Since she had given up her religious observances, she had never felt the need for them. It did not occur to her that when she had her fiery transports of conscience, her passionate monologues, she was really saying mass.
She did not think of giving her son what she had gone without herself. Perhaps the question would not even have occurred to her if, paradoxically, Sylvie had not brought it up. Sylvie, who had no more religion than a Parisian sparrow, would not have considered herself married without the concurrence of the Church; and it seemed to her indecent that Annette should not have her son baptised. Annette had not thought of this. But she had it done so that Sylvie might be the godmother. Then she thought no more of the matter, and things remained where they were until Julien's arrival. That Julien had a practical faith did not give Annette one, but it rendered the faith worthy of respect in her eyes and brought her attention back to the problem she had neglected. What was she to do for Marc? Send him to church? Teach him a religion in which she did not believe? She asked Julien, who was scandalized; he affirmed emphatically that the child had to be instructed in the divine truths.
"But if they are not truths for me? Must I tell lies when Marc asks me questions?"
"No, don't tell lies, but allow him to believe. It's for his good."
"No, it couldn't be for his good for me to be dishonest. And what authority would I have when he found it out? Wouldn't he have the right to reproach me for it? He would not believe in me any longer. And how do I know whether this faith he would learn would not thwart his real development later?"
Here Julien's brow darkened, and Annette hastened to change the subject. But what was she to do? She could not, as her Protestant friends advised, give her son a course in all the religions and leave him to choose for himself when he was sixteen years old. . . . Annette burst out laughing at this idea. What a strange conception of religion, as if it were a subject for an examination!
In the end Annette had done nothing. She walked about with Marc, went into churches, sat down in a corner, marvelled with him at the upspringing forest of these lofty trunks of stone, the underwood gleams that filtered through the stained-glass windows, enjoyed the flight of the vaults, the distant chanting, the vague accompaniment of the organ. It was a veritable bath of reverie and self-communion.
Marc did not dislike going about in this way, with his hand in his mother's, listening, whispering. It was sweet, it was warm, it was delightful. . . . Yes, if it didn't last too long. This sentimental somnolence bored him. He needed to move about and think of definite things. His little mind worked away, observed, noticed this crowd of praying people, watched his mother, who did not pray. And without expressing them he made his own reflexions. He asked few questions, much fewer than most children would have asked, for he was very proud and he was afraid of saying something naïve.
But he did ask, "Mother, who is God?"
"I don't know, my dear," she replied.
"Then what do you know?"
She smiled and pressed him against her. "I know that I love you."
Yes, the old story. He knew this, but it was not worth coming to church for.
He was not very sensitive and he had no taste for the vague soulfulness in which "these women" delighted. Annette, when she had her child beside her, when she was without too many material cares, during an hour of relaxation earned amid the tasks that pursued her, was happy. She did not have to go very far to find God: he was in her heart. But Marc had found in his heart nothing but himself, Marc: everything else was mere foolishness. He had to be clear about things. Just what was this God? The man up there over the altar, with his girlish petticoat and his gilded shell? The verger with his staff and his exposed calves? Those painted-up images—one in each chapel—that grinned at you with their sickly smiles like embarrassed ladies whom he didn't like?
"Mamma, let's go on."
"But isn't this beautiful?"
"Yes, it's beautiful enough. Let's go home."
What was God? . . . He no longer insisted on asking his mother. When grown-ups confess that they do not know something, it is because they are not interested in it. . . . He continued his rather impatient inquiry alone. He heard prayers, "Our Father who art in heaven"—a localization that excited the scepticism of the more wide-awake of these modern cubs for whom heaven was on the point of becoming a new field of sport. He thumbed the Bible, along with other old stories, with a bored curiosity, asked a few questions, caught a few replies, here and there, with a negligent air—"God, some invisible person who created the world." That was what they said. It was too far off. And not clear. He was like his mother: God did not interest him. One king more or less. . . .
But what did interest him was his own existence, and what threatened it, and what was going to happen to it afterwards. Some dull conversations with Sylvie that had taken place in his presence had very early aroused his attention. The shivering pleasure with which these girls spoke of accidents, sudden deaths, sicknesses, burials, chattering all the time! . . . Death excited them. The animal instinct of the child bristled at this word. He would have liked to question his mother about it. But Annette, who was very healthy, never spoke of death and never thought about it, at this period of her life. She had plenty of other things to do! Earning the little boy's living. When, from morning till evening, she had to think of the here and now, the beyond seemed a luxury. It only becomes essential when those one loves have passed to the other side. Her son was here. For the rest, if she lost him neither life nor death would have had any value for her. She was too passionate to be satisfied with an immaterial world, a world without a beloved body.
Marc saw her, vigorous, intrepid, busy, heedless of these fears; and he would have been ashamed to betray his weakness. So he was obliged to help himself alone. This was not easy. But, as one may suppose, the child did not embarrass himself with problems of complicated thought. He reduced the question to its proper dimensions. Death meant the disappearance of others. Let them disappear: that was their affair. But was it possible that he might disappear?
Once he overheard Sylvie say, "Oh, well, we're all going to die. . . ."
He asked, "I too?"
"Oh," she laughed, "you have time enough."
"How much?"
"Till you are old."
But he knew very well that they buried children too. Besides, even if he were old he would still be himself. Some day Marc would die. . . . It was terrifying. Was there no possible means of escaping it? Somewhere he must find something like a nail in a wall, something he could cling to, a hand he could grasp. "I don't want to disappear."
The need of this hand might have led him to God, as it leads so many others, this outstretched hand that men in their anguish see projected into the night. But that his mother did not seem to be looking for this support was enough to drive away his thought. Even while criticising Annette, he felt the influence of her attitude. That in spite of what was awaiting her she could remain calm did not reassure him, but it obliged him to stand as straight as she did. No matter if he was a nervous, puny little boy, rather stubborn, he was not Annette's child for nothing. . . . Since she, a woman, is not afraid, I must not be afraid.
But it was not given to him, as it was given to these grown-ups, not to think about it. Thought comes and goes; you cannot keep it down, especially at night, when you cannot sleep. Well, then, he had to think of it and not be afraid: "What is it like to be dead?"
Naturally he had no means of knowing. Save for a few pictures in the museum, he had been spared every kind of funereal spectacle. Stiff in his little bed, he felt the walls of his body. How could he find out? An imprudent word revealed to him, quite close by, a window that opened on the abyss into which he burned to look.
One summer day he was dawdling by the window. He caught some flies and was pulling off their wings. It amused him to see them floundering about. It did not occur to him that he was doing them any harm; he was playing a game. They were living toys, and it made no difference if he broke them. . . . His mother surprised him at this occupation. With the violence that she was unable to repress, she seized him by the shoulders and shook him, exclaiming that he was a disgusting little coward.
"What would you say if someone broke your arms? Don't you know that these creatures suffer just as you do?"
He pretended to laugh, but he was astounded by this. It had not occurred to him. These creatures were like him! He did not feel the least pity for them. But he looked at them now with other eyes, troubled, attentive, hostile. . . . A fallen horse in the street. . . . A howling dog that had been run over. . . . He watched. . . . The need of knowing was too strong for his pity to be awakened. . . .
At Easter, as the child, after a gray, damp winter that had been neither cold nor sunny, had suffered from a mild, but insidious, attack of influenza that had drained all the color from his cheeks, Annette rented for a fortnight a room in a farmhouse in the valley of Bièvres. It contained only one big bed for herself and the child. He did not like this very much: but she had not asked for his advice. Happily, he was alone during the day; Annette went back to Paris for her work, and she left him in the care of the landlady, who paid very little attention to him. Marc would quickly vanish into the fields. He looked around him, rummaged about, tried to grasp, from animals and things, some secret that concerned him; for everything in nature he related to himself. Wandering through the woods, he heard some boys making a noise in the distance. He was not looking for the company of other children; he was not strong enough, and he would have wanted to dominate them. But he was attracted just the same. He approached and saw that there were four or five of them forming a circle about a wounded cat. The animal's back was broken, and the children were amusing themselves poking it, tormenting it, prodding it with the ends of their sticks. Without stopping to think, Marc threw himself into the group and struck about him with his fists. When the surprise was over, the band fell upon him shouting. He beat a retreat, but he remained a few steps away, hidden behind some bushes, and stopped his ears. He could not make up his mind to leave. . . . He returned. The young scoundrels hailed him with jeers, "Hello, skinny! Are you afraid? Come over here and see him croak!"
He came. He did not want to seem a milksop. Besides, he wanted to see. The animal, with its eyes glazed and half torn away, was lying on its side, its hindquarters rigid, already dead; its chest was panting and its head trying to lift itself while it moaned in distress. It could not die. The children were convulsed with laughter. Marc looked at it, petrified. Then suddenly he seized a stone and struck with it furiously at the creature's head. A raucous cry broke from him. He struck, struck harder, like a madman. He was still striking when all was over. . . .
The boys looked at him, embarrassed. One of them tried to make a joke. With blood on the fingers that were still grasping the stone, Marc, pale, with knitted brows, a wicked look in his eye and a trembling lip, stared at them. They went away. He heard them laughing and singing in the distance. Setting his teeth, he walked home, and once at home he said nothing about it. But at night, in bed, he cried. Annette took him into her arms. The soft body was trembling.
"What is this wicked dream? My angel, it's nothing."
He was thinking, "I killed it. I know what death is."
The terrifying pride of knowing, of having seen and destroyed! And another feeling, which he could not comprehend, a feeling of horror and attraction. . . . The strange bond that unites the slayer and the slain, the fingers daubed with blood and the broken head. . . . To which of the two did the blood belong? . . . The animal was no longer suffering. . . . He still felt its last agonies. . . .
Happily, at this age, the mind cannot cling very long to the same thought. It would have been dangerous if this had become a fixed idea. But other images passed and their current refreshed his brain. The idea remained, however, in the depths of him: its presence betrayed itself, from time to time, in sombre gleams, bubbles of air that slowly mounted from the mud of the brook. Under the soft crust of his nature a hard core was hidden: death, the force that kills. . . . I am killed and I kill. . . . I will not let myself be killed! Victory to the strongest! I shall fight!
Pride, an obscure pride that sustains its weakness, like a suit of armor. Whence did this steel come if not from his mother—the mother for whom he felt contempt nevertheless because of her effusiveness and because he wound her around his finger? He was not unaware of it. Even in the days when his preference had been all for Sylvie, who petted him, he had recognized Annette's superiority. And he may have imitated her. But he had to defend himself against the encroachments of this personality who loved him too much, who got in his way and threatened his life. He remained in arms against her, and held her at a distance. She too was the enemy.
Sylvie had disappeared from the horizon. When the first months of resentment were past, she had a certain feeling of remorse as she thought of the difficulties against which her sister was struggling. She was waiting for Annette to come and ask her for help: she would not have refused it, but she was not going to offer it. But rather than ask for it Annette would have allowed herself to be cut to pieces. The two sisters were at swords' points. They had seen each other in the street and avoided each other. But once when Annette had met little Odette with one of the workers, she had not resisted an affectionate impulse; she had taken the child in her arms and devoured her with kisses. On her side, Sylvie, seeing Marc passing one day on his way home from school—he appeared not to see her—stopped him and said, "Well, don't you recognize me any more?"
One can imagine the high and mighty manner this little animal assumed as he said, "Good afternoon, aunt."
All by himself he had made his little reflexions, and, just or unjust, he had thought it best to identify himself with his mother's cause. "My country, right or wrong." Sylvie was completely taken aback. She asked, "Well, are things going as they should?"
He replied coldly, "Everything is going very well."
She watched him as he walked stiffly off, blushing from the effort he had imposed on himself. He was neat and nicely dressed. . . . The mean little thing! "Everything is going very well." She could have boxed his ears.
That Annette could manage her own affairs without her added to Sylvie's indignation. But she lost no opportunity to hear about her, and she did not give up the idea of lording it over her some day. If she could not do so actually, she could at least do so in thought. She was not unaware of the austere life which her sister led; and she did not understand why Annette condemned herself to it. She knew her well enough to be aware that a woman of her type was not made for this moral restraint, this joyless life. How could she force her nature in this way? What obliged her to live like a widow? In the absence of a husband she had no lack of friends who would be happy to lighten her troubles. If she had agreed to this, Sylvie would perhaps have respected her sister less, but she would have felt closer to her.
She was not the only one who did not understand Annette. Annette understood hardly any better herself the reasons for her monastic life, the fierce dread that led her to draw back, not merely from the possibility, but from the mere idea of one of those natural pleasures that no religious or social law could have prevented her from enjoying. (She did not believe in the morality of the Church, and was she not mistress of herself?)
"What am I afraid of?"
"Of myself."
Her instinct did not deceive her. For such a nature, filled with passions, desires, blind sensuality, there is no such thing as innocent pleasure, there is no play without consequences. The least shock would deliver her over to forces of which she was no longer the mistress. She had known long before the moral perturbation caused by her brief, passing encounters with love. The dangers would be very different to-day! She would no longer resist. If she gave herself up to pleasure, she would be utterly swept away by it; she would lose the faith she needed. . . . What faith? Faith in herself. Pride? No. Faith in that inexplicable, that divine something that was within her and that she wanted to transmit unsullied to her son. Such a woman has no choice, outside the strict discipline of marriage, between an absolute moral restraint and the frankest abandonment to her passionate instincts. Everything or nothing. . . . Nothing!
And yet, at moments—in spite of her transports of proud fervor—for several months this agonizing thought gripped her by the throat:
"I am wasting my life."
Marcel Franck reappeared. Chance threw him in Annette's path; he had ceased to think of her, but he had not forgotten her. He had had a number of amorous adventures. They had not left too many marks on his flexible heart—only a few lines, like fine scratches, about his clever eyes. But they had left him with a certain fatigue, a good-natured contempt for his easy conquests and for the conqueror. Scarcely had he caught sight of Annette than he felt again the old sensation of freshness and certitude that strangely attracted this blasé sceptic. He explored her eyes; she too had seen life! In the depths of her glance there were submerged lights, paths where vessels had been, shipwrecks. But she seemed calmer and more assured. And he again regretted this wholesome companion who had already escaped him twice. He was not too late! Never had they seemed more ready to understand each other.
Without questioning her, he was able to find out in his own circumspect way about her resources and her occupations. A little later he offered her some work that was very well remunerated: it consisted in arranging notes for the catalogue of a private collection of works of art of which he had charge. A natural excuse for spending a few hours each week with her. They were able to work and talk at the same time. The intimacy of the past was soon reëstablished.
Marcel never asked Annette about her life, but he talked about himself. This was the best way of finding out what she thought. The comic side of his love affairs offered a variety of subjects in which he delighted. He enjoyed making Annette his amused confidante, although she scolded him a little. He was the first to make fun of himself, as he made fun of everything; and she laughingly listened to his free confessions, for she was very tolerant where she herself was not concerned. He understood this to mean something else, and it gave him pleasure to see this gay intelligence that was so indulgent to life. He no longer found in her any trace of the moral pedantry, the intolerance of the young girl who is rather circumscribed by her virtue. While they exchanged their ironical reflexions, it occurred to him that it would be charming to form an attachment with this witty friend, to share with her the adventure of life. How? In any way she chose. Mistress, wife, as she wished. He had no prejudices. Just as he had attached no importance to Annette's "blossoming maternity," so he was not concerned with any encounters she might have had since then. He would never torment her with any exacting surveillance; he had no curiosity about her secret life. Let every one have his own secrets and his share of liberty! He only asked that in their life together she should be laughing and intelligent, a good comrade of his interests and pleasures. (And in pleasure he included everything, intelligence, affection and the rest.)
He thought so well of this that he spoke to her about it one evening in the library when they had finished their work and the sun, through the trees of an old garden, was gilding the tawny bindings of the books. Annette was completely surprised. What, he had come back to that; it was not finished? "Oh, my friend," she said, "how kind you are! But it can't be thought of any more."
"Oh, yes, it can be thought of," he said. "Why shouldn't it be?"
"Well, really, why not?" Annette said to herself. "I'm glad to talk to him, to see him. But, no, it's impossible! It cannot even be discussed."
Franck sat facing her on the other side of the table, his blond beard in the sunlight. With his two arms on the table, he took Annette's hands and said, "Think about it for five minutes! . . . There . . . I shall say nothing. . . . We have known each other for how many years? . . . Twelve? . . . Fifteen? . . . I don't need to explain myself. Everything I can say you know."
She did not try to disengage her hands; she smiled and looked at him. Her clear eyes were fixed upon him and yet did not see him because they had already gone beyond him. She was looking into herself. She thought, "This is not even to be discussed? Everything should be discussed! Why is it impossible? He doesn't displease me. He is a handsome fellow, attractive, good enough, intelligent, agreeable. How easy life would be! . . . But I could not live his life with him. He is pleasant, and everything pleases him. But he respects nothing, men, women, love or Annette. . . ." (It was she who was speaking, for she saw herself from outside.) "He is certainly not ungenerous so far as delicate attentions and social respect are concerned. He gives them to me in good measure. Perhaps he even treats me with special favor. . . . But what a complete sceptic! Is there anything he takes seriously? He delights in his absolute lack of faith in human nature. He discounts its weaknesses with a complacent and sympathetic curiosity. I think he would be disappointed if the day came when he was obliged to respect it. A good soul! Yes, life would be easy with him—so easy that I should no longer have any reason to live."
Beyond that she no longer put her thought into words. But the thought pursued her, and her mind was made up.
Franck had let her hands drop. He felt that his cause was lost. He got up and walked to the window, and with his back to the window-pane he philosophically lighted a cigarette. He was behind Annette; he saw her motionless, her arms stretched over the table, as if he were still in front of her. Her beautiful blond neck and her round shoulders. . . . Lost! . . . For whom, for what, was she keeping herself? Some new Brissot-foolishness? No, he knew that Annette's heart was free. Well, then? She was not cold. She needed to love and be loved!
Above all, she needed to believe. . . . To believe in what she did, in what she wanted, in what she was seeking, in what she was dreaming, to believe in what she was, in spite of all disgusts and disappointments, to believe in herself and in life! Franck destroyed respect. Annette could more easily endure not being respected than losing respect—her own—for life. For this is the source of energy. And without the strength to act, Annette would have been nothing. For her the passivity of happiness was death. The essential distinction between human beings consists in this, that some are active, the rest passive. And of all the forms of passivity, the most mortal for Annette would have been that of a mind tranquilly established, like Franck's, in the comfort of a doubt that no longer recognized doubt, but voluptuously surrendered itself to the indifferent stream of nothingness. Suicide! No, she refused that. Then what did she think her life would be? Perhaps nothing very happy or very complete. Perhaps it would utterly miss fire. But whether it missed or not, it would be an effort towards an end. . . . Unknown? Illusory? Perhaps. No matter! The effort was not illusory. . . . And let me fall by the wayside so long as it ismywayside!
She became aware of the long silence and realized that Franck was no longer there. She turned, saw him, smiled, rose and said, "Forgive me, my friend! Let us remain as we are. It is so good to be friends!"
"And not better otherwise?"
She shook her head. "No!"
"Well," he said, "here I am blackballed at the third examination!"
She laughed and, going to him, said mischievously: "Would you like at least to have what I refused you at the second examination?" And putting her arm about his neck she kissed him. An affectionate kiss. But there was no mistaking it—the kiss of a friend.
Franck was not deceived by it. "Well," he said, "let me hope that in twenty years I shall be admitted."
"No," said Annette, laughing. "There's an age-limit! Marry, my friend. You have only to choose. All the women are waiting for you."
"But not you."
"I'm going to remain a bachelor-girl."
"You'll see, you'll see. For your punishment you will marry when you are over fifty."
"Frère, il faut mourir.' Before then."
"Until then, the life of a nun."
"You don't know what delights it has."
Annette was bragging. It was not all delightful. She often felt cramped in her cloistered life. She was the kind of nun who would not have found it too much to have an abbey to manage and a God to love. The abbey was reduced to a fifth-floor apartment and God to her child. This was very little and yet it was immense. It was not what she was meant for, but she made a great deal of it. All her dreams turned round it, and with this sort of treasure she was well provided. If her everyday life was apparently puritanical and poor, she had her revenge in the life of her imagination. There, soundlessly and without friction, the eternal "enchantment" continued to flow.
But how enter these retreats of the soul? The inner dream is not woven of words. And to make oneself understand, to understand oneself, one must use words. . . . That heavy, sticky paste which dries on the tips of the fingers! To understand herself, Annette sometimes felt the need of securing her dreams by telling them over to herself in a soft voice. But these recitals were not faithful transcriptions—scarcely transmutations; they took the place of the dreams without really resembling them. Lacking the power to seize the spirit in its flight, the brain makes up stories for itself that keep it busy and deceive it about the great fairyland, the inner drama.
An immense liquid plain, a flooded valley brimming over, a shoreless river of fire, water and clouds. All the elements were still mingled there, a thousand currents as confused as hair on a head; but there was a force that curled these long dark locks that were spangled with gleaming lights. It was the countless-faceted Spirit and its troop of dreams, led by the silent shepherd to the shadowy pastures of Hope: Desire, the king of the worlds. A resistless gravitation drove them to the greedy slope, now gentle, now abrupt, that drew them down.
Annette felt the enchanted river flowing; she rolled and unrolled on her distaff the skein of the entwined currents; she abandoned herself to it and played with the feline force that carried her on. . . . But when the reasoning powers were suddenly aroused and wished to control the play, they found that Annette, torn from her dream, was merely seeking for another that she might enter. So she soberly invented one out of the elements of her disciplined days—her memories, figures from the past, the romance of the life she had already lived or was still to live perhaps. . . . And Annette tried to make herself believe that the great dream was pursuing her. She knew it had fled, but she was not troubled. Like the bridegroom in the Gospel, it would return at an hour that no man knew.
How many feminine souls there are whose hidden genius expresses itself like hers in this inner stream! If one could read below the surface one would often find there dark passions, ecstasies, visions of the abyss. Yet all one sees is the correct middle-class woman, tranquilly going on from day to day, attending to her affairs, coolly and sensibly, mistress of herself and sometimes even, by reaction, assuming as Annette did before her pupils and her son (though he was never deceived), an almost excessive appearance of cold, moralistic reasonableness.
No, she did not deceive the child. He had sharp eyes. He was able to read between the lines. He too knew what dreams were. Every day he had hours when he was like a king, entirely alone with his dreams, alone in the apartment. Annette, who was always imprudent, carelessly left at the disposal of the child a quantity of books, debris from the shipwreck of her library and that of the grandfather. They were of every sort. For several years she had not had the leisure to hunt through them. The little boy took charge of that. Every day, on his return from school, when his mother was not there, he would set out on the chase. He read at haphazard. Quite early he had learned to read quickly, very quickly; he galloped down the slope of the pages, pursuing his quarry. His school-work suffered from this; he was classed as a poor, scatter-brained student who never knew his lessons and skimped his duties. The teacher would have been very much surprised if the little poacher had recited what his eyes had caught in his game-preserve. He had even caught the "classics" in his snare, and what a different scent they had! Everything he gathered freely in this way, in the unknown, had for him the taste of beautiful forbidden fruit. There was nothing that could soil him yet in these encounters, nothing that could even enlighten him too brutally. His eyes passed merrily round dangerous corners without even seeing the carnal bait in the trap. But, happy and carefree, he felt the breath of warm life in his face; in this forest of books his nostrils caught the adventure and the eternal struggle of love.
Love, what is love for a child of ten? All the happiness one does not possess, that one will possess—that one is going to seize. . . . What will it look like? With a few scraps of what he has seen and heard, he tries to construct its image. He sees nothing. He sees everything. He desires everything. To possess everything. To love everything. (To be loved! For him that is the real meaning of love. . . . "I love myself. I must be loved. . . . But by whom?") His memories give him no aid. They are too close for him to be able to see them well. At his age there is no past, or so little of a past. The present is the theme with its thousand variations.
The present? The child lifts its eyes and sees its mother. About the round table, under the warm light of the oil lamp, they are sitting together. Evening, after dinner. Marc is studying—supposed to be studying—his lessons for to-morrow; Annette is mending a dress. Neither of them is thinking of what he is doing. They are trusting to their machines, their willing servants. The dream rolls on. Annette follows the current. The child observes her as she dreams. . . . That is a more interesting spectacle than the lessons his lips are repeating.
Marc seemed never to have noticed what was going on about him during these years; he could not have explained any of his mother's occupations. Yet nothing had escaped him. Julien's love. Her love for Julien. He had been obscurely aware of it. And a jealousy of which he was not conscious made him rejoice, like a little cannibal who dances about the stake, in the disastrous climax. His mother remained his. His property! Did he care so much about her? He had only appreciated her when someone else had wanted her. He looked at her—those eyes, that mouth, those hands. In the manner of children who lose themselves in a detail as in a world—and they are not always wrong—he studied each of her features. One shadow of an eyelid, the curling of a lip, are mysterious and vast landscapes. They fascinate the mind of the child. His glance hovered like a bee up and down the half-open mouth. . . . The red door. . . . It plunged into the depths, it emerged again. Searching so closely, he forgot what he was looking at, the woman herself. . . . A stupor full of affection. . . . He roused himself to remember (ugh) to-morrow's lesson, a boy he disliked, a bad mark he had hidden from his mother. . . . And then his attention was caught again by the gleam of the lamp in the shadow of the room, by the silence of the chamber amid the rumbling of Paris—that sense of a little island, of a ship at sea, and the expectation of shore, of what he was going to find, what he was going to carry away on the ship that would be full of his treasures, his hopes, the spoils of life he was going to capture. Among these he counted his mother, her beautiful blond hair and her arched eyebrows. . . . The little Viking! How much he suddenly loved her! With the ardor of a lover, but one who had kept the gift of divine ignorance! And at night, lying awake, he listened to her breathing. . . . All this mysterious life troubled him, absorbed him. . . .
So they both dreamed; but she was in mid-ocean and accustomed to the long voyage. He was just setting out, and everything was a discovery for him. And as everything was new to him, he saw with a keener eye, and often he saw further. He had moments of astonishing seriousness. They did not last. He was like an animal: suddenly this penetrating glance would waver. He would not be there any more! But in the moments when he fastened on his comrade-mother his young new force of attention and love, shut up with her in a burning silence, his whole being was impregnated with the odor of this soul: he divined without comprehending them her faintest tremors, and he touched as if by lightning the secrets of her heart.
Soon he would lose the key. He would no longer be interested. He would no longer be able to see. There were two beings in him: the light from within and the shadow from without. As the body of the child develops, the shadow increases with it and covers the light. As he climbs, he turns his back on the sun; he seems most a child when he is least one; and when he is grown-up, his view is more limited. For the moment Marc still enjoyed a magic clairvoyance of which he was completely unaware. Never had he been closer to Annette; not for many years would he be so close again.
Towards the end of this period the attraction she had for him became stronger than his distrust. He no longer resisted the impulse that flung him suddenly, face, eyes and mouth, against his mother's breast. Annette discovered with rapture that her child loved her. She had given up hope of this.
Several months passed, as delicious as a mutual first love. The honeymoon of the child and the mother. The ravishing purity of this love, carnal as all love is, but carnal without sin. A living rose.
It passes. It passes, the matchless hour. They pass, these years of close intimacy, severe discipline, a crowded life. These rich years. Annette, with all her strength intact, unimpaired. The child with all the flower of his little universe.
But a mere vibration of the air will be enough to throw this harmony of souls into confusion. Is the door shut?
One Sunday morning Annette was at home alone. Marc was playing ball with a friend in the Luxembourg Gardens. Annette was doing nothing; she enjoyed being able to rest without talking, without moving, sitting in her armchair on this day of rest; the flood of her thoughts followed its meandering course. A little stiff with weariness, she let herself float along. Someone knocked. She hesitated to open the door. Disturb this hour of silence? . . . She did not move. The knock came again; there was an insistent ring. She rose regretfully. She opened the door. . . . Sylvie! For months they had not seen each other. . . . Annette's first movement was one of joy, and Sylvie's face responded to her cordial expression. Then the memory of their grievances, their strained relations returned, and they were embarrassed. They exchanged polite questions, asked about each other's health. They spoke to each other without any formality, and in both their questions and their replies the forms of their language were familiar, but their hearts remained cold. Annette was thinking, "What has she come for?" And Sylvie, if she knew, did not seem to be in any hurry to say. All the time, while speaking of this and that, she showed that she was preoccupied with some thought she was trying to defer, but which at last came out. "Annette," she said suddenly, "let's put an end to this! There have been mistakes on both sides."
Annette, in her pride, would not admit that there were any on hers. Strong, too strong, in her right, and not forgetting the injustice that had been done her, she said, "There were none on my side."
Sylvie did not like to go halfway and have no one come to meet her. In a tone of vexation she said, "When you have made mistakes, you should at least have the courage to recognize them."
"I recognize yours," said Annette, obstinately.
Sylvie was offended and she poured out all her old accumulated reproaches. Annette replied haughtily. They were on the point of saying the harshest things to each other. Sylvie impatiently rose to leave, but she sat down again, saying, "Stupid thing! Nothing will ever make her admit that she was wrong."
"When it isn't true," said Annette, not budging an inch.
"At least, for politeness' sake, don't make me the only one who has done wrong!"
They laughed.
They looked at each other now with softened, twinkling eyes. Sylvie made a wry face at Annette. Annette's eyes were full of amusement. But they did not lay down their arms.
"Vixen!" said Sylvie.
"I don't admit it," said Annette. "It was you who—"
"Well, let's not begin again. Listen, I am frank; wrong or right, I would not have come back here just for myself. I can't forget either—"
In spite of what she had just said, she had again begun to remember jealously, half in fun, half seriously, with a mixture of bitterness and humor, that Annette had tried to turn her husband's head. Annette shrugged her shoulders.
"Well," Sylvie ended by saying, "you may be sure that if it had been only on my own account I should not have come!"
Annette studied her curiously. Her sister said, "It was Odette who sent me."
"Odette?"
"Yes. She asked why we never saw Aunt Annette any longer."
"Really? She thought of me?" said Annette, astonished. "Who reminded her of me?"
"I don't know. She saw your photograph in my room. And then you must have made an impression on her when she met you, I don't know where, on the street, or in your house perhaps. . . . Intriguer! Looking as if you weren't interested, with that secretive manner of yours! You know very well you carry away people's hearts."
(She was only half joking.)
Annette remembered the tender little body she had caught up as she passed, on that chance encounter, and lifted in her arms, the little dewy mouth that clung to her cheek.
"Well," Sylvie went on, "I told her that we had quarrelled. She asked why. I told her to hold her tongue. This morning, in bed, when I came in to kiss her, she said to me, 'Mamma, I wish you wouldn't be angry with Aunt Annette.' I said, 'Let me alone.' But she was unhappy. So I kissed her and said, 'Do you care as much as all that for your aunt? What difference can it make to you? What an idea! Well, if you care so much about it, I shan't be angry any more.' She clapped her hands and said, When will she come?' 'When she wishes.' 'No, I want you to go straight away now and tell her to come.' So I started out. The little wretch! She does what she likes with me. . . . Now you must come. We are expecting you for dinner."
Annette, with lowered eyes, said neither yes nor no. Sylvie was indignant: "I hope very much you won't have the heart to make me beg you."
"No," said Annette, lifting radiant eyes that were filled with tears.
They kissed each other passionately, half lovingly, half angrily. Sylvie bit Annette's ear. Annette cried out, "So you are biting now! Suppose it were I whom you call crazy. But it's you. Are you angry?"
"Yes, I am," said Sylvie. "How can you expect me not to hate you? You steal from me everything I have, my husband, my daughter. . . ."
Annette burst out laughing. "Keep your husband. He means nothing to me."
"Nor to me either," said Sylvie. "But he is mine. I forbid anyone to touch him."
"Why not put a sign on him?"
"You are the one I should like to put it on, you ugly old thing! . . . What is it about you that attracts them? They all fall in love with you."
"Oh, no."
"Yes, they do. All of them, Odette, that silly Leopold. . . . Other people. . . . Everybody. . . . And I too! I detest you! I wish I could get rid of you. But it can't be done. There's no way of shaking you off!"
They held each other's hands and laughed as they looked at each other, this time as sisters.
"You silly old thing!"
"You don't realize what a true word that is!"
It was a fact. They had both aged, and they both noticed it. Sylvie stealthily exhibited a false tooth which she had had made without saying anything about it. And Annette had a lock of white hair on her temple. But she did not hide this.
"You poseur!" said Sylvie.
So they were on the best of terms again, just as in the old days. And to think that without the little girl they would never have seen each other again!
That evening Annette, with Marc, went to dinner. Odette had hidden herself: they could not find her. Annette set about looking for her; she discovered her behind a big curtain. Stooping to pick her up, as she crouched on her heels, calling her pet names, she held out her arms to the child. The little girl turned her head to one side, unwilling to look at her; then there was an explosion; she threw herself on Annette's neck. At table, where she had the happiness to be placed beside her aunt, she remained tongue-tied: she was overcome by what had happened. At the very end she took an interest in the dessert. They drank to their restored friendship, and as a joke Leopold offered a toast to the future marriage of Marc and Odette. Marc was annoyed by this; his ambitions were loftier. But Odette took it seriously. After dinner the two children tried to play together, but they did not understand each other. Marc was contemptuous, Odette was mortified. The parents, as they talked, heard slaps and tears. They separated the combatants. Both were sulking. Odette was unnerved by the emotions of the day. She had to go to bed, and she crossly refused to do so. But Annette suggested carrying her in her arms, and the child allowed herself to be taken. Annette undressed her and put her in bed, kissing her plump little legs. Odette was in ecstasy. Annette stayed by her till she was asleep—which was not long. Then, finding Marc on Sylvie's knees, she said to her sister, "How would you like to make an exchange of the children?"
"All right!" said Sylvie.
In the bottom of their hearts neither of them would have exchanged. Marc might have suited Sylvie better, and Odette might have suited Annette. But neither would have been "her own."
The children were much more ready to accommodate themselves to an exchange. They had heard it spoken of jokingly and they clamored for it. To please them it was arranged. On Saturday evening the exchange took place between the two mothers. Odette spent Saturday night and all day Sunday at Annette's, and Marc at Sylvie's; on Sunday evening they were restored to their rightful owners. In the interregnum they were scandalously spoiled, and naturally enough they returned home grumbling. Their tenderest affections they had reserved for the one who was not their everyday mother.
Odette enchanted Annette by her fondling ways, her little confidences, her endless prattle. Annette had been deprived of this. Marc had the passionate temperament of his mother, but he knew better how to repress it; he did not like to surrender himself, especially to those who were closest to him, for they abused his confidence. With strangers it was less dangerous, for they misunderstood you anyway. Odette, like Sylvie, had endearing, expansive ways, but she had a very loving heart; she said out loud what Annette longed to hear. When the sly little creature perceived this, she doubled the dose; she awakened the echo of what Annette had thought as a child. At least, Annette imagined this, and she loved her partly because of this suggestion. Listening to her, she dreamed of her own early years which she unconsciously falsified, for she threw into them the burning clearness of her thoughts of to-day.
These blessed Sunday mornings! The little girl lay in the big bed. (It was a holiday for her to spend the night nestling in the arms of her aunt, who received the thumps from her feet without flinching and was afraid to breathe lest she should awaken her.) She watched Annette dressing; she chattered like a sparrow. She was sole mistress of the bed, and, having affirmed her possession of it, she stretched across it and carried on while her aunt's back was turned. But Annette, arranging her hair before the mirror, laughed as she saw in its depths the little bare legs in the air and the rough brown head on the pillow. This attitude did not prevent Odette from following each of her gestures and making comic observations on her toilet. Amid her prattle the child made grave reflexions that were most unexpected and irrelevant and made Annette prick up her ears: "What did you say? Say it again."
She could not remember. . . . So she made up something else, not as good as the first thing she had said. Or, more often, she was seized with a sudden transport of affection.
"Aunt Annette! Aunt Annette!"
"Yes, what is it?"
"I love you. . . . Heavens and earth, how I love you!"
Annette laughed at the energy she put into it.
"Impossible!"
"Oh, I love you madly!"
(For, sincere as she was, she was also a born actress.)
"Nonsense! I like it better without the madness."
"Aunt Annette, I want to hug you!"
"Just a minute."
"Right away. I want to. Come here, come here!"
"Yes."
She calmly finished combing her hair.
Odette turned over in bed in a pet, throwing the bedclothes in all directions.
"Ah, that woman has no heart."
Annette burst out laughing, dropped her comb, ran to the bed.
"Little masquerader, where did you pick that up?"
Odette hugged her furiously.
"Come, come, you're suffocating me. See, you've pulled my hair down again. I shall never manage to get dressed to-day. You monster, I don't want to have anything more to do with you!"
The little girl's voice became anxious; she was on the point of crying.
"Aunt Annette! Love me! . . . I want you to love me! I implore you to love me!"
Annette pressed her in her arms.
"Ah," said Odette, with a pathetic accent, "I would give my blood for you!" (A phrase from some newspaper serial she had heard read in the workroom.)
When Marc was a witness of these effusions, he pouted disdainfully; and, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised, he marched off, assuming a superior air. He despised this babbling, this feminine sentimentality that poured everything out. As he declared to one of his small friends, "These women are silly."
At bottom, he was annoyed by the signs of affection that his mother lavished on Odette. When he was the object of them, he repulsed them; but it did not please him to have someone else get the benefit of them.
Of course, he had his aunt, and with her he could take his revenge. In fact, he did take it. To punish his mother's ingratitude he was ten times more lovable with Sylvie than Annette had ever seen him. But it must be admitted that, although Sylvie petted him, he was disappointed. Sylvie treated him as a child, and he could not endure it. He did not like her to imagine that she gave him pleasure by taking him every Sunday to the cake-shop. He was certainly not indifferent to the cake, but he did not like to have anyone insult him by believing that he attached any importance to it. Besides, he felt too much that his aunt regarded him as a personage of no importance: she was entirely unreserved with him, and, while Marc's curiosity was satisfied, his self-esteem was not. For he noticed the difference. It would have pleased him if Sylvie had taken him into her private life, not as a boy, but as a real man. In short, although he would not have admitted it to himself, he lost his illusions when he saw Sylvie at close range. The careless girl never suspected for a moment what was going on in the pure and troubled brain of the ten-year-old boy, the fabulous image he had manufactured of woman, and the shock of his first discoveries. Sylvie took no more account of her acts and her talk in his presence than she would have done before some pet animal. (We have no evidence, after all, that a pet animal is not often shocked.) Through an instinct of defence against the disillusionments which the damaging of his idol caused him, there unfortunately developed in him certain precocious ideas that were quite naïvely cynical, ideas upon which it is better not to dwell. He tried to appear (in his own eyes; for the present he did not think of appearing so in the eyes of others) a blasé man. But with all the blind senses of an eager and innocent child, he uneasily breathed in the enigmatical charm, the animality, of the feminine being. He felt for woman a disgusted attraction.
Attraction. Repulsion. Every real man knows them. At this period of life the dominating sentiment of the two in Marc was repulsion. But even this repulsion had a sharp savor that made the other sentiments and the children of his own age seem tasteless to him. He despised Odette and regarded this little girl as beneath his dignity.
She was a very little girl in reality, and yet, strangely, a woman. In spite of the theories of those illustrious pedagogues who divide childhood into chambered compartments, one for each faculty, everything already exists in the young child from its earliest infancy, everything that one is and will be, the double Being of the present and the future (to say nothing of the immense, impenetrable past that determines both). Only, to catch a glimpse of it, one must have one's eye open. In the half-light of dawn it appears only in gleams.
These gleams were more frequent in Odette than in most children. A precocious fruit. Very healthy physically, she carried within her a little world of passions that were too great for her. Whence had they come? From some region that lay behind Annette and Sylvie? Annette was reminded of herself at Odette's age. But she was mistaken; she had been much less precocious; and when, observing Odette, she recalled the forgotten passions of her own childhood, she antedated, in all good faith, the feelings that belonged to her fourteenth and fifteenth years.
Odette was an aviary, filled with a sound of restless wings. Little invisible loves passed through her; their flight left lights and shadows behind it. She was placid and hysterical by turns; without any reason she would begin to sob, then burst out laughing; then she would have a feeling of lassitude, of indifference to everything; then again, no one knew why, at a word, at a gesture, interpreted to suit herself, she would be happy again, so happy! . . . Overwhelmed with happiness, drunk with it, like a thrush that is gorged with grapes, she would talk, she would talk. And then, in the twinkling of an eye, she would vanish; no one knew what had become of her; they would find her again in a corner of the store-room, hiding, enjoying the inexplicable happiness she hardly understood herself. This flock of birds came and went in her soul; they succeeded one another in a flash.
One never knows how far children are entirely sincere in their emotions: as they come to them from far away, much further back than themselves, they are at first astonished to witness them, and they become actors who play with them experimentally. This power of unconsciously dividing their emotions is an intuitive process of self-preservation, permitting them to carry a burden which, without this, would crush their frail shoulders.
Odette felt, for this person or that, and sometimes for nobody, transports of passion to which she spontaneously gave a theatrical expression, not always out loud, but in a whispered monologue for her own relief; in simulating the feeling she deadened the shock. These impulses were directed most frequently towards Annette or Marc—towards the two together; and she often said Annette when she meant Marc, because Marc made fun of her, Marc despised her, and she hated him. Then she would have a paroxysm of humiliated and jealous suffering, a desire for vengeance. . . . Why? What harm could she do him? The worst harm of all. How could she reach him? . . . Alas, she had only the claws of a child. It was exasperating. Since she could do nothing (for the moment) she would pretend to be indifferent. But it was hard to be able to do nothing; and it was hard also to be indifferent when one always had a desire to laugh or weep. Such a constraint was against nature: Odette was in despair over it. She was prostrated till suddenly a peremptory reawakening of her childish gaiety and the need of movement threw her back again into her play.
Annette watched, divined, sometimes imagined, these miniature despairs, and she pityingly remembered her own. How she too had consumed herself with the fever of loving, desiring, tormenting herself, and for whom, for what? What purpose could this all serve? It was so out of proportion with the object, which was limited by the nature of things! What a squanderer of energy! And what a force of love she spent at random! Some people had too much, others not enough. Annette, like Odette, was one of those who had too much, and her son was one of those who did not have enough. He was the lucky one, poor little fellow!
He was not so poor! The life of his affections was not less rich than Odette's, nor were the struggles of his mind less lively—though he said nothing about them. Nor were his feelings less violent, though their ardor tended in another direction. Yes, he was indifferent to the things that occupied these women. His spirit was agitated, however, by very different passions. Intellectually richer and much less absorbed by the more backward life of his senses, this little man, who felt the obscure flood of desire rising in him, was turning his energies, like a true man, towards action and domination. He dreamed of conquests beside which that of a feminine heart would have seemed to him very paltry—if at this time of his childhood he had thought of such a thing. The boys of the preceding generations had dreamed of soldiers, savages, pirates, Napoleon, adventures on the sea. Marc dreamed of aeroplanes, automobiles and wireless. About him the thought of the world danced a giddy round; a delirious movement made the planet vibrate; everything was running and flying, cleaving the air and the waters, revolving, whirling. A magic of mad invention was transmuting the elements. No more limits to power; consequently, no more to the will. Space and time—pass the juggler's ball!—were volatilized, spirited away by the swiftness of things. They did not count any more. And men still less. What counted was will, limitless will. Marc scarcely knew the rudiments of modern science. He read, without understanding it, a scientific review to which his mother subscribed; but without realizing it he had been bathed from his birth in the miracles of science. Annette did not perceive this, for she had learned science in the scholastic way; she had not breathed it in as a living thing. She saw the figures written in chalk and the numbers on the blackboard, the arguments. Marc's imagination was filled with fabulous forces. Just because he was not embarrassed by his reason he was carried away by a poetic enthusiasm as vague and ardent as that which filled the sails of the Argonauts. He dreamed of extraordinary exploits: piercing the globe with a tunnel from one side to the other, rising without motor-power into the air, connecting Mars with the earth, pressing a button and jumping over to Germany—or some other country (he had no particular preference). With such mysterious words as volts, amperes, radium, carburator, which he used at random, very coolly, he conjured up the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. How the devil could his mind stoop from such a height to a silly little girl?
But body and mind are twin brothers that do not keep step. In their double growth there is always one of the two—it is not always the same one—that loiters on the road while the other gallops on ahead. Marc's body remained that of a child; and while the spirit roamed about aloft a cord held him by the foot and brought him down again where it was pleasant to amuse himself. Then, for want of anything better, he would condescend to play—he would even play with his whole heart, without condescension, with the silly little girl. These were happy interludes.
They did not last long. There were too many inequalities between the two children, not only in their age, nor because she was a girl. Their temperaments were too different. Odette, who was not pretty, and rather suggested her father, though she had Annette's eyes and a chubby, well-rounded figure, with her flattish nose, was a robust, healthy child whose warmth of feeling did not disturb her physical equilibrium but seemed the natural overflow of an abounding vitality. She had escaped all the little ailments of childhood. Marc, on the contrary, had been stamped by the illness of his first year; and although later the soundness of his constitution was to come out on top, this struggle of the organism, in which he was often beaten, had spoiled part of his childhood. He had remained susceptible to the least chill and was often checked by slight returns of bronchitis or fever. His self-respect suffered from this, for all his instincts were those of pride and strength.
Towards the end of 1911, one year after the reconciliation of the two sisters, Marc had one of those winter illnesses, complicated by influenza, that caused a passing anxiety. Odette went to see him when he was in bed. She had been forbidden to do so for fear of infection, but she had found a way of slipping into the room one evening when the two mothers were busy in the next room. She was full of sympathy, and Marc, who was a little feverish, let himself go as he had never done before. He was restless.
"What are they saying, Odette?" (He imagined they were hiding from him the gravity of his illness.)
"I don't know. They don't say anything."
"What does the doctor say?"
"He says it isn't anything."
He was somewhat relieved, but he was still suspicious.
"Is that true? No, it isn't true. They're concealing it from me. . . . I know very well what I've got."
"What have you got?"
He was silent.
"Marc, what have you got?"
He retreated into a proud and hostile silence. Odette was in agony. She ended by believing that he was very ill, and her anxiety communicated itself to him. With that passionate exaggeration of hers which assumed melodramatic forms she clasped her hands.
"Oh, Marc, I implore you, don't be so ill. I don't want you to die."
Nor had he the least desire to do so. He liked to be condoled with, but he had not wanted as much as all this! Hearing uttered what he feared himself, he was frozen with fright. He did not want to show this, but he did show it.
"You see, you're hiding it from me. You know. I am very ill."
"No, no, I don't want it to be so. I don't know. I don't want you to be very ill. . . . Oh, Marc, don't die! If you die, I want to die with you!"
She flung herself on his neck, weeping. He was very much moved, and he too wept; he did not know whether it was because of her or himself. At the sound the mothers ran in scolding and separating them. They felt very close together at that moment.
By the following morning, however, Marc had thought things over. He was no longer anxious; he was even annoyed—for to drive away his fears they had made fun of him—to have shown himself a coward; he blamed Odette for having led him, by her stupid anxiety, into betraying these signs of weakness. And then he heard her laughing and saw her passing his door, overflowing with health. He was angry with her because of this health. She had too much of it. He envied her and he was humiliated.
After he was well again, he continued for a long time to feel mortified for having betrayed himself before his cousin's eyes. He was the more so because he had really been afraid and she had seen it. Once her emotion had passed, Odette maliciously remembered it all. She had seen him off his high horse, a timid little boy. She only liked him better for this. But he could not forgive her.
Marc was well again. Odette was flourishing. The previous summer she had proudly made her first communion. (It was about this date that the Church, like Joconda in search of innocence, had sniffed with its great distrustful nose the air of the time and made up its mind that there was no such thing as real innocence after the age of seven.) Odette considered herself a woman and tried to appear one by toning down her impetuosity, the impetuosity of a young tethered goat—though at any moment, with a caper, the little horned creature would escape from one's hands. . . . Sylvie was happy; her business was going well. And Annette, who found in her sister's household nourishment for the need of affection which her age and her ordeal had somewhat tempered, seemed to have reached a haven of peace. Everything was hopeful.
One warm afternoon, between three and four o'clock, at the end of October, one of those radiant days when the unveiled light seems as naked as the stripped trees, the windows were open to let in the rays of an autumn sun as mild and golden as honey. It was the day after Odette's eighth birthday. Annette was at Sylvie's. In the room over the court, they were looking out together and examining materials, gossiping and gravely occupied with their investigation. Odette was on the other side of the passage, in the room at the end that overlooked the street. Just a few minutes before, the inquisitive child had peeped through the half-open door to see what they were doing. They had pretended to scold her and had sent her back again to finish a little piece of work before they all had tea together. Marc was at school; they were expecting him home again in half an hour.
The moments were flowing along smoothly, without a ripple, without a wave, unhastingly, as if they were to flow this way for the rest of their lives. They felt so calm that they did not even think of enjoying it. It was natural! In the ivy on the wall of the court the happy sparrows were chirping. The last flies of autumn were humming their content, warming their torpid wings in the lingering rays of sunlight. . . .
They heard nothing, nothing. Yet they both became silent at the same moment, as if the fragile thread on which their happiness was suspended had broken.
There was a ring at the door.
"Marc, so soon? No, it's too soon."
A ring. Someone was knocking again. What a hurry some people are in! We're coming!
Sylvie went and opened the door, and Annette followed her a few steps behind.
At the door the concierge, out of breath, was shouting and waving her arms. At first they did not understand.
"Madame doesn't know . . . the terrible thing that's happened. The little girl . . ."
"Who?"
"Mademoiselle Odette. . . . That poor little darling."
"What? What?"
"She's fallen."
"Fallen!"
"She's down below."
Sylvie screamed. She pushed the concierge aside and dashed downstairs. Annette would have followed her, but her legs failed her; she had to wait till her heart would allow her to walk. She was still upstairs, leaning over the baluster, when from the street the wild cries of Sylvie came to her.
What had happened? Probably Odette, who did not like to work and was dawdling and rummaging about, had leaned out of the window to see if Marc was coming and had fallen. The poor little thing had not even had the time to understand. . . . When Annette, tottering, at last reached the street, she saw a great crowd gathered. Sylvie, like a madwoman, was holding in her arms the little broken body, with its legs and head hanging like a slaughtered lamb. The brown hair veiled the fractured skull; nothing was to be seen but a little blood at the nose. The eyes were still open and seemed to be asking. Death had replied.
Annette would have thrown herself on the ground, screaming with horror, if Sylvie's wild fury had not absorbed all the misery of the world. She had fallen on her knees on the sidewalk, almost lying on the child, whom she lifted up and shook with mad cries. She called to her, she called to her, she denounced . . . Whom? What? Heaven, the earth. . . . She was foaming with despair and hatred.
For the first time Annette saw in her sister the frantic passions that Sylvie bore without knowing it in the depths of her nature, passions that her life till then had spared her from expressing. And she recognized them as those of her own blood.
The wildness of this grief prevented her from yielding to her own. She was obliged, by reaction, to remain strong and calm, and she did so. She took Sylvie by the shoulders. The screaming woman struggled with her; but Annette, leaning over her, lifted her up; and Sylvie, submitting to this commanding gentleness, became silent, raised her head, saw the circle about her, threw a fierce glance towards it and, with the child in her arms, reentered the house without a word.
She had crossed the threshold. Annette was going in after her when she saw Marc at the corner of the street on his way home; and, in spite of her lacerated love for the poor little girl, her heart bounded in her breast. What a joy that it wasn't he!
She ran to Marc to prevent him from seeing. At her first words, Marc turned pale and clenched his teeth. She led him away from the scene; she told him that Odette was seriously hurt. But he, with the distrustful intuition of a child, knew that she was dead; and with his clenched fists he tried to drive the terrible thought away. In spite of his agitation, he was still thinking of himself, his own attitude and the people who were passing. He noticed that his mother was walking bareheaded beside him in the street and that people were looking at them, and this embarrassed him. His annoyance contributed to calm him. When they had gone halfway, Annette, seeing that he was steadier, told him to go home alone. She returned hastily to Sylvie. She found her prostrated, sitting in a state of collapse in a corner, near the bed of the little dead girl, unable to hear or understand, breathing noisily like a wounded animal. Her workers were busy with the child. Annette bathed the little body, dressed it again in white linen, laid it back in the bed, just as on those faraway evenings—yesterday—eternally far away, when she had listened to the whispered confidences of the child. When this was finished, she went over to Sylvie and took her hand. Moist and cold, the hand lay limply in hers. Annette pressed these fingers from which the life seemed to have withdrawn, but she did not have the courage to whisper a tender word, for it could not have penetrated through the wall of despair. Nothing but the sisterly contact of their bodies could make her pity slowly find its way through. She wrapped her arms about her, her forehead resting on Sylvie's cheek; and her tears dropped on her sister's neck as if to melt the ice that enveloped her heart. Sylvie was mute and did not stir; but her fingers were feebly beginning to respond to the sisterly hand when her husband arrived. Annette went away.
She returned to Marc and told him the truth. It was not news to him. He did not seem very much moved; he was afraid of his emotion and was anxious to keep his air of assurance. He should not have been obliged to speak, for as soon as he opened his mouth his voice began to tremble; he ran and hid himself in his room to cry. Annette perceived with a mother's insight the anguish of this childish heart in its first encounter with death, and she avoided speaking of the redoubtable subject; but she took him on her knees as she had done when he was a baby. And he, with no thought of complaining at being treated as a baby, took refuge in the warmth of her breast. After they had calmed each other, lulling their fear to sleep and feeling that there were two of them to protect each other, she put him to bed and begged him to be a brave little man, not to be frightened if she had to go out and leave him alone for a part of the night. He understood and promised.
She set out through the dark for the house of tragedy. She wanted to watch by the dead child. Sylvie had emerged from her dejected insensibility. She had not returned to her first furious despair, but the spectacle was not less painful. Her mind was a little unbalanced. Annette saw a smile on her lips. Sylvie raised her eyes as she heard her coming in, looked at her, went to her and said, "She is sleeping."
She took her hand and drew her over to the bed. "See how beautiful she is!"
Her face lighted up, but Annette saw a shadow of anxiety passing over her brow; and when, after a moment, Sylvie repeated in an undertone, "She is sleeping well, isn't she?" Annette met the feverish glance that was waiting for her to say, "She is sleeping. Yes." She said it.
They went and sat down in the adjoining room. The husband was there with one of the workers. They forced themselves to talk in order to occupy their attention. But Sylvie's wounded mind was running away from itself, leaping from one subject to another, without stopping. She had taken up some work which at every moment she threw down again; she took it up and threw it down to listen for sounds from the sleeper's room. Again she said, "How she sleeps!"—her eye wandering over the others in order to convince them, to convince herself. Once she returned to the little bed, and, leaning over the child, uttered endearing words to it. This was cruel for Annette. She wished Sylvie would be silent. Leopold, in a low voice, implored her not to disturb the illusion.
The illusion fell of itself. Sylvie, coming back to her place, took up her work and did not speak again. The others were talking around her, but she no longer heard them. They in turn became silent. A sombre hush hovered over them. Suddenly Sylvie cried out. Without words. A long cry. Throwing herself down on the table, she struck her head against it. Hurriedly they removed the needles and the scissors. When her speech came back to her, it was to curse God: she did not believe in Him, but she had to have someone against whom to avenge herself! Her eyes blazed, and she hurled vulgar oaths at him.