Chapter II: Part 2

When dinner was over, M. Jêrome dozed with his feet against the fire-dogs, leaving the two young people to face one another helplessly. Jean, sitting as far from the lamp as possible, tried to obscure himself--scarcely breathed. But he was unalterably there, and Cadette would certainly bring the candles at ten o'clock. Oh, that dreadful climbing of stairs!

A fine rain hissed upon the tiles, a shutter flapped, and a cart jolted down the street. Noémi knelt by the dreaded bed and prayed in a low voice: "Oh, God, I thank Thee for giving me the power to know and love Thee...." In the darkness, Jean was conscious that the adored body was drawing away from him, and he kept to his side of the bed. Sometimes Noémi, laying her hand upon his face--less hateful when she could not see it--felt hot tears upon his cheeks and, filled with remorseful sympathy, eyes closed and lips tight together, she clasped the wretched boy in her arms like a Christian Virgin in the arena who throws herself with sudden resignation into the jaws of death.

VII

THE shooting of wood pigeons provided Jean with an excuse for spending his days away from her to whom his mere presence was a torture. He got up so quietly in the mornings that Noémi did not wake, and when she opened her eyes he had left the house and was driving in a little cart over the muddy roads. He unharnessed his horse at a farm, hid himself close to the hut, and whittled a signal, fearing lest some doves might already be in sight. Cadette's grandson replied that all was clear, and the waiting began. Long, mist-wrapped, dreaming hours: tinkling sheep-bells, shepherds calling faintly, rooks cawing in the tree-tops.

At four o'clock Jean started for home, but in order to arrive as late as possible he went for a moment into the church. His lips did not form any prayer, but his heart bled before a hidden presence. Tears came frequently, and it seemed to him that his head was resting upon invisible knees. Later, Jean threw his day's bag of slate-coloured birds upon the kitchen table, their crops still swollen with acorns. His boots smoked when he stretched them towards the fire, and the warm tongue of a dog touched his hand. Cadette was putting bread in the soup, and Jean followed her into the dining-room. Noémi spoke to him: "I didn't know you had come back...." Then--"Aren't you going to wash your hands?" The shutters of his room were still open, and in the rain-water in the ruts the reflection of a lantern glittered coldly. Jean washed his hands without cleaning his fingernails, and at first the edge of the dining table prevented Noémi from seeing them. He watched her furtively; how white her ears were!

Noémi's appetite had gone, and Jean insisted clumsily upon her taking a second helping of mutton: "But I tell you I'm not hungry!" A little smile of apology, or perhaps the pouting suggestion of a kiss calmed his brief impatience. Noémi looked at her husband with the eyes of a God-fearing person at the point of death, and the smile that played about her mouth was forced as though to cheer a dying friend. It was Jean, Jean Péloueyre, who had banished the gleam from her eyes, and the colour from her cheeks, her lips, and her ears. His mere presence was cutting at the roots of her life, and he loved her the better for the suffering he caused her. No victim had ever been so adored by its tormentor.

M. Jêrome alone flourished. Troubles other than his own were not apparent to him, and his announcement that he was conscious of a definite improvement in the state of his health abounded everyone. His asthma allowed him a certain freedom, and he could now sleep until dawn without the help of a narcotic. To have denied admittance to Dr. Pieuchon whose son was spitting blood and undergoing treatment from his father had, M. Jêrome said, brought him good luck. He had broken with his old friend through fear of contagion, and he declared that his daughter-in-law could minister to all his needs--she was more competent than a doctor. Nothing, not even the ceremonies of his toilet, dismayed her. Under her supervision his loathsome diet became quite delicious. The juice of an orange or a lemon and sometimes a spoonful of old _Armagnac_ filled the gaps left by forbidden condiments, and produced a thing which M. Jêrome swore he had lacked for fifteen years--an appetite. And after a few shy attempts, Noémi was able to establish the habit of encouraging her father-in-law's digestion by reading aloud to him. She was indefatigable, and could carry it through to a finish without showing that she heard his short regular breathing, the overture to sleep. One o'clock would strike; an hour less of shuddering disgust in the darkness of the room above, of waiting for the loathsome body beside her to move from the sleep simulated out of pity for her. Often the touch of a leg waked her, and she would creep into the crevice between the bed and the wall where the slightest touch made her tremble with apprehension. Then Jean, believing her to be asleep, would risk a furtive caress, and it was Noémi's turn to pretend, left he should be tempted to go further.

VIII

THERE were no lovers' quarrels; they had already wounded each other too deeply for that, and the smallest transgression would have meant the end. Each one was careful not to hurt the other's feelings--their lives were planned carefully to this purpose. While Noémi was undressing, Jean looked away, and he was careful never to be present while she was washing. He was more particular about his toilet, ordered some _eau de Lubin_ with which he drenched himself, and every morning went shivering to his tub. Jean believed himself to be entirely to blame for the catastrophe, and Noémi hated herself for not being a wife pleasing to God. They never exchanged reproachful glances, but there was always a mute yearning for pardon in the eyes of each. They decided to say their prayers together; though enemies in the flesh they could unite in their nightly prostrations before their Creator. Their two voices at least might mingle and rise together into the Infinite.

One morning they met quite by chance at the bedside of an old cripple, and this common interest was eagerly made use of. It was the first bond between them, and thenceforth every week they visited the sick together, each giving the other the credit for the idea. During the other six days, Noémi avoided Jean, or rather her body sought to escape his, and Jean sought to escape the disgust that Noémi tried in vain to conquer. One mournful November morning, though she hated walking, Noémi forced herself to follow Jean across the sandy heathland to the edge of the marshes where, in the silence that precedes a tempest, one could hear the dull thunder of the Atlantic on the shore. Noémi saw that there were no more blue-eyed gentians in the heather; she ran ahead as though trying to lose Jean, and left him to follow after her.

The shepherds of Béarn, from whom Jean was descended, had possessed the right of pasture over these waste lands, and, at the muddy opening of a well they had dug for their flocks centuries before, he came up with her and stood thinking of the old shepherds who were afflicted with pellagra, that mysterious disease of _Les Landes_, and were found at the bottom of a well or with their heads plunged in the mire at the edge of a pond. Ah, if only he too might embrace this greedy soil that had moulded him in its likeness, and breathe out his last breath in a long stifling kiss.

IX

THE priest often came in while Noémi was reading aloud to her father-in-law. He called her "my child," and she offered him a glass of sloe gin, but for some reason he and M. Jêrome no longer indulged in their customary theological discussions, nor did the priest produce his usual diverting series of clerical anecdotes. The Péloueyres wore masks against his scrutiny, and three pairs of expressionless eyes met and baffled his prying gaze. He no longer felt at ease with these people who rarely spoke; everything he said seemed to lead up to a door mysteriously closed, and, stretching his short fat legs towards the fire, he shot rapid searching glances at the silent couple. He spoke with less than his habitual positiveness, seemed much less sure of himself, and it had been a long time since he had told the story, as he loved to do, of his latest argument with a certain Rationalist of his acquaintance in which this phrase was often to be heard: "And I replied crushingly...." M. Jêrome declared that he had never known the priest in such despair since the time when the former Mayor had proposed to have the bells rung for civil burials, and to use the hearse that belonged to the church. The priest wanted Jean to continue his research work in local history; it had been undertaken with avidity, but neglected during the past year. The young man made out that some important documents were inaccessible, but the truth was that he could never carry any work through to a finish. The early pages of his books were crowded with notes, but the rest were not even cut. The perpetual need to walk and think things out at his leisure took him away from his work. One evening after M. Jêrome had retired, the priest brought the subject up again and insisted upon a hearing. Jean declared himself incapable of proceeding without access to some special notes in the National Library; but how was he to go to Paris? "And why couldn't you go, my dear child?" The priest put this question in a low voice; his fingers played with the fringe of his belt, and his eyes never left the fire. A weak voice murmured: "I don't want Jean to leave me." But the priest was firm; it would be a sin not to develop Jean's talents. He was incapable of holding a class for study, or of organizing any charitable work, and it would not do for him to be idle any longer. The holy man went on developing his argument, and the low sad voice at his elbow murmured again with apparent effort: "If Jean goes to Paris, I will go with him." But the priest shook his head: Noémi was indispensable to the dear invalid, and in any case the separation need only be a short one: a few weeks, at most a month or two. Noémi was powerless to protest. No further word was spoken, and the priest put on his padded overcoat and his sabots. Jean threw his cloak about his shoulders and preceded his guest with a lantern.

The short days of a rainy December prevented the young people from escaping one another except when Jean went out after woodcock, and on these occasions he had no excuse to remain out after four. Indoors, their two bodies were drawn together in the sitting-room by the lamp and the fire. A gentle rain whispered about the house, and the acuteness of the pain in M. Jêrome's left shoulder was obvious from the continued complaints it occasioned. Noémi seemed in better spirits; she made daily efforts to dissuade Jean from his idea of a journey to Paris. She had vowed to heaven to do everything in her power to keep him with her. Her pleadings prevented the unfortunate Jean from falling into a permanent state of indecision and, by giving him the idea that she did not want him to go, forced him to make up his mind. He looked up at her with the eyes of a punished dog: "But I must go, Noémi." And she protected, but if he showed signs of giving in, she never pressed the point, and soon changed the subject. M. Jêrome, though the line from _The Two Pigeons_, "Absence causes the worst suffering of all," was seldom out of his mind, experienced a secret joy when he imagined himself living alone with his daughter-in-law. And at every meeting with Jean the priest continued to plague him. What chance had the poor boy against such a conspiracy? He was really pleased with the verdict of banishment; except for a pilgrimage to Lourdes and the honeymoon at Arcachon, he had never left his niche, and to submerge himself in the tumult of Paris would be like foundering in a human ocean more terrifying than the Atlantic. But there were too many minds set upon his plunging into the abyss, and his departure was fixed for the second week in February.

Long before that date Noémi began to occupy herself with his trunk and the clothes that were to be packed in it, and she had partially recovered her appetite before the day arrived. Her cheeks recaptured their colour, and one afternoon from the first floor window Jean watched her making snowballs to throw at Cadette's grandson. He completely understood this resurrection. The earth was freeing itself from the clutches of winter, and Noémi was freeing herself of him. He was leaving her to blossom again in the spring.

Jean lowered the dirty window of the railway carriage so that he might see the last wave of Noémi's handkerchief. How gaily it fluttered, this signal of farewell and joy! During the last week she so overwhelmed him with feigned affection that one night, when he thought she responded faintly to his touch, he murmured: "Noémi, suppose I don't go after all!" Though the room was dark, and though she almost stifled her answering exclamation, he knew that he had terrified her and could not help adding: "Don't worry. I'll go." This was all he said, Noémi knew that she had not deceived him. She turned her face to the wall, and he heard her crying.

Jean watched the familiar pines passing the window, and he recognized a thicket where he had once missed a woodcock. The railway followed the road over which he had so often driven in his cart, and a farm that he knew by name--the tenant was a friend of his--glided past in mist and smoke. It was at the edge of an empty field, and he caught a glimpse of the bread-oven, the stable and the well. Then he changed to another train which carried him across a barren stretch of land unknown to him, and at Langon he saw the last pines; they were like friends who had come with him as far as they could, and were finally obliged to stop and bellow a last blessing with their outspread arms.

X

HE took a room at the first hotel he encountered on the Quai Voltaire. In the mornings, he looked out through the rain at the river he had not yet dared to cross; at midday he ventured into the restaurant at the Gare d'Orléans where he could listen to the soothing roar of trains carrying happy travellers to the south-west. When his lunch was eaten and his bottle of white wine empty, he drank two liqueurs, not daring to remain at his table without reason, and his nimble mind skipped off into the Absolute. His peculiarities sometimes brought smiles to the faces of those about him, but for the most part he was unnoticed in his corner between the vestibule and a pillar. He read the newspapers, advertisements and all: murders, suicides, crimes of jealousy and madness--all these things helped to satisfy his appetite for the tragic facts of life. After dinner Jean bought a platform ticket and sought out the carriages that bore the name Irun. The next morning its windows would hold the reflection of monotonous heather-covered plains. He had calculated that this carriage would pass within fifty miles, as the crow flies, of his father's house, and he laid his hand upon it. When the train began to move out of the station he watched it with the eyes of a man who sees half of himself vanishing into space. Later at his table again, he abandoned himself despairingly to the influence of the restaurant orchestra. The ghost of Noémi took possession of him, and his thoughts thronged about her body which he had only seen while she slept. Through those long September nights when the moonlight fell upon the bed, Jean had probably come to know this body more intimately than if he had been her chosen lover and they had clasped each other in mutual ecstasy. She was always like a corpse in his arms, and his visual possession was therefore complete. Perhaps we know the woman who does not love us better than any other.

At that very moment, Noémi lay in the great cold bedroom, happy, and untroubled by a repulsive presence,--asleep in the bed he had deserted. Jean, still at his table, was acutely conscious of the joy and relief that his absence had brought her; anger flamed up within him, and he pressed his hands to his head. He would go back and compel her to submit to his desires, and insist upon enjoying himself at whatever the cost to her. He would make use of her. Then her face rose up in his mind; the same submissive expression, the same inanimate whiteness, the same passive surrender--a tree offering its fruit. He remembered her speechless horror; her wishes for death.... Paying for his drinks, he hurried along the quay to his hotel, and undressed in the dark in order not to see himself in the mirror.

Every three days he found an envelope on his breakfast tray which he sometimes did not open until evening. What did these hypocritical wishes for his return matter to him? The only pleasure these letters brought him was the fact that Noémi's hand had touched them, that her little finger-nail had scratched a faint line beneath each word. Towards the end of March he thought he could detect a trace of sincerity in the lines she wrote him: "If you don't believe I want to see you again, it is because you do not know your wife." And again: "I miss you." Jean crumpled her letter in his hand, and re-read one from his father that had come by the same post: "You will find Noémi changed for the better; she has put on weight and is in superb health. She is spoiling me to such an extent that I can hardly remember to thank her for her attentions. The Cazenaves never come here, but I know they think you two have quarrelled. Let them say what they please. I am very fit, unlike young Pieuchon who can only go out in a carriage and who is thought by everyone to be dying in spite of a doctor from B---- who pretends he is curing him with iodine and water. The old outlast the young."

With the first spring days Jean took courage and crossed one of the bridges. Just after the sun had set, he stood looking into the river, and his hands caressed the warm stone parapet as though it were a human being. Someone whispered at his shoulder; she called him "darling" and asked him to come with her. He turned and saw a young face close to his, pale under its paint. A swollen nailless hand sought his, but he turned and fled along the quay to the gate of the Louvre where he flopped, breathing hard. Could he have answered the summons of such a creature? For the first time he indulged himself with thoughts of a woman other than Noémi. He could not expect to thrill her, but she would at least be indifferent and not disgusted with him. Even as slight an enjoyment as that was inconceivable, he reflected bitterly, and anger again flamed within him. Why not give in to-night, and lose himself in the indulgent and willing embraces of one of these women? Were they in the world for everyone but a Péloueyre, these dispensers of love? At eight o'clock he watched the sky trembling in the pond in the Tuileries gardens; a laughing crowd of children gathered to watch his strange gesturings, and he hurried away. In the rue Royale he courageously crossed the threshold of a famous cabaret. He sat close to the door facing the bar to which a chattering throng attached itself as to a mahogany drinking-trough. He was delighted to find that his appearance caused no surprise to the women, or to the fat black-haired head waiters--the rats that infest expensive restaurants. In this glittering resort there were too many queer-looking savages from across the Atlantic, too many farmers and provincial notaries for anyone to laugh at Jean Péloueyre. Some Vouvray brought colour to his cheeks, and he smiled at the cattle round the mahogany trough. A big blonde woman left her stool and asked him for a light, drank from his glass, promised to make him happy for five louis, and then went back to her perch expectantly. An old man at the next table urged him to wait till the closing hour "because those who are left make you better prices then," but Jean paid his bill, and the woman joined him on the pavement outside. She called a taxi and drove her client to a house behind the Madeleine. The door opened directly on to the street as though to draw in all its odours. The tinkle of hairpins on marble awoke Jean from his lethargy; her arms were enormous at the point where they joined her shoulders, and bows of pink ribbon adorned a broad expanse of trembling flesh. She called him her wolf, and with infinite care began to remove her artificial silk stockings. Before this quick consent, this surrender without any trace of disgust, Jean experienced more acute agony of mind than when Noémi's body cried "No!" to him in the stillness.

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.