Chapter XIII: Part THREE: XXXVI (3)

There was nothing false in her tone now, and Annette pitied her again. She was insensible to the rights Noémi invoked over her husband; she did not believe in the rights of one being over another, in these contracts of mutual proprietorship that people sign for life. But she was distressed by these tricks of cruel nature who, when she separates two hearts that have loved each other, never removes love from both hearts at once--no, but rather takes pains that one of the two shall cease to love before the other, so that the most loving is always sacrificed. And it was hateful to her to further the schemes of the great torturer. "Life belongs to the strongest. Yes, love does not hesitate. To attain its end it tramples everything else under foot. Woe to the weak! . . . But why is it that I can't say this? I should like to, but the words stick in my throat, I cannot. It revolts me. Is it because I do not love enough? I am old, as she says. I belong in the ranks of the weak. . . . No! No! No! It's a trick! . . . By what right does she come and step between happiness and me? I will not give up to her my bit of happiness! . . . Her tears, what are her tears to me? . . . I will trample on her!"

But as she looked angrily at Noémi lying there, Noémi, who was watching her through her tears, took the hand, the arm that hung down by the back of the chair, pressed it against her cheek and begged, "Let me keep him!"

Annette tried to free herself. Noémi held her fast. Rising in her chair, she slid her two hands up Annette's arm, forcing her to bend over and look at her. "Let me keep him!"

Annette snatched herself away from the fingers that gripped her. She rebelled. "No! No! I will not. He needs me."

"He needs nothing but himself," said Noémi, bitterly. "He loves nothing but himself. He finds his pleasure in you as he once found it in me. He will leave you as he left me. He is not attached to anything."

She judged him hardly and profoundly. Annette was struck by her intelligence. With what acuteness, born of bitterness and suffering, had he been read to the depths by this little creature who seemed so frivolous and heedless! Some of her terrible observations corresponded only too well with the apprehensions that her own experiences had awakened in Annette. "And yet you love him?" she said.

"I love him. He does not need me. It is I who need him. . . . Ah! Do you suppose I don't suffer in needing a man who has no need of me, a man who despises me, whom I despise? . . . I do despise him! I despise him! But I can't live without him. . . . Why did I ever know him? It was I who wanted him. I wanted him, I caught him. . . . And I am the one who is caught. If only, if only I had never known him! Ah, but I can't wish that! . . . I haven't the strength. I am too much in love. He holds me completely. I hate him. I hate love. Why, why does one love?"

She stopped, exhausted, with her hunted eyes wandering, seeking to the right, to the left, a way of escape. They bowed their heads, these two women, enslaved under the yoke of the savage force.

Noémi took up her refrain in a dull, heavy tone, "Let me keep him."

Annette felt a will as tenacious and adhesive as a devilfish clinging to her limbs with its arms covered with suckers. She snatched herself away from it again and cried, "I will not."

There was a flash of anger in Noémi's eyes and her fingers clenched. Then in a soft, plaintive voice, she said, "Love him! Let him love you! But don't take him away from me. Let us both keep him, you and I."

Annette made a gesture of repulsion.

Noémi's fury flashed up again. "Do you think it doesn't disgust me? You disgust me. I detest you. But I don't want to lose him."

Annette moved away from Noémi and said, "I do not detest you. You are suffering and I am suffering. But it is base to divide in love. I am willing to be the victim. I am willing to be the executioner. I am not willing to be base. To save what I love I am not willing to surrender half of it. I give everything. I want everything. Or I want nothing."

Noémi, clenching her teeth, cried from the depths of her heart. "Nothing!" (For even while she was offering to yield a share, she counted on regaining everything.)

Then, with a bound, she rose from her chair, ran to Annette as she stood there, and, falling on her knees, clasped her legs. "Forgive me! I don't know, I don't know what I am asking. I don't know what I want. But I am unhappy. I cannot endure it. . . . What am I to do? Tell me! Help me!"

"Help you! I!" said Annette.

"You. To whom can I go for help? I am alone. Alone with that man who is not interested in you, even when he loves you, in whom you cannot put any trust. . . . And, before he came, a mother who was interested in nothing but herself, in her pleasures. . . . No one to advise me. ... I haven't a single friend. . . . When I saw you I thought you would be one. And you have been my worst enemy. . . . Why have you done me this injury?"

Annette was overwhelmed. "My poor child, it wasn't my fault. I didn't wish it. . . ."

Noémi seized upon this compassionate word, "Your child, you said. . . . Yes, be a mother, an older sister to me! Don't hurt me! Advise me. Tell me what I should do. I don't want to lose him. . . . Tell me, tell me. . . . I will do anything you say. . . ."

She was speaking only half falsely. She was so accustomed to shamming what she felt that she felt what she shammed. And her love, her grief, her need of Annette, her hope of touching her, were certainly real. Even this confidence she showed in her--the last card she had to play. She played it with a passion of despair. And even as she unbosomed herself, she did not lose sight of the disquietude that Annette's face could not conceal. Annette was weakening. Noémi's self-abandonment disarmed her. She no longer had the strength to reply. She was not deceived, however. The sugary tone of some of her adversary's inflections threw light on the latter's duplicity. She let her talk. She read her depths. She was thinking, "What shall I do? Sacrifice myself? What a sell! I will not. I don't like this woman. She lies, she hates me. But she is suffering." And she stroked the head of the kneeling enemy, who continued to groan and watch her, following her vacillating will as if it were her prey, with a shiver of fear, of acute breathless half-sanguinary joy, and who, at the right moments, pressing to her lips those hands that she would gladly have bitten, repeated, tirelessly, "Let me keep him!"

Annette, with lowered brows, wanted to drive her away. She saw in those eyes trickery and grief, falsehood and love, a desperate hope. She smiled with weariness, pity and disgust for herself, for them both--for everything; and, turning aside her head, she said in a moment of weakness, "Keep him!"

No sooner had she said it than she wished to take it back. But Noémi bounded to her feet and embraced Annette with frantic protestations. . . . (She had never hated her so much! At last she had her! . . . Had her?) Annette was already saying, "No, no! . . ."

Noémi pretended not to hear. She called her darling, her best friend. She vowed eternal gratitude, eternal love. She laughed and cried. But she did not waste her time in vain effusions. She wanted to know what Annette would do to get rid of Philippe.

Annette rebelled. "I said nothing."

"You did say it. You did say it. You promised me. . . ."

"A word that escaped me. . . . You dragged it from me by surprise."

"No, you can't take it back. You said 'Keep him.' You said it, Annette. Tell me that you said it! You can't deny it. . . ."

"Leave me, leave me," said Annette, exhausted. "Don't torment me. I can't. I can't."

She sat down, crushed, while Noémi, standing beside her, continued to harass her. Their rôles had changed. Annette refused to give him up; her love had taken root in her. Noémi did not care about this. Annette could keep her love if she did not keep Philippe. She wanted Annette to break with him at once, without waiting. And she could suggest ways of breaking with him; her head was full of them. She urged her, cajoled her, begged her, tried to force her, embraced her, deafened her with her flow of words; she appealed to her generous heart, besought, adjured, demanded, dictated the replies. . . .

Annette, rigid and frozen, would not say another word. She did not even try to stop this torrent. Her lips were tightly pressed together, her eyes dull. . . . At last Noémi became silent in the face of this immobility. She took her hands--they were cold and damp. "Answer, answer!" she said.

Without looking at her, Annette murmured, "Leave me." (Her voice was so low that Noémi read it on her lips rather than heard it.)

"You want me to go away?" she replied.

Annette nodded.

"I am going, but you have promised?"

Annette repeated wearily, "Leave me, leave me. . . . I need to be alone. . . ."

Noémi hastily rearranged her hair before the mirror. Then, turning towards the door, she said, "Good-bye, you have promised. . . ."

Annette made a final gesture of protest, "No, I have promised nothing."

Noémi felt herself again flooded with anger. After all this effort! But her instinct told her that she must not move too quickly or stretch the cord too tight. . . . All the same, the blow had its effect. She left.

She had seen the weakness of the enemy. She would trample on her.

XLV

Annette remained for some time motionless in the spot where Noémi had left her. She was exhausted after this long scene. She would have resisted better if the attack had not surprised her at a moment when she was already shaken by the double wear and tear of passion and incessant work, the uninterrupted fever aroused in her stormy soul by her participation in Philippe's struggles, the repressed remorse, the anguish that was concealed beneath her exhaustion of mind and body. This weakness gave Noémi her strength. She found the field prepared and an ally in her adversary.

Noémi herself played little part in Annette's anxieties. She cared little for her as a woman. As a rival she did not care about her at all. She considered her false, perfidious, heartless, and with jealous injustice she now denied what she had at first enjoyed, her charm. Everything about her seemed factitious except her grief. Besides, it mattered very little whether it was Noémi or someone else. . . . "She is a living creature who suffers, and I, I cause this suffering. . . ." And a strange pity preyed upon Annette's heart.

This tendency had developed, during the last few years, from the sight of so much misery, from her connection with those two deaths, Odette's and Ruth's. She had been mysteriously shaken by them. A weakness. She called it unhealthy and perhaps it was so. One could not live if one had to pause over the sufferings of the world. All happiness is nourished on the unhappiness of someone else. Life devours life, as larvæ devour the living prey in which they are laid. And everyone drinks the blood of all. . . . Annette had once drunk it without thinking of it, and this blood brought warmth and joy to her body. While she was young she had never thought of the victims. From the moment when she had said to herself, as she thought of them, "I must be hard," she had begun to weaken. She felt this; she could only be hard intermittently now. She was growing old. Ten years earlier she would not have had a moment's hesitation because of the harm she was doing Noémi. "My happiness is my right. Woe to anyone who touches it! . . ." She would have had no need to seek for pretexts. Now, in order to snatch from life her share of happiness, she had to find other reasons than her happiness. She was no longer sufficient unto herself. She had found the strength to brush aside, without scruple, the other less fortunate competitors in the hunt for bread. This bread was her son's; she was upheld by the animal instinct that makes a creature bristle to defend its young and feed them on the flesh of its fellow-animals. But the other animal instinct, the love of self--taking and keeping for oneself--was dying down and only asserted itself now by fits and starts. Maternity, by usurping the place of this other instinct, had partially destroyed it.

In the present crisis her son was no help to her. Far from it! He was one anxiety and remorse the more. Annette could not lie to herself, her passion took no account of her son. She felt guilty towards him, and she had taken pains to hide everything from him. She knew the child. In the past she had observed the jealousy that led him to drive his claws into those whom she loved. She did not blame him for this. She was glad that he wanted to be the only one to love her. . . . But to-day she was defending her treasure--against whom? Against her treasure! Passion against passion. She did not wish to sacrifice either of the two. And as both of them were jealous, obstinate, domineering, she had to hide from each the secret of the other. Had she succeeded? Marc detested the "other fellow." He knew nothing--of that she was sure--but although he did not know, had not his instinct told him? She was ashamed to conceal herself and she was even more ashamed that he might suspect. . . . No, he suspected nothing; it was for other reasons that he hated Philippe. . . .

As for Philippe himself, he did not do Marc the honor of thinking about him at all. In marrying Annette he would have been quite willing to take two or three brats into the bargain. It made no difference to him either in his feelings or financially; there was no need to be grateful to him for it. He did not dislike Marc; he thought him fairly bright, rather lazy, not very keen; he might have subjected him to a sharp discipline, but he felt no need to concern himself with the child, and he made this plain. He had a way of talking of him, a rough humor that wounded Annette to the quick. Accustomed to the coarse things of life, he had no idea of the consideration that a proud, sensitive nature demands, of the things that offend its sense of decency. In the bluntest, rudest terms he would give the boy, in his mother's presence, harsh warnings and medical advice that made both the child and the mother blush. The mother more than the child. Philippe's theory was that nothing must be concealed from the boy. This was also Annette's theory. And Marc's as well. But there are ways of putting things! Annette suffered in her very flesh. Marc, who was humiliated, stored up the bitterest resentment. Between him and Philippe there never could be anything but misunderstanding. Their two temperaments were too different. Annette could foresee the clashes, the endless discords. A terrible thought for her, the passionate lover and mother!

There was no one to whom she could turn for help in making up her mind. She had to decide alone, egoistically. Well, didn't she have the right to think of herself too? A right is nothing if one does not maintain it. Was she maintaining hers? . . . Yes, at moments, like a lioness, when she saw youth, happiness, life about to be swallowed up. . . . Happiness? . . . There was no question of happiness in a union with a man like Philippe! Something less or something more, incomparably more for a woman like Annette: a full, bold, intelligent life, not a life of repose slumbering in its security, but great winds, storms, action, struggles--with the world--with him--a life of trouble and fatigue--but together--life--a life worthy of being lived, with death at the end, when one was worn out and happy to leave the hard, fertile days behind, happy to have had them. . . . That was glorious!! But one must have the strength. . . . She had it, enough to carry the burden, once it was well adjusted, with her head up, to the end. But in order to adjust it she had to be helped and even forced a little. Philippe must place the burden on her head, impose it on her. He must say, "Carry it! For me! You are necessary to me. . . ." With these words she could surmount all her remorse. . . . Was she necessary to Philippe? He had said so during the first days when he had wanted to win her. He no longer said it, and Annette would have liked to hear it again and again, to be convinced. She saw him full of himself, used to working alone, fighting alone, extricating himself alone, putting all his pride into it; he would have felt humiliated if he had had to seek help. So she said to herself, "What am I good for?" It is the bounty of love not only to give us faith in someone else but to give us back faith in ourself. May it be charitable to us!

This was a feeling that Philippe seldom entertained. Like most of his kind, this great doctor of the body paid little attention to maladies of the soul. He never gave a thought to the doubts that preyed upon this woman whose body lay by his side. He should not have left her the time to question herself. . . . Make an end of it, marry her! . . . Annette would whisper to him softly, "Let's go away together, so that I can never take myself back!"

But Philippe was no longer in a hurry. He was passionate, yes, but he had many other passions that were of far more importance to him: his ideas, his struggles, the controversy that was absorbing him at the moment when Annette would have liked him to think of nothing but herself. He had no intention of stirring up a conjugal scandal and hampering himself with a noisy divorce-case before he had emerged from the fire of the present battle. He had made up his mind to keep his promises. But later! Annette must have patience. It was easy enough for him to be patient. He enjoyed her. He was quite willing to leave things as they were. He flattered himself that he could impose the same forbearance upon Noémi. He flattered himself too much! He did not wish to see how intolerable this waiting was to the two women. . . .

"Naturally," thought Annette, "a man--a man worthy for us to love--will never love us as much as his ideas, his science, his art, his politics. A naïve egoism that thinks it is disinterested because it incarnates itself in ideas. The egoism of the brain, more murderous than that of the heart. How many hearts have been broken by it!"

She was not surprised at this, for she knew life; but it hurt her. If it had only been a question of suffering she would have accepted it, however, perhaps even with that secret enjoyment of self-sacrifice which is familiar to women and which they willingly consider the price of love. But not to the point of sacrificing her self-respect and her son's honor in a humiliating situation. It hurt her that Philippe did not feel this. Of course he was not sensitive. She knew what he thought of women and love. He could not help thinking as he did; he had been shaped by his education and his rough experiences, and it was for this that she loved him. But she had flattered herself with the hope that she would change him. Instead, she perceived that day by day she was losing her power over him. And worst of all, over herself. Annette felt herself invaded by the demon of sensuality; day by day she became less the mistress of her will, more enslaved.

The duel of passion only preserves its nobility as long as there is equality between the combatants. When one is conquered the other abuses his victory and the vanquished becomes debased. Annette was at that poignant moment which precedes and determines defeat. She knew it: her strength would not sustain her any longer. Philippe knew this also, and his attitude showed it. It made no difference that he cared just as much--perhaps more, for Annette; he showed less consideration for her and he made brutal use of what belonged to him. He treated her like a conquered province. With all his days absorbed in his regular and passionate life of toil and his nights by Noémi (for he wished to keep up appearances), he saw Annette only during brief and burning encounters. No intimacy of the heart. He maintained, cynically, that she had the best of it all.

She wanted to tear herself away from this degradation in which her senses were accomplices, but every day they became more imperious. Once, when she wished to flee from their tyranny, they refused to obey with a violence that dismayed her. A woman of such fervent energy who, after having severely disciplined and repressed her passions for ten years, opens the door of their cage at the most fiery moment of the stormy summer, runs the risk of being destroyed.

Annette could only retrieve herself by forcing Philippe to respect the wife she wished to be--the companion "_rei humanœ atque divinœ_"--the equal. She asked Philippe, she besought him in anguish, to give her up till the time came when they could love and marry openly. Philippe refused: he was as unwilling to be hampered in his passions as in his public life. He was unwilling either to do without Annette or to marry her at a time that did not suit him. He pretended to consider Annette's attempt to leave him as a rather degrading manœuvre to attach him to her. And this although he knew very well what a whole-hearted gift she had made of herself! She was insulted by the outrageous suspicion--and she gave herself again with a despairing passion and disgust.

As for himself, he would see nothing of all this. He came back, demanding his own selfish rights as a lover, never realizing that, although she consented to them, every one of these carnal victories left a wound in his partner.

Annette was degraded in her own eyes. She ceased to give herself; she prostituted herself to love. Unless she flung herself off the slope down which her mad body was sliding, she was lost. . . .

One afternoon she fled. She went to Sylvie's and asked her to let her child stay with her for a few days, pleading as an excuse that she had to go away. Sylvie asked for no explanation; one glance was enough. This woman, whose curiosity was so often indiscreet, and who was unable in so many ways to understand her sister's ideas, had an instinct for love and its tragic tricks. In the days of the old intimacy with Annette, she had never confided to her the secrets of her own love affairs, and she did not expect Annette to open herself to her. She knew that every woman has a right to her hours of silence, her great hours, and that at such times no one can help her. One must save oneself alone or perish alone. She offered her sister the shelter of a little house she owned in the suburbs, near Jouy-en-Josas. Annette was touched, and she kissed her and accepted. In this little rustic house, on the edge of the woods, she shut herself up for a fortnight. She had not even told Marc where she was going. Her retreat was known only to Sylvie.

Scarcely had she left Paris and its enchanted circle than she perceived the excesses of the past few weeks and passed judgment on them. She was terrified by them. She, this mad creature, this miserable slave drunk with her own servitude! Passion, the destroyer of the soul! . . . Its clasp loosened. She breathed again, this evening, she saw and felt once more the fields, the woods, the calm of the earth. For two months an opaque red veil had concealed the living world from her. Even those closest to her, her son, had come to seem far away. . . . But when she reached the house in the fields, the veil was torn away in the rays of the setting sun. She heard the bells, the birds, the voices of the peasants; she wept with relief. . . . In the middle of the night, however--she had fallen asleep exhausted--she awoke suddenly with a pang of anguish. She felt about her throat the coils of the serpent.

She spent her days in a succession of humiliating tortures, bland impulses, moments of sudden, keen, absolute clairvoyance that pierced the great deception. She had a perpetual feeling of insecurity. Even though she was prepared and armed, a mere nothing would have caused her to give way. She prolonged her absence.

She was not without danger of imperilling her situation. In this sudden eclipse, she was losing her lessons. The little clientele that she had gathered with so much trouble was passing into other hands. Sylvie forwarded letters and information to her sister, but she added nothing but good news about the child's health. She avoided giving her any advice. Annette alone was to judge.

Annette knew full well that she ought to return, but she still lingered. . . . It was in vain that she stayed on; she could not prevent her thoughts from returning to Philippe. What was he doing? Wasn't he hunting for her? . . . From him nothing had come. She dreaded any news, and she sought for it. She dismissed him from her mind, she thought she had freed herself. But he had not given her up and suddenly he rose before her.

One evening she was wandering, idle, full of haunting thoughts, under the arbor that skirted the low wall of the garden, when, between the branches, she saw an automobile coming towards her in the distance down the white road. And she thought, "It's he!" . . . She stepped back out of sight. The car drove past along the wall to the end of the little yard. Annette, with her heart tightening, listened to its roaring, heard it slow down. Thirty paces farther on the road forked and the car stopped. Annette, behind the screen of leaves, ventured to glance, out and saw the back of the man who was hesitating, turning round, exploring the horizon. She recognized him. Terror seized her. She ran and flung herself behind a hedge of box and sank down upon the ground, her nails scratching the earth; she lowered her head and the blood flooded her cheeks as she thought, "He is going to take me again!" She wanted to say "No" and her blood cried "Yes!" She felt the dry turf crumbling under her fingers, and, with her face buried in the boxwood, she tried to stop the roaring of the blood in her ears so that she could listen to the steps on the other side of the wall. She heard the car starting off again. She ran to the corner of the garden on the road and cried, "Philippe!"

The car disappeared at the turn.

The next day Annette went back to Paris. Did she know what she wanted or what she was going to do? Sylvie looked at her pityingly and said to herself, "It's no better." But she did not question her.

Annette, full of gratitude, remained seated without speaking, her body broken with fatigue, in a corner of her sister's room, seeking peace in this warm presence. Sylvie came and went, leaving her to recover herself in the silence. At last Annette got up to go home. As she was about to leave, Sylvie, placing her hands on either side of her forehead, looked at her a long time, shook her head and said, "If you can't do otherwise, submit; don't struggle any longer. It will pass. Everything passes, the good, the bad and we ourselves. . . . How little it all matters!"

But to Annette it mattered a great deal. The question was not merely between Philippe and herself. It was between her and herself. To return to Philippe and confess herself conquered by him would have given her a bitter pleasure. But what terrified her was a deeper, more intimately personal defeat that would have no witness but herself. She carried her mortal adversary within her. Never once, for many years, had she failed to realize this, though from pride and prudence perhaps she had pleased herself by not thinking of it. This gulf of desire and sensual delight that a former life (her father's?) had dug within her. . . . Everything that gave her strength and pride of life, her will, her healthy soul, the free, pure breath that bathed her lungs, everything was being sucked down into it. _Mors antmœ_. . . . And Annette, whose reason did not seem to believe in the soul, did not wish her soul to die.

Carried back to Paris, where Philippe was, like a captive on some Assyrian bas-relief, with a rope about her neck, she did not look for Philippe. She avoided him.

Philippe, as much possessed by Annette as Annette was by him, had come and knocked at her door in her absence. He was indignant over this sudden departure. He would not admit that she could escape him. He tried to find her address. He had Sylvie's and he went to see her. The first glance was a declaration of war. Sylvie had understood. Armed with a bitter defiance, she sized Philippe up with her own eyes and not with those of Annette--a man who would be dangerous as an enemy and more dangerous as a lover, the kind of man who destroys what he loves. She knew that sort and she would never have anything to do with them. To Philippe's peremptory questions regarding Annette's whereabouts, she replied coldly that she knew nothing about them, taking pains that he should see that she knew everything. Philippe made an effort to conceal his annoyance. He tried to wheedle her. Sylvie remained stolid. He went away in a rage.

He wasted no time in beating the bushes for her, and it never entered his head to cover himself with dust travelling in a car to Jouy-en-Josas. He did not even look for Annette. He had no intention of sacrificing his days in a vain pursuit. He was sure she would come back. But that she should fail him, that she should allow herself to upset him at such a moment as this, was more than he could forgive; and his resentment, no less than a furious need of diversion, flung him back upon his wife. It was a provisional reconciliation and humiliating enough to this woman who was only a substitute. For it was only for want of something better; he was waiting for the other one.

But Noémi was not going to be proud when her advantage opposed it. She did not waste her time. The ordeal had revealed to her former mistakes. She had realized that to hold a man it is not enough to make him love you. You must flatter his pride and his whims. Philippe was astonished at the interest she showed in his present campaign, astonished that she had even taken the trouble to find out about it. He suspected her motives, but whether Noémi's interest was real or not, it was very agreeable to him. It pleased him to discover Noémi's intelligence. She no longer concealed it. It was through this that Annette had ousted her. She made use of these weapons and improved on them. Unlike Annette, she did not trouble to go to the bottom of the dispute. She left this to her husband and master. She limited her rôle to suggesting the most skilful tactics for assuring him the victory. Philippe admired her ingenuity.

At this moment the controversy was at the most violent stage. Noémi, overcoming the repugnance and boredom that she felt at these quarrels between men, perceived that she must fling herself resolutely into the arena. She set to work upholding, with the wittiest effrontery, in drawing-rooms, the daring arguments her husband had launched. Her grace, her humor, her laughing enthusiasm, her impishness, her passionate earnestness, caused some slight scandal and a great deal of amusement. She won over to her side a number of young women who were delighted to show how free they were from social prejudices. The skilful Noémi took pains not to break with appearances. Even while she gave them the most disrespectful raps, she contrived to procure indulgence for herself in the camp of morality and respectable people. She gravely maintained that the right of the poor to have no children had its counterpart in the duty of the rich to supply the State and Society with them. It required self-possession to say this and not lose her assurance, for during seven years of married life she had never found the time to fulfil this duty herself. But she was heroic. She discovered this now.

XLVI

Philippe was not slow in discovering that Annette had come back. He tried to find her in her apartment at the hours when he knew she was alone. But Annette distrusted herself. He found the door shut. In spite of his resentment and his distractions, his passion had not weakened. Annette's resistance exasperated him. He was not the man to let himself be dismissed.

Annette caught sight of him a few steps away in the street. She turned pale, but she did not try to escape from him. They approached each other. He said, with decision, "You are going home. I am going with you."

"No," she replied.

Together they entered a small square that backed upon a church. A dusty tree barely concealed them from the stream of passers-by in the street. They had to restrain themselves.

"You are afraid of me."

"No," she said, "of myself."

Philippe was burning with passion and resentment. But when his hard glance encountered Annette's, which did not avoid him, he perceived the suffering that she was firmly controlling. His anger melted, and in a softened voice he asked, "Why did you run away?"

"Because you are killing me."

"Don't you know what it is to love?"

"I do know, and that is why I ran away. I am afraid of hating you."

"Well, hate me, if you like. Hating is a way of loving."

"Not for me," she said. "I can't endure it."

"You are not so weak that you can't endure both the good and evil of a complete love."

"I am not so weak, Philippe. I want a complete love. Body and soul. I don't want merely half."

"The soul is all nonsense," he said.

"Then to what purpose have you devoted all your energy? For what have you sacrificed yourself, ever since you were born, if not to your Idea?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Delusion!" he said.

"You live by it. I have mine too. Don't kill it."

"What do you want?"

"I want us to avoid seeing each other till the day when we decide whether we are to unite our lives or not."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want, I don't want to hide any longer. I don't want any more sharing. I don't want it, I don't want it."

But she did not utter her deepest reason. ("If I gave in once more, I should soon cease to have the will to desire anything else. I should no longer belong to myself. I should be a toy that is broken after it has been spoiled.")

But he was incapable of understanding this instinctive revolt against one's enslavement to one's deadly desires. He could see in it nothing but defiance and a feminine trick to get the best of him. If he did not put this into words, he did not by any means conceal his feeling. When Annette perceived this, she made an impetuous movement to leave him. Philippe, trembling with impatience and the effort he was making not to betray it to the eyes of passers-by, seized Annette's arm, pressed it and said in a furious voice which he tried to muffle, "As for me, I will not, will not give you up. I will see you. Be still! Don't answer. . . . We can't talk here. . . . I shall come and see you this evening."

"No, no!" she said.

"I shall come," he said. "I cannot live without you. Nor can you live without me."

"I can," she said, rebelliously.

"You lie!"

They struggled, without moving, in low, violent voices, lashing each other's souls. They measured each other with their eyes. Philippe's gave way. "Annette!" he besought her.

But her cheeks still burned with the brutal lie he had given her, the shame of thinking that she really had lied. She stiffened, freed herself from the hand that held her, and went away.

In the evening Philippe came. She had spent the whole day in terror of this moment, in terror lest she might not have the strength to keep her door shut. For she did not want to face again this pitiless passion. She was convinced of the impossibility of living with this torch fastened to her breast. She must tear it away while the strength still remained to her. Did enough still remain? She loved him, she loved the flame that was consuming her. The next day she would love the shame and the outrage to which she had submitted. She blushed to admit it to herself, but even in her revolt against him that morning there had been an element of sensual delight.

She recognized his steps as they came up the stairs. She heard him ring and did not move from her chair. He rang again and knocked. Annette, with her arms hanging and her shoulders flung back, kept repeating to herself, "No! No!"

Even had she wished to rise and open the door her breath would have failed her.

She heard nothing more. Had he gone away? She was on her feet before she had even thought of it. She slipped with tottering, noiseless steps to the door. A board in the floor creaked. Annette stopped. Some seconds passed. . . . Nothing stirred. But she was aware of Philippe's presence watching behind the door. And Philippe knew that Annette was listening on the other side. There was a heavy silence. They were spying on each other. . . . Philippe's voice, close to the door, said, "Annette, you are there. Open!"

Annette, leaning against the wall, felt her heart give way. She did not answer.

"I know you are there. Don't try to hide! Annette, open! I must speak to you."

He lowered his voice so as not to be heard on the stairway, but a flood of mingled passions was rising in him. He was on the point of shaking the door.

"I must see you. . . . Whether you wish it or not, I mean to come in. . . ."

Silence.

"Annette, I hurt you this morning. Forgive me! . . . I want you. What do you want me to do? Tell me. I will do it. . . ."

Silence. Silence.

Philippe clenched his fists. He could have strangled her. With his mouth against the door, he growled, "You are mine. You haven't the right to take yourself back.

"Think hard!" he said. "If you don't open, it is finished for ever.

"Annette, my Annette!" he said.

"Coward!" he said furiously. "You are afraid to see me. You are only strong behind a closed door."

"Why do you torture me?" said a voice behind the door.

Philippe was silent.

"My friend," the tired voice went on, "you are killing me."

Philippe was touched, but his wounded pride was unwilling to show it. "What do you want?" he said.

"Mercy!" she answered.

The tone of her voice touched him, but he did not understand. "What do you need?"

"Leave me!" she said.

His anger sprang up again. "You are driving me away?"

"I am begging you for peace. Peace! . . . Leave me alone for a few weeks."

"You don't love me any longer?"

"I am defending my love."

"Against whom? Against what?"

"Against you."

"Madness! . . . You will open to me."

"No!"

"I demand it. I want you."

"I am not your prey."

Quivering, she held herself straight and proud. Her eyes defied him through the door. Though he could not see them, these eyes pierced him. "Good-bye!" he cried to her.

She heard him go away, and her blood froze. He would never forgive.

XLVII

He did not forgive. Philippe did not return.

Annette kept repeating to herself, "It had to be, it had to be. . . ."

But she could not accept it. She longed to see Philippe once more, to make him understand, gently--why had he been so furious?--that she was not leaving him, that she was jealously defending her love, their love, their common pride which he was destroying with unconscious brutality. She wanted them both to have a chance to collect themselves, to recover themselves amid the torrent of passion that was rolling them along with its mud and foam, so that they might consider things and make up their minds with perfect liberty. If he finally chose her, let it be in a fashion compatible with his wife's and his own self-respect.

But Philippe would never forgive a woman he loved who had raised a barrier against his will. If he had belonged to another social class he would have violated her. Confined as he was in the cage of his own, obliged to handle with tact this world he wished to master, his wounded passion turned into an exasperated denial of itself. Losing the woman, he destroyed the feeling he had for her. This, as he knew, would strike her to the heart. For his instinct told him that, in spite of everything, Annette loved him.

After three months of burning solitude, of a bitter and tormented self-communion, of hope, renunciation, pride, servility of soul, inner reproaches, after three months of hopeless, sterile waiting, Annette learned one day from the delighted Solange of the happiness that had fulfilled the longings of the Villard household. Noémi was about to have a child.

XLVIII

Annette would have liked to take refuge with her child and hide her unhappy head under the wing of the love which, they say, never fails one--that of the son for the mother. Alas, it fails like all the others. Annette could not look to Marc for a sign of tenderness or even interest. Never had the young boy seemed colder, more indifferent, more unfeeling. He saw nothing of the torments that ravaged his mother. To be sure, she did her best to conceal them from him. But she concealed them so badly! He might have seen them in her eyes, hollow as they were with sleeplessness, in her pale face, in her thin hands, in her whole body, which was wasted by cruel passion. He saw nothing. He did not even look. He was concerned with nothing but himself, and what took place in him he kept to himself. He saw her only at meal-times, when he never said a word; the efforts Annette made to talk only made him more obstinate in his silence. She could scarcely induce him to say good-morning and good-night at the beginning and the end of the day, for he had made up his mind that all such things were mere affectation, and he only agreed to them--and that not every day--for the sake of peace. He would hastily offer his mother's lips a bored forehead, and when he did not go out to school or on some affair of his own--it was not easy to get him to tell about the latter--he shut himself up in his workroom, a store-room, about the size of a large wardrobe, wedged in between the dining-room and his bedroom; and it was a mistake to disturb him there. At the table or in the sitting-room, he seemed like a stranger. Annette said to herself bitterly, "If I died he would not even weep."

And she thought of the dream she had once conceived of the dear little companion, blood of her blood, pressed close against her, divining, sharing, without words, all the secrets of her heart. How lacking in affection he was! Why was he so hard? One would have said at moments that he was angry with her. Why? Because she loved him too much?

"Yes, that is my weakness, loving too much. People do not need it. It bores them. . . . My son does not love me! He is only too anxious to leave me. My son is so little my son! He feels nothing of what I feel. He feels nothing!"

During these very days Marc's young heart was aflame with love and poetry. He had fallen madly in love with Noémi. It was one of those childish loves that are so absurd and all-consuming. He hardly knew what he wanted of this woman: was it to see her, feel her, touch her, taste her? Of course, he never dreamed of what possession meant: he was the possessed one. Marc almost fainted when he touched the little hand that Noémi held out to him, touched it with his lips and the tip of his nose, the greedy puppy's nose that inhaled, in the frail flower of the wrist, the intoxicating mystery of the feminine body. For him she was a living fruit and flower. He was dying with desire to implant his teeth in it--very gently--dying of terror lest he might yield. Once--oh, shame!--he did yield. . . . What was going to happen? Red and trembling, he expected the worst: public humiliation, indignant words, an ignominious dismissal. But she burst out laughing, called him "puppy," boxed his ear, rubbed his nose once, twice, three times, over the spot he had bitten, saying, "Beg my pardon, little wretch!"

From that moment she had amused herself playing with the young animal. She meant no harm, she meant no good. She enjoyed exciting the young lover. For her it was a matter of no moment. She never suspected how serious it might be for the boy. But for him (for him who, in spite of appearances, was the true child of Annette) it was tragic.

Since the first time he had seen her, she had been for him the forbidden Paradise, that marvellous mirage, woman, which appears before the awakening glance of an innocent child. The fascinating image is shaped as much from what exists as from what does not exist, as much from what he sees as from what he does not see, what he does not know, what he fears and desires, what he wants and what he does not want, the terrifying attraction that thrills the adolescent body at the ecstatic, brutal appeal of nature. As for Noémi's features, he probably did not see one of them just as it was. But each of her features and each of her movements, the folds of her dress, the curls of her hair, her voice, her perfume, and the gleam of her eyes, everything stirred in his hungry heart and body the wild, leaping waves of joy and hope, cries of happiness, the need of tears.

On the very day when the heart-broken Annette saw him so hard, so hostile, so icy, when her awkward effort to learn the cause, to drag out of him one word, one single word of affection, had brought down upon her a cutting reply--on just that day the young boy had had his most moving revelation of the enchanted dream. For eight days he had been living in a state of intoxication. Noémi, whom he continued to see, without his mother's knowing it, and who used him as a little spy who innocently brought her word of all the movements in the enemy's camp--Noémi, whom he had once surprised in her drawing-room, looking at herself, as she talked, in a tiny mirror hidden in the folds of her handkerchief, had amused herself painting his pale lips with her lipstick. He had had in his mouth the taste of the beloved mouth. And ever since he had carried it on the tongue that sucked it; he was impregnated with it. He saw this pomegranate red, this ever-open mouth with the lip drawn up, too short and too restless to meet the other lip, which was as full as a cherry--saw it everywhere on that morning when, leaving his mother's apartment, after rudely slamming the door, he decided to play hockey from school and go for a walk. It blossomed in the cloud-orchard of the beautiful July sky, in the little playful ripples of a fountain, in the absent-minded smiles of passing women. It obsessed him.

He was walking at random, with his blond head bare to the summer wind. But, abstracted as he was and full of his own fancies, his lynx-eyes recognized his Aunt Sylvie, in the distance, coming towards him on the other sidewalk. He hastily turned off into a side street. The last thing he wanted was to meet her. Not that he was afraid of being caught playing truant: she would have been much more likely to laugh at that. But when he had a secret, with her--it was not like this with his mother!--he never felt safe. Of secrets of this kind, his instinct told him, Aunt Sylvie was an expert reader.

She had not seen him. He breathed freely again. He could enjoy his love the whole morning. And as he strolled along--his love did not prevent him from halting before the shop-windows to look at a necktie, a trifle of some kind, an illustrated paper--his steps led him unawares straight to his goal. He was like those pigeons in Paris that fly every morning over the great piles of dusty houses seeking the green gardens and cool old trees. The boy was seeking them too. He felt the need of their rustling shade.

He went down the Mont Sainte-Geneviève and, leaving the old, crowded streets, found himself in the clear, calm spaces of the Jardin des Plantes before he was aware that this was the spot to which he had wished to come.

There were few people here at this hour. A handful of scattered strollers. Paris hummed like a hive in the distance. The blue vibration of a beautiful summer morning. He picked out a bench that was hidden at the foot of a group of trees, and he closed his eyes on his treasure. He pressed his long, feverish, adolescent hands against his breast as if he wished to shelter his heart from rash eyes. What was he hiding, what thing so precious that he scarcely dared to think of it? A remark Noémi had thoughtlessly uttered, a remark of which he had made a world. . . . The last time he had seen her she had thrown him a chance smile. She had been scarcely aware of the boy's presence, for her attention was absorbed in the great things that had happened (the reconquest of Philippe, the humiliation of Annette, the final victory! . . . "But one never knows! Nothing is certain. Let us be satisfied with to-day! . . .") She sighed from fatigue, relaxation, pleasure. Marc asked her why. Amused by the boy's alarmed, ingenuous gaze, she said, with another great sigh, to puzzle him, "It's a secret."

"What secret?"

A malicious thought darted through her mind and Noémi replied, "I can't tell you. You must guess."