Stretched out in her chair, with her head thrown back, her arms behind her neck and her mouth slightly open, she studied the ceiling; but out of the corner of her half-closed eyes she watched Marcel as he talked. She could have uttered in advance the words he was about to say; she could have sworn what was going to happen. With an amused curiosity that was a little sarcastic, for which she reproached herself, she let him go on.
(One must see and know, as he said just now, one must learn . . . learn. . . .)
She was learning to understand a friend.
(Yes, I understand you. . . . An Annette fallen from the tree would be good to pick up again. He is gently shaking the tree to make her tumble off. He is speculating on Annette's confusion. And yet he is in love with her. Yes, he is certainly in love with her. Not very bright, brother man! His voice begins to have a coaxing sound. See how tender he is growing. And now, look out! I wager he is going to bend over me.)
Several seconds in advance she foresaw Marcel's blond beard leaning towards her; she foresaw the caressing mouth that was about to alight on hers. She wanted to spare him the humiliation. And just at the exact moment she rose, and, with her outstretched hands, gently pushed Marcel's shoulders away.
"Good-bye, my friend," she said.
Marcel looked into those penetrating eyes that were scrutinizing him with a little malice in their depths. He smiled. He had been mistaken. But it had been a good battle. He was perfectly aware that, with all the calmness in the world, he had been given his dismissal. And yet, of this he was sure, Annette's feeling towards him was not one of indifference. Let whoever could understand it! The strange girl was escaping him.
Marcel did not reappear, and Annette took no steps to bring him back. They were still friends, but each was angry with the other. Just because Annette's feeling towards Marcel was not one of indifference, she was touched by what she had seen in him. She was not offended by this; it was the old story . . . Too old a story! . . . No, Annette had no grievance against Marcel. Only, only she could not forget what had happened! That is the way it is with forgivenesses granted by the mind which the heart does not ratify. Secretly bitter, she was forced to recognize, even more through Marcel's too free attempt than through the harsh welcome she had encountered in Lucile's drawing-room, that her situation was changed. She realized that she was no longer protected by the conventional consideration that society accords to those of its members who appear to submit to its laws. She would have to defend herself alone. She was exposed.
She closed her door to the world. She took care not to tell Sylvie of the experiences she had had; Sylvie had predicted them and she would be triumphant. She kept her secret and shut herself up with her child. She had decided henceforth to live only for him.
When little Marc came back from his airing in the evening, after Marcel's call, she welcomed him with transports. He laughed when he saw her and stretched out to her his four wriggling paws. She fell on him as a starved wolf falls on its prey; she devoured him with kisses; she pretended to eat every morsel of his body; she thrust his little feet into her mouth; and as she undressed him she tickled him from head to foot with her lips. "Yum-yum! I'm going to eat you up! That fool!" she exclaimed, calling him to witness. "That fool who had the impudence to tell me that you would not be enough for me! What insolence! You not enough for me, my king, my little god! Tell me that you are my little god! And what am I then? The little god's mother! The world belongs to us! All the things we are going to do together! See everything, have everything, try everything, taste everything, create everything!"
And indeed they did create everything. To discover and to create, are they not the same thing? To invent is to find. One finds what one invents, one discovers what one creates, what one dreams of, what one draws up from the fish-pond of one's musings. For the two of them, mother and child, it was the hour of great discoveries. The first words of the little boy, the game of exploration, when one measures the world with one's arms and legs. Every morning Annette, with her child, set out for conquest. She enjoyed it as much as he, perhaps more. It seemed to her that she was reliving her own childhood, but with complete consciousness and complete joy. He, the gay little soul, was full of joy too. He was a beautiful child, healthy, chubby all over, a little pink pig just ready for the spit. ("What else could you expect?" as Sylvie said.) In his plump, elastic body there was too much compressed force; he was like a rubber ball that insists upon bouncing. Every new contact with life threw him into a clamorous delight. The enormous power of dreaming that belongs to every baby amplified his discoveries and prolonged the vibrations of happiness into veritable chimes of bells. Annette was never behind him; it was as if they were having a contest as to who should be the happiest and make the most noise. Sylvie said that Annette was crazy, but she would have behaved the same way herself. And after this tumult they would both have hours of absolute, delicious, exhausted silence. The little one, tired out after so much movement, slept obliviously. Annette was dropping with fatigue, but for a long time she would refuse to go to sleep in order to enjoy the other's slumber; and the fire of her love, driven back into her heart, hidden like the light of a candle behind one's hand so as not to awaken the little sleeper, burned with a long silent flame that rose upward to heaven. She prayed . . . Mary beside the manger . . . She prayed to the child.
These months were still beautiful and shining. But they were not as pure as those of the previous year. Less limpid. They were full of an exalted, excessive joy that was a little exaggerated.
A vigorous, healthy nature like Annette's must create, perpetually create, create with its whole being, body and spirit. Create, or else brood over the creation that is to be. It is a necessity, and happiness comes only through satisfying it. Every creative period has its own limited field, and its rising force follows a trajectory that descends again sharply. Annette had passed the summit of the curve. Nevertheless, the transport of creation persists in the mother for a very long time after childbirth. Suckling prolongs the transfusion of the blood, and invisible bonds keep the two bodies in communication. The creative abundance of the spirit of the infant compensates for the impoverishment of the spirit of the mother. The river that is running out tries to replenish itself from the stream that is flowing over. It becomes a torrent so as to merge with the little torrent. But strive as it may, the little one outruns it. The child was already withdrawing into the distance. Annette had difficulty in following him.
Before he was able to frame a complete sentence he already had his little hidden thoughts, cupboards of which he kept the keys. Heaven knew what he concealed there: his reflexions on people, his scraps of reasoning, odds and ends of images, sensations, play-words the sound of which amused him, though he did not know what they meant, a singing monologue that had no sequence, no end, no beginning. He was perfectly well aware, perhaps not of what he was hiding, but that he was hiding something. For the more one tried to find out what he was thinking, the more mischievously he refused to let one know. He even amused himself sometimes putting one off the track; with his little tongue, which was as clumsy as his hands, as it stumbled about among the syllables, he was already trying to lie, to mystify people. It was a pleasure to prove his own importance to others and to himself by making fun of those who tried to penetrate into his private domain. This scrap of a being, scarcely born, had the fundamental instinct of theminethat is not yours—of "You shan't have any of my peanuts." His whole wealth lay in fragments of thoughts: he built walls to hide them from his mother's eyes. And she, with that lack of foresight which is common to all mothers, was proud that he knew so well how to say the No with which he so early manifested his personality. She haughtily proclaimed, "He has a will of iron."
She thought she had forged this iron herself. But against whom?
Against herself, to begin with; for, in the eyes of this little ego, she was the not-I, the external world, a habitable external world, of course, warm, soft and milky, that one could exploit, that one wanted to dominate. External to the I . . . I am not it. I possess it. But it does not possess me!
No, she did not possess him! She began to feel it; this Lilliputian intended to belong to no one but himself. He needed her, but she needed him: the child's instinct told him so. In all probability, this instinct, guarded by his egocentricity, told him that she needed him much more and that it was therefore quite fair for him to abuse it. And, heaven knows, this was true: she did need him much more.
"Well, fair or not, abuse me, little monster! Just the same, it's no use, you can't get along without me for a long time yet. I hold you. There, I plunge you into your bath. Protest, young carp! . . . He looks insulted; his mouth is open, as if this little personage were choking with indignation at being treated like a bundle. . . . And I turn you and turn you again! Heavens, what music! You are going to be a singer, my son. Well, cry out your do-re-me. Bravo! You do the singing, but it's I who make you dance. . . . Isn't it a shame for me to abuse your weakness in this way? Oh, how mean this mother is! Poor midget! Well, you'll avenge yourself on her when you are grown up. Meanwhile, protest! In spite of your dignity, look, I'm going to kiss you on your little behind."
He kicked. She laughed. But it was in vain she held him; she held only the shell. The animal within escaped into his burrow. Every day he became more difficult to grasp. It was a loving chase, a passionate struggle. But it was a struggle, a chase. One had to keep one's wind.
The thousand little regular attentions that a baby demands fill the days. Simple, monotonous as they are, they do not allow one to think of anything else. Aside fromhim, alwayshim, one's mind is in shivers. The swiftest thought is interrupted ten times over. The child invades everything; this little mass of flesh blocks one's horizon. Annette did not complain. She did not even have time to regret it. She lived in a plenitude of busy fatigue that was a blessing to her at first, but that gradually became an obscure weariness. One's strength is used up, one's soul wanders aimlessly: it does not stay where one has left it. It follows its way like a sleep-walker, and when it awakens it does not know where it is. Annette woke up one day conscious of a load of fatigue that had been accumulating for months, and an indefinable shadow mingled with the joy that dwelt in her.
She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion; and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary. Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it, somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her, "You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do."
For the sake of peace, Annette said she would go out, but she did not budge. She had a reason which she kept to herself: she was afraid of meeting her old friends and exposing herself to some slight, some coldly distant greeting. A superficial reason which she gave herself. In former times she would have ignored these petty offences, but now she had a neurasthenic tendency to avoid all contacts. Then why not leave Paris and live in the country, as Sylvie advised? She did not say she would not, but she did nothing; it involved making a decision, and she was not willing to stir from her torpor.
So she allowed her motionless days to float along, without a wave, like a becalmed sea that is preparing to ebb. An interlude, an apparent arrest in the eternal rhythm of respiration: the breath is suspended. Joy is tiptoeing away. Trouble is approaching on muffled feet. The trouble has not yet come. But anescio quidwarns one: "Do not move!" It is waiting outside the door.
It entered. But it was not what she had expected. It is useless to attempt to foresee happiness or trouble. When they arrive they are never what we have looked for.
One night when, suspended between sky and sea, on the borders of happiness and melancholy, Annette was skirting the cape of sleep, without knowing whether she was on this side of it or that, she became aware of a danger. Unaware whence it was coming or what it was, she collected her strength to fly to the help of the child who was sleeping near her. For already her consciousness, which never slept without one ear open, had realized that he was threatened. She forced herself to awaken and listened anxiously. She was not mistaken. Even when she was sound asleep the slightest alteration in the breathing of the dear little creature reached her. The respiration of the child was hurried; by a mysterious osmosis, Annette felt the oppression in her own chest. She turned on the light and leaned over the cradle. The little one was not awake; he was sleeping uneasily; his face was not red, which seemed to the mother a reassuring symptom; she touched his body, found the skin dry, the extremities cold; she covered him more warmly. This seemed to quiet him. She watched him for a few minutes, then turned out the light, trying to persuade herself that the alarm would not be repeated. But after a brief respite the hoarse breathing began again. Annette deceived herself as long as she possibly could. "No, he is not breathing harder or more quickly. It's only that I am agitated."
As if her will could impose itself upon the child, she forced herself to remain motionless. But it was no longer possible to doubt. The oppression was increasing, the breath came more quickly. And with a fit of coughing the child woke up and began to cry. Annette leaped out of bed. She took the child in her arms. He was burning, his face was pale, his lips were blue. Annette was distracted. She called Aunt Victorine, who only added her own agitation to the scene. That very day the telephone had been disconnected for repairs, and there was no way of communicating with the doctor. There was no druggist in the neighborhood. The Boulogne house was isolated; the maid was unwilling to run through the deserted streets at this hour of the night. They would have to wait for morning. And the sickness was growing worse. It was enough to make one lose one's head. Annette very nearly did so; but knowing that she must not she did not. Her aunt, whimpering, fluttered like a fly about the globe of a lamp. Annette said to her harshly, "It does no good to groan. Help me! Or, if you can't do anything, go to sleep and leave me alone. I will save him by myself."
Her aunt, petrified by this, recovered her composure; her long experience as a watcher at sickbeds dispelled Annette's most terrible apprehension, that of diphtheria. Annette retained an unspoken doubt; so did her aunt. One may always be mistaken. And even if it was not diphtheria, there were so many other mortal disorders. Not to know what it was added still more to their fright. But whether or not Annette's heart was frozen with terror, her movements were calm and just what they should have been. Without knowing it, moved by the maternal instinct alone, she did exactly the right thing for the child. (So the doctor told her the next day.) She did not leave him lying on his back for long, she changed his position, she struggled against his fits of suffocation. What neither experience nor science could have taught her the love within her dictated, for she suffered what he suffered. She suffered more. She regarded herself as responsible for it.
Responsible! The tension of an ordeal, especially of an illness that strikes a beloved being, often creates a superstitious state of mind in which one needs to accuse oneself for the suffering of the innocent one. Annette not only reproached herself for not having watched over the child, for having been imprudent with him, but she discovered that she had criminal thoughts in the back of her mind: a passing weariness of the child, the shadow of an unconfessed regret that her life should have been swamped in his. Was it quite certain that she had really felt and repressed this regret, this weariness? No doubt, since they emerged at this moment. But who could say whether she had not invented them through this need she felt, when she was powerless to act in a practical way, to act in thought, even if it meant turning her desperate energies against herself?
She turned them also against the great Enemy, against the unknown God. As she saw the little swollen face, as she breathed her breath into him, softly raising him in her hands with careful movements, she passionately asked his pardon for having brought him into the world, stolen him away from peace, thrown him into this life a prey to suffering, to mischance, to the evil hazards of heaven knew what blind master! And with her flesh creeping, like an animal at the entrance of his burrow, she growled, she sniffed the approach of the great murderous deities; she prepared to fight with them for her child, she bared her teeth. Like every mother whose child is threatened, she was the eternal Niobe who, in order to turn the mortal shaft against herself, hurls her furious defiance at the Murderer.
But no one in Annette's household divined this silent battle.
In the morning the doctor came; he complimented her on her presence of mind and the first steps she had taken—so different from what sometimes happens when an anxious affection spoils everything by its awkwardness. But she only grasped from his words what he said about the epidemics of grippe and measles that were raging in Paris and the possibility that her child had caught the germs of bronchial pneumonia. In refusing to leave Paris, as she had promised to do, she had thus been guilty towards the child. She judged herself pitilessly. This sentence she passed on herself had at least the advantage of limiting the field of her responsibility, for it dispelled any other remorse.
At the first news, Sylvie had arrived hastily, and the little patient had plenty of attention. But Annette, refusing to leave her place, took hardly any rest and remained in the breach during the days, the nights, the days. The perspiration on the little body and its burning suffocation melted her own being. The illness kneaded them into one mass. The child seemed to be aware of this, for in the moments when the fear of an attack of coughing contracted his sides his eyes rested, heavy with reproaches and an appeal for help, on the eyes of the mother. He seemed to be saying, "It's going to hurt me again! There it is coming back! Save me!"
And, pressing him to her, she would reply, "Yes, I shall save you! Don't be afraid, it's not going to get you!"
The attack came, and the child strangled. But he was not alone. She stiffened with him in order to break the noose. He felt that she was struggling, that she, the great protectress, would not abandon him; and the reassuring sound of her gentle voice and the pressure of her fingers gave him confidence, said to him, "I am here."
As he cried and struck the air with his little arms, he knew she would fight it.
And she did fight it, the nameless thing. The illness yielded. The noose relaxed. And the little birdlike body of the child, still palpitating, abandoned itself to the hands that had saved it. How good it was to breathe, the two of them, after that plunge into the depths! The wave of air that streamed through the mouth of the child bathed the throat of the mother and swelled her breasts with an icy pleasure.
These respites were of short duration. The struggle continued, alternating with periods of exhaustion. His condition was improving when the child had a sudden relapse from some unknown cause. His faithful watchers naturally tormented themselves all the more, accusing themselves of some moment of forgetfulness that had threatened his recovery. Annette said to herself, "If he dies, I shall kill myself."
For many nights she had been used to going without sleep; she kept it up as long as the child needed her aid, but during the hours when he slept and her own mind, reassured, might have made the most of this and relaxed, her spirit was more uneasy than ever. It vibrated like a telegraph-wire in the wind. Impossible to close her eyes. It was dangerous for her to lie there facing her distracted brain. Annette would turn on the light again and try to fix her mind upon some definite line of thought in order to escape from this vertigo. But it was only to turn over and over all sorts of superstitious, childish, extravagant ideas—or so they appeared to a mind that was accustomed to rational methods. She told herself that if calamity hung over her it was because she had been too completely happy, and it seemed to her that if her son was to recover she must suffer in some other direction. An obscure, powerful belief in some painful compensation, mounting up from the depths of time. Primitive peoples, in order to placate the ferocious bargaining god, the god who never gives something for nothing and demands cash payments, used to sacrifice their first-born: they purchased with this ransom the safety of the rest of their fortunes. And for her first-born Annette would gladly have given her life and all her wealth.
"Take my all," she said, "but let him live!"
Then at once she thought, "This is absurd. Nobody is listening to me."
It was no use. The old atavistic instinct continued to scent, somewhere about her, the presence of the jealous God. And, holding on, bargaining bitterly, she said, "Let us make an agreement. I am willing to pay on the spot. The child is mine. Take your choice of the rest!"
As if to justify her superstition, events took Annette at her word. One morning, when Aunt Victorine had gone to the lawyer's to get some money that he should have sent them some time before, she came back in tears. That very morning Annette had had the joy of being finally reassured about her child's health. The doctor had just left: this time he had announced that the child was definitely convalescent. Annette, in a transport of happiness, but still trembling, hardly dared to believe in her newly recovered happiness. At this moment she saw the door opening and at the first glance perceived her aunt's broken look. Her heart throbbed as she thought, "What new misfortune has befallen us?"
The old lady could hardly speak. At last she said, "The office is closed. M. Grenu has disappeared."
Annette's whole fortune was in his charge. For a moment she did not understand. Then—explain it if you can—her face cleared. She was relieved. She thought, "Is that all?"
So there it was, the saving calamity! The enemy had taken his portion.
A moment afterward she shrugged her shoulders at her silliness. But in spite of her irony she continued to say to it, "Was that enough? Are you satisfied? Now that I have paid, I owe you nothing more."
She smiled. Poor humanity, clutching at its morsel of happiness and seeing it unceasingly, unceasingly escaping, tries to conclude a pact with blind nature, which it creates in its own image.
"In my image? This envious, rapacious, cruel nature. Is it posable that I resemble it? Who knows? Who can say, 'I am not that'?"
Annette was ruined. She could not yet estimate the extent of her ruin. But when the first moment of aberration had passed, when she coldly examined the situation, she had to admit that she thoroughly deserved it.
She was quite capable of attending to her affairs. Like her father, she had a good hard head; figures had no terrors for her. When one comes of a line of peasants and shrewd, energetic tradesfolk, one must make an actual effort to lose one's assurance in practical matters. But she had been spared all thought about material things as long as her father was alive; and since then she had passed through a long crisis in which the inner travail of her emotional life had held her captive. In this rather abnormal state, maintained by the idleness made possible by her fortune, she had felt a rather unhealthy disgust at paying any attention to her property. It should be said boldly that the idealism of the inner life which despises money as parasitical forgets that it has the right to do so only when it gives up money. The idealism that grows out of a soil of wealth and professes to have no interest in it is the worst form of parasitism.
To escape from the boredom of managing her fortune, she had turned the whole administration of it over to the excellent M. Grenu, her lawyer. An old family friend, a respected man whose honor and professional standing were well known, M. Grenu had for thirty years overseen all the Rivières' affairs as they passed through his office. It was true that Raoul had not allowed any one to manage them without consulting him. However much confidence he may have placed in his lawyer, he never allowed him to make out a deed without verifying every period and comma himself. But after taking all precautions, he did have confidence in him, and when a man of his shrewdness has confidence in another the other must deserve it. M. Grenu did deserve it. As much as anybody in the world (when the precautions were taken) . . .
The rôle of lay confessor, which the lawyer is called upon to play in a family, had placed M. Grenu in possession of many of the Rivières' household secrets. He had been unaware of very few of Raoul's escapades or Mme. Rivière's sorrows. To the former he had lent a sympathetic ear, to the latter an ear equally complacent. As an advisor of the wife he appreciated her virtues; as the companion of Raoul, he appreciated the latter's vices (they were virtues too, Gallic virtues); and it was said that he was not above joining in some of Raoul's select parties. M. Grenu was a little grizzled man in his sixties, delicate in appearance, with a fresh complexion, excessively correct, malicious and smooth-tongued, a good fellow, an amusing actor; he liked to tell stories and would begin in a low, faint voice so that people would take pains to listen to him, a voice so soft that it seemed to be dying; then, when he had won from the audience a pitying silence, he would gradually spread out into a sonorous volume of sound that a big clarinet might have envied, and he would not abandon the stop till the final note when he had finished his song. He was a lawyer of the old school, but a weak man, attracted by the new ways, a good paterfamilias, an old-fashioned bourgeois, proud of being able to count a number of actresses, high livers and light women among his clientele, and it was his hobby to speak of himself as old and even to act so, exaggeratedly; but he was very much afraid of being taken at his word and in secret applied himself ardently to showing that he was livelier than all these young folks and could leave them far behind.
He had known Annette since her childhood, and he had taken her affairs very sincerely to heart. It seemed to him natural that she should confide in him after the death of her parents. With professional correctness, at first, he had scrupulously kept her posted; he was unwilling to do anything without her consent—which only bored Annette. Then he induced her to give him a special power of attorney for this or that transaction of which Annette heard (scarcely heard) a very vague account. And finally it was taken for granted that, since Annette made frequent trips away from Paris, often without leaving her address, M. Grenu would look out for her interests as best he could without consulting her. Thus everything went well: the lawyer took charge of everything, collected Annette's income and provided her with money as she needed it. At last, in order to regularize the situation, he caused her to give him a general power of attorney. . . . Water flowed under the bridges. . . . It was more than a year since Annette had seen M. Grenu, who, punctually, at the beginning of each quarter, turned over to her the amount that was due. Living alone, away from Parisian society, no longer reading the newspapers, she did not hear of events until long after they had happened. Old M. Grenu had tried to be too clever. Without any personal spirit of greed, he had allowed himself to be caught by his fondness for speculation; to increase the funds of his clients, he involved them in risky enterprises in which they were capsized. Then in his attempts to make up their losses he ruined them. Without warning Annette, he had not only disposed of all her ready money and the personal property of which he had charge, but, by certain subterfuges that were permitted by the elastic form of the power of attorney, he had mortgaged the Boulogne house and the house in Burgundy. When all was lost he fled before the ridicule which he knew would follow his downfall and which would perhaps have been more intolerable to him than dishonor.
To crown the misfortune, Annette, entirely absorbed in the child's illness, had not opened her correspondence for several weeks. She had not replied to the letters of the mortgage-holders or the court summons that followed. It was during the days of the child's relapse. Annette had lost her head. Not realizing that they were addressed to her and not to her agent, she sent the papers off without reading them to the lawyer, who did not read them either—for a good reason. He was on the run. When at last the recovery of her child left her mind free enough to examine the situation, the judicial procedure had advanced so far that, in Annette's failure to satisfy the demands of the creditors, the latter had won the right to have the mortgaged property put up for sale. Annette, awakened from her torpor, had to face this stunning blow; with the energy that was restored in an instant and the practical intelligence, inherited from her father, that made up for her inexperience, she fought with a vigor and a clearness of mind which the judge admired even while he decided against her: for her good excuses did not alter the fact that before the law her case was bad. Annette herself saw at once that she had lost in advance, but her fighting instinct, which coolly admitted her defeat, unjust as it was, could not admit it without resistance. Besides, she was concerned now for her child's property. She defended it, step by step, with the tenacity of a rude, shrewd peasant who, bracing her legs at the gate of her field, bars the road to intruders, trying to gain time even though she knows they are coming in. But what could she do? In her inability to pay the sum that was demanded, and not wishing to ask aid from her relatives or from the old friends who would probably have refused it in some humiliating way, she could not stop the sale. Her ingenious, stubborn energy only succeeded in obtaining the suspension, for a limited time, of the proceedings of expropriation, without any hope of preventing their execution after a brief delay.
Annette would have had some excuse if she had been overwhelmed by this catastrophe. Sylvie, who had not been personally injured by it, now burst into lamentations, now angrily talked of nothing but law-suits, law-suits, law-suits. Annette, on the contrary, seemed to have recovered her equilibrium through this very event. The ordeal had cleared the air. The soft, sentimental atmosphere that for two or three years had been cloying her heart was dissipated. When Annette was certain that the situation could not be changed, she accepted it. Without useless recriminations. Unlike Sylvie, who heaped the harshest maledictions on the lawyer's head, she found no comfort in blaming M. Grenu. The old man was in the water. So was she. But she had her youthful arms, and she could swim. Perhaps this thought was not even entirely unpleasant to her. Strange as it may seem, along with the distress of her ruin she had at bottom an inquisitive desire for adventure and even a secret pleasure in putting her unused energies to the test. Raoul would have understood her, Raoul who, at the height of his success, had been seized at moments with a fancy for destroying his life's work just to have the pleasure of rebuilding it.
She prepared now to leave the Boulogne house. The property in Burgundy had already been sold, hastily, on absurd terms. It was certain that the total sale would scarcely cover the debt and the costs, and that, if there remained an available surplus, it would not be enough for the maintenance of Annette and her family; she would have to look for new resources. For the moment, the main thing was to reduce expenses and settle in some very modest establishment. Annette set out to look for an apartment. Sylvie found one for her on the fourth floor of her own house. (She lived on theentresol.) The rooms were small and opened on the court, but they were clean and quiet. It was impossible to bring all the furniture from the Boulogne house here. Annette wanted to keep only what was absolutely necessary. But Aunt Victorine, weeping, begged her to preserve everything. Annette remonstrated that it was not reasonable, in their present situation, to assume the expense of a store-room. They must make a choice, and the old lady begged for each object. Annette firmly chose; aside from the furniture that was to follow them to the new apartment, she kept a few pieces that were particularly dear to her aunt, and the rest were sold.
Sylvie was struck by Annette's insensibility. But it was impossible to suppose that the courageous girl did not feel a little sad. She loved this house which she had to leave. . . . How many memories she had! How many dreams! But she repressed them. She well knew that she could not entertain them with impunity. They were too much, they would have taken everything; she needed all her strength at this moment.
Just once, taken by surprise, she gave way before their assault. It was one afternoon, shortly before the movers were to come. Her aunt was at church and Marc was at Sylvie's. Annette, alone in the Boulogne house, where everything spoke of their approaching departure, was kneeling on a half-rolled rug, folding up a tapestry that had been taken down. Occupied with her task, while her active hands came and went, her head was busy calculating about the new arrangements. But she still had room for dreams; for her eye, floating for an instant far from the present vision, fastened in its mistiness upon a design in the tapestry which her hands were rolling up: it recognized this design. A motif of pale flowers, almost worn away; butterflies' wings, detached petals? It mattered little; but Annette's eyes as a child had fallen there, and on this canvas they had embroidered the tapestry of the days that had fled. And this tapestry had suddenly emerged from the night. Annette's hands ceased to wander; her mind, for one moment more, persisted in repeating the figures of which it had lost the thread, then was still. And Annette, letting herself slip down upon the floor, with her forehead on the roll of the rug and her face in her hands, lay there with her knees drawn up, abandoned herself to the wind and the flood, set sail. . . . She did not voyage towards any particular country. . . . Such a mass of memories—lived? dreamed?—how distinguish between them? Dizzy symphony of a moment of silence! It contained much more than the substance of a life. In active thought, the consciousness, when it believes it takes possession of our inner world, only seizes the crest of the wave at the moment when the sun-ray gilds it. Reverie alone perceives the moving abyss and its torrential rhythm, those innumerable drops, scudding along on the wind of the ages, seeds of thought of the beings from whom we spring and who will spring from us, that formidable chorus of hopes and regrets whose trembling hands stretch out towards the past or the future. Indefinable harmony that forms the tissue of an illuminated second, and that sometimes a shock is enough to awaken. A bouquet of pale flowers had just evoked it in Annette.
When she pulled herself together, after a long silence, she rose hastily, and with hands that were suddenly awkward, hasty, trembling, she finished folding up the tapestry without looking at it. She did not quite finish it, she threw it into a box, incompletely rolled, and fled from the room. . . . No, she did not want to stay with these thoughts! It was better to escape from them. Later she would have time enough to regret the past, when she would herself belong to the past . . . later, in the twilight of her life. For the moment, she was too full of the future, she must see it through. Her dreams lay ahead of her. "I don't want to know what is behind me; I must not turn around."
She walked down the street, hastening her steps, tense, looking neither to right nor left . . . the years, the years, the life that was coming . . . that of her child, her own, the new life, the Annette of to-morrow.
She had this vision in her eyes on the evening when she established herself in Sylvie's house. Sylvie, as soon as her shop was closed, hastened to climb up to her sister's apartment to distract her from the regrets she supposed the latter must be feeling. She found her walking back and forth in her narrow room, not at all tired after the exhausting day, trying to make her too diminutive cupboards hold her clothes and her linen. Unsuccessful in this, perched on a stool, with her arms full of sheets, looking at the filled shelves, she was meditating another plan, whistling like a boy a Wagnerian fanfare that she absent-mindedly travestied, giving it a burlesque turn. Sylvie looked at her and said, "Annette, I admire you." (She did not mean quite as much as this.)
"Why?" asked Annette.
"If I were in your place, how I should rage!"
Annette began to laugh. Absorbed in her work, she made a sign to her sister to be silent.
"I think I've got it," she said.
She buried her head and her arms in the cupboard, arranging, disarranging, rummaging.
"I said so," she remarked, "and I have."
(She was addressing a cupboard that was full, arranged, conquered.)
She descended, victorious, from the stool.
"Rage, Sylvie?" she said. (She was holding her by the chin.) "When you were a child you played at building houses with dominoes. When the house fell, did you get angry?"
"I banged the dominoes on the floor," said Sylvie.
"And I said, Biff! I'll build another."
"You'll have to admit that you shook the table!"
"Well, I wouldn't swear I didn't," said Annette.
Sylvie called her an anarchist.
"What!" said Annette. "Isn't that just what you are?"
Sylvie was not. She could laugh at order and authority when she wanted to do so, but she felt the need of order and authority. Even if it was only to apply them to other people. For her, as for others, there was no pleasure in revolting unless it was against some authority. And as for order, Sylvie was well supplied with it. She did not cavil at the established order except in so far as it was not her own. She did not reproach it for being established. An order should be established. Since she too was established, as an employer, directing her own business, she was all for a stable order. Annette made this discovery with surprise. Nor was this the only discovery she made. You do not know another human being unless you see him in that everyday activity which brings his energies to a head and reveals his natural movements and gestures. Annette had never seen Sylvie except during her idle times, her times of relaxation. Who can judge of a cat stretched out on a soft cushion? You must see it on the warpath with its back arched and the green fire in its eyes.
Annette was now seeing Sylvie in her own field, the portion of earth she had cleared for herself in the Parisian jungle. The little business woman had taken her trade seriously, and she was second to no one in the art of managing her affairs. Annette could observe her at leisure and close by; for, during the first weeks that followed her moving, she took her meals with Sylvie; it had been agreed that they should keep house together until the settling was entirely finished. Annette, to keep her own end up, tried to make herself useful, sharing in some of the tasks of the workshop. Thus she saw Sylvie at all hours of the day, now with the customers, now with the workers, now alone for a private talk, and she observed in her sister traits she had not known, or which had become accentuated in the last two or three years.
The coaxing Sylvie, under her charming smile, no longer concealed from the penetrating eyes of Annette a rather cold nature which, amid all its entanglements, knew where it was going. She had a small personnel of working-girls whom she managed with superlative skill. With her keen observation and her winning ways, she had chosen and drawn to herself hearts that had no other attachments. Such, for instance, was her chief assistant, Olympe, who was much older than she, more expert in the craft, an excellent worker, but entirely without ideas, and unable to take care of herself. She had come from the country and was lost in Paris, victimized and laughed at by men, women, her employers and her fellow-workers. She was intelligent enough to see this, but she did not have the strength to resist it, and she had been looking for some one who, without taking advantage of her, would make use of her work and free her from the responsibility of managing herself. It had needed no effort on Sylvie's part to bring her into line. Sylvie was merely obliged to take care that there should be a good understanding among the rival devotions that she had aroused in her personnel, making skilful use of their antagonisms in order to stimulate their zeal and, like a wise government, uniting competitors in the patriotism of the common work. The pride of the little establishment and the desire to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the young mistress delivered them over to her cunning domination, which often made them work till they were exhausted. She set the example, and no one complained. Her affectionate taunts, the droll mockery at which they would burst out laughing, would reinvigorate the weary team and make them hold out to the end. Proud of their employer, they loved her jealously; while she, who stimulated their enthusiasm, remained indifferent to them herself. In the evening, after they had left, she talked about them to her sister in a tone of cold detachment that shocked Annette. For the rest, she was ready to do them a good turn in case of need, and she never left them in the lurch if she found them ill or in difficulties. But whether they were ill or not, if she did not see them she forgot them. She had no time to think of the absent. She had no time to love very long. A perpetual activity occupied all her moments: the care of her person, housekeeping, meals, business, trying on dresses, gossip, love affairs, amusements. And everything—even to the (never very long) periods of silence, when, between the bustle of the day and her sleep at night, she found herself alone face to face with herself—everything about her was precise. Not a cranny for dreams. When she observed herself, it was with the clear and curious eye that watches others and looks upon oneself as a passer-by. A minimum of inner life: everything projected into acts and words. The need that Annette felt for moral confession found no consideration here. Annette was embarrassed in this perpetual midday. No shadow. Or, if it existed—and it exists in every soul—the door was closed tight upon it. Sylvie was not interested in what might be behind the door. Her only concern was to administer her little domain punctiliously, enjoying everything, her work and her pleasures, but everything at its own time so that nothing should be lost; consequently, she was without passions or any great excesses, for this activity, this perpetual going from one thing to another, not only did not lend itself to anything of the kind, but even destroyed its possibility in advance. No danger that her lovers would make her lose her head.
The truth was that she did not love anything very much. She loved whole-heartedly only one soul, Annette. And how strange this was! Why in the world did she love this big girl who had nothing, or virtually nothing, in common with her?
Ah, that "virtually nothing" was a great deal; who knows but that it was the most important thing of all?—the tie of blood. This does not always count for much between people of the same family. But when it does count, what a mysterious strength it has! It is a voice that whispers to us, "That other person is a part of me. Moulded in another shape, the substance is the same. I recognize myself in a different form and possessed by an alien soul."
And one wants to capture oneself in this usurper double attraction, a triple attraction: the attraction of resemblance, the attraction of opposition, of the war of conquest, which is not the least of the three.
What forces there were binding Annette and Sylvie together! Pride, independence, orderliness, will, the life of the senses! Of these two spirits, the one turned inward, the other outward—the two hemispheres of the soul. They were constituted of almost the same elements, but each, for deep, obscure reasons that sprang from the essence of their personality, repressed one half, wished only to see one half, that which emerged or that which was submerged. The uniting of the two sisters in a common life disturbed the habitual consciousness that each had of herself. Their mutual affection was tinged with hostility. And the warmer the affection was, the keener was the hidden hostility, for they realized how hopelessly unlike they were. Annette was more expert in reading her buried thoughts, and she was also more sincere: she was able to judge them and repress them. The time had passed when she had wished to absorb Sylvie in her imperious love. But Sylvie still had a secret desire to dominate her elder sister, and she was not displeased that circumstances had given her an opportunity to affirm her superiority. It was a sort of revenge for the inequalities of their lot during the girlhood of the two sisters. This unconfessed feeling, together with her real affection, gave her a sense of satisfaction which she concealed as she saw Annette working under her direction in the shop. She would have liked to have her on her pay roll. She put her in charge of receiving her customers and making charcoal designs for embroidered trimmings; she tried to persuade her that she could look forward to some important position and even to being her partner later on in the business.
Annette, who saw what Sylvie was driving at, had no intention of tying herself down. She let the offer drop, and when Sylvie pressed her she replied that she was not fitted for this work. Upon this Sylvie asked her ironically for what work she was fitted. This was a tender point with her. When one has never had to work for a living and necessity drives one to do so, it is painful not to know what work one is fitted for, not even to know whether, in spite of one's education, one is fitted for any work. But she had to face the question. Annette did not want to remain dependent on Sylvie. Of course Sylvie would never have shown that she felt this dependence: she enjoyed helping her sister. But if she was happy in spending for Annette, she knew what she was spending; her right hand was never unaware of what her left hand gave. Annette was still less unaware of it. She could not endure the thought that Sylvie, as she made up her accounts, mentally wrote her down as her debtor. . . . The devil take all money! Should it be considered between two hearts that love each other? Annette and Sylvie did not consider it in their hearts. But it was a consideration in their life. People do not live by love alone. They live by money too.
This was a truth which Annette had ignored a little too much. She was to lose no time in learning it.
She started out in search of a position, saying nothing about it to Sylvie. Her first idea was to go to see the principal of the school for young girls where she had studied. As an intelligent student who was rich and the daughter of an influential father, she had been a favorite of Mme. Abraham, and she felt certain of her sympathy. This remarkable woman—one of the first to organize the teaching of women in France—had rare qualities of energy and judgment that were complemented—or mitigated, according to the case—by a very cold political sense which many men might have envied. She was disinterested personally, but she was far from being so where her school was concerned. She was a freethinker, and, although she did not parade the fact, she was not without a certain contemptuous anti-clericalism that could do her no harm with her clientele, the daughters of the radical bourgeoisie and young Jewesses. But in place of the dogmas she rejected she had established a civic morality which, although it lacked basis and certitude, was no less strict and commanding. (It was even more so, for the more arbitrary a rule is the more rigid it becomes.) Annette, thanks to her position in society, was intimate with the principal and had her confidence. It amused her to tease the latter about her famous official morality, and Mme. Abraham, who was sceptical by nature, found no difficulty in smiling at the whims of this saucy young thing. She smiled at them, yes, indeed, when they talked together behind her closed door. But as soon as the door was open and Mme. Abraham was reinstated in her title and her official rank, she was as firm as iron in her belief in the Tables of the laic Law, the product of the highly reasonable morality of a few republican pedagogues. It was enough to say that, if her naked conscience was indifferent to conventional morality, her clothed conscience—her usual conscience—severely blamed Annette's behavior. For she knew about it; the adventure had gone the rounds of society.
But she did not yet know of her ruin. And when Annette called, she took care not to reveal her thoughts: her first business was to find out the reasons for this call and whether the school might reap any advantage from it. She therefore gave her a pleasant though rather reserved greeting. But scarcely had she learned that Annette had come to ask a favor than she remembered the scandal and her smile froze. One can easily accept money from a person of whom one doesn't approve, but one cannot decently give it to such a person. It was easy for Mme. Abraham to find compelling reasons for averting a candidacy that was so impolitic. There was no position in the school; and, when Annette asked for a recommendation to other institutions, Mme. Abraham did not even take the trouble to make vague promises. She was very diplomatic when she was negotiating with anyone who was on top of the wheel of fortune, but she instantly ceased to be so when the wheel had flung them down. A serious mistake in diplomacy! For sometimes those who are down to-day are on top to-morrow, and good diplomacy looks out for the future. Mme. Abraham considered nothing but the present. At present Annette was drowning; it was a pity, but Mme. Abraham was not in the habit of fishing out those who were in the water. She did not disguise her coldness, and, when Annette failed to abandon her tone of calm self-possession and henceforth misplaced equality, Mme. Abraham, in order to bring her back to a more exact sense of her distance, declared that she could not conscientiously recommend her. Annette, who was burning with indignation, was on the point of expressing it. A flash of anger passed over her, but it was extinguished in contempt. She was seized by one of those rather diabolical whims of her younger days, an itching desire to mock. She rose, saying, "Well, think of me if you establish a course in the new morality."
Mme. Abraham looked at her, taken aback; the impertinence was all too evident. She replied dryly, "The old one is good enough for us."
"But it might not be a bad thing to enlarge it a little."
"What would you like to add to it?"
"Nothing very much," said Annette, calmly. "Freedom and humanity."
Mme. Abraham, hurt, said: "The right to love, no doubt?"
"No," said Annette, "the right to have a child."
As she went out she shrugged her shoulders at her useless bravado. . . . Stupid! . . . What was the use of making an enemy? . . . She laughed just the same as she thought of the vexed expression of her antagonist. A woman cannot resist the pleasure of slighting another. Bah! The Abraham woman would remain her enemy only until Annette had reconquered her position. And she would reconquer it!
Annette visited other institutions, but there were no positions. There were none for women. The Latin democracies are only made for men; they sometimes put feminism on their programmes, but they distrust it; they are in no hurry to furnish arms to what still remains, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the enslaved rival, a rival that will not long so remain, thanks to the tenacity of the Nordic woman. Pressure will have to be brought by the public opinion of the rest of the world to oblige them to offer a crabbed welcome to the woman who works and wishes to exercise her rights.
Annette might have been admitted, however, to two or three positions if her susceptibility had not caused her to lose them. They would have been ready to shut their eyes to her irregular situation if she herself had been willing to give them some specious explanation—that she was a widow or divorced by her own choice. But when she was questioned her absurd pride drove her to tell the facts as they were. After two or three rebuffs, she approached no more institutions, not even the University, although in the latter she had left sympathetic friends behind her and would have found minds large enough to help her without censuring her. But she was afraid of being wounded. She was still inexperienced in the country of the poor. The hands of her pride had not had time to become callous.
She looked about for a chance to give private lessons. She did not wish to seek them among the friends of her own class; she preferred to conceal her steps. She turned to those clandestine employment—those exploitative—agencies that still exist in Paris. She was not skilful enough to appear well from their point of view. She had too much disdain. They resented her fastidiousness. Instead of accepting whatever offered, like so many unhappy souls who are fortified with very few recommendations, who will teach anything that is asked of them at famine prices and work from dawn till dark, she presumed to pick and choose.
At last, through the mediation of Sylvie's customers, she found a few foreigners. She gave lessons in conversation to some Americans who treated her kindly and occasionally invited her to drive in their carriages, though they offered her an absurd remuneration, never even thinking that they ought to have paid her more. They did not hesitate to give a hundred francs for a pair of shoes, while for an hour of French they would pay a franc. (It was not impossible in those days to find people who would give lessons for fifty centimes!) Annette, who did not have the right to be exacting as yet, refused to accept this shameful treatment. But after having sought far and wide, she could find nothing better. The well-to-do bourgeoisie who, under the eye of public opinion, are willing to spend whatever is demanded for the education of their children when the teaching is public, sordidly exploit instructors in their own households. There no one sees you. You are dealing with people who are too humble to resist: for one who refuses there are ten who beg you to accept them!
Isolated, without experience, Annette was in a poor position to protect herself. But she had the practical instinct of the Rivières and she had her pride, and they would not accept the humiliating wages to which others yielded. She was not of the whining sort who complain and give in. She did not complain and she did not give in. And in the face of all expectation this attitude was successful. The human species is cowardly; Annette had a calm, rather haughty way of saying no that cut short all bargaining; people did not dare to treat her as they would have treated others, and she obtained conditions that were rather more favorable. Not greatly so. She had to go through many weary hours to earn what she spent every day. Her pupils were scattered in remote quarters, and this was before the time of the autobusses and the metro in Paris. When she came home in the evening, her feet ached and her shoes were worn out. But she was robust, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction to experience the life of toil for one's daily bread. To earn her bread was a new adventure for Annette. When she was successful in one of those little duels of the will with her exploiters, she was as well pleased with her day as a gambler who, in the pleasure of what he has won, forgets the insignificance of the stake. She learned to see men better. It was not always a pleasant sight. But everything is worth learning. She came into contact with the obscure world of toil. But her contacts were inadequate and without depth. If wealth isolates, poverty isolates no less. Every one is caught fast in his difficulties and his effort, and he sees in others not so much brothers in misery as rivals whose fortune is made at the expense of his own.
Annette divined this feeling in the women with whom she found herself thrown, and she understood it; for she was a privileged being among them. If she worked in order not to be a charge upon her sister, her sister was none the less there; she was safe from the danger of destitution. She did not know that feverish uncertainty about to-morrow. She had her child to enjoy; no one was trying to take him away from her. How compare her lot with that of this woman whose story she had learned—a teacher who had been dismissed because she, like Annette, had had the hardihood to be a mother. It was true that she had been tolerated at first on condition that she kept her maternity secret. Exiled in a post of disgrace, in the depths of the country, she had had to separate from the child of her own flesh. But she could not keep herself from running to him when he was ill. The secret was out, and the virtuous countryside made ferocious sport of her. The authorities of the university of course upheld the popular decree and threw into the street the two rebels against the code. And it was with them that Annette was disputing their meagre livelihood. She took care not to apply for the position which the other woman was seeking. But she was chosen. Just because she sought positions less eagerly, because she had less need of them. People have little respect for those who are hungry. And then the poor souls whom she supplanted treated her as an intruder who was robbing them. They knew they were unjust; but it is comforting to be unjust when you are a victim of injustice. Annette became familiar with that greatest of all wars—the war of the workers, not against nature or circumstances, nor against the rich for taking their bread away from them—the war of the workers against the workers who are snatching the bread from each other, the crumbs that have fallen from the table of the rich or from that sordid Crœsus, the State. That is the misery of miseries, most felt by women, and especially those of to-day. For they are still incapable of organization. They remain in the state of primitive warfare, the individual against the individual; instead of pooling their difficulties, they multiply them.
Annette hardened herself, and although her heart bled her eyes were aflame with joy. She strode on, sustained in her ungrateful work by its novelty, the energy she had to spend—and the thought of her child, which illumined the whole day.
Marc spent the day in Sylvie's workshop. Aunt Victorine had flickered out shortly after they were settled. She had not been able to survive the ruin of the old home, the loss of the old furniture, the habits of a peaceful half-century. Since Annette was out of the house till evening, Sylvie took charge of the child. He was the darling of the workshop, petted by the customers and the workers, rummaging about on all fours, sitting under a table, collecting hooks and eyes and scraps of chiffon, winding skeins of silk, rolling balls, stuffing himself with sweets and smothered with kisses. He was a little boy of three or four, with golden auburn hair like Annette's, and he had been rather pale ever since his illness. Life for him was a perpetual spectacle. Sylvie could remember her own first experiences when, sitting under her mother's counter, she had listened to the customers. But the great personages, from the tops of their stilts, have too utterly different a field of vision to know what catches the eyes of a child. And its rosy ears. . . . There was quite enough to keep them busy in the workshop! Every tongue was loosened, laughing, bold, brazen. Prudery was no weakness of Sylvie and her flock. Plenty of laughing, plenty of gossip, makes the needle fly. No one thought of the child. Was it possible that he understood? He did not understand (in all probability), but he grasped things, he let nothing escape him. The child collected everything, touched everything, tasted everything. Woe to whatever lay in his way! Sprawling under a chair, he put in his mouth whatever fell from above, scraps of biscuit, buttons, fruit-stones; and he also put words there. Without knowing what they meant. Exactly, in order to find out! And he munched away and sang.
"Little pig!"
An apprentice would snatch from his fingers a ribbon he was sucking, or perhaps experimentally burying in his nose. But no one took from him the words he had swallowed. He was doing nothing with them for the present; there was nothing he could do with them. But they were not lost.
Routed out from under the furniture and the petticoats, where he was absorbed in curious studies of the fidgeting feet and the imprisoned toes curled up in their shoes, dragged back to the conventions, to his normal position in the world of grown-ups, he would remain motionless, soberly seated on a low stool between Sylvie's legs. Or, since his aunt rarely kept still, between some other pair of knees. He would lean his cheek against the warm cloth and watch, with his nose in the air and his head thrown back, those bending faces with their puckered eyes, their quick, shining, moving pupils, those mouths, biting the thread; he saw the saliva and the lower lips—they seemed to be the upper ones—gnawed by the teeth, the undersides of the nostrils, covered with little red streaks and trembling as the words came, and the fingers that flew with their needles. Suddenly a hand would tickle his chin: there was a thimble at the end of it that gave him a cold feeling in his neck. Here, as ever, nothing was lost on him; these warm and cold contacts, this downy glow, these lights that reddened and these shadows that turned to amber the bits of living flesh, yes, and this feminine odor. . . . He was certainly not aware of it himself, but that multiple consciousness, that many-faceted consciousness which is spread about the whole periphery of a child, registered everything that passed over its little printer's-roller. . . . These women never suspected that their images, complete from head to foot, were being imprinted on this little sensitive plate. But he saw them only fragmentarily: pieces were missing, as in a puzzle in which the parts are mixed up. From this resulted his strange, fleeting preferences, as lively as they were varied, which seemed capricious but were really due to his deep-seated predisposition. A clever person might have said what it was in each of these women that attracted him. He was like a regular household pet: it was the gentleness of the hands rather than the whole person that he liked. And it was the totality of these sweetnesses, the home, the workshop. He was frankly an egoist. (And rightfully: the little builder has to assemble his ego first of all.) A sincere egoist, even in his blandishments. For he was blandishing: he wanted to please and he enjoyed giving pleasure, but only to those whom he had chosen.
From the very beginning his great favorite had been Sylvie. The instinct of the domestic animal in him had at once perceived that she was the god of the household, the master who dispensed food and kisses and was responsible for the tone of the day, and whom it was a good thing to propitiate. But it was better still to be propitiated by her. And the child had observed that this privilege had been accorded to him. It never occurred to him that it might not be deserved. Thus he received without surprise but with satisfaction the agreeable and flattering homage that was rendered to him by the sovereign of the workshop. Sylvie spoiled him, adored him, went into ecstasies over his gestures, his steps, his words, his intelligence, his beauty, his mouth, his eyes, his nose; she held him up to the admiration of her customers and preened herself on his account as if he had been her own chick.
To tell the truth, she also called him, "Little blackguard! Silly little fool!" And sometimes she tweaked his nose, slapped him, gave him a spanking. But from her he did not take this as an offence; although he protested loudly, he did not even find it too disagreeable. May not any one be struck by the hand of the queen? From any one else, from one of the girls in the workroom, heavens above, he would never have permitted it! Even without her sceptre, Sylvie had a charm for him. In his feminine puzzle, made up of this group and that, she had provided him with the greatest number of parts; he loved to press against her dress, with his head against her stomach, to listen to her voice (he could hear her laughing all through her body), or clamber up her hips till he had reached the summit; and then, with his two arms knotted about her neck, he would rub his nose, his lips and his eyes against her soft cheek, close to her ears, among the little blonde curls that had such a nice smell. What the eye is for the mind of grown-ups, the sense of touch is for that of children. It is the talisman that permits one to see over the wall and weave within oneself the dream of things one believes one sees, the illusion of life. The child spun his web. And without knowing what these blonde curls were, or what this cheek was, this voice, this laugh, this Sylvie or this "I," he thought, "This is mine."
Annette would come home in the evening. She would be famished. All day she had walked in a waterless desert, a world without love. All day she had walked with her eyes turned towards the spring which, in the evening, she would find again. She heard it rippling; in anticipation she would dip her lips in it; a passer-by in the street might have taken as intended for him the smile which this beautiful woman who was hastening along addressed to the image of her child. As she approached Sylvie's house, her steps quickened like those of a horse that scents the oats; and when at last she entered, laughing with greedy love, no matter how tired she was she went upstairs at a run. The door opened; she dashed in and threw herself on the child; she caught him up in her hands, squeezed him, devoured him furiously, his eye, his nose, under his nose, wherever she happened to alight, whatever part she could reach, and her mad joy expressed itself noisily. As for him, as he played about or amused himself soberly, comfortably settled on the padded sofa, drawing lines with a piece of chalk or mixing up threads of various colors, he was none too pleased by this invasion. This great rough woman who came in without any warning, seized him, pulled him about, shouted in his ear, stifled him with kisses . . . he didn't like it at all! To be disposed of without his permission made him indignant. He wouldn't allow it. He was cross and he struggled; but this only made her shake him, fondle him, laugh and cry all the more furiously. . . . Everything about her displeased him: this lack of consideration, this noise, this violence. . . . He quite understood that she ought to love him, admire him and even kiss him. But she should have had better manners! Where had she come from? Sylvie and her girls were more ladylike. When they played with him, even when they laughed or exclaimed, they didn't make such a racket and seize you and hug you in this brutal way. He was astonished that Sylvie, who knew so well how to give her subjects a dressing down, should never give this ill-bred person a lesson in deportment, that she did not protect him from such familiarities. On the contrary, Sylvia assumed with Annette a tone of affectionate equality which she did not have for any one else, and she said to Marc, "Come, be good! Kiss your mother!"
His mother! Of course, he knew it. But that was no excuse. Yes, she too was a domestic power. He was still too close to the warmth of the breast not to have kept on his epicurean mouth the sugary taste of milk, not to have kept in his birdlike body the golden shadow of the wing that sheltered him. Even more recent were the nights of illness when the invisible enemy had seized the throat of the fledgling and the head of the great protectress had bent over him. Of course, of course! But now he no longer needed this. If he preserved these memories and a hundred others that were stored away in his granary, he had no use for them at present. Later, perhaps, he would see. . . . Every moment now brought him a new gift; he had enough to do to gather them all in. A child is ungrateful by nature.Mens momentanea. Do you imagine he has time to remember what was good yesterday? What is good for him is what is good to-day. To-day Annette had made the great mistake of allowing herself to be eclipsed by others who were more agreeable and even more serviceable in Marc's eyes. Instead of going off, heaven knew where, and making her unseemly appearances in the evening, why didn't she stay here like Sylvia and the others, busy all day with Marc and paying court to him? It was her loss. So he barely condescended to accept Annette's effusions, responding to the rain of silly, loving questions with a bored and distant Yes, No, Good Morning, Good Evening; and then, flying from the downpour and wiping his cheek, he would return to his play or to Sylvie's knees.
Annette could not help seeing that Marc preferred Sylvie to herself. Sylvie saw it even more clearly. They laughed about it together, and both pretended not to attach a shadow of importance to it. But deep in their hearts Sylvie was flattered and Annette was jealous. They took good care not to confess this to each other. Like a good girl, Sylvie forced the ungracious child to kiss Annette. Annette found little joy in these forced embraces; Sylvie found more. She did not tell herself that she was stealing from the garden of the poor, and that later she would royally return some of the fruit. But what one keeps to oneself in order not to load oneself with troublesome scruples, one only tastes the better with one's closed mouth. And although she had no unkind feeling, Sylvie found more pleasure in making the child fondle her and in displaying her power over him in Annette's presence. Annette, pretending to joke, would say, in a careless tone, "Out of sight, out of mind." But her heart did not take it as a joke. There was no joke about it. Annette had no humor save that of the intellect. Her love was as foolish as that of a dumb creature. It was painful to be a woman among women and to be obliged to hide one's feelings. People would only laugh at you if you showed your poor famished heart. Annette, when she was with other people, acted as if her love were an old story; she talked about her day, the people she had seen, what she had learned, said and done—in short, everything that was indifferent to her. (Oh, how indifferent!)
But at night, by herself, in her apartment, alone with her child, she could give free rein to the torment she felt. To her joy, too, her torrential passion. No need to take precautions any longer. There was no one from whom to hide herself. She had her son entirely at her mercy. She abused her power a little; she wearied him with her wild affection. Since here, away from Sylvie, he no longer had the upper hand, the little politician did not show his annoyance: till morning came he would have to humor this extravagant mother. He used strategy; he pretended to fall asleep. He did not have to pretend very much; sleep came quickly after his full days. All the same, it had not quite come when, like a lamb in his mother's arms, with his eyes closed, Marc would seem to be overwhelmed by it. Annette, interrupting her prattle, was obliged to carry him to bed; and the little comedian, in the half-sleep down which he let himself slip, step by step, down which he slid on the banisters to the foot, laughed in his sleeve as he watched through his eyelashes the credulous Mamma who was mutely adoring him. He had a sense of his superiority, he was grateful to her for it; and sometimes in a transport he would even throw his little arms about her neck as she knelt beside him. By a surprise like that Annette was repaid for her troubles. But the stingy child did not repeat it often, and Annette had to fall asleep hungry. It was not before she had turned over in bed many times to listen to the child's breathing as her thoughts revolved feverishly. He had not kissed her nicely, and she said to herself, "He doesn't love me."