The fear of living

A family meal before a departure reminds us in its sadness of the first meal we have together after the final disappearance of an habitual guest. If no one is missing as yet, still joy has fled. Everyone tries vainly to brighten it, and of this touching, fruitless effort is born a deeper sadness.

Thus the dining-room at Le Maupas, in spite of the October sun which shone into it, was silent and mournful. Marcel was going away at nightfall in Trélaz’s carriage to catch the six o’clock train at the station. When the conversation languished nobody thought of taking it up again. With a few unimportant words, spoken without enthusiasm, it would falter back to life, only to die out once more. Marie, the old servant, had prepared Marcel’s favorite dishes. Carrying them back to the kitchen almost untouched, she murmured in a cross voice which expressed her own sorrow:

“It isn’t right—it isn’t right. They want to starve themselves to death!”

After lunch, Marcel went out with his sister.

“I want to see our old walks again,” he said.

Through the vineyards on the hill they climbed up to the chestnut-trees at Vimines, under the shade of which grows thick moss where as children they used to gather mushrooms. From the border of the woods they looked out on Lake Bourget in its mountain basin. To appreciate its wild beauty at its best one must see it in the evening.

“Now let’s go and see the waterfall,” said Marcel.

He wanted to assure himself, as it were, before leaving, of the existence of all those quiet and lonely places which had helped to form his character. From Vimines, whose pointed steeple commands the hill, one comes down through the vineyards and orchards to the waterfall at Coux by a zig-zag path from which are to be seen several very fine views. Opposite lies a chaos of mountains, boldly scaled by rows of pines; on the left, the Nivolet with rocky peaks bathed in a bluish light; on the right, the openings of the valley of the Echelles and La Chartreuse. Marcel stopped short when he saw, between two golden-leaved beeches which framed a picture of savage loveliness, the long waterfall, slender and white, which fell a hundred feet and shone again in a silvery dust in the sunshine. He smiled happily.

“It is beautiful in its lonely surroundings,” he said. “Don’t let us go down any further. We have still to go to the Montcharvin woods and the ravine of Forezan.”

These were some of the old possessions of Le Maupas, which had been given up when the crash came. Because they were nearer home and, from time immemorial, familiar sights to him, he loved them best. And now though they were sold, they had not lost their charm for him. The beauty of the earth is not to be bought and sold. It belongs to the discoverer who can understand it and enjoy it.

Le Forezan is a deep valley whose steep sides are covered with a ragged growth of brushwood. Here and there the sides are less abrupt, and it is possible to climb down to the stream which runs at the bottom. There, under a far-stretching arch of greenery, are peace, silence, and forgetfulness.

Marcel, who was walking ahead, turned back and saw that his sister was caught in the creepers which crossed the path. Before coming to help her he cried:

“How pretty you look in those bushes!”

“Come and help me instead of talking nonsense,” said Paule. But he did not hurry. The girl’s natural grace harmonised wonderfully with this fresh virgin landscape. He could not help admiring the suppleness of the movements she made to disentangle herself, and the bright flush of health that the exercise brought to her cheeks. When he came up to her, she was quite free from the snare which had held her. “Too late!” she cried.

“Bravo, Paule! You wouldn’t be afraid in Cochin-China or the Tonkin forests. You will see them some day. You belong to the same race as your brothers.”

“What, I?” she said, the fire in her eyes dying out. “I shall live and die at Le Maupas.”

They came back from the valley through the ash wood. These trees with their light trunks reared their heads proudly on high, wearing as a crown the mass of branches from which the autumn wind was tearing the leaves. Half stripped, they showed their shapeliness in all their youthful health and strength, and thousands of uplifted arms waved peacefully. Like naked hamadryads they betrayed the secret of their forms. The scanty leaves which still adorned them, were ruddy gold, almost as rich as the fallen ones which thickly carpeted the soil below. Evening came on and all the wood was bathed in a violet mist, which gave to it the mysterious aspect of a sacred grove.

Turned to the west on one side, on the other looking over meadows and vineyards, the farm of Montcharvin reflected in its windows the glow of the setting sun. This spacious house was built amid the ruins of an old castle, of which one dismantled tower and a Romanesque portico were all that remained. This portico, unprovided with a door and now quite useless, looked on to a roofless shed where old plough-shares were kept, and beyond, by reason of an abrupt descent, to a distant landscape which was framed in its arch. This arrangement called to mind the pictures of the old Italian masters, who, in order, doubtless, to sum up the multiform beauty of the world, used to supplement their human figures with a scene from nature, glimpsed between the columns of a palace or under the arches of a cloister.

Marcel and Paule skirted the old building and, following a screen of trees at the edge of a field which hid the deep valley of Forezan, they stopped in front of a fallen trunk, a natural bench which had been left there for years. Of one accord they sat down.

They saw the shades of evening falling over the land. They saw the path which they had followed and the dead leaves of the woods turning pink and violet. Two bullocks drawing a cart full of milk-cans passed in front of them, and, as they crossed a band of sunshine, a light haze could be plainly seen rising from their nostrils at every breath and mounting upwards. Peace filled the countryside, which was preparing for its winter rest with all the sadness of its shorn meadows and despoiled woods.

Marcel took his sister’s hand. Suddenly at his touch she burst into tears. They had too many sensations in their hearts at this moment of leave-taking. He was thinking of Alice and her weakness, Paule was thinking of him. For a moment he waited till the tears he had caused her to shed were dried.

“Listen,” he said at last. “You must watch over mother. I shall be away for a long time perhaps.”

Uneasily she felt a foreboding of some new misfortune, but immediately she mastered herself.

“You will come home next year from Algiers, won’t you?”

He looked at her tenderly. “I don’t know, Paule dear, I am taking part in an expedition which is preparing to cross the Sahara.”

“Oh,” she cried, “I was sure of it. You ask too much of our courage, Marcel. Mother is old and very worn. She feels our troubles as much as we do ourselves. We must make it easy for her.”

Looking at the peaceful fields, he thought how sweet it would be to stay near his mother and sister. But it was only a passing regret, and he went on:

“Are you not there, you, our sister of charity? I have to go far away. I must forget. Don’t talk about it now. The Moureau expedition is not yet ready. It won’t set out for a year, or more perhaps. I am telling you, because I have no secrets from you. Mother will know about it soon enough.”

“Will this expedition take long?” she asked simply.

“No one can say exactly. Probably eighteen months.”

She tried to master her sorrow, but overwhelmed she burst into tears.

“You don’t know how much Mother and I love you. Oh, if only we could have given our hearts to her who didn’t dare to assert her will, she at least might have been able to do what we cannot, to keep you here.”

He took her in his arms and pressed her to his heart. Sure of this love, whose strength gave him courage, he waited till her despair had passed. But he did not mention Alice. That name should never cross his lips again. He only made a contemptuous allusion to his love.

“Don’t let us speak of that, dear. Such a marriage would only have hampered me. A woman has no right to cramp her husband’s career. What is a love worth that is not strong enough to bear separation and sorrow and to make a sacrifice? You will stay with Mother. My destiny was to be a globe-trotter—worse luck!”

He felt his sister’s form grow stiff in his arms.

“I was not thinking of myself,” she said, and in this phrase lay a whole world of inward rebellion, which he divined and understood.

She had known sorrow too young, at an age when life was opening with all its charm, and since her father’s death she had experienced much base ingratitude and much insulting patronage to both her mother and herself. From these experiences, she had gained the strength of a stoic, but a bitter pride as well. She had already lost all hope for the future. She tried to forget herself, as she believed herself to be forgotten. The love for her mother and brother satisfied her passion for devotion. Uplifted by her dignity and her contempt for society, she did not seek to analyse the vague feelings which were surging in her ardent heart.

Marcel knew she had the same nature as he, little inclined to talk about self or to worry about her own affairs. He only tried to distract her and spoke with deep affection.

“Paule, don’t despair. One of these days you will be happy. You deserve it so much!”

But she turned the conversation:

“Your trip to Paris was about the expedition, wasn’t it? You never told me about it,” said Paule.

“I did not keep you in the dark long, Paule, not long. I had to fight against all kinds of intrigues and competition. At last I got permission, both for Jean Berlier and myself, to join the expedition.”

“Oh, so M. Berlier is going too?”

“Yes, and he will come back a captain and with the Legion of Honour. It will certainly develop him. The desert widens one’s heart and brain, as the sea does. You don’t think of love-making any more! But why have you left off calling him Jean?”

She made no reply. He looked at her, and then getting up said:

“Let us go back. It is growing dark. We must not leave Mother alone any longer.”

Madame Guibert was seated at the door, waiting for them. With her old hands she was knitting some woollen stockings for a farmer’s little girl. She had put on her spectacles to see her needles. She often lifted her eyes towards the avenue. This side of the house was covered with the five-leaved ivy whose scarlet color was deepened by the rays of the dying sun.

As soon as she saw Marcel and Paule she smiled at them. But as they were coming up the staircase she quickly took off her spectacles to wipe her eyes.

“At last!” she cried.

Her son kissed her.

“We stayed too long in the Montcharvin woods. But here we are, Mother. Are you not afraid of the cold? It is getting late to be out of doors.”

And as they went into the house, the young man turned to look at the neighboring meadows, the chestnut avenue, and the open gate. Knowing how things stood with his family, he was aware that they would have to think of selling Le Maupas, unless his brother Étienne made a fortune in Tonkin. Here he had spent his childhood, and formed his soul. From this country—now all pink and violet—his memories came back to him at his call. They came to him from all sides, like a flight of birds clearly defined in the setting sun. Marcel shut the door. In the drawing-room he went and sat beside his mother on a low seat, leaned on her shoulder, and took her hand.

“I am so comfortable here,” he said in a caressing voice which was a contrast to his determined face.

For the first time he noticed the hand that he was holding in his own, a poor, worn, rough hand with fingers swollen and ringless, which betrayed a life of toil and old age. Madame Guibert followed her son’s eyes—and understood.

“I was obliged to leave off wearing my wedding ring, it hurt me. I wore your father’s for a long time, but the gold grew so thin that one day it broke in two like glass.” And she added, as if talking to herself:

“It did not matter. Only our feelings matter. And even death cannot alter them.”

Marcel looked at the portrait of his mother that he knew so well. It represented a woman, pretty and slender, looking like a shy young girl, whose tiny, tapering fingers held a flower, in the quaint old-fashioned way. Then he bent down and put his lips to the withered hand.

In memory he saw again the old lady, worn out and humiliated, coming home from La Chênaie after the refusal, and he thought of the rough way he had received her. Then with the rather haughty grace which lent so much value to his words of love, he said:

“My dear Mother, I have sometimes spoken rudely to you.”

She drew her hand gently away and stroked his cheek, smiling a sad yet bright smile, which told the whole story of a soul purified by suffering.

“Be quiet,” she murmured, brokenly. “I forbid you to blame yourself. Every day I thank God for the children He has given me.”

They were silent. Minutes passed, swiftly, irrevocably.

The approaching separation drew nearer, and they enjoyed to the full the happiness of their last moments together.

Nothing brings two lives closer than having suffered in common. When would they ever be together again as they were now in the golden charm of autumn, facing the fading trees, whose dying beauty could be seen through the window? Of these three souls, two had the presentiment that these hours would never come back. Madame Guibert sought in vain her usual bravery in farewell moments. Marcel was thinking of the solitudes of Africa which sometimes keep those who visit them; but, ashamed of his weakness, he banished with cheery words of hope these dark forebodings which cast shadows over the little country drawing-room.

And now Farmer Trélaz came to tell them that the carriage was at the door. The luggage was stowed away in it—a lunch basket not being forgotten for the long journey to Marseilles.

It was quite dark before the ancient vehicle started.

At Chambéry Paule noticed Madame Dulaurens and her daughter under an arcade. She saw Alice grow deadly pale; but turning to her brother, she was surprised to see him quite unmoved. He seemed indifferent. She felt intuitively, however, that he, too, had seen her.

At the station the three had a long wait. They had the little waiting-room to themselves. Madame Guibert never tired of looking at the son who was about to leave her. Suddenly she said:

“You are more like your father than any of the others.”

“I have not his faith in life,” said Marcel. “I never saw him discouraged. Whenever he failed in anything, he used to lift his head and laugh and say, ‘As long as there’s life there’s hope.’”

“Since his death,” said the old lady, “I have lost all my courage.”

“He lives again in you, Mother. He still lives for us.”

“Through you too. And he is waiting for me.”

Marcel kissed her.

“No, Mother, you know we need you,” he said.

They were no longer alone, and a short time after, at the porter’s call they went out on the platform. There they saw in the darkness the two headlights of the express flash as it sped on towards them. The moment of farewell had come. Never had Madame Guibert shown so much emotion. Again and again she cried, “My son, my dear son,” while she embraced him. He smiled to reassure her.

Her last words were a prayer:

“May God bless you and keep you!”

All bent and bowed to the earth which was drawing her towards it, she went back on Paule’s arm to Trélaz’s carriage.

“Don’t be unhappy, Mother dear,” said Paule, comforting her. “It is only for a year. You used to be so much braver.”

All the time she herself was in torture because of the secret that had been entrusted to her.

On the way home they were silent. During the evening at Le Maupas Madame Guibert suddenly burst into tears.

“I am so afraid I shall never see him again,” she murmured, when she could give voice to her grief.

“But he is running no risks,” Paule assured her, surprised and alarmed at this strange presentiment of a danger of which she alone was aware.

“I don’t know. I am as sad as I was the year your father died.”

With a great effort she managed to control herself so as not to frighten her daughter. Then, taking the hand of her last child with that gracious gentleness which remained to her from her youth, she said to Paule, thinking of the many separations in the past, some for a long time and others for ever:

“Dear little girl, you are the last flower of my deserted garden.”