the wake of his insolent dollars, had opened a way for him in spite of the triple barriers piled up by routine, jealousy and the just rights of those who had been long awaiting their turn to enter. Whether it was just or not, he was advanced over them all. Philippe had not permitted himself to accept any honors or advantages he had not deserved; but, knowing that he deserved them, he did not trouble himself about the means by which he got them. He despised men too much not to borrow their own contemptible weapons, when it was necessary, in order to get the better of them. He did not despise a newspaper puff that pierced people's ears like the brass instruments that used to accompany the village tooth-pullers on their platforms. He was a great man for fashionable exhibitions, first nights, varnishing-days, official galas. He lent himself to sensational interviews. He himself wrote—one is never served better than by oneself—and, through one or two examples, showed those who contradicted him that he could handle the pen as well as the knife. A counsel for amateurs! . . . Never be ambiguous! His way of holding out his hand meant, "Alliance or war?" He allowed no means to escape him by being neutral.
At the same time, a habit of working desperately, with no more consideration for himself than he had for others, an indifference to risks, brilliant results that could not be denied, made the internes in the hospital he directed his enthusiastic partisans. He indulged in rash communications to the Academy that aroused the exasperated incredulity of comfortably settled souls who did not like to be turned upside down: Homeric jousts from which he almost always emerged with the decisive word and always with the last one.
He terrified the timid. He had no regard for individuals when the interests of science or humanity seemed to him at stake. He would have liked to experiment on criminals, destroy monsters, sterilize the abnormal, undertake heroic operations on living subjects. He loathed sentimentality. He did not give way to sympathy with his patients, and he did not allow them to pity themselves. Their groans had no interest for him. But when he was able to save them he did save them—harshly; he cut down to the quick to cure the living man. He was hard of heart, but his hands were gentle. People were afraid of him and they pursued him. He fleeced the rich and asked nothing of the poor.
He lived in a large way, for he had acquired the taste for luxury. He could give it up, however, on a day's notice; but, leading this life, he led it whole-heartedly. His wife was part of his luxury. He enjoyed them both and he never demanded of them anything they could not give. He did not ask Noémi to share in his intellectual life; he did not give her a chance to do so. Noémi did not care; if she had the rest, she had, as she thought, the important part. He had made up his mind that in any case this was all that women ought to have. A woman who thought was a cumbersome bit of furniture.
Why, then, was he so immediately captivated by Annette?
Through that which resembled himself. Through the quality in the Annette of this period that was like himself, the quality he alone could perceive. At the first crossing of their glances, as their first responses struck, steel against steel, he said to himself, "She sees these people as I see them. She's one of my kind."
Of his kind? It scarcely seemed so, to judge by the facts. Annette had fallen out of the social sphere into which Philippe had succeeded in elbowing himself, and they had met each other, in passing, on one of the rungs of the ladder. But at this particular moment they were on an equal footing, they both felt that they were strangers in this world, adversaries of this world, that they both really belonged to another race, once mistress of the soil, but now dispossessed, scattered over the earth and almost vanished. After all, who knows the mysteries of races and their vicissitudes, that mingling of all, in the ultimate future towards which, as it seems, humanity is moving for the final triumph of mediocrity? . . . But it has its unexpected resurgences, and sometimes the former master of the soil resumes his estate for a day. Whether it was his estate or not, Philippe claimed it as his own. And in this way he had just appropriated Annette.
When Annette returned to her apartment again, with lowered head, heavy with thought, she went to bed without speaking. She tried to make her mind a blank, but she could not sleep. She had to struggle to escape from a certain mental picture, for the moment she became drowsy the picture appeared at the door of her imagination. To forget it she tried to fix her mind on her everyday affairs: they did not interest her. Then she appealed against the threatening invasion to an ally whom she usually feared to invoke, because by doing so she ran the ride of stirring up too many past troubles: Julien and the world of thoughts, more fictitious than real, which her regrets and dreams had grouped about the beloved name. They returned for a moment and fell back again, frozen. She persisted in trying to grasp them by force. She held in her arms only withered sheaves. A hot sun had dried up their sap. In her desire to revive them Annette, with her feverish hands, only burned them up. She was agitated, turning and turning her pillow. But she had to sleep for the sake of to-morrow's work. She took a sleeping-powder and fell into oblivion. But when she awoke after three or four hours, her anxiety was still there. It seemed to her that even during her sleep it had not left her.
During the next day and the days that followed, her anxiety persisted. She came and went, gave her lessons, talked, laughed as usual. The well-equipped machine went on of itself. But her soul was troubled.
One grey day, as she was crossing Paris, everything suddenly became bright. On the other side of the street Philippe Villard was passing. She went home filled with joy.
When she made up her mind to get to the bottom of this joy she was thunderstruck. It was as if she had discovered a cancer in herself. . . . So once more she had been caught in the trap. Love? Love for a man who could only be for her another cause for useless suffering, a man whom she was sure was dangerous, heartless, a man who could not belong to her, who belonged to someone else, a man she could not love because she loved someone else. Someone else? Yes, yes, she still loved Julien. Well, if she loved him, how was it possible for her to love another man? She did love him. . . . But how, how could her heart give itself to two persons at once? Give itself wholly to each without dividing itself? For when she gave her heart Annette gave it completely. . . . She had a feeling that she was prostituting herself. To be sure, to surrender her body would have seemed to her less shameful than to surrender her heart to two loves at once. Wasn't she sincere, loyal to herself? . . . Of course she was. She did not know that she had more than one heart, that she was more than one being. In the forest of a soul there co-exist thickets of thoughts, jungles of desire, twenty different essences. Ordinarily one does not distinguish them: they are asleep. But when the wind passes over them their branches dash against one another. . . . The clash of passions had long since stirred this multiplicity to life in Annette. She was at once a dutiful and a passionately proud woman, a passionate mother, a passionate mistress. Mistress? Mistresses? The forest in the wind with its branches flung out toward all the points of heaven. . . . Annette, humiliated by the oppression of the force that was disposing of her without her consent, thought: "What is the use of willing and struggling for years if one moment is enough to ruin everything? Where does this force come from?"
For she repudiated it, furiously, as something alien. Didn't she recognize it as of her own substance? Ah, that was even more overwhelming. How escape from herself?
She was not the sort of woman who yields passively to an inner fatality that she despised. She determined to stifle a feeling that mortified her. And with the help of her work she would have succeeded had it not been for Noémi.
She received a letter in the large handwriting of this little person who, although she had made a study of worldly elegance, was unable to disguise the cold resolution that lay behind it. A few friendly lines inviting her to dinner. Annette excused herself because of her work. Noémi repeated the invitation, expressing this time the warm desire she felt to see her again and leaving her to choose the evening. Annette, determined not to risk a danger of which she had become aware, declined the invitation again, pleading her extreme fatigue at the end of her days. She thought the matter was settled, but the little Pandarus, who, when he is bored and malicious, is one of the thousand forms of love, left Noémi no peace until she had introduced Annette into her sheepfold. And one evening when Annette, returned from her lessons, was preparing dinner—the hour that idle people always choose to make their calls—who should appear but Noémi, chirping, assuring her of her eternal friendship. While Annette, embarrassed at appearing at such a disadvantage, was beguiled by the affectionate manner of this woman in whom she unconsciously loved the reflection of "the other one," she held her ground, in spite of Noémi's entreaties, and absolutely refused to dine with her. But she could not do less than promise to return her call, carefully making sure of the hours when she would be certain to find Noémi alone. Noémi perceived how anxious Annette was to avoid Philippe; she put it down to timidity and a lack of sympathy with him. Her own sympathy increased. When she was at home again she indiscreetly poured out to Philippe an account of her call, dwelling, with the charming perfidy of the best of friends, upon everything which, to her mind, might tend to depreciate a woman in Philippe's eyes: the poverty, the disorder, the odor of ink and cooking—in a word, Annette in the kitchen. Philippe, who knew all about Annette's gallant history and who knew still better the odor of poverty, made other reflections than those he was expected to make, but he kept them to himself.
It was not altogether by chance that Annette, a few days later, as she was coming out of Noémi's house, met Philippe in the street on his way home. As she had not expected to meet him, she felt she had a right not to combat the secret joy that ran through her. They exchanged a few words. While they stopped to talk, a young woman passed to whom Philippe bowed. Annette recognized her. She was the intelligent actress who was playing Maslova just then. Annette was attracted to her, and this attraction was evident in her look. Philippe asked: "Do you know her?"
"I have seen her," she said, "in Resurrection."
"Ah," he replied, with a contemptuous curve of his mouth.
"Don't you like her acting?"
"Her acting isn't the point."
"Is it the play then? You don't like it?"
"No," said Philippe. And seeing that Annette was curious to know his reasons, he added, "Let's walk a little way together, shall we? It's rather unconventional, but conventions were not made for us."
They walked along together. Annette was embarrassed and flattered. Philippe talked about the play with a mixture of hostility and humor such as Tolstoy himself—it was a fair enough turn of the wheel—had often employed in regard to people he did not like. He interrupted himself, amused at his severity, "I am not fair. . . . When I see a play I see those who are watching it. I see under their membranes, and the spectacle is not beautiful."
"It is with some people," said Annette.
"Yes, there are some people who have the gift of making the misery of the world seem beautiful. This saves them the trouble of remedying it. These good idealists manage to have many a sweet hour with the misfortunes of others. They serve them as a means for artistic or charitable emotions of the most tranquillizing kind, but they are of even more service to the villains who exploit them. Their sentimentality flies its protecting flag over patriotic leagues, leagues for repopulation, the founding of missions, colonial wars and other philanthropies. . . . The epoch of the teary eye! . . . There is no eye that is colder and more self-interested! The epoch of the kind employer—you have read Pierre Hamp?—who builds a church, a slaughter-house, a hospital and a brothel near his factory! Their lives are divided into two parts: one consists of talking about civilization, progress, democracy, the other of the sordid exploitation and destruction of the whole future of the world, the corruption of the race, the annihilation of the other races of Asia and Africa. . . . After this they go and melt with emotion over Maslova and take their afternoon nap to the soft harmonies of Debussy. . . . Look out when the awakening comes! Ferocious hatreds are piling up. The catastrophe is coming. . . . So much the better! All their dirty medicine does is to keep diseases going. Some day they will have to come to surgery."
"Will the patient recover?"
"I take away the disease. The patient has to take his chance!"
A joke. Annette smiled. Philippe threw her a sidelong glance. "It doesn't frighten you?"
"I am not ill," said Annette.
He stopped and looked at her. "No, you are not. In your presence one breathes the fragrance of health. It frees me from my physical and moral infections. The latter are the worst. Excuse my diatribe! But I've come from a meeting, a dispute with a gang of hypocrites over the official support of disease—that is, over hygiene. I was furious and suffocating with disgust, and when I saw you with your clear eyes, walking along so freely, with everything about you so proud and wholesome, I selfishly drank in a whiff of your air. There! It's better now. Thank you."
"So I'm promoted to the rank of a doctor. And after what you have just been saying about them?"
"Doctor, no. Medicine. Oxygen."
"You have a direct way with people!"
"This is the way I class them: inspiration, expiration, those who bring you to life and those who kill you, whom you must kill."
"Whom do you want to kill now?"
"Now?" He took her up. "Don't you think I have enough to do with my patients?"
"No, no, I couldn't help saying that," replied Annette, laughing. "It was my old classic blood. . . . But may I ask you with whom you were angry when I met you?"
"I should so much like to forget it, now that I'm with you. To put it briefly, it was about a block of unsanitary houses that has been a breeding-ground for cancer and tuberculosis ever since the time of Henry IV. The finished product: eighty per cent infected during the last twenty years. I had brought the matter before the sanitary board and demanded radical measures, that the buildings should be expropriated and torn down. They seemed to agree with me and asked me to draw up a report. I drew up the report, went back and found that the oracles had changed their minds. . . . An impressive report, dear and eminent colleague, a fine document. We must think it over. We must look into this. There is no doubt that these people have died, but were their deaths really due to the houses they lived in? . . . One of them brings me some certificates (manufactured how?) proving, with the complicity of various families who had been bribed by the owner, that one man had already bought his ticket to the cemetery when he came and settled in the waiting-room, that in another case the cancer was the result of an accident. Another contests the idea that old houses are less sanitary than new ones and says they are larger and more airy; he gives his own as an example. . . . We must make things sanitary, not destroy. Moderation in all things. A good cleaning will be enough; the owner promises to have them disinfected. . . . Besides, we are poor, our pockets are empty, we haven't the money to expropriate them. . . . Ah! if it were a question of making a new gun! . . . But, after all, cancer kills more surely than a gun. . . . To finish the farce, one of the augurs ended by talking about beauty. It seems that since these buildings belonged to the period of Henry IV, they ought to be preserved for the sake of history and art. . . . I am fond of art myself, and I can show you some pictures in my own house, ancient and modern both; but age (unless we are talking about beautiful Madame So-and-So) is not the mark of beauty; and, beautiful or not, I shall never admit that the past should poison the present. Of all hypocrisies, the aesthetic hypocrisy revolts me the most, for it tries to create nobility out of its own barrenness. So I said some pretty stiff things on that score. . . . In the middle of the discussion a colleague motioned to me, drew me aside and said, 'Don't you know that old beetle who feeds on the corpses of his tenants is an intimate friend of the president of that great committee of commerce and food-supply which brings about elections and coalitions, one of those grizzled dignitaries who rule over our democratic banquets and conventions, the invisible man out of whom the rabble constructs the tottering masonry—freemasonry—of our Republic? This friend of the people doesn't want to have the people turned out of their tomb . . . because, and this is the best of all . . . because of his philanthropy. . . .' At the end they hand me a petition from the tenants, drawn up in fine style, protesting against this desire to turn them out of their quarters! What do you expect me to do against all these people? The augurs laugh, they say. So I laughed. But I added that one shouldn't keep a good joke to oneself, that I was not an egoist, and that I intended to share it to-morrow with the readers of the Matin. They cried out at this, but I shall do as I said. I know what to expect; every knife will be raised against me. . . . The disciples of Hippocrates, to whom I've just given a good drubbing, will miss no chance. They have their own way of getting back at me. But, as you say, 'War,' my Lady Warrior! How about the other evening at Solange's? All this seems to amuse you?"
"Yes, it's splendid. I like this, fighting against injustice. I should have liked to be a man."
"There is no need to be a man. You have done your share. . . ."
"I have never complained of my share in the struggle. It's only the suffocation. Our lot is to fight in a cave, but you fight in the open air, on a mountain-top."
"Ah! that quivering of the nostrils! A horse sniffing the powder. I've seen that already. I noticed it the other evening."
"You laughed at me the other evening."
"Not at all. It was too much like myself for me to laugh."
"You harassed me; you started me off."
"Yes, I saw it at once. . . . I wasn't mistaken. . . ." "Just the same, you were contemptuous enough in the beginning."
"How the devil could I have expected to find you, to find you at Solange's house?"
"Well, but what about yourself? Why were you there?"
"It's another matter with me."
"A liking for sentimentality?"
"It's your turn to tease. . . . Poor Solange! . . . No, don't let's talk about her. I know everything that can be said. But Solange is taboo."
She did not question him, but she looked at him.
"I'll tell you some other time. . . . Yes, I owe her a great deal."
They had come to a stop. They were about to separate. Annette smiled. "You are not as bad as you seem."
"And perhaps you're not as good!"
"That makes an average."
He looked her directly in the eyes. "Will you?"
He was no longer joking. The blood streamed into Annette's cheeks, and she could not find a way to reply. Philippe's eyes held her and would not let her go. Was he saying something? Was he not saying anything? On his lips she read, "I want you."
He bowed and went on.
Annette remained alone in a torrent of flame. She walked straight ahead and ten minutes later she found herself at the point from which she had started. Without realizing it, she had made the complete circuit of the iron fence of the Luxembourg Gardens. She came to herself to find that she was all on fire, with the three flaming words engraved on a black background. She made an effort to efface them. Had he uttered them? . . . She saw again the impassive face, she tried to disbelieve it. But the imprint was there, and her resistance weakened and suddenly gave way. Well, it was decreed. . . . She knew it in advance. . . Instead of revolting, as she would have thought of doing an hour before, she felt relieved. The die was cast. . . .
She went home with her mind clear, no longer feverish. She had decided. She knew that whatever Philippe wished he would do, and what Philippe wished she wished also. She was free, nothing held her back. . . . The thought of Noémi? She owed her only one thing, the truth. She would not lie. She would take what belonged to her. . . . What belonged to her? The other woman's husband. . . . But blind passion whispered to her that Noémi had stolen him from her.
She did nothing to hasten the inevitable. She was sure that Philippe would come. She waited.
He came. He had chosen the hour when he knew that she would be alone.
As she went to open the door she was seized with terror. But it had to be as it was. She opened the door, revealing nothing of what she felt, unless her paleness did so. He entered the room. They remained standing before each other, a few steps apart, their heads lowered; then he looked at her with his serious eyes. After a silence he said, "I love you, Rivière."
And this name of Rivière in his mouth brought up the image of a stream of water.
Annette, trembling, motionless, replied, "I don't know whether I love you. I don't think I do, but I know that I am yours."
The gleam of a smile passed over Philippe's grave face. "Good," he said. "You don't lie. Neither do I."
He took a step towards her. She drew back instinctively and found herself leaning against the wall of the room, defenceless, the palms of her hands pressed out behind her, and her legs gave way beneath her. He had stopped and he looked at her. "Don't be afraid," he said. There was something tender in his hard look.
Like a captive who accepts her fate calmly, she said, with a shadow of scorn, "What do you want of me? Is it my body you want? I will not dispute with you over that. Is that the only thing you want?"
He took another step and sat down on a low chair at her feet. His cheek brushed her dress. He took Annette's hand, which she limply abandoned to him. He breathed in its fragrance, passed his lips over the fingertips and, bending down, placed it on his head, on his eyes. "This is what I want."
Under her fingers, Annette felt the rough, bushy hair, the swelling of the forehead and the beating temples. This imperious man was placing himself under her protection. She leaned towards him and he raised his face. It was their first kiss.
His arms encircled Annette, who had dropped on her knees beside him and no longer resisted, as if she had no breath left, and Philippe, violent as he was, had no thought of taking advantage of his victory. "I want everything," he said, "all of you, mistress, friend, companion—my woman altogether."
Annette extricated herself. Noémi's image had risen before her. A moment before it had been she who had driven her from her consciousness. But that Philippe should do the same thing wounded her in a way, wounded her in that instinctive freemasonry of women who, even as enemies, find themselves leagued against the aggressiveness of man—one body in common.
"You cannot," said Annette. "You belong to another."
He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing of me that she possesses."
"She has your name and your faith."
"What does the name matter? You have the rest."
"I don't care about the name, but I must have your faith. I give it and I ask for it."
"I am ready to give it to you."
But Annette, who had asked for it, felt a certain revolt when it was offered to her. "No! no! Do you mean to take it away from her who has shared your life for years and give it to me whom you have only seen three times?"
"It has not required three times for me to see you."
"You don't know me."
"I do know you. I have learned to see into life quickly. Life goes by and no moment ever appears twice. You must make up your mind on the spot or you can never make it up. You are passing, Rivière, and if I do not take you I lose you. I take you."
"You may be making a mistake."
"Perhaps. I know that when one makes a decision one often makes a mistake. But in not deciding one always makes a mistake. I should never forgive myself the error of having seen you without determining to possess you."
"What do you know about me?"
"More than you think. I know that you have been rich and that you are poor, that you had a youth filled with all the pleasures of wealth and that you were ruined and cast out of your world, that you have struggled and not weakened. I know what your struggle has been, for I underwent it myself, every day, for thirty years of my life, a hand-to-hand struggle, and twenty times I was on the point of giving in. You have held out. As for me, I was used to it. I have known abject poverty from the cradle. You had a thin skin, and you were pampered and made much of. You did not yield. You have never accepted any shameful compromise. You never tried to escape the struggle by any feminine means, seduction or the honest expedient of a marriage for money."
"Do you imagine it has been offered to me so many times?"
"That is because they knew very well, even the meanest of them, that you are not a person to be bought by contract."
"Inalienable, yes."
"I know that after having loved and had a child you refused to be the wife of your child's father. I do not need to know the reasons of your heart. But I do know that in the face of a cowardly society, you dared to demand, not the right to enjoy, but the right to suffer, the right to have a son and bring him up, in your poverty, alone. It was nothing to have demanded this right, but you have exercised it, all by yourself, for thirteen years. And knowing, through my own experience, what these thirteen years mean in suffering and daily effort, I see you before me, intact, straight, proud, without a trace of wear and tear. You have escaped two defeats, that of failure and that of bitterness . . . I myself have not escaped the mark of the latter. . . . I am a connoisseur of the battle of life. I know what the quality of a character like yours is worth. That serious smile, those clear eyes, the calm line of the lids, the loyalty of those hands, that tranquil harmony—and, under it all, the burning fire, the joyous thrill of the struggle, even if one is beaten. (It doesn't seem to matter! One goes on fighting . . .) Do you suppose that a man like myself does not know the value of a woman like you? Or that, knowing it, he should not be ready for anything to win it? . . . Rivière, I want you. I need you. Listen! I am not trying to deceive you. Although I desire your good, I do not want you for your own good, but for my own. I am not offering you any advantages, only more ordeals. . . . You don't know about my life. . . . Sit down here beside me, my beauty of the eyebrows!"
Seated on the floor, she raised her eyes to his. He held her two hands in a firm clasp while he talked to her. "I have a name, I have success, I have money and everything it gives. But you don't know how I got them or how I keep them. I took them by force and I hold them by force. I compelled my fate, if there is a fate. I succeeded in spite of things and in spite of men. And I have never tried, or desired, to win forgiveness for my success by bandaging the wounded self-esteem and the interests that have been trampled upon as I passed. My dear colleagues expect that success at least will have its narcotic effect upon me. There hasn't been any such effect. They have tried in vain to flatter me; they feel that I am not and never will be one of them. I can't forget what I have seen on the other side of the fence, the innumerable rascalities and iniquities. I have had time to meditate on the social lies for which the best watchdog has always been the intellectual class, in spite of what it pretends and what people expect from it. Apart from a few knowing fellows who, where their art and thought are in question, have the reputation of respecting nothing, but who, outside their own bailiwick, tip their hats very politely to the reigning imbecility. I have had the conspicuous folly never to pay court to it. At this very moment I am planning an attack upon some of their sacred impostures, impostures that condemn thousands of beings to poverty and endless misery. I am going to make the three heads of Cerberus howl, the three hypocrisies of morality, patriotism and religion. I shall tell you all about it later. I shall be beaten, too, I know. But I shall fight on just the same, for the joy of it, for the difficulty, and because it has to be done. . . . You see why your words, the other evening, brought me a message you never foresaw. Your words are mine. The mouth ought to be mine."
Annette gave it to him. He took her forehead and her Cheeks tenderly in his strong hands. "Rivière, I need you. I never expected to find you. Now that I have you I shall hold you."
"Hold me firmly! I am afraid I may escape."
"I know how to keep you. I offer you my hard life, my enemies, my dangers."
"Yes, you know me. But none of this can be mine. It is not yours to dispose of. It belongs to your Noémi."
"What would she do with it? She doesn't want to know anything about it. She ignores all truth, everything that is painful in life."
Annette looked at Philippe, and he read in her eyes the question she withheld.
"You are thinking, 'Why did he marry her, then?' The woman lies, yes, I know it. Her whole body is a lie, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her nails. Well, the odd thing is that I took her for that very reason. It is almost the reason why I love her. When falsehood is as perfect an art as that it deserves a good theatre. . . . (Don't we know that the theatre, that almost all art, lies, except in the case of a few freaks who bewilder their confrères; then the confrères say that they are not artists, that they ruin the trade.) If the world is a lie, at least we have the right to demand that the lie shall be pleasant. Everything considered, I prefer for my satisfaction and my society those who lie prettily. They don't take me in. I see through them. Noémi's grace is as artificial as her sentiments. But she makes a success of it. She does me credit. I enjoy it when I come home in the evening with my eyes befouled by the cutting up of spoiled meat. She is like laughing water. I bathe in it. Let her lie! It is of no importance. If she spoke the truth she would have nothing to say."
"You are hard. She loves you."
"No doubt, and I love her too."
"If you love her, why do you need me?"
"I love her in her own way."
"That's a great deal."
"A great deal for her, perhaps. It's not much for me."
"But can I give you what she gives you?"
"You are not a toy."
"I should like to be a toy, too. Life is a game."
"Yes, but you believe in it. You are one of those players who take the game seriously."
"So are you."
"Because I wish to do so."
"How do you know that I too don't wish to do so?"
"Well, let's wish together!"
"I don't want a happiness that is built on ruins. I have suffered. I don't want to cause suffering."
"All life is bought with suffering. Every happiness in nature is built upon ruins. In the end everything is ruined. At least we can have built something!"
"I can't make up my mind to sacrifice another person. Poor little Noémi!"
"She would have less pity if she had you under her feet."
"I suppose so. But she loves you, and to me it is a crime to kill a love."
"Whether you wished it or not, it's done now. Your presence has killed it."
"You think of nothing but yourself."
"No one thinks of anything but himself in love."
"No, no, that's not true. I think of myself, of you, of the woman who loves you, of everything that you love and everything that I love. I should like my love to be good and full of joy for everyone."
"Love is a duel. If you look to the right or the left you are lost. Look straight before you into your adversary's eyes."
"My adversary?"
"I."
"You are indeed, but I don't fear you. But Noémi is not my adversary. She has done me no harm. Can I come into her life and destroy it?"
"Would it be better to lie to her?"
"Deceive her? Far better to destroy her! . . . Or destroy me. Renounce."
"You will not renounce."
"How do you know?"
"Women like you never renounce through weakness."
"Why shouldn't it be through strength?"
"I will not admit that there is any strength in abdicating. I love you and you love me. I defy you to renounce."
"Don't defy me!"
"You love me."
"I love you."
"Well?"
"Well, what you say is true, I can't, I can't renounce."
"Then?"
"Then so be it!”
They had not yet said anything to the "other woman."
Annette had sworn to herself that she would not belong to Philippe till he had spoken to Noémi. But the strength of passion had been too much for her resolution. No one appoints the hour for passion. It seizes its own. And now it was Annette who restrained Philippe. She dreaded his implacability.
Philippe would not have scrupled to leave Noémi in ignorance. He did not respect her enough to feel that he owed her the truth. But if he was obliged to tell it, he meant to tell it without stopping to consider her. He was a terrible man, terribly without kindness when a passion had seized upon him. Nothing else existed. The love that he had felt for Noémi was that of a master for a valuable slave, and indeed she had never been anything more than this for him. Like many women she had adapted herself to this; when the slave holds the master nothing exceeds her power. She is everything until the day comes when she ceases to be anything. Noémi knew this, but she felt confident in her youth and her charm for many more years. After us the deluge! Besides, she had been on the watch. She had known of Philippe's passing infidelities. She had not attached much importance to them because she had wisely realized that they were momentary. She simply consoled herself with the luxury of small revenges of which she said nothing to him. She had deceived him in a temper on one occasion, one sole occasion when Philippe's unfaithfulness had stung her more than usual. She had enjoyed it very little; she had even been rather disgusted. But no matter, they were quits. Afterwards she had been more affectionate to her husband than before. It gave her satisfaction to say to herself, as she embraced him, "My dear, I am lying to you. This will teach you! You're it, this time!"
The fear she would have had of Philippe, if he had learned the truth, added to the interest. Philippe knew nothing definite, no facts, but he read the lie in her eyes. Whether Noémi had deceived him or not, he knew she was thinking about it. And she saw a flash pass through his eyes; his hands might have crushed her. But he knew nothing; he would never know anything; she closed her eyes with the languorous air of a dove.
He said brutally, "Look at me."
She had time to assume an innocent expression. He knew it was false—and he did not resist it.
He was not angry with her, but if he had caught her in the act he would have broken her back. He did not expect from her what she could not give him, frankness and faithfulness. Since she pleased him, and as long as she pleased him, all was well. But he considered himself free to break with her when she no longer pleased him.
Annette had more scruples. She was a woman, and she knew better what was going on in Noémi's heart. Noémi might be false and vain and she might deceive Philippe, but she loved him. No, for her it was not just a game, as he had said it was. She was bound to him as if he were a part of her own flesh, not merely by the fiery bond of sensual pleasure, but from the bottom of her heart, for good or evil. Good and evil. In love nothing counts but the strength of love, that imperious magnet that draws soul and body together, one being into another being. She clung to him as the aim and purpose of her life, as what she had wanted, wanted, wanted through long years. A woman does not always know why she has fallen in love. But because she has fallen in love she cannot liberate herself. She has expended too much of her strength and her desire to be able to transfer them to another object. She lives like a parasite on the being she has chosen. It would be necessary to cut into them both to separate them.
A suspicion began to eat its way into Noémi. A mere nothing, at first, the nibbling of a mouse. There was no change in their life. Philippe, hard as ever, always in a hurry, with little desire to talk, listened to her without hearing her, absorbed, with a flame in his eyes. Just at this time he was deep in a very disagreeable affair, a bitter controversy in which he had involved himself. Noémi knew about it, but the last thing she wanted was to be kept informed of these bothersome matters. When he was in the midst of them he thought of nothing else, and he neglected her. She had only to wait and let him fast; he would come back to her later with more appetite than ever. But he was fasting too long now! At other times she had amused herself by enticing him in a way that moved Philippe to rebuff her, for it annoyed him to be distracted when he was engrossed in something; but although she had protested loudly at his rudeness she had not been angry. She had been like a child playing with a fire-cracker; the more noise it made the more it diverted her. But this time, calamitously, the fire-cracker had not gone off. . . . Noémi's provocations had met with nothing but indifference. Philippe did not even notice them. . . . The mouse of her suspicion went away, came back, took up its abode in her. It nibbled so far that it reached the quick. There came a day when Noémi cried out.
They were both in bed, one morning, side by side. His eyes were open. She had just awakened, but she pretended to be asleep and she watched him. Instinctively she felt that the reflection of another face was passing over this one. (For, unaware of it as we may be, the outer casing of the mind is moulded by the image that dwells in it.) Her jealous attention was instantly caught. From under her lowered lids her eyes pierced him like a gimlet as she lay there, motionless, continuing to breathe regularly as if she were sleeping; she keenly studied this man who was so far away, so near, this man who belonged to her, this eternal stranger whose thigh was touching her own and between whom and herself lay an impassable world. No, she was not mistaken, there was some other anxiety in his mind aside from his ideas. . . . Anxiety? . . . She saw him smile. He was thinking of another woman. To snatch him away from this phantom, to test her own power, she groaned as if she was dreaming and rolled over against him. He drew away from this body that was seeking him, assured himself that she was asleep, rose noiselessly, dressed and went out. She had not moved. . . . But the door was not closed before she sat up in bed with her face distorted. She beat her breasts with her little fists, stifling a cry of rage and anguish.
From this moment she was a huntress. Tense, quivering, she looked about, she sought the scent. The nails of her clenched hands hurt her; she was burning to tear the enemy to pieces. . . . Oh, silently, gently. . . . To tear the woman's heart out. . . . But she could not find this heart. Where was it hidden? She beat the woods, explored with feverish minuteness the circle of his acquaintances. With her painted, youthful smile hiding her sharp teeth, she did not miss the least alteration of Philippe's face in the presence of the other sex, while she watched the hands, the eyes, the vocal inflections of every one of them, while the hunting-dogs that she carried in her heart were constantly casting about for the scent. . . . But the trail was always false and the animal escaped.
The strange aberration persisted which, from the beginning, had led her to place Annette outside the field of her suspicions. For weeks she had forgotten her. Annette never appeared. She felt guilty and, far from being proud, she was humiliated at the thought of Noémi because of her secret victory, her stolen victory. She avoided any reappearance at the Villards' house, and she would have found plenty of excuses if Noémi had expressed any desire to see her again. But Noémi expressed nothing of the kind; she had too much on her mind to remember Annette.
She had tried in van to convince herself that Philippe's caprice would pass. But, far from passing, the all too evident symptoms of his disaffection became even more marked: a cold inattention to what she said and how she looked, to the very presence of his little wife, at times a complete indifference—even when Noémi tried to force the fact of her existence upon him, a bored weariness, an unconcealed disgust that avoided any importunate contact. . . . She quivered with rage and slighted love! . . . She could not hide from herself any longer the seriousness of this misfortune. She became frantic. But she was careful always to force herself not to show it. . . . Always, always to be gay, sure of herself and of him, always to keep offering him the bait which he would not even look at! She was eating her heart out. . . . And against this intangible enemy there rose within her a furious hatred. Unable as she was to lay hold of her, she could have beaten her own head against the wall. She had watched everyone, everyone, in vain—everyone but Annette. Annette was the last person she would have thought of.
And it was Annette who betrayed herself.
She was walking along the street when, twenty steps away, she saw Noémi coming towards her. Noémi did not see her. She was walking with her eyes empty, her head bent; her pretty face was pale and looked older and careworn. She was not conscious of herself at this, moment or of anything about her; for days she had been like a monomaniac who, with a dejected rage, turns the grindstone of a fixed idea. Annette was shocked at the sight of her. She might have passed close beside her without being noticed, or have retraced her steps, but in her clumsy haste she left the sidewalk and crossed the street. This movement broke the continuous flow of the passing people and mechanically attracted Noémi's attention. She recognized Annette, who was trying to avoid her, and, following her with her eyes, she saw Annette furtively glance at her from the other side of the street and then turn her head away. It was like a blinding light. . . . She was the woman!
She stopped with her heart in her mouth, her nails driven into the palms of her hands, clenching her teeth, bristling like a cat with its back arched; there was murder in her eyes. The look of a passer-by reminded her that she was in a world where people live by falsehood, the world which, for once, she had left. She returned to it. But ten steps farther on she laughed cruelly. She had caught her. . . .
Annette had been completely upset by the sight of Noémi. Ever since she had surrendered herself she had been tormented by remorse. Not that she considered herself at fault for loving the man who loved her: their love was true, it was healthy, it was strong. It had no need of excuse or pretence. No social convention weighed in her mind against it. In the fever of her passion she would not even admit that she had any duty towards Noémi. She was Philippe's real wife. She could not recognize the other one who had not been able to share in his work and his struggles and make him happy. But all this assurance did not alter the fact that someone else paid the price of her own happiness, that she had destroyed the happiness of another. She had tried to believe that Noémi was too frivolous to suffer very much and that she would not find it very hard to give him up. But she knew this was not so, and all she could do was to avoid thinking of Noémi. The self-centredness of the first days of passion had made this possible.
But it was no longer possible now that she had met Noémi. Annette had the unfortunate gift of being able to pass outside herself and enter sympathetically, in spite of her own passions, into the passions of others—especially into their sufferings, which a glance revealed to her. . . .
She went home almost as much obsessed as Noémi by the anxiety that was devouring her. She could not satisfy herself with words; she could not fortify herself with the rights of love. Noémi, too, was in love, and Noémi was suffering. Has the love that suffers less rights than the love that causes the suffering? It is not a question of rights. One of the two must suffer, she or I!
She! Annette's passion left her no choice. . . . But it was far from pleasant.
At least this suffering should not be aggravated! It was wrong to prolong it as they did, to let the wound grow worse without applying a firm hand to it, operating upon it, dressing it. To dodge the frank confession, to throw upon Noémi all the misery of discovering her misfortune, was cowardly and cruel. From the very first day Annette had insisted to Philippe, "I am unwilling to conceal myself." Then how had she allowed herself to slip from day to day into this undignified situation? . . . It was her own faint-heartedness all the time.
"We must speak," she said to Philippe.
But the moment Philippe was willing to speak she prevented him. She was afraid of his brutal frankness. He threw away like a squeezed lemon what he no longer loved. His old bonds annoyed him. "Come," he said, "let's make an end of it."
And Annette replied, "No, no, not to-day." She saw the suffering he was going to cause. Gracious heavens! How painful a thing it was to destroy a heart!
Philippe had plenty of other things to think about! His days were filled by an implacable warfare against public opinion and a press that was aroused against him. This was no time for Annette to bother him with her own troubles. He was engaged in a perilous campaign. He had taken the initiative in a league for birth-control. He abhorred the shameless hypocrisy of the ruling bourgeoisie who, without the slightest interest in improving the hygiene or alleviating the poverty of the working-classes, were only interested in increasing their numbers, so that there would be plenty of fodder for factory and cannon. So far as they are concerned, they are careful not to threaten their prosperity and complicate their life by having too many children themselves. But they are not at all disturbed if a badly regulated birth-rate perpetuates poverty, sickness and slavery among the common people. They make a national and religious duty of this. Philippe was well aware of the fury he would arouse, but no danger had ever stopped him. He rushed straight into them, though they were greater than he expected.
He had made himself hated by a multitude: first by his colleagues, the pontiffs, whose vanity, doctrines and interests were wounded, then by the rivals he supplanted and even some of his own adherents, to whom he had not hesitated to tell the unvarnished truth. For he was not the man to exchange easy compliments with people who praised him, and gratitude was the least of his faults. He took what was due to him and he gave only what he thought was deserved—which was not very much. Solange alone excepted, the title of benefactor did not greatly impress him. No favoritism! So he could only expect to be attacked hard and defended weakly. He embarrassed the manœuvres of the profiteers of the ideal. Every time some noble, philanthropic, filibustering scheme was organized, they could be sure that he would place himself in opposition to it. He took a scandalous pleasure in punching the noses of the virtuous at their sly tricks. In this way he had earned in respectable quarters, the (sotto voce) reputation of a bad character, a destroyer, an anarchist. These whispers had not yet ventured as far as the public ear—the monstrous ear of Pasquino, the slanderous press. They were awaiting the right moment. Eccolo! The beautiful occasion had come! . . . It was an explosion of patriotic anger. All the papers took part in it. The echo of the public indignation reached Parliament, where immortal words were pronounced vindicating the right of the poor to a plentiful family. A few exalted souls proposed a law that would deal rigorously with all propaganda that tended directly or indirectly to reduce the population. The exaggerations of a free-and-easy press, in which the egoism of the pleasure-lover took precedence over all humanitarian reasons, furnished arguments to discredit the cause. Philippe found his adherents among the enemies of society. To every volley he replied straightforwardly himself in one of the great newspapers. But there was danger that this tribune would fail him, for letters of protest flooded the paper. He gave lectures; he spoke at riotous meetings. His vehemence equalled that of his opponents. They were on the watch for some imprudent utterance that would enable them to overpower him. But this formidable wrestler remained the master of his passions and did not allow himself to be carried an inch beyond what he wanted to say. He achieved an enormous notoriety; he was all the rage with some and an object of scorn and hatred to others. He found it easy to breathe in the dust of the combat.
In the midst of this tempest of what account was Noémi?
Noémi hastened homewards. She was remembering Philippe's first meeting with Annette, when she had been present—her own stupidity and their treachery. She was furious. Scarcely had she found herself between the walls of her apartment than she gave way to her rage. It was like a water-spout. In the twinkling of an eye everything was laid waste. Anyone who saw her, weeping, convulsed, would have had difficulty in recognizing her, with her pretty face distorted with anger, biting and tearing her handkerchief, making havoc of the papers on her husband's writing-table, avenging her suffering on the little dog that ran to her to be petted and the paroquet she was ready to strangle. . . . But she had taken care to lock herself in. The rôle of Fury should certainly be played in private. It was not beautifying. It made her look hard, old and worn out. But to see herself in the mirror, without witnesses, ugly and wicked, did not displease her; it almost gave her comfort. This, too, was a form of vengeance. She began to pity herself and her face, and, distracted from her violence by this compassion, she rolled on the carpet and sobbed loudly. . . . This could not last long, for Philippe would be coming in; she must hurry, take double mouthfuls, weep quickly, weep for all she was worth. . . . She continued to sob in great gusts, but the worst part of the storm was already over. The little dog returned, unresentfully, and licked her ear. She hugged him, moaning, and sitting on the carpet petted one of his feet and fell silent. She was thinking. Suddenly, with her mind made up, she rose to her feet, fastened up the hair that had fallen over her eyes, picked up the objects that were strewn about the room, rearranged the scattered papers, carefully composed her face and her dress. Then she waited.
Philippe found her calm and appreciative. At first she tried the simplest weapons. In the course of their talk she innocently let fall a few offensive words about her detested rival. In a sweet voice she said two or three atrocious things about Annette—about her outward appearance, of course. The moral question was secondary; even when the spirit is what one loves, it is the body that makes love. Noémi was expert in finding in a woman's beauty the things that make her seem ugly, things which, once they have been seen, cannot be forgotten. This time she surpassed herself. To poison the image of the rival in the eyes of a lover is an inspiring task. . . . Philippe never flinched.
Then she changed her tactics. She defended Annette against various bits of gossip; she praised her virtues. (Eulogies have no consequences!) She tried to make him talk, to make him take off his mask, to open battle with her on the field where she was awaiting him. But Philippe remained as indifferent to the good things she said as to the evil.
She brought into action all her amorous allurements. She tried to arouse Philippe's jealousy; she threatened, laughingly, to pay him back if he ever deceived her and to pay him double. He pleaded a business engagement and got up to go.
Then anger seized her again. She cried out that she knew everything, that he was Annette's lover. She threatened him, upbraided him, besought him, talked about killing herself. He shrugged his shoulders and, turning his back, walked to the door without a word. She ran after him, caught him by the arms, forced him to turn around and, with her face against his, in an altered voice, said, "Philippe! . . . You don't love me any longer. . . ."
He looked her in the eyes and said, "No!" Then he went out.
If Noémi had been distracted, she now became possessed. For hours her head whirled with insane fury. She thought of every absurd, ferocious means of avenging herself. To kill Philippe. To kill Annette. To kill herself. To dishonor Philippe. To defame Annette. To make Annette suffer. To throw vitriol over Annette. . . . What joy to disfigure her! . . . To strike at her through her honor. To strike at her through her child. To write, send anonymous letters. . . . Feverishly she scribbled a few lines, tore them up, began again, tore them up again. . . . She was just as ready to set fire to the house.
But she did not do so. Calming herself gradually, she collected her strength and the true genius of a woman in love came into play.
She saw plainly that she could do nothing with Philippe directly. He would pay her for this some day! . . . But for the moment he was inaccessible. Consequently, she must deal with Annette. . . . She went to see Annette.
She did not know what she was going to do. She was ready for anything. She had taken her revolver in her hand-bag. On the way she rehearsed in her mind scenes that she later discarded. For her instinct led her to foresee Annette's replies and correct her plan in accordance with them. Even at the last moment she changed everything. A flood of rage rose in her as she climbed the stairs, panting, almost running; and through the material of the bag she clenched the weapon in her fist. But when the door opened and she found herself before Annette, she understood at a glance. . . . One gesture, one word of violence, would exasperate Annette, and she would be all the more implacable in following her passion.
All trace of Noémi's anger instantly disappeared. And red, as if she were out of breath from having climbed the stairs too quickly, she flung herself, laughing, on Annette's neck. Surprised at this outburst, annoyed by this embrace, Annette kept her reserved manner. The other, once in the apartment, walked unceremoniously into the bedroom and rapidly assured herself that Philippe was not there. Then she sat down on the arm of the chair and addressed little, tender words to Annette, who stood stiffly beside her. As she talked she even passed one arm about Annette's waist and played with her collar. Suddenly she burst into tears. . . . At first Annette thought she was still pretending. . . . But, no! This was serious; these were real tears. . . .
"Noémi, what is the matter with you?"
With her face pressed against Annette's breast, she did not answer; she continued to weep. Annette, bending over this great grief, tried to calm her. Finally Noémi raised her head and moaned through her sobs: "Give him back to me."
"Who?" asked Annette, startled.
"You know!"
"But . . ."
"You know, you know! I know you love him and I know he loves you. . . . Why did you take him away from me?"
More tears. Annette, with stricken heart, heard Noémi plaintively recall the confidence, the affection, she had shown her, and she could not answer, for she was reproaching herself; and these sad reproaches, which had no violence in them, struck her heart. But when Noémi said bitterly that Annette had abused her friendship to deceive her, she tried to clear herself, saying that love had come in spite of her and had overpowered her. There was nothing pleasant for Noémi in these confessions, and she endeavored to turn them aside; she pretended to help Annette to justify herself and seemed to believe that Philippe was chiefly to blame. She spoke of him in the most outrageous way to assuage her own bitterness and make him odious or at least suspect in Annette's eyes. But the latter rose to his defence. She would not allow anyone to accuse Philippe of being the aggressor. He had been frank. She, she alone, had committed the error of not permitting him to confess. Then Noémi, filled with hatred, redoubled her accusations. Annette opposed her. The dispute grew bitter. One would have said that, of the two, Annette was Philippe's real wife. And Noémi seemed suddenly to become aware of this. She lost all her discretion and cried out in a new rage, "I forbid you to speak to him! I forbid you! He is mine."
Annette, shrugging her shoulders, said, "He belongs neither to you nor to me. He belongs to himself."
"He is mine," Noémi repeated passionately. "I shall keep him." She was claiming her rights.
"There are no rights in love," said Annette, harshly.
"He is mine," Noémi cried again. "I shall keep him."
"I am his," Annette replied. "You have kept nothing."
The two women glared at each other with hatred in their eyes, Annette steeled in egoism and hardness, Noémi burning to strike Annette. She hated every inch of her, from her head to her feet. She wanted to insult her ugliness, lash her with the cruellest words, the most irreparable words. It would have been such a satisfaction. But she stopped short; she would have lost too much!
Stooping down quickly to pick up the bag that had fallen at her feet, she pulled out the revolver and turned it . . . against whom? . . . She did not know yet. . . . Against herself! . . . At first it was a feint, but when Annette flung herself upon her to seize her arm what had been pretence became real. The two women struggled; Noémi fell upon her knees with Annette bending over her. It was not easy to restrain the desperate little creature. She really meant to kill herself now. . . . Although, if the weapon had touched Annette's bosom, with what delight she would have fired at her. . . . But Annette struck her hand aside, the gun went off, the bullet lodged in the wall. And Noémi never knew which of the two she had aimed at. . . .
She had dropped the weapon and she struggled no more. The nervous reaction had set in. She fell now, sobbing and prostrated, at Annette's feet: she was in hysterics. From the first Annette had suspected intuitively that Noémi was acting a part . . . up to a certain point. (But does one ever know just to what point?) And she had been dully irritated by this nonsense about suicide. . . . But how could she doubt the suffering of this poor little broken thing? She struggled to remain hard, to turn away, but she could not; she was ashamed of her suspicions and, with her heart full of pity, she knelt down by Noémi, lifted up her head, tried to console her, saying maternally, "My child. . . . Come, come! . . ."
She took her in her strong arms and raised her up. She felt this young body, shaken by sobs, abandoning itself, defenceless, and she thought, "Is it possible that I am the one who causes this suffering?"
Another voice said to her, "Would you not buy your love at the cost of any amount of suffering?"
"My own suffering, yes."
"Your own and other people's. Why should the others be privileged?"
She looked at Noémi as she held her, half-fainting. . . . So light! . . . A bird! . . . It seemed to her that she was her daughter and, without quite meaning to do so, she pressed her in her arms. Noémi opened her eyes and Annette thought, "If she were in my place would she spare me?"
But Noémi turned towards her a broken look. Annette laid her in her chaise longue, and, standing beside her, placed her hand on her head. (Noémi shivered at the hateful contact, but she did not show it.) She asked her, as if she were addressing a weeping child, "So you love him very much?"
"I love nothing but him."
"I, too, love him."
Noémi gave a jealous start. "Oh," she said harshly, "but I am young. You, you" (she hesitated), "you have had your life, you can get on without him."
Annette repeated to herself, bitterly, the words she had not uttered: "It is because I shall soon be old that I cling to this last hour of youth, this supreme light, and will not give it up. . . . Ah! If I had the treasure of youth before me as you have!"
But she added, sadly, "I should make a mess of it a second time, I suppose."
Noémi had seen Annette's face darken and she was afraid she had imperilled the frail advantages she had just gained. She said hastily, "I know quite well that he loves you, that you are beautiful"—("Liar!" thought Annette)—"that you are superior to me in many things that he likes. I cannot even hate you because, in spite of everything, I love you"—("Liar! Liar!" repeated Annette)—"The match is not equal. It isn't fair! No . . . I am only a poor, weeping woman. I don't amount to anything. I know it. . . . But I love him, I love him, I can't live without him. What do you think will become of me if you take him away? Why did he love me once if it was only to abandon me? I can't endure it. He is my whole life. Everything else is nothing to me."
There was nothing false in her tone now, and Annette pitied her again. She was insensible to the rights Noémi invoked over her husband; she did not believe in the rights of one being over another, in these contracts of mutual proprietorship that people sign for life. But she was distressed by these tricks of cruel nature who, when she separates two hearts that have loved each other, never removes love from both hearts at once—no, but rather takes pains that one of the two shall cease to love before the other, so that the most loving is always sacrificed. And it was hateful to her to further the schemes of the great torturer. "Life belongs to the strongest. Yes, love does not hesitate. To attain its end it tramples everything else under foot. Woe to the weak! . . . But why is it that I can't say this? I should like to, but the words stick in my throat, I cannot. It revolts me. Is it because I do not love enough? I am old, as she says. I belong in the ranks of the weak. . . . No! No! No! It's a trick! . . . By what right does she come and step between happiness and me? I will not give up to her my bit of happiness! . . . Her tears, what are her tears to me? . . . I will trample on her!"
But as she looked angrily at Noémi lying there, Noémi, who was watching her through her tears, took the hand, the arm that hung down by the back of the chair, pressed it against her cheek and begged, "Let me keep him!"
Annette tried to free herself. Noémi held her fast. Rising in her chair, she slid her two hands up Annette's arm, forcing her to bend over and look at her. "Let me keep him!"
Annette snatched herself away from the fingers that gripped her. She rebelled. "No! No! I will not. He needs me."
"He needs nothing but himself," said Noémi, bitterly. "He loves nothing but himself. He finds his pleasure in you as he once found it in me. He will leave you as he left me. He is not attached to anything."
She judged him hardly and profoundly. Annette was struck by her intelligence. With what acuteness, born of bitterness and suffering, had he been read to the depths by this little creature who seemed so frivolous and heedless! Some of her terrible observations corresponded only too well with the apprehensions that her own experiences had awakened in Annette. "And yet you love him?" she said.
"I love him. He does not need me. It is I who need him. . . . Ah! Do you suppose I don't suffer in needing a man who has no need of me, a man who despises me, whom I despise? . . . I do despise him! I despise him! But I can't live without him. . . . Why did I ever know him? It was I who wanted him. I wanted him, I caught him. . . . And I am the one who is caught. If only, if only I had never known him! Ah, but I can't wish that! . . . I haven't the strength. I am too much in love. He holds me completely. I hate him. I hate love. Why, why does one love?"
She stopped, exhausted, with her hunted eyes wandering, seeking to the right, to the left, a way of escape. They bowed their heads, these two women, enslaved under the yoke of the savage force.
Noémi took up her refrain in a dull, heavy tone, "Let me keep him."
Annette felt a will as tenacious and adhesive as a devilfish clinging to her limbs with its arms covered with suckers. She snatched herself away from it again and cried, "I will not."
There was a flash of anger in Noémi's eyes and her fingers clenched. Then in a soft, plaintive voice, she said, "Love him! Let him love you! But don't take him away from me. Let us both keep him, you and I."
Annette made a gesture of repulsion.
Noémi's fury flashed up again. "Do you think it doesn't disgust me? You disgust me. I detest you. But I don't want to lose him."
Annette moved away from Noémi and said, "I do not detest you. You are suffering and I am suffering. But it is base to divide in love. I am willing to be the victim. I am willing to be the executioner. I am not willing to be base. To save what I love I am not willing to surrender half of it. I give everything. I want everything. Or I want nothing."
Noémi, clenching her teeth, cried from the depths of her heart. "Nothing!" (For even while she was offering to yield a share, she counted on regaining everything.)
Then, with a bound, she rose from her chair, ran to Annette as she stood there, and, falling on her knees, clasped her legs. "Forgive me! I don't know, I don't know what I am asking. I don't know what I want. But I am unhappy. I cannot endure it. . . . What am I to do? Tell me! Help me!"
"Help you! I!" said Annette.
"You. To whom can I go for help? I am alone. Alone with that man who is not interested in you, even when he loves you, in whom you cannot put any trust. . . . And, before he came, a mother who was interested in nothing but herself, in her pleasures. . . . No one to advise me. ... I haven't a single friend. . . . When I saw you I thought you would be one. And you have been my worst enemy. . . . Why have you done me this injury?"
Annette was overwhelmed. "My poor child, it wasn't my fault. I didn't wish it. . . ."
Noémi seized upon this compassionate word, "Your child, you said. . . . Yes, be a mother, an older sister to me! Don't hurt me! Advise me. Tell me what I should do. I don't want to lose him. . . . Tell me, tell me. . . . I will do anything you say. . . ."
She was speaking only half falsely. She was so accustomed to shamming what she felt that she felt what she shammed. And her love, her grief, her need of Annette, her hope of touching her, were certainly real. Even this confidence she showed in her—the last card she had to play. She played it with a passion of despair. And even as she unbosomed herself, she did not lose sight of the disquietude that Annette's face could not conceal. Annette was weakening. Noémi's self-abandonment disarmed her. She no longer had the strength to reply. She was not deceived, however. The sugary tone of some of her adversary's inflections threw light on the latter's duplicity. She let her talk. She read her depths. She was thinking, "What shall I do? Sacrifice myself? What a sell! I will not. I don't like this woman. She lies, she hates me. But she is suffering." And she stroked the head of the kneeling enemy, who continued to groan and watch her, following her vacillating will as if it were her prey, with a shiver of fear, of acute breathless half-sanguinary joy, and who, at the right moments, pressing to her lips those hands that she would gladly have bitten, repeated, tirelessly, "Let me keep him!"
Annette, with lowered brows, wanted to drive her away. She saw in those eyes trickery and grief, falsehood and love, a desperate hope. She smiled with weariness, pity and disgust for herself, for them both—for everything; and, turning aside her head, she said in a moment of weakness, "Keep him!"
No sooner had she said it than she wished to take it back. But Noémi bounded to her feet and embraced Annette with frantic protestations. . . . (She had never hated her so much! At last she had her! . . . Had her?) Annette was already saying, "No, no! . . ."
Noémi pretended not to hear. She called her darling, her best friend. She vowed eternal gratitude, eternal love. She laughed and cried. But she did not waste her time in vain effusions. She wanted to know what Annette would do to get rid of Philippe.
Annette rebelled. "I said nothing."
"You did say it. You did say it. You promised me. . . ."
"A word that escaped me. . . . You dragged it from me by surprise."
"No, you can't take it back. You said 'Keep him.' You said it, Annette. Tell me that you said it! You can't deny it. . . ."
"Leave me, leave me," said Annette, exhausted. "Don't torment me. I can't. I can't."
She sat down, crushed, while Noémi, standing beside her, continued to harass her. Their rôles had changed. Annette refused to give him up; her love had taken root in her. Noémi did not care about this. Annette could keep her love if she did not keep Philippe. She wanted Annette to break with him at once, without waiting. And she could suggest ways of breaking with him; her head was full of them. She urged her, cajoled her, begged her, tried to force her, embraced her, deafened her with her flow of words; she appealed to her generous heart, besought, adjured, demanded, dictated the replies. . . .
Annette, rigid and frozen, would not say another word. She did not even try to stop this torrent. Her lips were tightly pressed together, her eyes dull. . . . At last Noémi became silent in the face of this immobility. She took her hands—they were cold and damp. "Answer, answer!" she said.
Without looking at her, Annette murmured, "Leave me." (Her voice was so low that Noémi read it on her lips rather than heard it.)
"You want me to go away?" she replied.
Annette nodded.
"I am going, but you have promised?"
Annette repeated wearily, "Leave me, leave me. . . . I need to be alone. . . ."
Noémi hastily rearranged her hair before the mirror. Then, turning towards the door, she said, "Good-bye, you have promised. . . ."
Annette made a final gesture of protest, "No, I have promised nothing."
Noémi felt herself again flooded with anger. After all this effort! But her instinct told her that she must not move too quickly or stretch the cord too tight. . . . All the same, the blow had its effect. She left.
She had seen the weakness of the enemy. She would trample on her.
Annette remained for some time motionless in the spot where Noémi had left her. She was exhausted after this long scene. She would have resisted better if the attack had not surprised her at a moment when she was already shaken by the double wear and tear of passion and incessant work, the uninterrupted fever aroused in her stormy soul by her participation in Philippe's struggles, the repressed remorse, the anguish that was concealed beneath her exhaustion of mind and body. This weakness gave Noémi her strength. She found the field prepared and an ally in her adversary.
Noémi herself played little part in Annette's anxieties. She cared little for her as a woman. As a rival she did not care about her at all. She considered her false, perfidious, heartless, and with jealous injustice she now denied what she had at first enjoyed, her charm. Everything about her seemed factitious except her grief. Besides, it mattered very little whether it was Noémi or someone else. . . . "She is a living creature who suffers, and I, I cause this suffering. . . ." And a strange pity preyed upon Annette's heart.
This tendency had developed, during the last few years, from the sight of so much misery, from her connection with those two deaths, Odette's and Ruth's. She had been mysteriously shaken by them. A weakness. She called it unhealthy and perhaps it was so. One could not live if one had to pause over the sufferings of the world. All happiness is nourished on the unhappiness of someone else. Life devours life, as larvæ devour the living prey in which they are laid. And everyone drinks the blood of all. . . . Annette had once drunk it without thinking of it, and this blood brought warmth and joy to her body. While she was young she had never thought of the victims. From the moment when she had said to herself, as she thought of them, "I must be hard," she had begun to weaken. She felt this; she could only be hard intermittently now. She was growing old. Ten years earlier she would not have had a moment's hesitation because of the harm she was doing Noémi. "My happiness is my right. Woe to anyone who touches it! . . ." She would have had no need to seek for pretexts. Now, in order to snatch from life her share of happiness, she had to find other reasons than her happiness. She was no longer sufficient unto herself. She had found the strength to brush aside, without scruple, the other less fortunate competitors in the hunt for bread. This bread was her son's; she was upheld by the animal instinct that makes a creature bristle to defend its young and feed them on the flesh of its fellow-animals. But the other animal instinct, the love of self—taking and keeping for oneself—was dying down and only asserted itself now by fits and starts. Maternity, by usurping the place of this other instinct, had partially destroyed it.
In the present crisis her son was no help to her. Far from it! He was one anxiety and remorse the more. Annette could not lie to herself, her passion took no account of her son. She felt guilty towards him, and she had taken pains to hide everything from him. She knew the child. In the past she had observed the jealousy that led him to drive his claws into those whom she loved. She did not blame him for this. She was glad that he wanted to be the only one to love her. . . . But to-day she was defending her treasure—against whom? Against her treasure! Passion against passion. She did not wish to sacrifice either of the two. And as both of them were jealous, obstinate, domineering, she had to hide from each the secret of the other. Had she succeeded? Marc detested the "other fellow." He knew nothing—of that she was sure—but although he did not know, had not his instinct told him? She was ashamed to conceal herself and she was even more ashamed that he might suspect. . . . No, he suspected nothing; it was for other reasons that he hated Philippe. . . .
As for Philippe himself, he did not do Marc the honor of thinking about him at all. In marrying Annette he would have been quite willing to take two or three brats into the bargain. It made no difference to him either in his feelings or financially; there was no need to be grateful to him for it. He did not dislike Marc; he thought him fairly bright, rather lazy, not very keen; he might have subjected him to a sharp discipline, but he felt no need to concern himself with the child, and he made this plain. He had a way of talking of him, a rough humor that wounded Annette to the quick. Accustomed to the coarse things of life, he had no idea of the consideration that a proud, sensitive nature demands, of the things that offend its sense of decency. In the bluntest, rudest terms he would give the boy, in his mother's presence, harsh warnings and medical advice that made both the child and the mother blush. The mother more than the child. Philippe's theory was that nothing must be concealed from the boy. This was also Annette's theory. And Marc's as well. But there are ways of putting things! Annette suffered in her very flesh. Marc, who was humiliated, stored up the bitterest resentment. Between him and Philippe there never could be anything but misunderstanding. Their two temperaments were too different. Annette could foresee the clashes, the endless discords. A terrible thought for her, the passionate lover and mother!
There was no one to whom she could turn for help in making up her mind. She had to decide alone, egoistically. Well, didn't she have the right to think of herself too? A right is nothing if one does not maintain it. Was she maintaining hers? . . . Yes, at moments, like a lioness, when she saw youth, happiness, life about to be swallowed up. . . . Happiness? . . . There was no question of happiness in a union with a man like Philippe! Something less or something more, incomparably more for a woman like Annette: a full, bold, intelligent life, not a life of repose slumbering in its security, but great winds, storms, action, struggles—with the world—with him—a life of trouble and fatigue—but together—life—a life worthy of being lived, with death at the end, when one was worn out and happy to leave the hard, fertile days behind, happy to have had them. . . . That was glorious!! But one must have the strength. . . . She had it, enough to carry the burden, once it was well adjusted, with her head up, to the end. But in order to adjust it she had to be helped and even forced a little. Philippe must place the burden on her head, impose it on her. He must say, "Carry it! For me! You are necessary to me. . . ." With these words she could surmount all her remorse. . . . Was she necessary to Philippe? He had said so during the first days when he had wanted to win her. He no longer said it, and Annette would have liked to hear it again and again, to be convinced. She saw him full of himself, used to working alone, fighting alone, extricating himself alone, putting all his pride into it; he would have felt humiliated if he had had to seek help. So she said to herself, "What am I good for?" It is the bounty of love not only to give us faith in someone else but to give us back faith in ourself. May it be charitable to us!
This was a feeling that Philippe seldom entertained. Like most of his kind, this great doctor of the body paid little attention to maladies of the soul. He never gave a thought to the doubts that preyed upon this woman whose body lay by his side. He should not have left her the time to question herself. . . . Make an end of it, marry her! . . . Annette would whisper to him softly, "Let's go away together, so that I can never take myself back!"
But Philippe was no longer in a hurry. He was passionate, yes, but he had many other passions that were of far more importance to him: his ideas, his struggles, the controversy that was absorbing him at the moment when Annette would have liked him to think of nothing but herself. He had no intention of stirring up a conjugal scandal and hampering himself with a noisy divorce-case before he had emerged from the fire of the present battle. He had made up his mind to keep his promises. But later! Annette must have patience. It was easy enough for him to be patient. He enjoyed her. He was quite willing to leave things as they were. He flattered himself that he could impose the same forbearance upon Noémi. He flattered himself too much! He did not wish to see how intolerable this waiting was to the two women. . . .
"Naturally," thought Annette, "a man—a man worthy for us to love—will never love us as much as his ideas, his science, his art, his politics. A naïve egoism that thinks it is disinterested because it incarnates itself in ideas. The egoism of the brain, more murderous than that of the heart. How many hearts have been broken by it!"
She was not surprised at this, for she knew life; but it hurt her. If it had only been a question of suffering she would have accepted it, however, perhaps even with that secret enjoyment of self-sacrifice which is familiar to women and which they willingly consider the price of love. But not to the point of sacrificing her self-respect and her son's honor in a humiliating situation. It hurt her that Philippe did not feel this. Of course he was not sensitive. She knew what he thought of women and love. He could not help thinking as he did; he had been shaped by his education and his rough experiences, and it was for this that she loved him. But she had flattered herself with the hope that she would change him. Instead, she perceived that day by day she was losing her power over him. And worst of all, over herself. Annette felt herself invaded by the demon of sensuality; day by day she became less the mistress of her will, more enslaved.
The duel of passion only preserves its nobility as long as there is equality between the combatants. When one is conquered the other abuses his victory and the vanquished becomes debased. Annette was at that poignant moment which precedes and determines defeat. She knew it: her strength would not sustain her any longer. Philippe knew this also, and his attitude showed it. It made no difference that he cared just as much—perhaps more, for Annette; he showed less consideration for her and he made brutal use of what belonged to him. He treated her like a conquered province. With all his days absorbed in his regular and passionate life of toil and his nights by Noémi (for he wished to keep up appearances), he saw Annette only during brief and burning encounters. No intimacy of the heart. He maintained, cynically, that she had the best of it all.
She wanted to tear herself away from this degradation in which her senses were accomplices, but every day they became more imperious. Once, when she wished to flee from their tyranny, they refused to obey with a violence that dismayed her. A woman of such fervent energy who, after having severely disciplined and repressed her passions for ten years, opens the door of their cage at the most fiery moment of the stormy summer, runs the risk of being destroyed.
Annette could only retrieve herself by forcing Philippe to respect the wife she wished to be—the companion "rei humanœ atque divinœ"—the equal. She asked Philippe, she besought him in anguish, to give her up till the time came when they could love and marry openly. Philippe refused: he was as unwilling to be hampered in his passions as in his public life. He was unwilling either to do without Annette or to marry her at a time that did not suit him. He pretended to consider Annette's attempt to leave him as a rather degrading manœuvre to attach him to her. And this although he knew very well what a whole-hearted gift she had made of herself! She was insulted by the outrageous suspicion—and she gave herself again with a despairing passion and disgust.
As for himself, he would see nothing of all this. He came back, demanding his own selfish rights as a lover, never realizing that, although she consented to them, every one of these carnal victories left a wound in his partner.
Annette was degraded in her own eyes. She ceased to give herself; she prostituted herself to love. Unless she flung herself off the slope down which her mad body was sliding, she was lost. . . .
One afternoon she fled. She went to Sylvie's and asked her to let her child stay with her for a few days, pleading as an excuse that she had to go away. Sylvie asked for no explanation; one glance was enough. This woman, whose curiosity was so often indiscreet, and who was unable in so many ways to understand her sister's ideas, had an instinct for love and its tragic tricks. In the days of the old intimacy with Annette, she had never confided to her the secrets of her own love affairs, and she did not expect Annette to open herself to her. She knew that every woman has a right to her hours of silence, her great hours, and that at such times no one can help her. One must save oneself alone or perish alone. She offered her sister the shelter of a little house she owned in the suburbs, near Jouy-en-Josas. Annette was touched, and she kissed her and accepted. In this little rustic house, on the edge of the woods, she shut herself up for a fortnight. She had not even told Marc where she was going. Her retreat was known only to Sylvie.
Scarcely had she left Paris and its enchanted circle than she perceived the excesses of the past few weeks and passed judgment on them. She was terrified by them. She, this mad creature, this miserable slave drunk with her own servitude! Passion, the destroyer of the soul! . . . Its clasp loosened. She breathed again, this evening, she saw and felt once more the fields, the woods, the calm of the earth. For two months an opaque red veil had concealed the living world from her. Even those closest to her, her son, had come to seem far away. . . . But when she reached the house in the fields, the veil was torn away in the rays of the setting sun. She heard the bells, the birds, the voices of the peasants; she wept with relief. . . . In the middle of the night, however—she had fallen asleep exhausted—she awoke suddenly with a pang of anguish. She felt about her throat the coils of the serpent.
She spent her days in a succession of humiliating tortures, bland impulses, moments of sudden, keen, absolute clairvoyance that pierced the great deception. She had a perpetual feeling of insecurity. Even though she was prepared and armed, a mere nothing would have caused her to give way. She prolonged her absence.
She was not without danger of imperilling her situation. In this sudden eclipse, she was losing her lessons. The little clientele that she had gathered with so much trouble was passing into other hands. Sylvie forwarded letters and information to her sister, but she added nothing but good news about the child's health. She avoided giving her any advice. Annette alone was to judge.
Annette knew full well that she ought to return, but she still lingered. . . . It was in vain that she stayed on; she could not prevent her thoughts from returning to Philippe. What was he doing? Wasn't he hunting for her? . . . From him nothing had come. She dreaded any news, and she sought for it. She dismissed him from her mind, she thought she had freed herself. But he had not given her up and suddenly he rose before her.
One evening she was wandering, idle, full of haunting thoughts, under the arbor that skirted the low wall of the garden, when, between the branches, she saw an automobile coming towards her in the distance down the white road. And she thought, "It's he!" . . . She stepped back out of sight. The car drove past along the wall to the end of the little yard. Annette, with her heart tightening, listened to its roaring, heard it slow down. Thirty paces farther on the road forked and the car stopped. Annette, behind the screen of leaves, ventured to glance, out and saw the back of the man who was hesitating, turning round, exploring the horizon. She recognized him. Terror seized her. She ran and flung herself behind a hedge of box and sank down upon the ground, her nails scratching the earth; she lowered her head and the blood flooded her cheeks as she thought, "He is going to take me again!" She wanted to say "No" and her blood cried "Yes!" She felt the dry turf crumbling under her fingers, and, with her face buried in the boxwood, she tried to stop the roaring of the blood in her ears so that she could listen to the steps on the other side of the wall. She heard the car starting off again. She ran to the corner of the garden on the road and cried, "Philippe!"
The car disappeared at the turn.
The next day Annette went back to Paris. Did she know what she wanted or what she was going to do? Sylvie looked at her pityingly and said to herself, "It's no better." But she did not question her.
Annette, full of gratitude, remained seated without speaking, her body broken with fatigue, in a corner of her sister's room, seeking peace in this warm presence. Sylvie came and went, leaving her to recover herself in the silence. At last Annette got up to go home. As she was about to leave, Sylvie, placing her hands on either side of her forehead, looked at her a long time, shook her head and said, "If you can't do otherwise, submit; don't struggle any longer. It will pass. Everything passes, the good, the bad and we ourselves. . . . How little it all matters!"
But to Annette it mattered a great deal. The question was not merely between Philippe and herself. It was between her and herself. To return to Philippe and confess herself conquered by him would have given her a bitter pleasure. But what terrified her was a deeper, more intimately personal defeat that would have no witness but herself. She carried her mortal adversary within her. Never once, for many years, had she failed to realize this, though from pride and prudence perhaps she had pleased herself by not thinking of it. This gulf of desire and sensual delight that a former life (her father's?) had dug within her. . . . Everything that gave her strength and pride of life, her will, her healthy soul, the free, pure breath that bathed her lungs, everything was being sucked down into it. Mors antmœ. . . . And Annette, whose reason did not seem to believe in the soul, did not wish her soul to die.
Carried back to Paris, where Philippe was, like a captive on some Assyrian bas-relief, with a rope about her neck, she did not look for Philippe. She avoided him.
Philippe, as much possessed by Annette as Annette was by him, had come and knocked at her door in her absence. He was indignant over this sudden departure. He would not admit that she could escape him. He tried to find her address. He had Sylvie's and he went to see her. The first glance was a declaration of war. Sylvie had understood. Armed with a bitter defiance, she sized Philippe up with her own eyes and not with those of Annette—a man who would be dangerous as an enemy and more dangerous as a lover, the kind of man who destroys what he loves. She knew that sort and she would never have anything to do with them. To Philippe's peremptory questions regarding Annette's whereabouts, she replied coldly that she knew nothing about them, taking pains that he should see that she knew everything. Philippe made an effort to conceal his annoyance. He tried to wheedle her. Sylvie remained stolid. He went away in a rage.
He wasted no time in beating the bushes for her, and it never entered his head to cover himself with dust travelling in a car to Jouy-en-Josas. He did not even look for Annette. He had no intention of sacrificing his days in a vain pursuit. He was sure she would come back. But that she should fail him, that she should allow herself to upset him at such a moment as this, was more than he could forgive; and his resentment, no less than a furious need of diversion, flung him back upon his wife. It was a provisional reconciliation and humiliating enough to this woman who was only a substitute. For it was only for want of something better; he was waiting for the other one.
But Noémi was not going to be proud when her advantage opposed it. She did not waste her time. The ordeal had revealed to her former mistakes. She had realized that to hold a man it is not enough to make him love you. You must flatter his pride and his whims. Philippe was astonished at the interest she showed in his present campaign, astonished that she had even taken the trouble to find out about it. He suspected her motives, but whether Noémi's interest was real or not, it was very agreeable to him. It pleased him to discover Noémi's intelligence. She no longer concealed it. It was through this that Annette had ousted her. She made use of these weapons and improved on them. Unlike Annette, she did not trouble to go to the bottom of the dispute. She left this to her husband and master. She limited her rôle to suggesting the most skilful tactics for assuring him the victory. Philippe admired her ingenuity.
At this moment the controversy was at the most violent stage. Noémi, overcoming the repugnance and boredom that she felt at these quarrels between men, perceived that she must fling herself resolutely into the arena. She set to work upholding, with the wittiest effrontery, in drawing-rooms, the daring arguments her husband had launched. Her grace, her humor, her laughing enthusiasm, her impishness, her passionate earnestness, caused some slight scandal and a great deal of amusement. She won over to her side a number of young women who were delighted to show how free they were from social prejudices. The skilful Noémi took pains not to break with appearances. Even while she gave them the most disrespectful raps, she contrived to procure indulgence for herself in the camp of morality and respectable people. She gravely maintained that the right of the poor to have no children had its counterpart in the duty of the rich to supply the State and Society with them. It required self-possession to say this and not lose her assurance, for during seven years of married life she had never found the time to fulfil this duty herself. But she was heroic. She discovered this now.
Philippe was not slow in discovering that Annette had come back. He tried to find her in her apartment at the hours when he knew she was alone. But Annette distrusted herself. He found the door shut. In spite of his resentment and his distractions, his passion had not weakened. Annette's resistance exasperated him. He was not the man to let himself be dismissed.
Annette caught sight of him a few steps away in the street. She turned pale, but she did not try to escape from him. They approached each other. He said, with decision, "You are going home. I am going with you."
"No," she replied.
Together they entered a small square that backed upon a church. A dusty tree barely concealed them from the stream of passers-by in the street. They had to restrain themselves.
"You are afraid of me."
"No," she said, "of myself."
Philippe was burning with passion and resentment. But when his hard glance encountered Annette's, which did not avoid him, he perceived the suffering that she was firmly controlling. His anger melted, and in a softened voice he asked, "Why did you run away?"
"Because you are killing me."
"Don't you know what it is to love?"
"I do know, and that is why I ran away. I am afraid of hating you."
"Well, hate me, if you like. Hating is a way of loving."
"Not for me," she said. "I can't endure it."
"You are not so weak that you can't endure both the good and evil of a complete love."
"I am not so weak, Philippe. I want a complete love. Body and soul. I don't want merely half."
"The soul is all nonsense," he said.
"Then to what purpose have you devoted all your energy? For what have you sacrificed yourself, ever since you were born, if not to your Idea?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Delusion!" he said.
"You live by it. I have mine too. Don't kill it."
"What do you want?"
"I want us to avoid seeing each other till the day when we decide whether we are to unite our lives or not."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want, I don't want to hide any longer. I don't want any more sharing. I don't want it, I don't want it."
But she did not utter her deepest reason. ("If I gave in once more, I should soon cease to have the will to desire anything else. I should no longer belong to myself. I should be a toy that is broken after it has been spoiled.")
But he was incapable of understanding this instinctive revolt against one's enslavement to one's deadly desires. He could see in it nothing but defiance and a feminine trick to get the best of him. If he did not put this into words, he did not by any means conceal his feeling. When Annette perceived this, she made an impetuous movement to leave him. Philippe, trembling with impatience and the effort he was making not to betray it to the eyes of passers-by, seized Annette's arm, pressed it and said in a furious voice which he tried to muffle, "As for me, I will not, will not give you up. I will see you. Be still! Don't answer. . . . We can't talk here. . . . I shall come and see you this evening."
"No, no!" she said.
"I shall come," he said. "I cannot live without you. Nor can you live without me."
"I can," she said, rebelliously.
"You lie!"
They struggled, without moving, in low, violent voices, lashing each other's souls. They measured each other with their eyes. Philippe's gave way. "Annette!" he besought her.
But her cheeks still burned with the brutal lie he had given her, the shame of thinking that she really had lied. She stiffened, freed herself from the hand that held her, and went away.
In the evening Philippe came. She had spent the whole day in terror of this moment, in terror lest she might not have the strength to keep her door shut. For she did not want to face again this pitiless passion. She was convinced of the impossibility of living with this torch fastened to her breast. She must tear it away while the strength still remained to her. Did enough still remain? She loved him, she loved the flame that was consuming her. The next day she would love the shame and the outrage to which she had submitted. She blushed to admit it to herself, but even in her revolt against him that morning there had been an element of sensual delight.
She recognized his steps as they came up the stairs. She heard him ring and did not move from her chair. He rang again and knocked. Annette, with her arms hanging and her shoulders flung back, kept repeating to herself, "No! No!"
Even had she wished to rise and open the door her breath would have failed her.
She heard nothing more. Had he gone away? She was on her feet before she had even thought of it. She slipped with tottering, noiseless steps to the door. A board in the floor creaked. Annette stopped. Some seconds passed. . . . Nothing stirred. But she was aware of Philippe's presence watching behind the door. And Philippe knew that Annette was listening on the other side. There was a heavy silence. They were spying on each other. . . . Philippe's voice, close to the door, said, "Annette, you are there. Open!"
Annette, leaning against the wall, felt her heart give way. She did not answer.
"I know you are there. Don't try to hide! Annette, open! I must speak to you."
He lowered his voice so as not to be heard on the stairway, but a flood of mingled passions was rising in him. He was on the point of shaking the door.
"I must see you. . . . Whether you wish it or not, I mean to come in. . . ."
Silence.
"Annette, I hurt you this morning. Forgive me! . . . I want you. What do you want me to do? Tell me. I will do it. . . ."
Silence. Silence.
Philippe clenched his fists. He could have strangled her. With his mouth against the door, he growled, "You are mine. You haven't the right to take yourself back.
"Think hard!" he said. "If you don't open, it is finished for ever.
"Annette, my Annette!" he said.
"Coward!" he said furiously. "You are afraid to see me. You are only strong behind a closed door."
"Why do you torture me?" said a voice behind the door.
Philippe was silent.
"My friend," the tired voice went on, "you are killing me."
Philippe was touched, but his wounded pride was unwilling to show it. "What do you want?" he said.
"Mercy!" she answered.
The tone of her voice touched him, but he did not understand. "What do you need?"
"Leave me!" she said.
His anger sprang up again. "You are driving me away?"
"I am begging you for peace. Peace! . . . Leave me alone for a few weeks."
"You don't love me any longer?"
"I am defending my love."
"Against whom? Against what?"
"Against you."
"Madness! . . . You will open to me."
"No!"
"I demand it. I want you."
"I am not your prey."
Quivering, she held herself straight and proud. Her eyes defied him through the door. Though he could not see them, these eyes pierced him. "Good-bye!" he cried to her.
She heard him go away, and her blood froze. He would never forgive.
He did not forgive. Philippe did not return.
Annette kept repeating to herself, "It had to be, it had to be. . . ."
But she could not accept it. She longed to see Philippe once more, to make him understand, gently—why had he been so furious?—that she was not leaving him, that she was jealously defending her love, their love, their common pride which he was destroying with unconscious brutality. She wanted them both to have a chance to collect themselves, to recover themselves amid the torrent of passion that was rolling them along with its mud and foam, so that they might consider things and make up their minds with perfect liberty. If he finally chose her, let it be in a fashion compatible with his wife's and his own self-respect.
But Philippe would never forgive a woman he loved who had raised a barrier against his will. If he had belonged to another social class he would have violated her. Confined as he was in the cage of his own, obliged to handle with tact this world he wished to master, his wounded passion turned into an exasperated denial of itself. Losing the woman, he destroyed the feeling he had for her. This, as he knew, would strike her to the heart. For his instinct told him that, in spite of everything, Annette loved him.
After three months of burning solitude, of a bitter and tormented self-communion, of hope, renunciation, pride, servility of soul, inner reproaches, after three months of hopeless, sterile waiting, Annette learned one day from the delighted Solange of the happiness that had fulfilled the longings of the Villard household. Noémi was about to have a child.
Annette would have liked to take refuge with her child and hide her unhappy head under the wing of the love which, they say, never fails one—that of the son for the mother. Alas, it fails like all the others. Annette could not look to Marc for a sign of tenderness or even interest. Never had the young boy seemed colder, more indifferent, more unfeeling. He saw nothing of the torments that ravaged his mother. To be sure, she did her best to conceal them from him. But she concealed them so badly! He might have seen them in her eyes, hollow as they were with sleeplessness, in her pale face, in her thin hands, in her whole body, which was wasted by cruel passion. He saw nothing. He did not even look. He was concerned with nothing but himself, and what took place in him he kept to himself. He saw her only at meal-times, when he never said a word; the efforts Annette made to talk only made him more obstinate in his silence. She could scarcely induce him to say good-morning and good-night at the beginning and the end of the day, for he had made up his mind that all such things were mere affectation, and he only agreed to them—and that not every day—for the sake of peace. He would hastily offer his mother's lips a bored forehead, and when he did not go out to school or on some affair of his own—it was not easy to get him to tell about the latter—he shut himself up in his workroom, a store-room, about the size of a large wardrobe, wedged in between the dining-room and his bedroom; and it was a mistake to disturb him there. At the table or in the sitting-room, he seemed like a stranger. Annette said to herself bitterly, "If I died he would not even weep."
And she thought of the dream she had once conceived of the dear little companion, blood of her blood, pressed close against her, divining, sharing, without words, all the secrets of her heart. How lacking in affection he was! Why was he so hard? One would have said at moments that he was angry with her. Why? Because she loved him too much?
"Yes, that is my weakness, loving too much. People do not need it. It bores them. . . . My son does not love me! He is only too anxious to leave me. My son is so little my son! He feels nothing of what I feel. He feels nothing!"
During these very days Marc's young heart was aflame with love and poetry. He had fallen madly in love with Noémi. It was one of those childish loves that are so absurd and all-consuming. He hardly knew what he wanted of this woman: was it to see her, feel her, touch her, taste her? Of course, he never dreamed of what possession meant: he was the possessed one. Marc almost fainted when he touched the little hand that Noémi held out to him, touched it with his lips and the tip of his nose, the greedy puppy's nose that inhaled, in the frail flower of the wrist, the intoxicating mystery of the feminine body. For him she was a living fruit and flower. He was dying with desire to implant his teeth in it—very gently—dying of terror lest he might yield. Once—oh, shame!—he did yield. . . . What was going to happen? Red and trembling, he expected the worst: public humiliation, indignant words, an ignominious dismissal. But she burst out laughing, called him "puppy," boxed his ear, rubbed his nose once, twice, three times, over the spot he had bitten, saying, "Beg my pardon, little wretch!"
From that moment she had amused herself playing with the young animal. She meant no harm, she meant no good. She enjoyed exciting the young lover. For her it was a matter of no moment. She never suspected how serious it might be for the boy. But for him (for him who, in spite of appearances, was the true child of Annette) it was tragic.
Since the first time he had seen her, she had been for him the forbidden Paradise, that marvellous mirage, woman, which appears before the awakening glance of an innocent child. The fascinating image is shaped as much from what exists as from what does not exist, as much from what he sees as from what he does not see, what he does not know, what he fears and desires, what he wants and what he does not want, the terrifying attraction that thrills the adolescent body at the ecstatic, brutal appeal of nature. As for Noémi's features, he probably did not see one of them just as it was. But each of her features and each of her movements, the folds of her dress, the curls of her hair, her voice, her perfume, and the gleam of her eyes, everything stirred in his hungry heart and body the wild, leaping waves of joy and hope, cries of happiness, the need of tears.
On the very day when the heart-broken Annette saw him so hard, so hostile, so icy, when her awkward effort to learn the cause, to drag out of him one word, one single word of affection, had brought down upon her a cutting reply—on just that day the young boy had had his most moving revelation of the enchanted dream. For eight days he had been living in a state of intoxication. Noémi, whom he continued to see, without his mother's knowing it, and who used him as a little spy who innocently brought her word of all the movements in the enemy's camp—Noémi, whom he had once surprised in her drawing-room, looking at herself, as she talked, in a tiny mirror hidden in the folds of her handkerchief, had amused herself painting his pale lips with her lipstick. He had had in his mouth the taste of the beloved mouth. And ever since he had carried it on the tongue that sucked it; he was impregnated with it. He saw this pomegranate red, this ever-open mouth with the lip drawn up, too short and too restless to meet the other lip, which was as full as a cherry—saw it everywhere on that morning when, leaving his mother's apartment, after rudely slamming the door, he decided to play hockey from school and go for a walk. It blossomed in the cloud-orchard of the beautiful July sky, in the little playful ripples of a fountain, in the absent-minded smiles of passing women. It obsessed him.
He was walking at random, with his blond head bare to the summer wind. But, abstracted as he was and full of his own fancies, his lynx-eyes recognized his Aunt Sylvie, in the distance, coming towards him on the other sidewalk. He hastily turned off into a side street. The last thing he wanted was to meet her. Not that he was afraid of being caught playing truant: she would have been much more likely to laugh at that. But when he had a secret, with her—it was not like this with his mother!—he never felt safe. Of secrets of this kind, his instinct told him, Aunt Sylvie was an expert reader.
She had not seen him. He breathed freely again. He could enjoy his love the whole morning. And as he strolled along—his love did not prevent him from halting before the shop-windows to look at a necktie, a trifle of some kind, an illustrated paper—his steps led him unawares straight to his goal. He was like those pigeons in Paris that fly every morning over the great piles of dusty houses seeking the green gardens and cool old trees. The boy was seeking them too. He felt the need of their rustling shade.
He went down the Mont Sainte-Geneviève and, leaving the old, crowded streets, found himself in the clear, calm spaces of the Jardin des Plantes before he was aware that this was the spot to which he had wished to come.
There were few people here at this hour. A handful of scattered strollers. Paris hummed like a hive in the distance. The blue vibration of a beautiful summer morning. He picked out a bench that was hidden at the foot of a group of trees, and he closed his eyes on his treasure. He pressed his long, feverish, adolescent hands against his breast as if he wished to shelter his heart from rash eyes. What was he hiding, what thing so precious that he scarcely dared to think of it? A remark Noémi had thoughtlessly uttered, a remark of which he had made a world. . . . The last time he had seen her she had thrown him a chance smile. She had been scarcely aware of the boy's presence, for her attention was absorbed in the great things that had happened (the reconquest of Philippe, the humiliation of Annette, the final victory! . . . "But one never knows! Nothing is certain. Let us be satisfied with to-day! . . .") She sighed from fatigue, relaxation, pleasure. Marc asked her why. Amused by the boy's alarmed, ingenuous gaze, she said, with another great sigh, to puzzle him, "It's a secret."
"What secret?"
A malicious thought darted through her mind and Noémi replied, "I can't tell you. You must guess."
Trembling with emotion, he said, "I don't know. Tell me."
She lowered her lids over her languorous eyes. "No, no, no!"
Blushing, stammering, he was afraid to understand.
To keep up the game, she assumed a mysterious air and said, "Would you like to have it?"
In his emotion he was ready to cry, "No!"
"Well, not to-day. . . . I'll tell you some other time."
"When?"
"Soon."
"How soon?"
"Soon. . . . Next week, when you come to dinner."
The week had passed. This was the evening, Marc was thinking, when he was to see her again. He was only living in the expectation of that moment. He had lived it through twenty times in advance! He never dared to go to the end of the scene. It was too agonizing. . . . But to linger on the way was so sweet! On the garden-bench he gave way to his languor. A clock struck noon. Behind a screen of trees the sand of a sunny path crunched under the feet of a little girl who passed singing. Further on, in an aviary, some exotic birds were chirping in a strange, agitating language. From far away, on the Seine, came the long-drawn-out sound of the siren of a tug. And noiselessly, without seeing him, two lovers passed him slowly with their arms entwined as they walked, a tall, dark girl and a pale young workman whose lips touched and who devoured each other with their eyes. Holding his breath, the boy gazed after them till their path turned, and as they disappeared he sobbed with happiness, the happiness that had passed, the happiness that was coming. The happiness that was in them, in everything that surrounded him, in this July noon—in his own burning heart which embraced it all.
He went home in the halo of this moment of ecstasy. It was infinitely greater than the feminine image that had aroused it. The shadow of Noémi melted into a golden bath, and he had to make an effort to summon it up again. Marc tried to do so, but it escaped him. He was cheating himself, pretending to find under this happiness, which was so intense that it was painful, in everything that filled his heart to overflowing, the boundless hopes, the heroic resolutions, the strength and good will that bore him up like wings as he ran upstairs, four steps at a time. But the moment he caught sight of his mother's severe face—he was three-quarters of an hour late for lunch—the glory faded. He fell back beneath the sullen cloud of silence.
Annette did not try to talk to him. She had her own burden of anxieties, and she could not share his. Her son, sitting opposite her at table, seemed self-centred and far away. He ate ravenously. He was hungry and eager to finish so that he could plunge back again into his daydreams.
Annette thought, "I am nothing to him but the person who gives him his food."
She no longer had even the courage to protest. She felt abandoned. Towards the end of the meal he became aware that he had not spoken, and he felt vaguely remorseful. But he was afraid that if he said a word she would begin to question him. He thrust his badly folded napkin into its ring, rose hurriedly, and, taking care not to catch his mother's eye, went out . . . or was going out, when, on a sudden impulse, he asked—he was sure, for Noémi had told him, but he wanted confirmation—"It's tonight we are dining at the Villards'?"
Annette, who was still sitting there, motionless and dejected, said, without looking up, "We are not dining out."
Marc stopped, astonished, on the threshold. "What! They told me so!"
"Who told you?"
In his embarrassment the boy did not answer. His mother knew nothing about his visits to Noémi. He hastened to turn aside the question with another question, "But when are we going, then?"
Annette shrugged her shoulders. There were never going to be any more dinners at the Villards'. Noémi had said, for fun, "Next week," as she might have said, "In the year forty."
Marc let go of the door-knob and turned back in distress. Annette looked at him, saw how disappointed he was, and said, "I don't know."
"What! You don't know?"
"The Villards have gone away," said Annette.
"No!" Marc cried.
She did not seem to hear him. Marc laid an impatient hand on his mother's arm, which was stretched out over the table, and besought her, "It isn't true?"
Annette roused herself from her torpor, rose and began to clear the table.
"But where, where?" cried Marc, overwhelmed.
"I don't know," said Annette. She gathered up the dishes and went out.
Marc stood there, haggard, before his ruined dream. He did not understand. This sudden departure, without a word of warning. . . . Impossible! . . . He started to follow his mother, to drag some explanation out of her. But, no! He stopped short. . . . No, this wasn't true! He understood now. . . . Annette had discovered his love. She wanted to separate them. She was lying, she was lying! Noémi had not gone away. . . . And he hated his mother.
He slipped out of the apartment, tumbled down the stairs, walked, ran, with a beating heart, to the Villards'. He was going to make sure that they had not left. And as a matter of fact, they were there. The footman said that Monsieur had just gone out; Madame was tired and was not receiving anyone. But Marc urged that she would let him have a moment's conversation with her. The servant returned. Madame was sorry, but it was impossible. The boy insisted, feverishly, that he must see her just for a moment; he had something very important to tell her. . . . Meanwhile, he said all sorts of incoherent things, stuttering and choking in a broken voice, making awkward gestures; he blushed, he was on the point of weeping. The curious, mocking eyes of the impassive footman made him lose the thread of his ideas. He was pushed towards the door. He resisted stupidly, crying out that he forbade anyone to touch him. The servant told him to get out, said that if he did not hold his tongue he would telephone to the concierge and have him taken down by force. . . . The door closed behind him. Ashamed and furious, he remained on the threshold, unable to make up his mind to leave. And as he leaned mechanically against the door, he saw it was not shut tight and was yielding. He pushed it open and stepped inside again. He meant at all costs to reach Noémi. The vestibule was empty. He knew where the room was and slipped into the corridor. He heard Noémi's voice from within. She was saying to the footman, "Never in the world! He bores me to death! You did quite right in pushing him out, the little fool!"
He found himself back on the landing. He fled, he wept, he ground his teeth, he was distracted. He sat down, choking, on one of the steps of the staircase. He did not want people to see him crying in the street.
Wiping away his tears, he assumed an air of calm that covered his mad grief and, without knowing where he was going, he set out for home again. He was desperate. To die, he wanted to die! Life was no longer posable. It was too ugly, too base, it lied, everything lied. He could not breathe. As he crossed the Seine he thought of flinging himself into it. But another unfortunate had been ahead of him. The banks looked as if they were blade with flies. Thousands of women and children were leaning over the parapet, eagerly watching as the drowned man was drawn out. What feelings stirred them? A very few felt a sadistic thrill. A few more felt pity. The immense majority felt the attraction of the unusual event, idle curiosity. A good number, perhaps, looked into their own hearts to see how a person suffers ("how I might suffer"), to see how a person dies ("how I might die"). Marc perceived only a base curiosity, and it horrified him. Kill himself, yes, but not in public! He was like Annette. He had a shy, fierce pride; he could never make a spectacle of himself before this rabble, never be mauled by their hands, violated in his nakedness by their dirty glances. He clenched his teeth and hurried home, hurried faster, resolved to kill himself.
In the course of the minute searches which, during his mother's absences, he had devoted to the apartment he had found a revolver. It was Noémi's; Annette had picked it up after she had left and placed it, too carelessly, in a drawer. He had appropriated it and hidden it. His mind was made up. As, with a child, an act, whenever it is possible, immediately follows the thought, Marc meant to carry out his resolution at once. Re-entering the apartment as noiselessly as he had gone out, he shut himself up in his room and loaded the revolver as he had seen a schoolmate do: the latter, who was hardly older than himself, had carried one of these dangerous playthings in his pocket and, holding it between his legs, in the Greek class, had explained to his attentive neighbors how to handle it. The weapon was ready now. Marc was prepared to fire. . . . Where should he place himself? He must not miss. There, standing before his mirror. . . . But afterwards where would he fall? . . . It would be better to sit here, leaning on the table, with the mirror in front of him. He unhooked the mirror, placed it on the table, and propped it up with a dictionary. . . . There, he could see himself perfectly. He took the revolver and pressed it. . . . Where? Against the temple; they say that's the best place. . . . Would it hurt very much? He did not give a thought to his mother. His passion, his sufferings and the preparations completely occupied him. . . . His eyes in the mirror touched his heart. . . . Poor Marc! . . . He felt the need of expressing, of making known before he disappeared, what he had suffered from the world and how much he despised it. . . . The need of avenging himself, of leaving regrets behind him, of arousing admiration. . . . He hunted up a big sheet of school-paper, folded it across—he was in a hurry—and wrote in his uncertain, laborious, childish script, "I cannot live any longer, for she has betrayed me. The whole world is wicked. I don't love anything any longer, so I would rather die. All women are liars. They are mean. They don't know how to love. I despise her. When they bury me I ask them to put this paper over me: 'I die for Noémi.'"
At this dear name he wept; he pressed his handkerchief against his mouth in order not to make a noise. He wiped away his tears, reread his lines, and thought gravely, "I mustn't compromise her."
Then he tore up the sheet and began again. Almost in spite of himself he breathlessly dashed off his despairing lines. When he reached the sentence "They don't know how to love," he continued, "I have known and I die." In the midst of his grief he was very much pleased with this phrase: it almost consoled him. It disposed him to be kind to those he was leaving behind him, and he ended generously, "I forgive you all." He added his signature. A few seconds more and all would be over; he would be delivered, and he saw in advance the fine effect it would produce. But just as he was passing the pen once more over the childish flourishes where the ink had failed, the door of the little room opened suddenly behind him. He had just enough time to hide the weapon and the papers under his arms. Annette saw only the mirror placed against the dictionary and she thought Marc was admiring himself. She made no comment. She seemed terribly tired and, in a low voice, as if she were exhausted, she said she had forgotten to buy milk for dinner and that Marc would be very kind if he would spare her the trouble of climbing up and down the four flights by going after it. As for him, he had only one idea, that she should not see what his arms covered. He did not wish to move and replied roughly that he did not have the time; he was busy. With a sad smile, Annette closed the door and went out.
He heard her slowly descending the stairs. (She had looked worn out.) He was seized with remorse. He could not forget the expression of her face and her tired voice. . . . He threw the revolver hastily into a drawer, buried the farewells to life under a pile of books and rushed out of the apartment. He jostled his mother on the stairs and called to her, in a cross voice, that he was going to do the errand. Annette came upstairs again, her heart somewhat lightened. She was thinking that the boy was not as contrary as he seemed. But she had been pained by his rudeness and his harshness. Heavens, how unaffectionate he was! . . . Well, so much the better for him! Poor child, he would suffer less from life. . . .
When Marc came back, he had quite forgotten his intention to commit suicide. It gave him no pleasure to find the famous Testament, imperfectly hidden, on his table. He hastened to place it completely out of sight in the bottom of a band-box. He dismissed the depressing thought. He felt now how cowardly, how cruel, it would have been to his mother, whose health worried him. But he expressed his concern clumsily; he did not know how to ask her about it and she did not know how to reply. Through misplaced pride he did not want to show his real feelings; it would have seemed as if he were awkwardly performing a mere polite duty. And she, as proud as himself, did not want to worry him, and she turned the conversation away from it. So they both fell back into their silence. Freed from his anxiety, Marc now felt that he had the right to be angry with his mother because for her he had sacrificed his suicide. . . . He was well aware that he no longer felt the least desire for this; but he needed to avenge himself for what he had suffered. When you cannot avenge yourself on others you do so on your mother; she is always there, at hand, and she does not strike back.
So they remained walled-up, each one absorbed in his own grief. And Marc, whose own sorrow had begun to weigh upon him, felt his animosity against Annette's increasing. He was relieved when he heard the door-bell announcing Aunt Sylvie—for he knew her ring. She had come to take him to a performance of Isadora's, for she had suddenly gone crazy over dancing. In spite of the duty that he felt to retain in his soul and also on his face—especially on his face—the fatal mark of the ordeal through which he had passed, he could not hide his joy at escaping. He ran to dress, leaving the door open so as to lose none of the gay talk of his aunt, who, the moment she had arrived, had launched into a frivolous story. And Annette, who was forcing herself to smile, though she was broken-hearted, thought, "Can this be the woman who cried her heart out a year ago over her child's body? Has she forgotten?"
She did not envy this elasticity. But her son's laugh, as he answered Sylvie's sallies from the other room, evidenced an equal gift of forgetfulness. Annette, who was pained by this apparent heartlessness, did not know that she too possessed this cruel and marvellous gift. When Marc reappeared, beaming, ready to start, she could not command her face enough to conceal her harsh disapproval. Marc was more hurt by this than he would have been by out-and-out censure. He avenged himself by exaggerating his gaiety. He became almost noisy and seemed in such a hurry to get away that he forgot to say good-bye to his mother. He thought of it after he had gone out. Should he go back? Let her worry! He pouted. It comforted him to leave behind him that reproachful face, that sadness, the depressing atmosphere he felt in the house, and the disturbing traces of the day's troubles. . . . That immense day! . . . A whole world! . . . Several lifetimes in a few hours, the peak of joy and the depths of despair. . . He ought to have been crushed under such a load of emotions, but it weighed no more on the elastic adolescent than a bird weighs on a branch. The bird flies away, the branch swings back and sways in the wind. They had flown away, the joys and sorrows of the day that was past! Only a dream remained of them. To enjoy the new joys and the new sorrows, he hastened to efface it.
But Annette, who had no means of knowing what was passing through his head, Annette, who, like him, was a passionate soul, attributed everything to herself; and, as she listened to his laughter receding down the stairs, she was struck to the heart by his joy at leaving her. She thought he hated her, for her passion always exaggerated things in every way. . . . She was a burden on him, yes, that was quite clear. He longed to be free from her. When she was dead he would be happier. . . . Happier! . . . She would be happier too. It stabbed her through and through, this absurd thought that her son, her child, might desire her death. . . . (Absurd? Who can tell? In his innermost heart, in a moment's madness, what child has not desired his mother's death?) . . . The terror of this intuition, striking Annette at this moment when she was holding on to life with one weak hand, was a mortal blow to her.
All day she had been devastated by the furious return of her passion. Now that her decision had been made and carried out, the irreparable deed consummated, now that she had deliberately done her duty, she no longer had the strength to resist the attack of the enemy within. And the enemy had rushed upon her like a torrent.
She was a party to it. She had opened the gates to it. When all is lost, one has at least the right to enjoy one's despair! My suffering concerns only myself. Let me feel the whole of it. Bleed, bleed, my heart! Let me stab you by forcing you to see again all you have lost! Philippe. . . . He was there before her. . . . The evocation was so strong that she saw him, spoke to him, touched him. . . . He, everything that she loved in him, the attraction of that which resembles and that which is opposed to us, the antagonistic union, burning with the double fire of love and combat, the embrace and the struggle: they are the same thing. And this illusory embrace had such a carnal violence that the possessed soul, possessed by love, bent like Leda beneath the swan. The flood of passion ebbed despairingly. Then came those agonies that are part of the life of every woman who is made for love and to whom her share of love has been refused—agonies that come at this time of life when, if a love dies, she thinks that love itself is dying. On this night Annette, alone in her room, abandoned by her son, with her passion mutilated, suffered tortures in the destitution of her heart, and the haunting belief that love was lost forever, that life was lost without love, gripped her by the throat. It did not give her a moment's respite. She drove it away; it returned. Annette tried in vain to fill her mind with other things. She picked up her work, tossed it aside, got up, sat down. With her head on the table, she wrung her hands. The fixed idea maddened her. She had reached that point of suffering when to escape from herself a woman is ready for the worst aberrations. Annette felt that she was on the verge of madness, and she was aware, in her delirium, of a savage impulse, the frightful desire to go down into the street and to debase herself in her fury, destroy her body and her tortured heart, prostitute herself to the first man she met. When she became aware of this bestial thought, she cried out in horror; and as a result of this horror the infamous idea would not relax its grip. Then, like her son, she thought of killing herself. She could no longer control her obsession. . . .
She rose and went towards the door, but to reach it she had to pass close to the open window; she decided that, once there, she would fling herself out! . . . A strange instinct of purity that wished to save her soul from pollution! That illusory soul! Her reason was not duped by the conventional morality. But her instinct was stronger and it saw more clearly. . . . Entirely occupied by her double obsession—the door and the window—she did not see what was close to her. Walking towards the window, she struck herself violently in the stomach against the sharp corner of the sideboard. The pain was so severe that she could not breathe. Doubled over, with her hands on the wounded spot, she felt a keen, revengeful joy that her stomach had been struck. She would have liked to break to pieces in her body the blind and drunken master, the tiger-god. . . . Then the reaction came. She sank down on a low chair that fitted in between the sideboard and the window, and her strength failed her. Her hands were icy, her face beaded with perspiration; the beating of her disordered heart wavered. Ready to slip into the abyss, she had only one thought, "Quicker, quicker! . . ."
She fainted.
When she opened her eyes again—(When was it? After a few seconds? . . . A gulf . . . )—her head was thrown back as if on a block, her neck was lying against the window-sill, her body wedged into the narrow angle of the wall. She opened her eyes and over the dark roofs, in the July night, she saw the stars. . . . One of them pierced her with its divine gaze.
Silence, unprecedented, vast as a plain. . . . Yet the wagons were rolling by in the street below; the glasses on the sideboard vibrated. She heard nothing. . . . Suspended between earth and sky. . . . "A noiseless fight." . . . "She was not entirely awake. . . ."
She put off the moment. She was afraid of finding again what she had left behind—the horrible lassitude, the torment, the snare of love: love, maternity, implacable egoism, that of nature who cares so little for my troubles, who only watches till I awaken so as to break my heart. . . . Never to wake again! . . .
She became conscious, none the less. And she saw that the enemy was no longer there. Her despair had vanished. . . . Vanished? No, it was still there, but it was no longer in her. She saw it outside. She heard its rustle. . . . Magic. . . . A terrible music disclosing unknown spaces. . . . Paralyzed, Annette heard, as if some invisible hand were conjuring it up in the room, the sound of sobbing, the Fatum of a Chopin prelude. Her heart was flooded with a joy she had never before experienced. It had nothing but the name in common with the poor joy of everyday life which is afraid of pain, which only exists because it denies pain, denies that immense joy which is also pain. . . . Annette listened with closed eyes. The voice stopped. There was an expectant silence. And suddenly from the torn soul a wild cry of deliverance flew upward as if on wings. As a diamond leaves its track on a piece of glass, it streaked across the vault of the night. In her exhaustion, as she lay on her hard pillow, Annette, on the threshold of this night of sorrow, gave birth to a new soul. . . .
The silent cry whirled far away and disappeared in the abyss of thought. Annette remained silent and motionless. A long time. . . . At last she rose, her neck aching, her limbs stiff. But her soul was delivered. An irresistible force pushed her towards the table. She did not know what she was going to do. Her heart was in her throat. She could not keep it all to herself. She took up her pen and, in a whirlwind of passion, without metre, in a rough and jerky rhythm, in a single torrent, she poured out the flood of pain. . . .
You have come, your hand holds me,—I kiss your hand.
In love, in fear,—I kiss your hand.
Love, you have come to destroy me. I know it well.
My knees tremble. Come, destroy!—I kiss your hand.
You eat the fruit and fling it away: bite my heart, it is yours!
Blest be the wound your teeth make!—I kiss your hand.
You want me—all; but, possessing all, you will possess nothing.
You leave nothing but ruins.—I kiss your hand.
To-morrow your hand, caressing me, will kill me.
Even as I kiss it, I await the mortal stroke of your hand.
Kill me! Strike! In doing me evil, you will do me good.
You deliver me, destroyer.—I kiss your hand.
Every blow that makes me bleed breaks a bond.
You tear away the chains with the flesh.—I kiss your hand.
You break the prison of my body, murderer,
And through the breach my life escapes.—I kiss your hand.
I am the broken soil from which rises the grain
Of the sorrow that you sowed.—I kiss your hand.
Sow the sacred sorrow! May all the sorrow of the world
Come to ripeness in my breast.—I kiss your hand, I kiss your
hand. . . .
Tempest, sea-waves crashing against the rocks, a soul laden with spray, flashing with lightning, a surf foaming with passions and tears dashed up towards the sky. . . .
And at the last cry of the wild birds the soul fell back suddenly. And Annette, exhausted, flung herself on her bed and slept.
When morning came, nothing remained of the sorrows of the night but a light snow that melted in the sun. . . . Cosi la neve al sol si disigilla. . . . And the aching peace of a body that has fought and knows it has conquered.
She felt satiated, satiated with her grief. Grief is like passion. To deliver oneself from it, one has to glut oneself with it. But few people have the hardihood to do this. They feed the snarling dog with crumbs from their table. The only people who conquer grief are those who dare to embrace its excess, who say to it, "I take you to myself. You shall bring forth children through me. . . ." That powerful embrace of the creative soul, as brutal and fertile as actual possession. . . .
On the table Annette found what she had written. She tore it up. These disordered words had become as unbearable to her as the feelings they expressed. She did not want to disturb the sense of well-being that pervaded her. She had a feeling of relief, as if a knot, a link of the chain, had just been broken. . . . And in a flash she had a vision of the chain of servitudes from which, one by one, the soul slowly frees itself through a series of existences, its own and those of others (they are all the same). . . . And she asked herself: "Why, why these eternal attachments, these eternal ruptures? Towards what liberation does desire drive us in its sanguinary progress?"
It was only for a moment. Why worry about what is going to happen? It will pass, just like what has already happened. We know quite well that, no matter what happens, we shall make our way through. As the saying goes, that old heroic utterance of prayer and defiance: "May God only not lay upon our shoulders heavier burdens than we can bear!"
She had borne hers, that of a day. Well, one day at a time! . . . She was eased in heart and body. . . . To strive, to seek, NOT to find, and not to yield. . . . "It's all right. It's all right. . . . I haven't wasted my time. . . . Leave the rest to to-morrow!"
She rose. She was naked, and from over the roofs the morning sun bathed her body and the room. . . . She was happy. . . . Yes, in spite of everything!
Everything about her was just as it had been yesterday: the sky, the earth, the past and the future. But everything that had crushed her yesterday was radiant to-day.
Marc had come home very late in the evening. He had enjoyed himself without his mother, and now he felt remorse at having left her alone and made her sit up for him. For he knew that Annette would not go to bed until he had returned, and he had expected an icy reception. Although he was in the wrong he assumed as he went upstairs—if only for that reason—an attitude of defiance. With an insolent smile on his lips, although at bottom he was not sure of himself, he picked up the key from under the doormat and opened the door. Hanging up his coat in the vestibule, he listened. Silence. Nothing stirred. Noiselessly, he tiptoed into his room and went to bed. He felt relieved. Serious matters could wait until to-morrow! But before he was entirely undressed he was seized with anxiety. This stillness was not natural. . . . Like his mother he had a vivid imagination and one that was easily disturbed. . . . What had happened? . . . He was a thousand miles from suspecting the deadly storms that had raged that night in the room adjoining his own. His mother was inexplicable and disturbing to him. He never knew what she was thinking. Seized with alarm, in his nightshirt and bare feet, he went and pressed his ear to Annette's door. He was reassured. She was there. She was asleep; her breathing was loud and uneven. He pushed open the door, fearing that she was ill, and stole up to the bed. By the light from the street he saw her, stretched out flat on her back, with her hair over her cheeks, with that tragic face which, in nights of old, had stirred the curiosity of her companion Sylvie. Her breast rose and fell heavily, harshly, violently, with difficulty. Marc was seized with fear and pity for all the weariness and suffering he divined in this body. Bending over the pillow, in a low, trembling voice, he murmured "Mamma."
As if she had heard the call from far away in her sleep, she made an effort to free herself and groaned. The child drew back, frightened. She relapsed into her immobility. Marc went back to bed. The thoughtlessness of his age, the fatigue of the day, got the better of his anxiety. He slept without waking until morning.
When he got up, the fancies and fears of the past evening returned. He was surprised that his mother was not yet visible. As a rule, she came into his room to kiss him and say good-morning while he was in bed. She had not come in this morning. But he heard her coming and going in the neighboring room. He opened the door. Kneeling on the floor, she was dusting the furniture and did not turn round. Marc said good-morning to her. She turned her smiling eyes on him and said, "Good-morning, my dear." Then she went on with her work, paying no more attention to him.
He expected she would ask him about his evening. He detested these questions, but when she did not ask them he was vexed. She went into her room, put it in order and finished dressing. It was time for her classes; she was getting ready to go out He saw her looking at herself in the mirror, with dark circles about her eyes, her face still showing lines of fatigue, but with a light in her eyes! Her mouth was smiling. He was astonished at the sight. He had expected to find her sad and he was even ready to pity her in his heart; this disturbed his plans. The little man's logic was upset by it.
But Annette had her own logic. "The heart has its reasons" which a sense higher than reason understands. Annette had ceased to worry about what others might think. She knew now that you must not ask others to understand you. If they love you, it is with their eyes closed. They don't close them often! . . . "Let them be as they wish to be! Whatever they are, I love them. I cannot live without loving them. And if they don't love me I have enough love in my heart both for myself and for them."
She smiled into the mirror with a smile that came from far deeper depths than her eyes, smiled at the fire of which they were a spark, at eternal Love. She let her arms fall from her head, turned towards her son, saw the child's troubled face, remembered his evening out, took hold of the tip of his chin, and, letting the syllables drop, said gaily, "You were dancing? I'm so glad! And now you must sing!"
She laughed as she saw his amazed expression, caressed him with her eyes, kissed him on his nose and, picking up her bag from the table, went out, saying, "Good-bye, my little cricket!"
In the vestibule he heard her whistling a careless tune. (It was a talent he envied her even while he despised it, for she whistled much better than he.)
He was indignant! This indecent gaiety after all the evening's anxiety. . . . She had escaped him. He denounced the eternal caprices of women, their lack of seriousness, as he had heard others do . . . "la donna mobile."
He was about to go out when a piece of paper in the scrap-basket caught his attention. At a distance the sharp, prying eyes of the rapacious child unthinkingly deciphered a few words on a fragment of the sheet. He stopped short. . . . These words. . . . His mother's writing! He picked them up, read them feverishly, at random at first, one at a time. These flaming words! . . . As they were torn into bits, the emotion they called up, interrupted in the midst of its flight, was all the more fascinating. . . . He gathered them together, rummaged in the basket for the smallest fragments, took them all and patiently pieced them together. His hands trembled at the secret he had captured by surprise. When he had assembled all the pieces and was able to grasp the poem as a whole, he was completely taken aback. He did not understand it very well, but the wild fervor of this solitary song revealed to him unknown depths of passion and grief that exalted and dismayed him. Was it possible that these stormy cries had come from his mother's breast? . . . No, no, it wasn't possible! He wouldn't have it. He told himself that she had copied them from a book. . . . But from what book? He couldn't ask her. . . . And yet, suppose it wasn't taken from a book . . . ? The tears came, the need of crying out his emotion, his love, a longing to throw himself into his mother's arms, at her feet, to open his heart to her, to read her own . . . And he couldn't do it. . . .
When his mother came home at noon for lunch, the boy, who had spent the whole morning reading and copying the torn fragments and had thrust them in an envelope into his breast, said nothing to her. Sitting at his table, he even refrained from rising and turning his head towards her when she entered. The more burning was his desire to know, the stiffer was the constraint that led him to conceal his anxiety under a mask of insensibility. If, after all, these tragic words were not Annette's! Doubt returned to him at the sight of his mother's tranquil face. . . . But the other, the upsetting doubt, persisted all the same. . . . Supposing they were hers? . . . This woman, my mother? . . . Facing her at table, he did not dare look at her. . . . But when her back was turned and she moved about the room, looking for something, carrying a plate, he stared at her eagerly with questioning eyes that asked: "Who are you?"
He could not define his troubled, fascinated, uneasy impression. But Annette, full of her new life, noticed nothing.
In the afternoon they went out, each about his own business. Marc watched his mother in the distance. He was torn by conflicting feelings: he admired her, he was irritated by her. . . . Women were too much for him! Women, every woman. At times they were so close, at other times so very far away! A strange race. . . . Nothing about them is like ourselves. One never knows what is going on in them, why they laugh, why they cry. He scorned them, he despised them, he needed them, he pined for them! He was angry with them just because of this obsession. He could have bitten the neck of that woman who was walking by as he had bitten Noémi's wrist—as he would have liked to bite it—till the blood flowed! At this sudden memory his startled heart gave a leap. He stopped, turned pale and spat with disgust.
He crossed the Luxembourg Gardens, where the young men were playing. He looked at them enviously. The best part of him, his secret desires, went out towards manly activity, without love, without women—sport, heroic games. But he was weakly: an unjust fate, his illness as a child, had placed him in a position of inferiority in the race of his own generation. And his sedentary life, his books, his dreams, the companionship of women, the two sisters, had poisoned him with this venom of love, transmitted by his mother, his aunt, his grandfather, by all the blood of the Rivières. How he would have liked to spill that blood, to open his veins! Ah, how he envied those young men with their beautiful limbs, empty of thought, full of light!
All the riches that were his he despised. He could think of nothing but those of which he was deprived, the games and contests of harmonious bodies. And in his injustice he did not see that other contest which his mother was waging so close to him. . . .
She walked on. The summer was pouring its splendid waves over the city. The blue gaze of the sky bathed the tops of the houses. . . . How good it would have been to be far away from the city in the fields! . . . But that was more than she could ask for: Annette did not have the means to leave Paris. No doubt Marc would be able to go off for a few weeks with his aunt to some beach in Normandy. But Annette would not go; her pride would not allow her to be a charge on her sister. Besides, ever since the days when she had seen them with her father, she had felt an aversion for summer-resorts, with all their bored people, those flirtations of the idle and the curious. She would stay at home alone. She did not mind this. She carried within herself the sea and the sky, the sunsets behind the hills, the milky fogs, the fields stretching out under the shroud of moonlight, the calm death of the nights. In the August afternoon, breathing the warm air, amid the uproar of the streets and the flood of human beings, Annette crossed Paris with the quick, sure step, the light, rhythmical step of other days, noting everything as she passed and yet very far away. . . . In the great, dusty street, shaken by the wheels of the heavy autobusses, she was wandering in her thought under the vaults of the forest in that Burgundian countryside where she had spent her happy childhood, and her nostrils caught the odor of bark and moss. She was walking over the fallen autumn leaves. A rain-laden wind swept through the stripped branches, brushing her cheek with its damp wing; a bird's song flowed magically through the silence; the rain-laden wind passed her. . . . Through these woods the young Annette passed also with her weeping lover, and there was the hawthorne hedge, there were the bees about the abandoned house. . . . Joys and sorrows. . . . So far away! She smiled at her own youthful image to which suffering was still so new. . . . "Wait, my poor Annette, you are only at the beginning. . . ."
"Do you regret nothing?"
"Nothing!"
"Neither what you have done nor what you have failed to do?"
"Nothing, deceitful spirit! Were you trying to spy out my regrets? You will find that your labor is lost! I accept everything, everything I have had and everything I have not had, my whole lot, wise and foolish. Everything has been as it should have been, the wise and the foolish. One makes mistakes: that is life. But it is never quite a mistake to have loved. Although age is overtaking me, my heart, at least, has no wrinkles. And although it has suffered, it is happy to have loved." And her grateful mind turned, with a smile, to those whom she had loved.
There was much tenderness in this smile and not a little French irony. Touched as she was at the thought of them, Annette perceived, curiously enough, the ridiculous side of all these torments, her own and those of others . . . that pitiful fever of desire and waiting! For what was she waiting? An end of love, for herself. For the others, too, in their turn!
She saw the others, her son, with his burning hands, quivering to grasp the uncertain future; Philippe, dissatisfied with the commonplace food that society offered his devouring hunger; Sylvie, trying to forget and looking to the future that would fill the gaping emptiness of her heart; the multitude of ordinary people yawning over the boredom of their life; and youth, restless youth, wandering and waiting. . . . For what was it waiting? Towards what were its hands stretched out?
Liberated from herself, she looked at all these burden-bearers, saw that herd, that mob in the streets, hastening, running, each ignoring every one else, each as if pursued by the sheep-dogs, and, under the apparent disorder, the sovereign rhythm—all believing they directed themselves, all directed. . . . Towards what? Whither was he leading them, the invisible shepherd? . . . The good shepherd? . . . No! Beyond good and evil. . . .
She gave her lessons as usual, patient and attentive, listening kindly, explaining clearly, making no mistakes. Even as she spoke, the dream continued to envelop her. Whoever has formed the habit finds it easy to live two lives at a time, one on a level with the ground, with other men, the other in the depths of the dream that is bathed by the inner sun. One neglects neither of them. One reads them both with a glance as a musician's eye reads a score. Life is a symphony: each moment of life sings in several parts. The reverberation of this warm harmony brought the color to Annette's face. Her pupils to-day were astonished at her youthful air, and they conceived for her one of those strong attachments which the young feel for their elders, the Heralds of life, and which they dare not confess. Annette knew nothing of the wake of love that her passing left that day in the hearts of those who were near her.
She came home towards evening in the same aerial state. With her light heart, she felt as if she were moving on air. She could not have explained it. The powerful enigma of a woman enveloped in her own radiance, in a joy without apparent reason, even in the face of reason! Everything that surrounds her, the whole external world is, at these moments, only a theme for the free improvisations of the passionate fantasy of her dreams.
She threaded her way, in the streets, through anxious groups of people. The newsboys were running about shouting the news which the passers-by were discussing. She saw and heard nothing. From a passing tram someone shouted something to her; she recalled who it was a moment later—Sylvie's husband. Without hearing what he said she had replied with a gay wave of her hand. . . . How excited everyone was! . . . Once more she had the brief sense of a dizzy current which, like the whirling spirals of star-dust, was rushing through a crevice in the vault into the abyss that drew it down. . . . What abyss? . . .
She climbed up to her apartment. Marc was awaiting her on the threshold, his eyes shining, and behind him, Sylvie, very much excited. They were eager to tell her the news. . . . What was it? Both spoke at once; each of them wanted to be the first. . . .
"But what on earth are you trying to tell me?" she said, laughing.
She distinguished one word, "War."
"War? What war?" But she was not surprised. . . . The abyss. . . . "So it was you? For a long time I have felt your breath drawing us down. . . ."
Their exclamations went on. To please them she roused herself—a little—from her somnambulistic state. . . . "War? Well, so be it! War, peace, it's all life, all part of the game. . . . I'll take my share! . . ."
She was a good player, the enchanted soul!
"I challenge God!”
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