The stupefied woman saw him throw a note upon the table, and before she could protest he was gone, speeding down the street like a robber. People were streaming along the boulevards, and Jean was filled with the happiness that comes after some great danger has been averted. Then the lure of gaunt leafless chestnut trees enticed him to the Champs Elysées, and he sat upon an empty bench, breathless and coughing a little. The arc-lights outshone the waning moon, but he knew that its quiet gleam fell upon the sombre uplands between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. His agony had passed from him and his purity remained; he revelled in his wretched chastity. Sometime he and Noémi would love each other all through an endless summer's day, and he imagined what this exalted union of the flesh would be like. Ah, that bright shining light in which their immortal, their incorruptible bodies would come together! Jean spoke aloud: "There are no masters; we are all born slaves to be emancipated by Thee, Lord." A policeman approached the bench, looked at him for a moment, and passed on with a shrug of his shoulders.
Jean installed himself every afternoon at one of the little tables in front of the Café de la Paix, on the edge of a melancholy river of faces. Degrading diseases, alcohol and drugs had produced an unimaginably loathsome similarity in the features of the multitude that passed him, and these had once been children's faces. Jean counted the prostitutes eagerly hunting for employment, and tried to amuse himself by guessing what vice one particular man with an eyeglass and a sagging lower lip sought to satisfy. Anxiously he searched the crowd for a face bearing the mark of a Master. The sight of just one of these elect beings would have caused him to jump from his chair in eager pursuit. But he saw only shifting eyes, trembling hands and faces polluted by unnatural lust. If such a Master had existed, would he have been immortal? Jean, waving his arms and gesticulating at his table on the boulevard as wildly as in one of the back streets of his own town, took to himself Pascal's phrase about the end of the most brilliant career in the world: "One always loses the game!" One always loses the game; even your brain, Nietzsche!
The people about him began to nudge one another; a woman spoke to him and he leapt from his seat, threw some coins upon the table, and hurried away. But he could hear the woman's words: "You don't often see anything as soft as that!" He scampered like a rat along the inner edge of the flowing tumult, close to the shop windows, and all the time he was working out a plan for a decisive essay which he would call: The Will to Power and Holiness. Every now and then a mirror presented him with a reflection that he did not recognize; bad food was making him thinner than ever, and the dust of Paris irritated his throat. He should have given up cigarettes altogether, but he now smoked more than ever and was continually coughing and spitting. Attacks of dizziness often obliged him to cling to lamp posts, and he usually preferred starving himself to suffering a burning pain in his stomach. Would he be picked out of the gutter one day like a dead cat? Then Noémi would be free of him.... Such were his thoughts as he sat in a cinema where the uninterrupted music rather than the screen had drawn him. He often went into Turkish bath establishments, feverish and exhausted: the light behind calico curtains, the dripping of taps, and then the fading of consciousness. Jean's reason for seeking the protection of places like this was that the only church he knew in Paris was the Madeleine; there was no other on his way from the hotel to the Café de la Paix. But one day he took a less roundabout route and discovered Saint-Roch: its shadowy interior became his daily refuge. Even the smell of it was like his own church, and the Presence was there close to one of the great city's crowded thoroughfares, as definitely as in the obscure town from which he came. Not once did he cross the threshold of a library.
He might have existed in this way till the end of his life, had not a letter from the priest arrived one morning to call him home. The letter was a pressing one in spite of the fact that it contained the most satisfactory news of M. Jêrome and Noémi. Greatly distressed, Jean took his place in the carriage bearing the name Irun, a part of the train he had so often watched gliding slowly and then more rapidly out of the station, feeling that a part of himself went with it towards the South-West.
XI
THIS summons was not occasioned by any special event; the priest had resolved to write one day after Noémi had confessed her weekly collection of venial sins, and had begged for her preceptor's spiritual assistance in withstanding certain temptations and disturbances whose exact nature she did not divulge.
Jean's departure had afforded her a certain delicious languor, a sort of convalescence. To her, solitude was an endless joy, and she allowed herself full enjoyment of it. Although incapable of self-analysis, she felt herself to be another person. She was living her old life again, but she knew perfectly well that she was no longer a girl. Her disgust with matrimony had kept her from realizing that it had made her a woman; this stranger within her was now beginning to make mysterious demands. She was so disconcerted at her inability to recover the peace of mind she had known before her marriage that she could not explain to herself the struggle between her dormant thoughts and her half-awakened flesh. Her mental horror had been intense, certainly, but the flesh never forgets the ordeals to which it has been submitted. Noémi's prayer book represented the extent of her reading, and her state of poverty and gentle birth deprived her of intimate friendships; there was nothing in her life that could explain this insistent craving. And then Chance enlightened her.
The March sunlight flashed in the pools of rain water that dappled the square. During M. Jêrome's siesta the house lay under a spell of silence; even the furniture refrained from cracking. Noémi, like all the other women in the town, sat sewing just inside one of the ground floor windows; the shutters were half closed. Her work-table was covered with mending, some of which had fallen to the floor. There was a noise of wheels outside, and she saw that a light gig had drawn up close to the window. A young man sat holding the reins, obviously in search of guidance, but the square was empty. Noémi pushed the shutters wide open and the young man turned towards her, took off his hat, and asked to be directed to Dr. Pieuchon's house. She told him the way, and he bowed, touched his horse with the whip, and disappeared. Noémi took up her mending again and spent the rest of the day plying her needle, her thoughts far from the face that had left its image in her mind. The next day, at the same time, the unknown young man drove by again. He did not stop, but, as he passed, drew in the reins slightly and looked in through the half-closed shutters. He bowed.
At the evening meal, M. Jêrome said he had it from the priest that Dr. Pieuchon's son was worse, and that a young doctor whose method was highly thought of had been called in from the sub-prefecture. He treated tuberculosis with tincture of iodine in heavy doses; the patient had to swallow hundreds of drops diluted with water. M. Jêrome expressed his doubts as to whether young Pieuchon's stomach could cope with such a mixture.
Every day the gig drove by, and every day it slowed down in front of the Péloueyre house, but the shutters always remained half-closed. The young doctor bowed to the strip of shadow where Noémi sat unseen. The town became interested in the iodine cure, and all the consumptives in the district adopted it; people said that young Pieuchon was improving. Spring came before its appointed time, and at the end of March the warmth broke the bonds of winter. One evening Noémi undressed with her window open; she rested her elbows on the sill and looked out into the darkness in a state of melancholy happiness that precluded sleep. At night, by some secret process, this man's face, hitherto little more than a vague impression, became almost a visual revelation. For the first time, she deliberately allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it: this stranger had bowed to her each day without even seeing her. Would it not be more suitable if, the next morning, she were to open the shutters and return his greeting? A decision to do this produced a pleasant emotion, and she stood awhile at the window before getting into bed. She evoked what she had seen during the few seconds of their only conversation: black curly hair beneath the raised hat; a short moustache and thick red lips; a rough tweed suit, and from its pocket the clasp of a fountain pen shining; no tie, but a soft tussore shirt, open at the neck.
Noémi, whose impulses were generally instinctive, was, however, accustomed to examining her conscience. She was on her guard now, and the first alarm came when she was kneeling by her bed; she had to begin her prayers over and over again, for a sunburnt smiling face intruded itself into her communion with God. She lay for some time, a prey to this apparition, and upon waking the first clear thought that rose out of her dream-troubled consciousness was that she would soon be seeing him again. All through mass that morning, Noémi kept her face hidden in her hands. During M. Jêrome's siesta the gig drove past, and slackened speed, but the shutters on the ground floor of the Péloueyre house were all closed.
It was then that the disquieting letter was sent to Jean in Paris; Noémi had written, "I miss you." Lately she had been sitting in the dark room until the gig drove past, and then had pushed open the shutters and taken up her mending. One afternoon, she came to the conclusion that over-scrupulousness was a sin like any other. "I'm getting worked up over nothing at all," she thought, and decided to lean out of the window and return the young doctor's greeting. She thought she heard the rattle of wheels and her hand went to the fastening, but for the first time for a fortnight the gig did not drive past.
When the time came to give M. Jêrome his valerian, Noémi could not help telling him that the new doctor had not visited the Pieuchons, and she learned that the invalid had had a relapse the day before, that he could no longer take the iodine. The priest had brought the news of a bad hemorrhage; the spring was a dangerous time of the year for consumptives. He also reported that Dr. Pieuchon had quarrelled with his young colleague, who no doubt would not dare to show himself in the neighbourhood again. Noémi interviewed one of the farmers, helped Cadette to fold up the washing, and at six o'clock went to her devotions. On her way home, she called in as usual at her parents' house. After dinner, she complained of a headache, and went to her room.
She began to lead a more active life, and occupied herself with the poultry; her broods were a great success. Then she remembered social obligations and, in her best clothes, made her annual round of visits, the solemn practice of all the ladies of the town. After that came the farmers. She enjoyed driving along the forest roads that had been opened up by heavy farm carts. Cadette's grandson sat beside her, acting as coachman on these occasions. There were splashes of yellow gorse in the dried bracken; a few dead leaves clung to the oaks in trembling resistance to the warm southerly breeze. A round pool held the untroubled reflection of tall reddish trunks, dark feathery green foliage, and the blue of the sky. Resin was oozing from innumerable freshly made incisions in the pines, and the heat of the sun filled the air with its pungent odour. The cuckoo's soft notes recalled other springs, and the two young people laughed lightheartedly as the jolting of the cart bumped them against each other. The next morning, Noémi was so tired that the bailiff had to be asked to finish the round of the farms. Except at mass, no one saw her again till the morning of Jean's return.
XII
SHE went to the station and waited for him in the sunlight on the platform. She wore a low-necked muslin frock and cotton mittens, and round her neck hung a medallion upon which were painted two cupids struggling with a goat. Some children were trying to walk upon one of the rails; the whistle of the little train could be heard long before it appeared. Noémi was determined that her emotion at the approaching moment should be one of joy. In Jean's absence, her memory of his features had undergone certain modifications; she had as it were re-created him in a form that was no longer repulsive, and her mental image of him was insidiously redrawn. She was so intent upon loving him that she believed herself to be only waiting for the train's arrival that she might clasp this unreal Jean in her arms. It was true that the ghost of a longing glance might have fluttered against her will towards another face, but before God there had never once entered her mind even the suggestion of indiscretion. And in return for this, she felt sure she would be granted the relief of seeing a husband get out of the train quite different from the one whose departure had been a deliverance.
Jean made his appearance upon the step of a second-class carriage. He was indeed a different Jean now, and Cadette's grandson eagerly took the valise from his thin white hands. He walked unsteadily down the platform on Noémi's arm: "But Jean, dear, you're ill!" and he saw as much change in her as she did in him. How she had improved because of his absence! She was even more the resplendent female and he the wizened stunted male than in the priest's parlour not so many months ago. The couple caused a good deal of whispering at the station, and the presence of the newsagent, the station master, and the porter, filled Jean with shame. Noémi said: "I should have driven to meet you in the carriage. Why didn't you write me that you were ill?" And when they reached the house, she prepared his bed and washed his face and hands; she put a table at his elbow, covered it with a white napkin, and gave him the pile of reviews that had accumulated, unread, in his absence. Jean watched her with his sharp little eyes, as a child watches its nurse.
M. Jêrome was against calling in Doctor Pieuchon; he was exasperated at the idea of anyone in the house being ill but himself. His son was barely in bed when he too retired to his, declaring himself to be suffering agonies of pain in every part of his body and loudly refusing the proffered attentions of Cadette. Noémi went to him as soon as she could, not to see how he was, but to get his permission to call in the doctor. He refused point-blank. Pieuchon would not leave the bedside of his germ-ridden son. If she wanted to see a doctor, why not send for the young man with the iodine? Noémi looked away, saying that she had no confidence in him, and anyhow, speaking of germs, wasn't he attending all the consumptives in the district? M. Jêrome silenced her angrily: he had said all he had to say and would thank her to stop pestering him; whereupon he turned his nose to the wall, and at regular intervals came the sighing and the "Oh, God! Oh, God!" that used to waken Jean in the silence of the night.
Noémi found the housemaid unfolding an emergency bed. All that could be seen of Jean was a pair of bright feverish eyes, two flaming cheeks, and a nose that seemed more pointed than ever. He stuttered out his complaints: he was cold in the big bed; he had always preferred a narrow one and now, at least until after the doctor had examined him, it would be unwise for them to sleep together. She would have liked to protest, to pretend that his objections had deceived her; but the words would not come. She leaned over and kissed his moist forehead, but he turned away; the gratitude that had prompted the kiss was horrible to him.
The day drew peacefully and dismally to a close. Jean slept in the silent room, only waking when the spoon tinkled against the saucer. He was not very ill, but Noémi supported him while he drank, and he swallowed slowly in order to keep her cool arm behind his neck as long as possible. At dusk the church bells began to ring, and from the court came the voice of Cadette's grandson: "Hue! Dia!"; he was harnessing one of the horses. M. Jêrome half opened the door; his bare feet were slippered, and he wore an old dressing gown spotted with medicine. He was ashamed of his behaviour an hour or two since, and wanted to be forgiven for it, but the pretended reasons for his visit were anxiety and a desire to be reassured as to his son's condition. Cadette had been ordered to send her grandson to fetch the young doctor with the iodine. Jean objected that he was only a little tired—a few days' rest was all he needed—and when he came the doctor would find no justification for such an urgent call.
Noémi sat silently in her shadowy corner; she listened to the rattle of cart-wheels growing fainter and fainter and, without a sob or any movement of her body, she wept. A sudden shower pelted against the windows, hastening the fall of night, and neither she nor Jean thought of lighting the lamp until Cadette came to lay a table for supper near Jean's bed. While they ate, Noémi asked him whether he had finished the work for which he had gone to Paris. Jean shook his head, and she asked no further questions.
The cart clattered again in the court. "There's the doctor," Jean said, and Noémi stood up and edged away out of the lamplight. The sound of his voice and footsteps were to her ears like the rumbling of an imminent storm. Cadette opened the door and he entered the room looking stouter than Noémi had expected; people called him a "handsome devil." He had black hair and a high colour; his eyes boldly sought Noémi's and then slowly followed every contour of her body. He too had been thinking about her! Noémi trembled in her haven of obscurity while the doctor examined the invalid. "Please unbutton your shirt. A handkerchief will do, Madame. Now count thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three...." In the lamplight Jean's protruding bones were pitifully evident. No, there was nothing alarming in M. Péloueyre's condition, but they would have to keep an eye on his lungs. A tonic was prescribed, and some injections of cacodyl. From time to time during the examination the young doctor glanced at Noémi. How could he help thinking that it was she who had contrived to get him into the house? If not, it was absurd to have asked a doctor to drive four miles in the evening to examine a young man who was suffering from fatigue.
He sat for a while with them, ponderously denying that he had ever pretended he could cure such an advanced case as young Pieuchon with his iodine treatment. His rustic drawl made a deep masculine sound in the room. Noémi felt herself being watched, but the young man saw only a silent shadowy form. He spoke of forestalling the disease, and explained that M. Péloueyre was like soil specially prepared for the growth of bacilli: "I might call him 'tuberculisable' soil. Didn't the late Mme. Péloueyre die of consumption?" The technical jargon fell strangely from lips that were made for kissing.
M. Péloueyre would have to be watched, the doctor said, and he stood up expecting the usual request to call again to see his patient. But Noémi was silent, and he asked bluntly whether M. Péloueyre would like him to continue his visits, if only to give him the injections. "What do you think, Noémi?" No reply was forthcoming and Jean asked again, thinking she had not heard. "Say what you think, Noémi; shall the doctor come again?" This time she brought out a reply: "It will be quite unnecessary," and Jean was afraid that he would take offence at the tone of her voice. He put the burden of the decision upon the doctor, who replied without embarrassment that he would come the moment he was sent for. Noémi took the lamp and preceded him out of the room; then she felt his warm breath upon her neck as she rapidly descended the stairs. The cart was waiting at the door, and he took his seat beside Cadette's grandson without receiving a single glance from her. The boy clucked to the horse whose hind quarters were visible in the gleam of the carriage light. Then the wind blew out the lamp Noémi was holding, and she stood in the darkness upon the threshold of that lifeless house, listening while the noise of the wheels died away in the night. She could not sleep, for Jean was tossing feverishly and muttering unintelligible phrases in his iron bed. She got up to tuck in the bedclothes, and laid her hand upon his forehead as though he were the baby that would never be born to her.
XIII
TWO days later Jean was himself again and he dropped back into his old life. He stole out of the house during M. Jêrome's siesta to carry on his old warfare against the magpies, and when the light failed he entered the church and waited until there was nothing for it but to go home. Noémi's lately acquired radiance had already begun to fade, and Jean saw the dark rings appearing under those eyes that looked at him so sadly and with such submissive tenderness. He had hoped that his exile from the nuptial bed would enable Noémi to get used to having him at home again. She was desperately fighting down her disgust, and the mental struggle was telling on her. Sometimes she called him in the night to come to her, and when he pretended to be asleep she got up and kissed him as he lay in his narrow bed—a kiss like those given to lepers by the saints of long ago. No one can say whether the lepers were refreshed by the breath of saints upon their sores, but Jean Péloueyre had reached the point of wrenching himself free from these embraces, and it was he who cried in horror: "Let me alone!"
Tangled masses of lilac spread their disorder dark against the high garden walls; the evening air was heavy with the scent of syringas, and as the daylight faded, the may-beetles began their humming. It was the month of May and after the Litany the priest said: "Your prayers are requested for the success of the examinations of several young people; the marriages of several young women; the conversion of a father of a family; the health of a young man who is dangerously ill...." Everyone knew that he referred to Dr. Pieuchon's son who was now past recovery. The June lilies bloomed, and Noémi wondered why Jean no longer took his gun with him when he left the house after lunch. Replying to her question, he said that the magpies had got to know him too well; the cunning devils wouldn't let him come anywhere near them. She feared that his rambles were too much for him: he had usually come back with a trace of animation in his face, but now he was always white and dejected, pretending that the heat had taken away his colour. One night Noémi heard him cough several times and asked in a low voice: "Are you asleep, Jean?" He told her his throat was bothering him a little; it was nothing serious. But she knew that he was trying not to cough. Lighting a candle, she found him bathed in perspiration, and an agony of apprehension took possession of her. His eyes were closed, and he gave her the impression of being intent upon some mysterious process that was going on within him. Then he opened his eyes and smiled up at her tenderly, and into the confusion of her mind wrought by this unwonted show of affection came a whispered request for a drink of water.
The next morning his temperature was sub-normal and Noémi was reassured. She tried to persuade him not to go out after lunch, but her efforts were of no avail and only displeased him. He took out his watch as though afraid of being late for an appointment, and M. Jêrome remarked jokingly that Noémi would be justified in thinking he was hurrying off to some assignation. Jean said nothing, and his quick steps echoed in the hall. Storm clouds began to spread over the sky, and the leaves hung motionless as though fixed by the silence of the birds. All through the afternoon Noémi sat by the window looking on to the street, a prey to dark fears. At four o'clock a measured succession of subdued notes came from the church bell, and she crossed herself for she knew someone was at the point of death. She heard a voice in the square: "It's for young Pieuchon; he almost died this morning." Big raindrops fell into the hot dust, and the smell of the approaching storm came in through the window. M. Jêrome was still asleep, so she went to the kitchen to talk about Robert Pieuchon with Cadette. The old woman was deaf, and had not heard the bell tolling. She said that Monsieur Jean would tell them all about it, and, noticing Noémi's blank look, she sighed and the tears rolled down over her cheeks. She was quite sure that her mistress did not know it or she would have stopped poor Monsieur Jean, delicate as he was, from spending so much time with young Monsieur Pieuchon; every afternoon for the last month! He had forbidden his old Cadette to mention it to anyone. Noémi pretended not to be surprised; but she left the house at once. It had stopped raining, and a dust-laden wind was dispersing the heavy storm clouds. The shutters of the Pieuchon house had already been closed, and as Noémi drew near Jean appeared at the front door. He was blinking his eyes in spite of the half-light and, without seeing her, he turned instinctively towards the church. His face was the colour of clay and there was something unearthly in his expression. Noémi went down the steps into the church after him and shivered in an earthy dampness as of a newly dug grave. It was the chill that seizes the living when they go down into churches which have been gradually sinking into the ground for centuries beneath the heavy hand of time. And again Noémi heard the cough that had waked her the night before; but this time it reverberated under the grey arches endlessly.
XIV
JEAN'S bed had been moved down to one of the ground floor rooms that looked on to the garden; when he had difficulty in breathing they pushed it out upon the veranda, and he could watch the wind swaying green branches against a blue sky. An ice machine stood near by, for almost the only thing he could swallow except cold milk was a little faintly flavoured water-ice. M. Jêrome came to see him, but stood smiling at a safe distance. Jean would no doubt have preferred to hide his sufferings in the bedroom upstairs, but he had chosen to die in the garden so that Noémi might run the smallest possible risk of contagion. Injections of morphine made him drowsy. Rest! Rest after those hideous afternoons spent at the bedside of Robert Pieuchon, in agonies of despair at having to abandon his life: lurid evenings at Bordeaux; dancing to the music of barrel-organs in little suburban cafés; cycle rides in the country, with dusty legs and delicious fatigue afterwards; and best of all: amorous adventures with young women.
The Cazenaves were spreading the gossip that M. Jêrome's stinginess was depriving Jean of the benefit of a milder climate and a higher altitude. But Jean was the sort of person who preferred to die at home, and Doctor Pieuchon professed that there was no climate for consumptives like the forests of Les Landes. He hung the walls of the sick room with young pines as though for Corpus Christi day, and placed jars overflowing with resin by the bed. When he could think of nothing more to do, he called in his young colleague, certain that Jean was now incapable of taking iodine in heavy doses. Noémi's indifference when she received the handsome youth was not complete enough to prevent her from noticing that he paled slightly when their eyes met and their hands touched. After each visit the pleasant realization came to her that nothing in the world mattered but her husband lying there in the bed. Possibly, well hidden at the back of her mind, there was the feeling that she had this young male securely caught, and her calmness may have been due to the knowledge that she would one day land him, alive and quivering.
Jean had forbidden Noémi to kiss him, but he gratefully accepted the coolness of her hand upon his forehead. He must have thought that she loved him, for he murmured: "I bless Thee forever, O God, for giving me a woman's love before I die." And, as in the days of his solitary wanderings, he turned the same line over and over again in his mind. Noémi was counting his pulse, and, tired of his rosary, he repeated Pauline's cry in a low voice: Mon Polyeucte touche à son heure dernière. Then he smiled. He did not consider himself a martyr: people had always called him: "Poor fellow," and he had believed they were right. Backward glances over the grey waters of his life had always fed his self-contempt. What stagnation! But now, under the leaden surface, there was a secret welling up of vividly clear water, and for him who had known little more of life than a corpse the gates of death would open upon a new existence.
One evening Noémi found Doctor Pieuchon and the priest talking in the hall, and she asked bitterly of them the reasons for their silence: why hadn't they told her of Jean's daily visits at the bedside of the consumptive? The doctor bowed his head, pleading ignorance of Jean's condition. He was a man of unbounded kindness himself; why should he have been surprised at devotion like his own in another, and devotion to his own son? The priest defended himself more vigorously: Jean had insisted upon silence, and the rôle of spiritual director necessitated scrupulous discretion. "But it was you, Father, who were determined upon that fatal journey to Paris." "Was it I alone, Noémi?" She leaned against the wall, digging with one of her fingers at a little hole in the marbled plaster. Jean's coughing sounded through the bedroom door, and Cadette's dragging footsteps could be heard in the kitchen. The priest spoke again: "I prayed for guidance, Noémi; we must praise the ways of God." He put on his coat and departed, his mind full of conflicting emotions; in hours of sleeplessness he wept over Jean Péloueyre. To no purpose did he repeat to himself that Jean had made his will in favour of Noémi, and that it was M. Jêrome's intention, after his son's death, to give the house and as much as possible of his property to his daughter-in-law—providing she did not re-marry. The priest, though perhaps too apt to interfere in the lives of others, was a conscientious man, and he questioned himself searchingly. He had never thought that the marriage could be anything but happy—and, sub specie aeterni, could anyone help wondering at the success of it? What profit was there for him in the affair? He was a good shepherd whose one concern was the welfare of his flock. Whenever he indulged in self-judgement he invariably absolved himself, but his absolution was never final. The dread of losing the power to discriminate between justice and injustice was ever with him, and hesitation preceded all his actions. As his humility increased, he pontificated less; he no longer let fall the train of his cassock, and he gave up wearing the three-cornered hat that distinguished him from his brother priests. He gradually freed himself from all his pettiness, and was quite indifferent when the news came that, though he was not a senior priest, the bishop had granted him the right to wear a hooded cloak over his surplice. How could he have cared for these trifles, he, a keeper of souls? The only thing for him to do now was to extricate himself from this drama. Had he been the humble instrument of God, or had a poor country priest been trying to take his Creator's place?
Meanwhile, every evening, the young doctor drove away in his gig over the frozen roads. The moonlight flooded through the interlacing branches of the pines and their dark round tops hovered in the sky like an immovable flock of huge birds. On several occasions the shadowy form of a wild boar crossed the road a few hundred paces ahead of the house. The line of pines widened suddenly and skirted a meadow hidden by low-hanging mist; then the road sank between two high banks and one felt the icy breath of a stream. Wrapped in his goat-skin coat, and enveloped in a thick cloud of mist and tobacco smoke, the young man did not know that the stars were shining above the tree-tops. He was thinking of his kitchen fire at which he would soon be drying himself, and the soup that he would pour some wine into; and when his thoughts wandered from food and warmth they clung about the figure of Noémi, so close to his hand every day, but scarcely ever touched by him. "Still," the sportsman said to himself, "I haven't missed her; she's winged." He knew instinctively when the feminine quarry had been run down and was imploring mercy; it was as though Noémi had cried out. Many women had been his, and they were the wives of men, not of poor broken things like Jean Péloueyre. Caught and more defenceless than any of these, would Noémi prove after all the only one not to give in? Naturally, during her husband's illness, common decency was keeping her straight, but, before that, what had prevented him from entirely fascinating his prey? What stronger influence had kept her just out of his reach? Another love, perhaps? He did not believe she was very devout; he imagined he knew that sort when he saw it, for he had already measured his strength with the priest's over the conquest of a sheep from the fold. Pious women enjoyed the game, allowed themselves to be kissed, fluttered close to the flame, even singed their wings; but at the last moment they slipped through one's fingers, back to the confessional as though drawn by an invisible wire. He laid his plans for the day of Jean Péloueyre's death, saying to himself, "I'll get her," and he laughed, for he had the patience of the sportsmen of Les Landes who lie in wait for their prey.
About that time, the pious people of the town who went to church in the middle of the day, and believed themselves to be alone there, were startled by the sound of sighing that came from the choir. The priest spent almost all his spare moments there before his Judge. In no other place could he find peace; not the peace that is afforded by the stillness of country churches, thick with shadows, like caves under the sea, but the peace that the world cannot give. He understood that the wretched little Jean, who had scarcely been able to polish the crystals of the chandeliers before high festivals or to gather moss for the ladies to make into garlands, that poor hunter of magpies, was a vastly different person from the man who was now offering his life for the salvation of others. The priest was overwhelmed in the presence of Him who possessed the power to make slaves equal unto Himself.
XV
FORTUNATELY for Jean, the summer was a mild one; in September frequent storms turned the leaves red. Cadette's grandson brought in the first mushrooms, smelling of forest loam, and diverted him with ortolans taken at dawn, which he would fatten in the dark and serve to Monsieur Jean soaked in old armagnac. Flights of wood-pigeons foretold an early winter, and soon the decoys would be prepared.
Jean had always loved the autumn; he felt a secret affinity with the fields of harvested millet, with the tawny heather-lands known only to solitary ring-doves, to sheep, and to the wind. The scent that came in through the window, opened at dawn to make his breathing easier, reminded him of those melancholy October afternoons when he used to come slowly back from his shooting. He was not allowed to wait peacefully for his release. Noémi did not understand that silence is due to the dying, and just as in the early days she had been unable to conceal her disgust, she could not now spare him the sight of her remorse. Her thirst for his forgiveness was insatiable, and as she bent over his hands, wet with her tears, he whispered: "I am the one who chose you, Noémi. I was the one who should have considered you ..."; but his words were in vain. She shook her head; Jean was dying for her sake; this thought banished everything else from her mind. Oh, the bigness, the nobility of him! How she would love him if he were to recover! She would pay back a hundredfold any affection that he might show her now. How was she to know that the moment when Jean became convalescent must mark the beginning of a fresh desire to be rid of him, and that he had to be at the point of death before she could love him? Young, ignorant and sensual, she could not possibly know her own mind, but her desires were sincere and she had communicated them to God. She kept clumsily insisting that Jean should set her free from remorse and he soon lost heart; his one idea now was to avoid being left alone with her. This would have been difficult to manage, a host of imagined ills having rivetted M. Jêrome to his bed, but for the frequent visits of the young doctor. Jean wondered at such extraordinary attention from a stranger, and, though unable to converse with him, enjoyed his presence.
One afternoon late in September he roused himself after a long period of inertia and saw that Noémi was sitting in a chair by the window asleep, with her head resting on her shoulder. He listened for a moment to her regular breathing, and then closed his eyes. The door-latch clicked, the doctor came in softly, but Jean, too weak to utter a single word of greeting, pretended to be asleep. There was a squeak of hunting boots, and then the room was still. The silence excited Jean's curiosity and he opened his eyes again; the doctor was standing near his sleeping wife, he was leaning ever so slightly towards her, and his big hand trembled.... Then Jean shut his eyes and heard Noémi's low voice: "Oh, do forgive me, doctor; I didn't hear you come in. I must have been asleep. Our patient is having a bad day to-day; the weather is so oppressive. Look at the leaves; they're not moving." He answered that there was a breath from the South-West; then Noémi went on: "It comes from Spain; there'll be a storm...." The man's pale face and his burning eyes were the portents of the storm that was imminent, and they were as clear to Noémi as any thunder-cloud. She got up and walked across the room in order to put Jean's bed between her body and those devouring eyes. The doctor stuttered: "You should take great care of yourself, if only for his sake." "Oh, I can withstand anything. I'm strong; I eat and sleep like an animal.... I envy people who can die of grief." They sat at opposite sides of the room, and Jean, apparently asleep, sang to himself without moving his lips, pausing at the cesura: Mon Péloueyre touche à son heure dernière....
Autumn with its veils of mist and its scent of tears folded him in her arms, and he was able to breathe more easily and eat a little. But during these days his mental agony was at its height. Lingering on the borderland between life and death, without distrusting Noémi he could not help wondering how, when he had gone, she would defend herself against this young man's irresistible beauty. Two persons predestined to love each other are not kept apart by the wretched ghost of a dead man. But there was no trace of these tormenting thoughts upon Jean's face and he smiled as he shook hands with the doctor. Ah, that he might live to conquer in the battle for Noémi's love! What obscure madness had produced his desire for death? Even without Noémi, even without any wife, he would have the caresses that were worth more to him than any others, those of the wind at dawn. Pouring with perspiration and sickened by the smell of the sick room, he looked with envious eyes at Cadette's grandson who had brought him the first woodcock of the season. What joy those mornings had been: dull grey pine-tops high in the blue sky, like the meek who will be exalted to glory; the strip of green grass and alders and mist in the heart of the forest that marked the wandering course of a stream whose clear waters flowed over a bed of brown sand. These pines beloved by Jean Péloueyre were the vanguard of a great army that stretched between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic, overlooking Sauternes and the hot valley where the sun warms every stem of every cluster of grapes.
With the passing of the years Jean would have become less and less a prey to emotions, and his ugliness, like all ugliness and all beauty, would have lost itself in old age. At least, he would have had the long days of hunting and gathering mushrooms. In bottles of Yquem are imprisoned the burning summers of long ago, and the sunsets of yesteryear redden the Gruau-Larose; one sits reading before the kitchen fire when the heather lands are bathed in rain and mist.... "It's not necessary for you to come to-morrow," Noémi said to the doctor, and he replied: "Oh, yes, I had better come." Was it possible that she did not understand? Had he never declared himself? Would death carry him off before he knew the result of this contest at his bedside? It was as though someone who thought the unhappy boy was leaving the world without enough suffering had hastened to bind him with the earthly ties that require the severest exertion to break. However, these fell from him one by one before his last day; peace settled upon him, and he had the same grateful smile for everyone. He no longer repeated lines of poetry, but words like these: "It is I. Fear not."
They had to keep the windows of Jean's dismal room closed on account of the late winter rains; but why did they trouble themselves about Jean's suffering, when suffering was a joy to him? The only signs of the life about him that penetrated his consciousness were the crowing of cocks, the jolting of farm carts, the church bells, and the endless patter of rain upon the tiles; and at night he heard the savage screams of birds of prey and the cries of their victims. The dim light of his last dawn came in at the windows. Cadette lit the fire, and the room was filled with resinous fumes. Through many hot summers this scent of burning pine had blown from the parched heather lands upon his face. The d'Artiailhs thought he could still hear, but no longer could see. M. Jêrome, in his soiled dressing gown, stood near the door weeping, and Cadette knelt with her grandson at the foot of the bed. The voice of the priest seemed with propitiatory phrases to be pushing open an invisible door: "Depart from this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty, Who created you in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Who suffered for you; in the Name of the Holy Ghost Who came down upon you; in the name of Angels and of Archangels; in the name of Thrones and of Dominions; in the name of Principalities and of Powers...."
Noémi gazed at him earnestly and she said softly to herself: "He was beautiful."
The people in the town mistook the bell that tolled while he was dying for the morning Angelus.
XVI
M. JEROME went to bed. The mirrors in which Jean had so often seen his wretched face were covered with dustsheets. His body had been dressed as though for high mass, and Cadette had even put a soft felt hat upon his head and a prayer book in his hands. The kitchen was all bustle and confusion for there would be forty people in the dining-room, and a group of farmers standing round the hearse groaned uncontrollably, like the mourners of ancient days. It was the first time that the priest had officiated at a funeral of such magnificence. Each guest was given a pair of gloves and a sou wrapped in paper. It rained during the service, but afterwards the sun broke through the clouds and shone until the funeral procession had left the cemetery. Jean Péloueyre awaited the resurrection of the dead, his body lying uncorrupted in the dry embalming sand. Noémi Péloueyre shrouded herself in crêpe for three years and her deep mourning enabled her to be almost literally invisible. She only went out to go to mass, and always before crossing the square made certain that no one was in sight. Even through the heat of summer she wore a high black collar edged with white, and in order to protect herself against the comments of the severe she refused to wear dresses made of a too silky material.
About this time a report of the young doctor's conversion went the rounds. He went to mass, and was seen in the church on week-days as well. When the priest was approached on the subject of this event which must have been such a satisfactory one to him, a smile played about his thin-lipped mouth, but he said nothing.
He seemed to have lost his influence and his power of persuasion, for he was unable to find out from M. Jêrome whether he had taken out of his will the clause which obliged Noémi not to re-marry. He failed, too, when he expressed his disapproval of the mourning and insisted that they should relax the strictness with which it was being carried out. M. Jêrome was proud of belonging to a family whose widows never went out of mourning, and the d'Artiailhs were most anxious for Noémi to continue wearing it. And this was why, in the early winter mornings, the young doctor was no more able to see the widow in her shadowy retreat than she to see her husband through the flagstone that sealed his grave, upon which she knelt every day. At times, however, he caught glimpses of her face, youthfully radiant in spite of her secluded life and of her fasts before Communion. The day after the Anniversary Mass, when it became known in the town that Noémi would stay in mourning, the doctor's Christian resolutions broke down. He neglected his patients as well as his religious duties, and Doctor Pieuchon was told that his young colleague had taken to drink, that he even kept a bottle at his bedside for nocturnal consumption. M. Jêrome's health was excellent, so his daughter-in-law had a good deal of leisure; she occupied herself with the estate, but the timber cutting required little supervision. Her religion was a cut-and-dried, mechanical affair, took up a very small part of her time and was not strengthened by reading. She was scarcely capable of meditation, so her faith rested almost entirely upon formula. In a country flowing with resin there is scarcely any poverty; and only a few moments are necessary once a week to collect the bleating flock of the Children of the Virgin about a harmonium. The only thing left for Noémi to do was to interest herself mildly, as did most of the women of Les Landes, in cooking. After the third year of her mourning she began to put on flesh, and Doctor Pieuchon had to prescribe an hour's walk every day.
One warm afternoon in the early spring she went as far as the farm called Tartehume and sank down exhausted on the bank that ran along the side of the road. Bees hummed in the broom; horseflies stung her ankles. Noémi's heart was beating rapidly and she could think of nothing but the dusty road that led back to the house; there were two miles of blazing sun, for the trees that bordered the road had recently been cut down. She felt that she would be forever hemmed in by these endless pines with their sticky red gashes, and in these dreary stretches of sand and burnt heather. In her slow uncultivated mind there was a confused echo of the conflict that had tortured Jean Péloueyre in the days of his bachelorhood. The aridity of her country and the solitude of her life parched her soul with mortal thirst and forced the wretched girl to raise her eyes and stretch out her hands towards the Living Water which is perpetual refreshment.
Noémi dried the perspiration from her hands with a black-bordered handkerchief. She looked at her dusty shoes and at a tuft of young ferns whose fronds were opening out like fingers. Then she raised her eyes slowly and the smell of rye bread came drifting across to her like the very breath of the farm. Suddenly she stood up, trembling. A gig that she easily recognized was standing in front of the farmhouse. How often through half-opened shutters she had gazed at its polished axle-caps, more thrilling to her than the stars in the heavens! Noémi shook the sand from the folds of her dress; the wheels of a farm cart creaked; a jay cried. A swarm of horseflies enveloped her as she stood watching the farmhouse door. Her mouth was open, her breath came quickly, and she waited and waited—a meek submissive animal. Then the door swung half-way back, and she tried to see into the dim hall where he was standing. A familiar voice was prescribing in peasant dialect enormous doses of tincture of iodine. He appeared; and every button on his hunting jacket gleamed in the sunlight, as the farmer accompanied him to the gate and held his horse, remarking that this was the season for forest fires; everything was dry; there was no green undergrowth and no rain to ease the situation. The young man picked up the reins.
Noémi drew back; her impulsive movement towards him was checked by a hidden force. She plunged into a thicket of tall heather bushes, scratching her hands on the brambles, and listened for a moment as the gig rattled away down the road. No doubt she was thinking, as she hid from him, of the town's disapproval of all lapses from respectable widowhood; and then there was the clause in M. Jêrome's will, which would always prevent her parents from giving their consent to what Madame d'Artiailh called a crazy match. Noémi would have instinctively swept aside such obstacles as these, had not her instinct been stifled by something still more powerful. Her trifling personality was condemned to greatness; her slavery had become authority. This commonplace girl could not help transcending herself; no road was open to her save that of renunciation, and in this moment she knew that her fidelity to the dead was a humble glory from which her destiny forbade her to escape.
So Noémi ran on through the scorched heather, till at last breathless, exhausted, and her shoes full of sand, she faltered and grasped a stunted oak whose withered leaves rustled in the hot wind—a stunted blackened tree that reminded her of Jean Péloueyre.
La Motte, Vémars, July;
Johannet, Saint-Symphorien, September 1921.