Thérèse

Saint Clair, at last. No one recognised Thérèse as she got out of the carriage. While Balion was giving up her tickets she went round outside the station through some stacks of timber and got on to the road where the carriage was waiting.

This carriage had become her refuge; along that jolting road she was no longer afraid of meeting any one. Her whole story, so carefully constructed, collapsed: nothing remained of the confession she had prepared. No; she had nothing to say in her defence, not even a reason to give: the simplest thing would be to say nothing, or merely answer questions. What had she to fear? That night would pass like all the rest: the sun would rise to-morrow: she was sure all would be well whatever happened. And nothing could be worse than that indifference, that utter apathy that cut her off from the world and from her very existence. It was truly death in life: she had tasted death as far as a living woman may.

Her eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, recognised at a turn of the road the farm where certain low buildings looked like animals crouching and asleep. It was here that Anne used to be frightened of a dog that would always run under the wheels of her bicycle. Further on, a clump of elders revealed a glimpse of water; and on the days of fiercest heat a breath of coolness fanned the girl’s cheeks at this point. A child on a bicycle, whose teeth gleamed under her sunbonnet, the sound of a bell, and a voice crying: “Look, I’m letting both my hands go!” And this blurred image, from those days now past for ever, was all that Thérèse could find to comfort her fainting heart.

She repeated mechanically, in time with the rhythm of the horse’s hooves: “useless ... endless ... hopeless.” Ah! the only possible gesture,—Bernard would never make it. Supposing he did open his arms without asking her any questions! If only she could lay her head on a human breast, if only she could weep against a living body!

She noticed the embankment on which Jean Azévédo had sat, one hot day. To think she had believed that some place existed in the world in which she could have fulfilled her destiny among beings who would have understood her, perhaps admired and loved her! But loneliness had eaten into her like a leper’s sores: “No one can help me. No one can hurt me.”

“Here is Monsieur, and Mademoiselle Clara.”

Balion drew in the reins. Two shadows came forward. So Bernard, though still very weak, had come to meet her—impatient to know that all was well. She half-rose from her seat, and cried out before they met: “Case dismissed.”

Merely replying, “Of course!” Bernard helped the aunt to climb into the carriage and took the reins. Balion was to go back on foot. Aunt Clara sat between husband and wife. They had to shout to her that it was all settled (she had, in fact, only the vaguest knowledge of the tragedy). The deaf woman began one of her usual interminable discourses; she said They had always played the same game and that it was the Dreyfus affair all over again. “If you keep on throwing mud, some of it will always stick. They were terribly powerful and the Republicans were very wrong not to keep their eyes open. As soon as these poisonous brutes are given the least chance, they’re on you at once....”

These fatuities relieved the pair from the necessity of exchanging a single word.

Aunt Clara, breathing heavily, went upstairs carrying a candle in her hand:

“Aren’t you going to bed? Thérèse must be worn out. You will find a cup of bouillon and some cold chicken in your room.”

But husband and wife remained standing in the entrance-hall. The old lady saw Bernard open the door of the drawing-room, stand aside for Thérèse, and disappear after her. If she had not been deaf, she would have done a little eavesdropping ... but there was nothing to fear from her, buried, as she was, alive. She put out her candle, however, went downstairs again, and looked through the keyhole. Bernard was moving a lamp: his face was fully in the light, and he looked both nervous and solemn. The aunt saw the back of Thérèse seated; she had thrown her toque and mantle on to an arm-chair: her wet shoes were steaming in front of the fire. For one instant she turned her head to her husband and the old lady was glad to see she was smiling.

Thérèse was smiling. In the brief interval of space and time between the stable and the house, walking at Bernard’s side, she suddenly saw, or thought she saw, what she ought to do. The mere proximity of the man had destroyed her hope of explaining herself, or of giving him her confidence. How we distort the creatures we know best as soon as they are no longer there! During the whole of this journey, she had unconsciously been trying to create an image of a Bernard capable of understanding her;—but at the first glance he appeared to her just as he really was, one who had never once in his life put himself in another’s place; one who had never made the effort to get outside himself to see what his opponent was seeing. Indeed, would Bernard even listen to her? He paced the long, low, damp room, and the flooring, which was rotting here and there, creaked beneath his steps. He did not look at his wife,—he was bursting with a speech he had long since prepared. And Thérèse, too, knew what she was going to say. The simplest solution is always the one we never think of. She would say, ‘I am going to disappear, Bernard. Don’t worry about me. I will go out into the night at once, if you like. I am not afraid of the forest or the darkness. They know me: we know each other. I was created in the image of this arid land in which nothing lives except the birds that pass over it and stray wild boars. I consent to my expulsion; burn all my photographs; let even my daughter no longer know my name, let me be in the eyes of the family as if I had never been.’

And Thérèse opened her mouth, and said, “Let me disappear, Bernard.”

At the sound of her voice Bernard turned. He hurried back from the far end of the room, the veins of his face swollen:

“What,” he stuttered, “do you dare to express an opinion? Not another word! Your business is to listen, to receive my orders and obey what I shall decide once and for all.”

He stammered no more, having now got into touch with his carefully prepared phrases. Leaning against the mantelpiece, he spoke in measured tones, taking a piece of paper from his pocket and referring to it now and then. Thérèse was no longer frightened; she wanted to laugh: he was ridiculous,—a purely comic figure. She cared little for what he was saying in that disgusting accent of his that made every one laugh except at Saint Clair. She would go. Why all this melodrama? It would not have mattered in the least if this fool had disappeared from the ranks of living men. She noticed his ill-kept nails against the paper that shook in his hands: he had no cuffs on his shirt, he was one of those absurd oafs who are out of their proper station, and whose lives are of no value to anything or anybody. It is only from habit that one attaches infinite importance to a man’s existence. Robespierre was right: and Napoleon, and Lenin.... He saw her smile: lost his temper, raised his voice, and she was obliged to listen:

“I’ve got you; do you understand? You will have to obey what the Family has decided, or else....”

“Or else ... what?”

She no longer troubled to feign indifference: she assumed a tone of bravado and mockery: “Too late!” she cried. “You have given evidence in my favour: you can’t go back on it. You will be convicted of perjury....”

“Another piece of evidence can always be discovered. I have such a further proof in my desk. There is no statute of limitations for evidence, thank God!”

She shuddered:

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

He consulted his notes, and for a few seconds Thérèse sat listening to the stupendous silence of Argelouse. The hour of cock-crow was yet far off: no living water flowed in that desert, not a breath of wind moved the countless tree-tops.

“I am not giving way to any personal considerations. I am disregarding myself: the Family alone counts. The interests of the Family have always dictated all my decisions. I have consented for the honour of the Family, to cheat the justice of my country. God will be my judge.”

This pompous tone made Thérèse feel ill. She felt like asking him to express himself more simply.

“It is of importance, for the sake of the Family, that the world should think our relations all they should be, and that I should not seem to throw any doubt upon your innocence. On the other hand, I want to protect myself as far as possible....”

“Are you afraid of me, Bernard?”

“Afraid? No: I merely regard you with horror. But,” he went on: “I shall waste no time; what I am saying, I say once and for all: we shall leave this place to-morrow and go and live near by in the Desqueyroux house: I will not have your aunt living with us. Your meals will be brought to your room by Balionte. You are forbidden to enter any other room: but I shall not prevent you going for walks in the woods. On Sunday we shall be present together at High Mass in the Church of Saint Clair. You must be seen walking with me: and on the first Thursday of the month we shall go in an open carriage to the fair at B——, and to visit your father, as we have always done.”

“And Marie?”

“Marie leaves to-morrow with her nurse for Saint Clair, and after that my mother will take her to the South. We will invent some reason of health. You can hardly have supposed she would be left with you? We must put her in safety, too! If I had gone, she would have had the property when she was twenty-one. After the husband, the child ... naturally!”

Thérèse had got up: she stifled a cry:

“So you think it was for the pines that I....” So among the many secret springs of her action, this imbecile had not been able to discover one; and he invented the lowest....

“Why, of course: for the pines ... what else? I defy you to produce another motive.... However, it is of no importance and no longer interests me; I ask myself no more questions. You are nothing: all that exists is the name you bear, alas! In a few months, when every one is convinced of our good relations, and Anne has married young Deguilhem, ... you may be aware that the Deguilhems are insisting on some little delay and asking for time to think matters over ... then I shall at last be able to go and live at Saint Clair: you will stay here. You will be neurasthenic, or something....”

“Mad, perhaps?”

“No, that would injure Marie. But we shall find plenty of plausible reasons.... And that is all.”

Thérèse murmured: “At Argelouse ... until I die....”

She went to the window and opened it. At that moment Bernard was really happy; this woman who had always intimidated and humiliated him, this evening he had her at his feet. How abject she must feel! His moderation made him feel quite pleased with himself. Madame de la Trave constantly told him he was a saint: the whole Family praised his noble character: and indeed he began for the first time to realise his own nobility of mind. When, with many precautions, Thérèse’s attempt on his life had been disclosed to him in the nursing-home, his self-possession, which had been so highly commended, had cost him but little effort. Nothing seems really serious to those who are incapable of love; because he was without love, Bernard had only felt the sort of tremulous joy that follows an escape from great danger: the sort of sensation a man might have who had been told that he has lived for years, without knowing it, in the company of a homicidal maniac. But that evening Bernard was conscious of his strength: he dominated life. He marvelled how every difficulty gives way before a clear and upright mind: even so soon after all this turmoil he was ready to maintain that “no one is ever unhappy except by his own fault.” See how he had dealt with the most appalling tragedy as if it had been the most ordinary matter of business. It would hardly be known: he would save his face: no one would sympathize with him any more, and he hated sympathy. There is nothing humiliating about having married a criminal when one has the last word. Besides, a bachelor life is no bad thing, and the proximity of death had marvellously increased in him his taste for landed property, shooting, motor-cars, and things to eat and drink;—for life, in short.

Thérèse remained standing before the window: she could catch a glimpse of white gravel, and smell the chrysanthemums, which were protected from the cattle by wire-netting. Beyond them a dark mass of oaks hid the pines: but the night was full of their resinous odour: like a hostile army, invisible but near at hand, Thérèse knew that they surrounded the house. These warders, whose muttered lamentations she could hear, would watch her wasting away through the winters, and gasping through the summer heats: they would be the witnesses of her slow strangulation. She shut the window once more and went up to Bernard.

“Do you think you will keep me here by force?”

“As you like ... but let me tell you this: you won’t leave this house except in handcuffs.”

“What nonsense! I know you: don’t make yourself out worse than you are. You will not expose the Family to such shame. You need not try to frighten me.” Whereupon, with the air of a man who has well weighed everything, he explained to her that to leave the house was to confess her guilt. In that case, the Family could only avert disgrace by amputating the diseased member, rejecting and disowning it in the face of the world.

“That was, in fact, the decision my mother wanted us to make, I may tell you. We were on the point of letting justice take its course; and if it had not been for Anne and Marie.... But there is still time. Do not give your answer in a hurry: I will give you till to-morrow morning.”

“I have my father still,” said Thérèse in a whisper.

“Your father? But we’re in entire agreement. He has his career, his politics, the ideas he stands for: his only thought is to hush up the scandal at whatever cost. You must realise what he has done for you: it was entirely due to him that the enquiry came to nothing. Besides, he must have made his express wishes known to you.... Hasn’t he?”

Bernard’s voice was no longer raised, he became almost courteous. It was not that he felt the slightest compassion. But this woman, whom he could not even hear breathing, was at last prostrate: she had found her true place. All was now in order. Another man’s peace of mind would not have survived such a blow: Bernard was proud to have made so successful a recovery: any one may be deceived; indeed everybody, for the matter of that, had been deceived by Thérèse, even Madame de la Trave, who was usually such a penetrating judge of character. The fact was that in these days people do not take sufficient account of principles: they no longer realise the dangers of an education, such as Thérèse had received; a perverted creature, no doubt; still, it is no use saying,—“if she had believed in God” ... fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Such were Bernard’s thoughts. And he reflected, too, that all the neighbours, greedy to enjoy their shame, would be greatly disconcerted every Sunday by the sight of so harmonious a household! He was almost impatient for Sunday to come so that he might observe their expressions!... Moreover, justice would still be done. He took the lamp, and as he raised it, the light fell upon Thérèse’s averted head:

“Aren’t you going up yet?”

She did not seem to hear him: and he went out, leaving her in darkness. At the bottom of the staircase Aunt Clara sat crouching on the lowest step. As the old woman stared at him, he smiled with an effort, and took her arm to raise her. But she resisted,—like an old dog against the bed of its dying master. Bernard placed the lamp on the paved floor, and shouted in the old woman’s ear that Thérèse was already feeling much better, but that she wanted to be alone for a few minutes before she went to bed.

“It is just one of her moods, you know.”

Yes, the aunt knew: it was always her ill-luck to go into Thérèse’s room just at the moment when she wanted to be alone. Indeed, in the past, the old lady had often felt she was not wanted immediately she had opened the door. She got up with an effort and, leaning on Bernard’s arm, went up to her room, which was over the large drawing-room. Bernard went in after her, carefully lit a candle on the table, kissed her on the forehead, and then withdrew. The aunt never took her eyes off him. What did she read on the faces of men whose voices she could not hear? She left Bernard the time to get to his room, and opened her door again gently ... but he was still on the landing, leaning against the banisters, rolling a cigarette; she hurriedly went in again, her legs trembling and so breathless that she had not the strength to undress. She remained lying on her bed, with staring eyes.