A Life (21 page)

She offered no reply, crushed, aching, exhausted now, with no strength left either for anger or resentment. Her nerves seemed to have gone slack, to have been gently severed, as though she were scarcely any longer alive.

The Baroness, who found it quite impossible to understand how people could harbour grudges, and who was in any case temperamentally incapable of prolonged effort, murmured:

'Come now, Jeanne.'

So the priest took the young man's hand and, drawing him towards the bed, placed it in that of his wife. He tapped the two hands gently as though to unite them once and for all; and then, abandoning the professional tones of a sermonizer, he said contentedly:

'There, that's done. Believe me, it's better this way.'

Then the two hands which had briefly come together parted at once. Julien, not daring to kiss Jeanne, kissed his mother-in-law on the forehead, turned round, and took the Baron's arm. The latter offered no resistance, on the whole glad that the matter had been settled in this way; and off they went to smoke a cigar.

Presently the exhausted patient dozed off to sleep as the priest and Mama talked quietly together.

The Abbé would say something, explaining and expanding on his suggestions; and each time the Baroness would nod in agreement. At length he said, by way of conclusion:

'So, that's agreed then. You shall let the girl have the farm at Barville, and I shall be responsible for finding her a husband, some decent, sensible lad. Oh, with a property worth twenty thousand francs, there'll be plenty of takers all right. We'll be spoilt for choice.'

And the Baroness was smiling happily now, as two tears hovered on her cheeks, the moist traces of their descent already dried.

'Yes, that's agreed,' she said, wishing to make sure of the detail. 'Barville is worth at least twenty thousand francs. But we'll register it in the child's name, and the parents can have the benefit of the income during their lifetime.'

And the priest rose to his feet and shook hands with Mama:

'Don't get up, my lady, don't get up. I know what one step costs!'

As he was leaving the room, he encountered Aunt Lison coming to visit the patient. She did not notice anything; no one told her anything; and she never knew anything, as usual.

VIII

Rosalie had left the house, and Jeanne was approaching the term of her difficult pregnancy. She felt no pleasure in her heart at the prospect of becoming a mother, for she had suffered too much unhappiness. She awaited the arrival of her child without curiosity, burdened rather by apprehension and the thought of nameless misfortunes yet to come.

Spring had arrived very gradually. The bare trees shook gently in a breeze that was still cool, but in the wet grass along the ditches, where autumn leaves lay rotting, the yellow primroses were beginning to show themselves. The entire plain, the farmyards and the waterlogged fields, gave off a damp smell, like the aroma of something fermenting. And a host of tiny green shoots were emerging from the brown soil and gleaming brightly in the sunshine.

A large woman, as stout as a castle keep, had taken Rosalie's place and supported the Baroness on her monotonous walks up and down the avenue, where the trail left by her dragging foot remained constantly muddy and wet.

Papa gave his arm to Jeanne, who had grown heavy herself now and was still not well; and Aunt Lison, anxiously preoccupied by the coming event, took her hand on the other side, deeply perturbed by this mysterious process that she herself would never experience.

They walked along together like this for hours on end, scarcely exchanging a word, while Julien went out riding all over the countryside, having suddenly acquired a taste for this pursuit.

Nothing further happened to interrupt their drab routine. The Baron, his wife, and the Vicomte paid a visit to the Fourvilles, with whom Julien already seemed very well acquainted, though no one quite knew how. Another formal visit was exchanged with the Brisevilles, still buried away in their sleepy manor.

One afternoon, about four o'clock, as two people on horseback, a man and a woman, came trotting into the courtyard at the front  of the house, Julien entered Jeanne's bedroom in a great state of excitement.

'Quick, quick, you must go down. It's the Fourvilles. It's only a casual visit, nothing more, on account of your condition. Tell them I've gone out but that I'll be back presently. I'm just going to smarten up.'

Surprised, Jeanne went downstairs. A pale, pretty young woman, with an unhappy face, blazing eyes, and lustreless fair hair that looked as if not a single ray of sunlight had ever touched it, calmly introduced her giant of a husband, a sort of bogeyman with a huge, red moustache. Then she continued:

'We have had the opportunity of meeting Monsieur de Lamare on several occasions. He has told us how unwell you are, and we did not wish to wait a moment longer before paying you a simple neighbourly visit, without any fuss or formality. Indeed, as you see, we have come on horseback. The other day, moreover, I had the pleasure of receiving a visit from Madame, your mother, and the Baron.'

She spoke with complete assurance, in a tone at once intimate and well bred. Jeanne was captivated and adored her at once. 'Here is a friend,' she thought to herself.

The Comte de Fourville, on the other hand, seemed like a bear who had strayed into a drawing-room. When he sat down, he placed his hat on the chair next to him, hesitated for a moment as he wondered what to do with his hands, placed them on his knees and then on the arms of the chair, and eventually clasped them together as if he were about to pray.

Suddenly Julien walked in. Jeanne was astonished and barely recognized him. He had shaved. He was handsome, elegant, attractive, just as he had been at the time of their engagement. He shook the hairy paw of the Comte, who seemed to have woken up at his arrival, and kissed the hand of the Comtesse, whose ivory cheeks turned slightly pink while her eyelids fluttered briefly.

And he talked. He was his old, charming self. His large eyes, filled once again with tender solicitude, were like mirrors for love's reflection; and his hair, dull and coarse but a moment ago,  had been restored by brush and scented oil to its former condition as a mass of soft, gleaming waves.

As the Fourvilles were leaving, the Comtesse turned to him and said:

'I wonder, my dear Vicomte, whether you would care to go riding next Thursday?'

Then, as he was bowing to her and softly answering: 'But gladly, Madame,' she held Jeanne's hand and said in a clear, affectionate tone, smiling warmly:

'Ah, when you're well again, the three of us will be able to go galloping all over the countryside. It will be marvellous. Would you like that?'

With one easy sweep of her arm she gathered the train of her riding-habit, and the next moment she had sprung into the saddle with the lightness of a bird. Her husband, meanwhile, awkwardly bowed farewell and bestrode his large Norman mount, upon which he sat bolt upright like a centaur.

When they had disappeared round the bend by the gate, Julien, who seemed spellbound, burst out:

'What thoroughly charming people! They will certainly be worth knowing.'

Jeanne, happy also but not quite sure why, replied:

'The little Comtesse is delightful, I think I shall like her. But the husband looks rather a brute. Where did you meet them?'

He was rubbing his hands together cheerfully:

'I met them by chance at the Brisevilles'. The husband does seem a bit of a rough sort. He's mad about shooting, but he's a nobleman through and through, no question of that.'

And dinner that evening was almost merry, as if some secret source of happiness had entered the house.

After that nothing out of the ordinary occurred until the end of July.

One Tuesday evening, as they were sitting under the plane-tree by a wooden table on which stood two little glasses and a small carafe of brandy, Jeanne suddenly let out a sort of scream and, turning very pale, clutched both hands to her sides. A sudden, sharp pain had shot through her, and then vanished at once.

But ten minutes later she felt another pain, longer this time but less acute. She had great difficulty in returning indoors, having to be almost carried by her father and her husband. The short distance from the plane-tree to her bedroom seemed never-ending; she groaned involuntarily and kept asking to sit down, to stop for a moment, overcome by an unbearable sensation of heaviness in her stomach.

She had not reached her term, for the baby was not due until September; but since they were worried that something might have happened, a carriage was harnessed, and Père Simon left at the gallop to fetch the doctor.

He arrived about midnight, and immediately he recognized the symptoms of premature labour.

Once Jeanne was lying in bed the pains had eased a little, but she was seized with an appalling sense of dread, of desperation, like a faltering of her whole being, as though she had felt a mortal premonition, the mysterious touch of death. It was one of those moments when it passes so close that its breath chills our heart.

The bedroom was full of people. Mama sat slumped in a chair, sobbing. His hands shaking, the Baron rushed about, fetching things, asking the doctor's opinion, in a state of utter confusion. Julien was pacing up and down, with a look of concern on his face but otherwise quite calm; and the widow Dentu stood at the foot of the bed, wearing an expression suitable to the occasion, the air of a woman of experience for whom life holds no surprises. Midwife, tender of the sick, and guardian of the dead, she was used to receiving the new arrivals, registering their first cry, giving their newborn flesh its first wash and wrapping it in its first clothing, and then listening with the same imperturbable calm to the last words, the last gasp, the last little tremor of the departing, cleaning them too for the last time, sponging their worn-out bodies with vinegar and wrapping them in their last sheet. Thus had she developed an unshakeable indifference to every contingent feature of birth and death.

Ludivine the cook and Aunt Lison remained discreetly out of sight beside the door into the entrance-hall.

From time to time the patient would utter a faint groan of distress.

For two hours it looked as though they would have to wait a long while; but towards daybreak the pains suddenly came on again, strongly, and soon they were excruciating.

And as the involuntary cries of pain forced their way through her clenched teeth, Jeanne kept thinking of Rosalie, who had not suffered, who had scarcely even let out a moan, and whose child, the bastard child, had emerged without difficulty and without torment.

In her wretched, troubled soul she kept making comparisons between herself and Rosalie; and she cursed God, whom she had hitherto considered just. She railed against the culpable favouritism of destiny, and the criminal lies of those who preach goodness and the straight path of virtue.

Sometimes the agony became so acute that her mind went blank. Such remaining strength, and life, and consciousness as she possessed served only to make her feel the pain.

During the intervals of peace she could not stop looking at Julien; and a further agony, an agony of the soul, gripped her as she remembered the day when her maid had collapsed at the foot of this selfsame bed, with her child between her legs, the brother of the little creature that was now so cruelly tearing her own entrails apart. She recalled with absolute clarity her husband's every gesture, every look, every word, as he had caught sight of the girl stretched on the floor; and now she could read his thoughts as if they had been written in his very movements, the same boredom, the same indifference towards her as towards the maid, the same lack of concern felt by the selfish male, for whom fatherhood is simply a nuisance.

But a fierce contraction seized hold of her, a spasm of such severity that she thought:

'I'm going to die. I
am
dying!'

Then her inner being rose up in angry revolt, filled with a need to curse and furious with hatred for this man who had ruined her life and for this unknown child that was killing her.

She tensed herself in one supreme effort to expel the burden  from her. Suddenly it seemed as though her belly all at once were emptying itself; and the pain began to ease.

The nurse and the doctor were leaning over her, handling her. They removed something; and soon she was startled to hear that muffled sound she had heard once before; and then the little cry of distress, the faint mewling of the newborn child, entered into her soul, her heart, her whole, wretched, exhausted body; and instinctively she wanted to reach out and hold it.

She felt a surge of joy flood through her, bearing her up towards the new happiness which had just come forth. In a single instant she found herself delivered, assuaged, happy, happy in a way she had never known before. Her heart and her flesh were coming back to life. She could feel it now: she was a mother!

And she wanted to see her child! He had no hair or nails, having arrived too soon; but when she saw the little mite move, when she saw him open his mouth and utter his little cries, when she touched this living, grimacing, wrinkled little object born before its time, she was overwhelmed with irresistible, rapturous delight, and she realized that she had been saved, secured against all despair, that she now held in her arms something she could love to the ultimate exclusion of all else.

From that moment on she had but one thought: her child. She immediately became the fanatical mother, and was all the more besotted for having been deceived in her passion and disappointed in her hopes. She had to have the cradle constantly by her bed; and then, when she could get up, she remained sitting by the window for days on end, rocking the little bed beside her.

She was jealous of the wet-nurse; and when the thirsty little creature stretched out his arms towards her plump breast with its bluish veins and took the button of brown, wrinkled flesh between its greedy lips, she would stare, pale and trembling, at the strong, placid peasant woman and want to snatch her son away from her, to beat and scratch this breast from which he was drinking so eagerly.