The fear of living

The discussion at the Café National at Cognin had been long and animated. When the telegram from the Minister of War had been brought to the town-hall, the municipal schoolmaster was on the doorstep dismissing his pupils. He took the envelope from the hands of the messenger, who was puffing out his cheeks to make his importance felt.

“Official and post free! For the Mayor.”

“Give it to me,” said the schoolmaster cautiously. And he immediately tore open the envelope, to show the messenger who was the real head of the community. He read the words twice aloud, with the Minister’s name at the bottom:

“The Mayor, Cognin, near Chambéry. Inform Guibert family immediately decease of Commander Guibert while defending Timmimun, Algiers. Shot through forehead after repulsing assault.”

He did not grasp it the first time he read it because, taking everything to himself as most people do, he expected to discover something of a personal nature in this government communication, perhaps the exemption of his son, who had just drawn his lot and was trying to escape military service. His disappointment prevailed over his pity.

After having told his wife and his deputy about the news, he put on his hat and ran over to the Café National, kept by Mayor Simon himself. The latter was the successor to the post to Dr. Guibert, who had been excluded from the Corporation a short time before his death, the very year that he had gratuitously attended almost all the population when attacked by typhoid fever. He was a country lawyer, an intemperate boaster, who drank with all his customers and treated his bar as a political committee-room. Ignorant and incapable, but genial-hearted, he left all his duties to the schoolmaster, who was filled with false teachings and who dazzled him by his socialistic and anti-militarist theories which he culled from pernicious propagandist pamphlets. In public he treated him condescendingly, but he obeyed him humbly at the town-hall.

“Well, Master,” he cried as he saw him come in, “you have forgotten your ferule!”

Proud of knowing this rare word, he used it on every occasion to poke fun at his assistant.

“There is some news,” said Maillard mysteriously gliding up to the counter. And the Mayor and his assistant gravely shook their heads in concert. It was important that they should impress two honest customers who sat at the end of the room, with their whips slung over their shoulders, sipping absinthe before going out again into the bitter cold of the clear winter evening.

After informing himself of the contents of the telegram, the Mayor shook his red head.

“It must be done. These Guiberts are people of importance. I’ll put on my frock-coat and go up to Le Maupas.”

He had been in the militia during the campaign of 1870 but his regiment never reached the front. From that terrible year he had learned the fear of war and a respect for courage. Flattered at having received an official telegram, he also felt pride in the heroism of his fellow-townsman abroad. He called his daughters to tell them the secret that the schoolmaster’s wife had already told everybody.

While he was strutting about, the ferret-faced Maillard looked at him and cackled.

“Let’s drink a glass of something,” said the Mayor. “Nothing can be done well without a drink. I shall have time. One always arrives early enough when carrying a message of death. But what do you find to laugh at, you imp of ill omen?”

“I was wondering, Mr. Mayor, if we were republicans or not. The Minister treats you like a dog, you the head of the community. ‘Inform the Guibert family!’ Hurry up and do it. For whom is all this fuss? For a lot of reactionaries, who defied you at the town-hall. They are not so particular when there’s only a man of the people concerned.”

“He was a commander,” observed the hotelkeeper, who could not forget his respect for rank.

“Isn’t a soldier’s blood worth as much as an officer’s?” retorted the schoolmaster in a professorial tone. “I suppose that the equality which is proclaimed on all our public buildings is a lie then? Everything is for the gold lace? The others are just food for powder! It was well worth while having the revolution only to re-establish caste a hundred years later!”

It is imperfect education that is responsible for these bitter, envious, aspiring beings, who find it hard to tolerate superiority of any kind. Before his weak boasting Mayor, the little ill-natured man gave free scope to his hatred of the authorities, a hatred which was increased by the coming entry of his son into military service.

Simon’s face grew red. It was a sign that his brain was working.

“No,” he said, “I can’t get out of it. It is an order.”

“Only the Minister of the Interior can give you orders. You aren’t amenable to military law.”

“But, good God! Madame Guibert will have to be told.”

“I don’t deny it. Only it isn’t necessary that you should put yourself out about it. A Mayor is not at everybody’s beck and call. When a Mayor bestirs himself it is the State which acts. You send a deputy, or even a councillor, where enemies of the Republic are concerned. Devil take it! One is either a republican or one isn’t, Mr. Mayor!”

“Mélanie, fetch us a pint!” cried the Mayor, torn between his natural duty and his duty as a republican which was being instilled into him. “And send the boy to look for Randon, Pitet, and Détraz.”

These three were the most influential councillors in the place. Pitet, with his red, freckled face, which gained him the nickname of Pitet le Rouge, was the first to arrive.

“I heard the news at the Fountain,” he declared as he came in. “I can’t do anything. What do you want of me?”

He always spoke in a coarse, aggressive tone. He had been a tenant at Le Maupas, and suddenly had to leave his farm. Nobody ever understood why he was sent away from an estate where the tenants and servants “took root,” as was currently said. In reality it was on account of a theft, about which Dr. Guibert had never told anyone. Till the doctor’s death Pitet had kept quiet. When he was quite certain he could do so with impunity, he raised his head and played a vigorous part in all the elections. He began by making money out of politics and ended by getting dignity—which people were the less ready to refuse him because he needed it so much. The whole community was afraid of him, and everyone knows the power of fear over the peasants. He turned the scale at once in favor of the schoolmaster Maillard. The Mayor could not put himself out for the “aristocrats.”

“The Mayor must put himself at the service of everybody,” said Simon, whose face shone like a burning log. “And, besides, a man’s death isn’t a matter of politics.”

Pitet the Red would not hear of it.

“There you are! You must bow and scrape to the nobility and the church! Then you will say it isn’t a matter of politics. Your daughters go to Mass, Mr. Mayor. Take care, it won’t be forgotten.”

“But I don’t go to their church! Our deputy knows that,” cried Simon.

“You don’t go to Cognin, but you go to Bissy.”

Bissy was the neighboring parish. While the Mayor was defending himself, Randon and Détraz entered the room.

“Now, Mélanie, two pints of wine, one red and one white. And see that it’s good stuff!”

The newcomers asked together: “He’s dead then?”

“The whole place knows about it!” cried Simon, raising his arms to heaven. “We must hurry up or Madame Guibert will hear of it.”

Randon, old and broken down, had to thank the size of his estate for the electors’ regard. He was an honest man, but as shy and nervous as a hare. He gave a timid vote for the Mayor’s visit in person. As to Détraz, the boorish and vulgar, he admitted at once that he took no interest whatever in the question.

“Two against two; it’s a tie,” shouted Pitet the Red, exultantly, throwing all his long-cherished rancor into the argument.

In a weak voice Randon muttered that the schoolmaster had no say in the matter and that the Mayor’s voice was the important one. But nobody listened to his prudent words. The Mayor was derided for the lukewarmness of his democratic opinions and was at last reduced to silence.

“Now then, you’re the oldest, you must go,” said Pitet to Randon.

“Oh, no, not I!” cried the latter, terrified. And he kept on repeating “Not I!” as if the message of death threatened his own life. He was thinking of his own peace of mind above all things.

“Well then, you, Détraz.”

“It isn’t my business.”

“Then I shall go,” said the Mayor, taking on an offensive manner.

Randon expressed a mild approval.

They both remembered how Dr. Guibert had attended and saved their children. They strove hard to reconcile their opinions and their prospects of re-election.

Furious at this reverse which followed his victory, and also excited by the wine he had drunk, Pitet shouted: “Haven’t you been told that it is too much honor? Can’t you hear? I tell you, don’t argue!”

“What?” exclaimed the Mayor, purple in the face.

The schoolmaster interrupted in honeyed tones:

“The logical thing is to give the message to the police. They carry the Mayor’s orders in the town. A policeman can take the telegram and explain that the Mayor has sent him in person.”

“That, of course, is the only right way,” said Pitet approvingly.

No sooner said than done. Faroux, the policeman, was sent for, and the schoolmaster gave him the Mayor’s instructions with the telegram. A few more glasses were drunk and the party broke up.

Old Randon, who was waiting for his cart, was left alone in Simon’s bar. For a few minutes the two men found nothing more to say. They were thinking of the effect of the message, which they had forgotten in their discussion.

“We are cowards,” the Mayor admitted at last, and the councillor heartily agreed.

As a matter of fact, they were no more cowardly than the average man. They simply represented the attitude of honest men confronted by bullies.

After a long silence—for a countryman moves in the world of ideas at the pace of a plough-ox among the furrows—old Randon suggested: “Do you think we ought to go up to Le Maupas together?”

“I was thinking about it,” rejoined the Mayor. And they encouraged each other with all kinds of good reasons.

“Nobody will see us.”

“It is dark.”

“We will go up privately, as fellow citizens.”

“Just in ordinary clothes, unofficially.”

“The doctor saved my little one.”

“And my two daughters. Mélanie, my hat!”

They got up very firmly. They felt proud of their resolution. They wrapped themselves up in their capes and went out, the old man going in front like a youngster. They got as far as the end of the village, when in the road they met the schoolmaster, who was walking along smoking a cigar. Maillard grinned as he recognised them.

“What, going for a walk?” he asked.

“No,” said the stammering Mayor, “I am seeing Randon home.”

“But he lives on the Chaloux road!”

The councillor explained matters.

“I am going as far as the Favres grocery near here with an order. It is for my wife.”

“I will go with you. I am just taking the air before supper.”

Neither the Mayor nor Randon dared to confess their plan. They returned to Cognin very humbly on either side of the schoolmaster, who held forth at length and announced the coming golden age of brotherhood.

“I shall be back in the evening,” Madame Guibert had said to her daughter, as she got into Trélaz’s carriage. She was going to Chambéry on family business. With the help of Étienne and François, who had been lucky in their enterprises at Tonkin, and with Marcel’s aid during the Sahara Expedition they had been able to keep Le Maupas.

At sunset Paule came out for the first time to lean on the balustrade. She listened for the sound of the approaching carriage coming up the slope, but she listened in the quiet evening air in vain. As the frost was very sharp she ran to get a shawl, wrapped herself in it, and waited.

The snow-covered land grew rosy in the evening light. A kind of virginal purity was over it. The vine-branches and the hedges were covered with a fine lacework of hoarfrost, which shone in the dying fires of day. The bare woods had no more secrets, and the branches with their thousand twigs stood out in the clear air like blades of grass.

Paule, who clung to this little place with every fibre of her being, loved the fairy-like winter effects. The cold made her shiver. As she crossed the threshold, a raven flew croaking across the horizon. Its wings made a black spot against the pale sky.

“Bird of misfortune!” murmured the girl carelessly, without reading any ill omen in it. Was it not the time for ravens? They hover over the bare fields, near the houses, trying to find a scanty sustenance.

She put two logs in the drawing-room grate, built up the fire carefully, and placed a kettle on the logs. Then she went to find a glass, a spoon, the sugar and the bottle of rum, which she arrayed on a little table near the fireplace. “Mother will be cold when she gets back,” she thought during these preparations. “It is freezing to-night and she will be dreadfully cold in that open cart of Trélaz’s. A good fire and a hot drink will do her good. Poor Mother!”

She sat down beside the lamp and tried to read a book she had begun. But this occupation could not hold her attention. She looked at the clock. It was past six.

Uneasily she took up the shawl which she had left on a chair, and went back to the veranda. Night had fallen. The stars were trembling in the sky, as if they were cold. Although the moon was still invisible, the horizon was not dark. It seemed as if a faint light was rising from below, as if the white earth illumined the sky. Down in the depths of the valley Paule saw the lamps of Chambéry shining. She looked searchingly at the wood with its bare oak-trees, through which the carriage must come, she watched for the light of the moving lamps, and listened for the slightest sounds that the breeze carried to her. For a moment the clatter of a mill deceived her. A shrill scream which broke the silence made her shudder,—it was so like a cry of despair. When she had recovered from her fright, she recognised the siren of a neighboring factory. For a long time she remained leaning on the balustrade, listening and receptive of every impression.

Marie, the old servant who had lived with the family through good and bad fortune, came to look for her and scolded her.

“Now isn’t it madness to stay outside in this cold? Will you come in, Miss Paule? You won’t bring Madame home any quicker by taking cold yourself!”

Paule obeyed, making no reply. But she went no further than the kitchen, so that she might be ready to run out at once. Hearing the gate open, she rushed out and found herself face to face with a peasant from Vimines, who on account of his poverty was ironically nicknamed Baron.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in her disappointment, as the poor creature walked unceremoniously into the kitchen.

“Good evening, everybody! I’ve just looked in as I passed, to get warm.”

From time to time he did a day’s work at Le Maupas. He was an idle good-for-nothing, whom Dr. Guibert had helped. He often came to the door and asked for work, though really only to get a drink.

“Good evening, Baron. You did not meet my mother on the road?”

“No, Miss, I saw nobody.”

Seated near the stove with his felt hat crushed in his hand, he looked at the girl and the servant with a cunning eye. Paule left them and began gazing out once more into the night. The moon was illuminating the scene with her silvery beams, but her light revealed only the emptiness of the road.

In the kitchen the rustic was saying to Marie: “So you haven’t heard anything?”

“About what?” asked the servant, putting her pan on the fire.

“About the news, bless you!”

“What news, you old chatterbox? What are you keeping to yourself?”

Distrustful, he had thought that they were hiding it from him. At last he understood that at Le Maupas they were still ignorant of what all Cognin already knew. As he passed in front of the hospitable house, he had yielded to his curiosity to see the effect of the bad news. But he would not tell anything, not he! Everybody has his own job to do. He quickly drained his glass of red wine, refused a second, and got up to leave.

“Well, Baron, what about your news? Are you going to take it on to Vimines?”

“That’s just it,” said he, winking his wicked eye.

“So you won’t tell us about it?”

“Oh, you will know it soon enough.”

“It’s all cry and no wool with you, you old humbug!”

On the threshold the rustic turned round and delivered himself of a platitude with a sarcastic smile: “Live and learn! Well, well, what will the old woman do?”

His feet falling lightly in the snow he passed behind Paule, who was still leaning on the veranda rail.

“Good evening, miss. Bear up! You never know who’s alive or who’s dead.”

The girl started again, more at this voice heard unexpectedly behind her back than at the words, whose meaning she did not understand. She came back to the kitchen with a vague fear mingled with her uneasiness.

“Make us some nice soup, Marie, and very hot. It is freezing hard.” And cheered by the cosy hearth she added, “That Baron almost frightened me.”

The servant snorted. “A good-for-nothing like that, with a long tongue! I don’t want to see him round here any more. Your father was a good Samaritan when he picked up that fish. And he has the evil eye. We must take care. If the soup is burned, it will be all his fault. I don’t know what story he had heard in the town, but he had a long face and was watching us as a cat watches a rat.”

The girl went back to the drawing-room to stir the fire. Now she was alone, she no longer felt her accustomed courage. Her heart was beating loudly in her breast. She tried to comfort herself and did not succeed.

“Trélaz’s horse goes so slowly. That business at the lawyer’s always lasts so much longer than one thinks it will....”

She could no longer keep down her anxiety, which increased every minute. Even prayer could not calm her. As she was on her knees, she heard the drawing-room door open.

“Is Mamma there?” she cried as she rose from her knees. It was old Marie who appeared at the door.

“No, Miss Paule. It is a man who wants to speak to the mistress.”

“Who is he?”

“He says he is a policeman and has been sent by the Mayor.”

“A policeman! What does he want with us?”

As her mind recalled all the bad omens of that evening, the girl trembled while she gave the order for the man to be shown in. But she controlled herself and received the Mayor’s messenger with the greatest outward calm.

Faroux, the policeman, was one of those silent, stolid countrymen who give themselves up entirely to their work without ever thinking about it. But in the presence of Paule Guibert it was impossible for him not to understand at last the importance of his mission. As he came along the road he had not given a thought to it. So many people approach thus absent-mindedly the most sacred and most serious tasks.

Standing before him the girl said:

“My mother is not at home. But could I not take her place?”

He stood there silent and stupid, and the pause increased Paule’s secret fear. He stammered at last:

“Mademoiselle Guibert, I have come to ... to ... tell you ...”

In his face, as the lamp shone on it, she read so much confusion and trouble that she gave way to her darkest presentiments. With a few quick words she aroused the poor, frightened man from his stupor.

“Speak, oh, do speak! Has there been an accident? My mother ... on the road....” She could not finish the sentence.

“No,” said the man, “I did not meet the lady.” And he relapsed into silence.

“Well, why did you come? If you have anything to say, say it. Do be quick!”

Straight and proud, she spoke in the commanding voice which she knew how to take upon occasion, like Marcel. The stiffness of her bearing quite confused the policeman, who drew the telegram from his pocket and with his big trembling hand held it out to the girl. He tried to take it back again, but the blue paper was already in Paule’s hand. Before she had even opened it, she thought of her brother. She glanced over it, said “Ah,” crushed up the telegram, and turned deadly pale. But with a supreme effort she remained standing and did not cry. She could not show her weakness to this man, whom she thought unfeeling, but she had to lean on the table. This movement and her pallor were her only admissions of weakness.

A fearful silence enveloped them. At last she was able to say without trembling: “It is all right. You may go. I thank you.”

As he was stepping out she remembered the laws of rural hospitality and added:

“Tell Marie to give you something to drink, please.”

But the policeman rushed through the kitchen and fled as if he had murdered someone.

“Oh, my God!” cried Paule when no one could hear her. She dragged herself towards the fireplace, held on to it for a minute with her two hands, tried to stand, but had to drop into an armchair. Her body shook from head to foot. She held her hand before her dry, staring eyes to keep away the horrible vision before them. She saw there before her on the carpet her brother lying dead, his shattered forehead with the lifeblood flowing from it. That grave face of his, so melancholy and so proud, which had been the more so ever since Alice’s refusal,—she saw it now, sightless, motionless and icy-cold, still in death and beautiful! “Marcel, Marcel,” she called softly, and hid her face in her hands. The tears refused to come to her relief. Her adored brother, the pride of her life, was dead. Dead, she repeated ten, twenty times before she could understand the horror of it. Dead, the hero of Andriba, the conqueror of Rabah and the desert! At thirty-two, this life of courage, of gallantry and self-sacrifice, had been cut off. Oh, how little he had cared for life. For a long time he had despised it. Had not the meeting with a shy little girl taken away his joy in it? And Paule distractedly racked her memory for the pictures in which she had read the signs of coming fate. There was that hesitating smile which she had surprised on his lips the first night that he confessed his secret to her. There was that movement of indifference as he listened to the mournful warnings of the owls after his last interview with Alice. And there was again that strange, quiet, almost disinterested discussion of his future, as they sat there on the tree-trunk at the edge of the Montcharvin wood, on the day of his departure from France. For years, since that evening at La Chênaie, he had carried death in his eyes. He had never again mentioned Alice’s name, never spoken of his love. But he had lived on without any faith in life.... And in that dear face that her ardent love called up in her memory, Paule saw a deep serenity, unchangeable, eternal. Then she gave a great cry and knelt down, weeping.

“Yes,” she thought, “you are at peace at last. Our love was not sufficient for you. We loved you too much, Marcel. You do not know how I loved you. I cannot speak: but my heart was full of you. Why was I not chosen in your place? Of what use am I?”

A new fear, which she would not admit to herself in this terrible hour, completed the distraction of her mind. Marcel was not alone at Timmimun....

All at once she started up.

“And Mother! Mother is coming home!” She had forgotten her. And, thanking God who had allowed her to break to her mother this supreme sorrow, she mourned no longer for him who was sleeping his last sleep, dead on the day of victory, in a conquered land; but instead for her who was quietly coming home along the dark roads, travelling all unsuspicious towards the precipice. Might not this last blow crush the frail old life, overwhelmed already with its many trials?

Paule vainly searched her mind for help. She felt the sadness of a cemetery round her. What deaths and separations there had been— Her sister Thérèse dead at twelve; her father struck down in his vigor; her sister Marguerite in a convent; Étienne and François in the Colonies. She was left alone—and how very much alone—to help her mother to bear this too heavy cross. But as she must do it, she would be brave and uphold the poor tottering woman with all her strength.

She dried her eyes and bathed her face.

“Not now, not all at once,” she repeated, thinking of her mother. “She must have time to warm herself, to rest. I will tell her to-night that he is ill. She did not sleep at all last night, she must sleep at least to-night. To-morrow her heart will be broken. Suffering is easier to bear in the day-time than in the horrors of night, so like the grave. I will not tell her to-night.” And she put her mother’s cup of bitterness away from her. From the far country where he lay she seemed to hear her big brother calling to her—his soul at peace—“Spare her this evening. She has suffered so much already.”

She heard a footstep and hastened to hide, the telegram which had brought with it death.

Marie entered the room.

“Madame is coming. I hear the wheels in the avenue.”