Thérèse

“A letter from the master.”

As Thérèse did not take the envelope that she held out, Balionte pressed it on her: Monsieur had surely said when he was coming back, and she must know, so as to have everything in readiness.

“If Madame would like me to read it.”

“Oh, read it, read it,” said Thérèse. And, as she always did when Balionte was in the room, turned her face to the wall. However, what Balionte managed to decipher, aroused her from her lethargy.

Bernard announced that he was coming back by road, but that as he expected to stop at several places on the way he could not fix the exact date of his return.

It was a beautiful day, clear and cold. Thérèse got up, obedient to Balionte’s injunctions, and took a turn in the garden leaning on her arm, but she found it very difficult to finish a scrap of chicken for her dinner. There were ten days left before December 20th. If Madame would consent to make an effort, it was quite long enough to get on her legs again.

“One can’t say that she doesn’t try,” said Balionte to Balion. “She does what she can. Monsieur Bernard knows how to break in a dog that won’t obey him. You know that iron collar he puts on them? Well, it didn’t take him long to make her crawl. But he’d better not be too sure of her....”

Thérèse was, in fact, making a great effort to try to give up dreaming and sleeping, and come back to life again. She forced herself to walk and eat, but especially to get her brain clear once more, and to look at men and things with the eyes of the flesh;—and just as though she were coming back to a stretch of heath which she had set on fire, treading upon the ashes and walking among the burnt and blackened pines, so she would try to speak and smile among that Family,—her family.

On the eighteenth, about three o’clock, on a cloudy but fine afternoon, Thérèse was sitting in her room in front of the fire, her head leaning against the back of the chair, and her eyes shut. She was awakened by the throbbing engines of a motor-car; she recognised Bernard’s voice in the entrance-hall and also Madame de la Trave’s. When Balionte, completely out of breath, had pushed open the door without knocking, Thérèse was already standing up before the mirror. She was putting rouge on her cheeks and lips. “I must not frighten the poor young man,” she said to herself.

But Bernard had made a mistake in not going up to see his wife at once. Young Deguilhem, who had promised his family “to keep his eyes extremely wide open,” reflected that this was, “to say the least of it, a rather significant piece of neglect.” He drew a little aside from Anne and turned up his fur collar, remarking that “it was not worth trying to warm these country drawing-rooms.” “Have you no cellar below?” he asked Bernard. “If not, your floor will always rot unless you lay down a bed of cement....”

Anne de la Trave was wearing a grey squirrel cloak, and a felt hat without any ribbon or bow. (“But,” as Madame de la Trave said, “it cost more just as it was, than our hats did with all their feathers and aigrettes. It is the best felt, certainly: it comes from Lailhaca, but it is a Reboux model.”) Madame de la Trave stretched out her boots to the fire, and her face, at once arrogant and weak, was turned towards the door. She had promised Bernard she would be equal to the situation, but she had warned him that she would not kiss Thérèse. “You cannot ask your mother to do that, it will be dreadful enough for me to have to touch her hand. My feeling is this: what she did was awful enough, God knows; but it isn’t that that revolts me the most. One already knew that there were people capable of committing murder ... but it’s her hypocrisy! That really is awful! Don’t you remember what she said: ‘Mother, do take this chair, you will be more comfortable....’ And don’t you remember when she was so frightened of giving you a shock? ‘The poor darling has such a horror of death, a consultation would be the end of him....’ God knows I didn’t suspect anything; but ‘poor darling,’ coming from her, did surprise me....”

At present, in that Argelouse drawing-room, Madame de la Trave was only conscious of the embarrassment that every one was feeling; and she noticed young Deguilhem’s goggle eyes fixed on Bernard.

“Bernard, you ought to go and see what Thérèse is doing ... perhaps she is feeling worse.”

Anne, who seemed indifferent and aloof from anything that might happen, was the first to recognise a familiar step, and said: “I hear her coming down.” Bernard, with a hand against his heart, was seized with a palpitation; he was a fool not to have come the day before; he ought to have arranged the scene with Thérèse in advance. What would she say? She was quite capable of upsetting everything without precisely doing anything that she could be called to account for. How slowly she came downstairs! They were all standing up, turned towards the door, which Thérèse at last opened.

Bernard was to remember, for many years after, that at the approach of that wasted form, that small, white, painted face, his first thought was: The Assize Court. But not because of Thérèse’s crime. In a flash, he saw before him that coloured picture from the Petit Parisien, which among so many others adorned the wooden closets in the garden at Argelouse; while amid the buzz of flies, and the shrill voices of the grasshoppers on a blazing day of summer, his boyish eyes stared so earnestly at that red and green drawing which depicted a poor wretched girl who had been imprisoned and starved by her parents at Poitiers.

So now, he watched Thérèse as she stood there, bloodless and emaciated, and realised his folly in not having got rid of this terrible woman,—as one flings into the water an infernal machine which may burst at any moment. Whether consciously or not, Thérèse suggested tragedy,—worse than that in fact: the tragedies of the Sunday Newspapers. She could be nothing but criminal or victim....

The Family broke into a murmur of astonishment and pity, so obviously genuine, that young Deguilhem began to doubt his conclusions and did not know what to think.

“It is quite simple,” said Thérèse. “The bad weather stopped my going out, so I lost my appetite. I was hardly eating at all. It’s much better to get thin than fat.... But I want to talk about you, Anne, I am so delighted....”

She took Anne’s hands (she was sitting down and Anne was standing) and looked at her. In that face, which looked so ravaged, Anne could clearly recognise the expression whose persistence used to irritate her in days gone by. She remembered how she used to say. “When you have finished looking at me like that!”

“I am delighted to hear of your happiness, my little Anne.”

As she uttered the word “happiness” she smiled faintly at young Deguilhem,—his bald head, his curly moustache, his sloping shoulders, his tight little coat, and his fat little legs under the black-and-grey striped trousers. (Oh well! A man like any other,—just a husband!) Then once more she rested her eyes on Anne and said:

“Take your hat off.... Ah, now I recognise you, darling.”

Anne now saw quite close to her those slightly twisted lips, those eyes that were always dry, those eyes that could not weep; but she did not know what Thérèse was thinking. Young Deguilhem was saying that winter in the country was not so dreadful for a woman who is fond of her home:

“There are always so many things to do in a house.”

“But you don’t ask for any news of Marie.”

“That’s true.... Tell me about Marie....”

Anne seemed once more distrustful and hostile; she had been saying for months, in the same tone as her mother: “I would have forgiven her anything, because, after all, she is ill; but I cannot forgive her indifference about Marie. When a mother takes no interest in her child, you can invent any excuses you like for her, I think it is disgraceful.”

Thérèse read the young girl’s thoughts: “She despises me because I did not begin by talking about Marie. How can I explain? She would not understand that I can think of nothing but myself, that I am my only interest. Anne, of course, is simply waiting to have children so as to efface herself in them as her mother does, and all the women of the Family. But I want to find myself again; I am trying to make my own acquaintance.... Anne will forget our youth together, the caresses of Jean Azévédo, with the first howl of the brat which that little object will beget upon her without even troubling to take off his coat. The ambition of the women of the Family is to lose all their individual existence. This complete self-sacrifice for the species is a fine thing; I feel the beauty of that absorption, that self-annihilation ... but I—No!...”

She tried not to listen to what people were saying, and to think of Marie: the child must be able to talk now: “Perhaps it would amuse me for a few minutes to listen to her, but I should soon get tired of it, and want to be alone with myself again.”

“I suppose Marie talks by now?” she asked Anne.

“She repeats anything you like. It’s great fun; whenever she hears a cock crow, or the noise of a motor-horn, she puts up her little finger and says: Do you hear the music?’ She’s a perfect little love.”

Thérèse thought to herself; “I must try to listen to what they are saying: my head feels quite empty; what is young Deguilhem talking about?” She made a great effort and tried to attend.

“My men at Balisac don’t work like they do here: only four barrels of stuff, while the Argelouse men get in seven or eight.”

“Well, with resin at its present price, they really must be lazy.”

“Do you know that these people can earn a hundred francs a day sometimes? ... but I think we are tiring Madame Desqueyroux.”

Thérèse was resting her head against the back of her chair. Everybody got up. Bernard decided that he would not go back to Saint Clair. Young Deguilhem agreed to drive the car which the chauffeur would bring back to Argelouse the following day with Bernard’s luggage. Thérèse made an effort to get up but her mother-in-law prevented her.

She shut her eyes, and heard Bernard say to Madame de la Trave: “Really, that Balion pair are beyond everything! I’ll let them have something they won’t forget.” “Take care, don’t do anything in a hurry; we don’t want them to go away, they know a little too much: and then don’t forget the estates: Balion’s the only person who really knows the boundaries.”

And Madame de la Trave added in reply to some remark of Bernard’s that Thérèse did not hear:

“All the same, be careful, don’t trust her too far; watch her movements, and never let her go into the kitchen or dining-room alone.... No, she hasn’t fainted: she’s asleep, or pretending to be....”

Thérèse opened her eyes again: Bernard stood in front of her; he held a glass and said: “There, drink that: it’s a glass of port, it will do you good.” And as he always did what he had made up his mind to do he went into the kitchen, and proceeded to lose his temper. Thérèse heard Balionte’s raucous patois and thought: “Bernard has clearly been frightened: I wonder why?” At that moment he came back.

“I think you would eat with more appetite in the dining-room than in your own room. I have given orders for your place to be laid there again.”

This was the Bernard she had known at the time of the enquiry: the ally who wanted to save her at any price. And now he was unreservedly anxious she should get well. Yes, it was clear he had been frightened. Thérèse watched him, sitting opposite her, and stirring the fire, but she could not guess what those great round eyes of his were seeing in the flames:—the red and green drawing from the Petit Parisien.

Incessant as the rain had been, not a single puddle was left in the sand of Argelouse. In the very depths of winter, after an hour’s sunshine, one could walk dry-shod in country sandals, along the road, on that dry and yielding carpet of pine-needles. Bernard was out shooting all day, but came back to meals: he was anxious about Thérèse, and more attentive than he had ever been. There was but little constraint in their relations. He made her weigh herself every three days, and not smoke more than two cigarettes after each meal. On Bernard’s advice Thérèse took long walks: “Exercise is the best digestive,” he would say.

She was no longer afraid of Argelouse: it seemed as though the pines were moving further off, opening their ranks, and signalling to her to make her escape.

One evening Bernard had said to her: “I am only asking you to wait until Anne’s marriage: we must be seen in company once more by the whole neighbourhood: after that you will be free.” She had not been able to sleep during the following night: her joy made her restless and her eyes would not close. At dawn she heard the innumerable cocks, who did not seem to be answering each other: they were all crowing together and filling earth and heaven with their united clamour. Bernard would let her loose into the world, just as in days gone by he had let loose on the moors that wild sow he had not been able to tame. When Anne was at last married, people might say what they liked: Bernard would fling Thérèse into the depths of Paris and then hurriedly retire; this was understood between them. There would be no divorce or official separation; some reason of health would be invented for the sake of appearances,—“She is never well except when she is travelling.” And Bernard would render, every All-Saints’ Day, an exact account of the income from the sale of her resin.

Bernard did not question Thérèse about her plans, let her go and hang herself somewhere else. “I shan’t have any peace,” he said to his mother: “until she is off the premises.” And she had replied: “I’ve no doubt she will take her maiden name again ... however, if she gets into trouble, you will be dragged into it fast enough.” “But Thérèse,” he said, “only kicked in harness; no one could be more sensible when she had her freedom.” In any case, they must take the risk. That was Monsieur Larroque’s opinion also. All things considered, it was better that Thérèse should disappear; she would be more quickly forgotten, and people would get out of the habit of talking about her. Silence was the essential thing. This notion was so firmly fixed in their minds that nothing could have uprooted it. They must get Thérèse out of harness; and how impatient they were to do it!

Thérèse loved to watch the close of winter despoiling the already barren land, though the oaks had never shed their stubborn mantle of dead leaves. She discovered that the silence of Argelouse had no real existence. In the calmest weather the forest moaned like a sorrowing human soul, and lulled itself to sleep: and the nights were full of a murmur that never ceased. In her future life; that unimaginable life before her, there would be dawns so barren that she would perhaps regret the hour of awakening at Argelouse: that marvellous clamour of myriad cocks. She would remember, in the summers to come, the grasshoppers by day and the crickets by night. Paris: no longer the torn and battered pines, but human beings to be feared: a world of men, no longer a world of trees.

Husband and wife were astonished that their relations were so little constrained. Thérèse reflected that people become endurable as soon as we are sure we can get away from them. Bernard was interested in Thérèse’s weight,—but also in her conversation. She spoke more freely in his company than she had ever done: “In Paris ... when I am in Paris ...” she would begin: she would live in a hotel and perhaps look for a flat. She would take up a course of study, and go to lectures and concerts; “begin her education all over again.” Bernard never thought of watching her, and ate his soup and drank his wine, quite unconcerned. Doctor Pédemay, who sometimes met them on the Argelouse road, said to his wife: “What is so amazing is that they don’t look as if they were acting.”