The Thibaults (68 page)

Jumping down, she ran to the iron gate, opened it, and vanished round a wall. Almost immediately she came into sight again and called to Antoine.

“It’s still there.”

Sunlight fell full upon her face, where only joy was manifest. She vanished again and this time Antoine followed her. He found her standing, arms akimbo, gazing at a patch of weeds wedged in the angle between two walls; some vestiges of masonry showed through the nettles.

“It’s there all right, but what a state it’s in! Yes, poor kid, your grave could do with a brush-up—and, just think, I pay them twenty francs a year to look after it!”

She turned to Antoine, and now her voice sounded almost diffident, as though she craved his indulgence for a caprice.

“Toine dear, would you mind very much taking off your hat?”

Blushing, Antoine removed his hat.

“Poor little darling!” she suddenly exclaimed, and rested her hand on Antoine’s shoulder, while her eyes filled with tears. “To think I wasn’t even with her when she died! I came too late. She was such a sweet little thing, just like a little angel, and so pale… .” Then, in a sudden change of mood, she wiped her eyes and smiled. “Well, it’s a queer sort of expedition I’ve brought you on, isn’t it? Of course it’s ancient history in a way, but one can’t help feeling it all the same. It’s just as well we have work before us—it takes one’s mind off things. Come along!”

She insisted on going back to the carriage and, refusing the driver’s help, carried her packages to the graveyard. There, waving Antoine aside, she unfastened them herself, kneeling on the ground. On an adjoining tombstone she alined methodically a bill-hook, a shovel, and a mallet; last of all a big cardboard box containing a wreath woven of strings of white beads.

“Now I know why it was so heavy,” said Antoine smiling.

She drew herself up gaily.

“Look here, stop ragging and lend us a hand for a change. Off with your coat! Here, take this pruning-hook! We’ve got to root up, or hack away somehow, all those damned weeds which have overgrown everything. See those bricks there, underneath? That’s the grave. She had such a mite of a coffin, and it didn’t weigh much either, poor darling! Pass me that, please. It’s all that’s left of a wreath; a pretty old one, that. ‘In memory of our darling daughter.’ Zucco brought it. I’d had nothing to do with him for a year, but I thought I ought to let him know about it all the same—you understand, don’t you? Anyhow he did the right thing; he put in an appearance, in mourning, too. What’s more, I was really glad he’d come; I didn’t feel so lonely at the funeral. Silly of me, but there you are! Hallo, that’s the cross. Set it up straight, please; we can bank it up with earth afterwards.”

As he drew aside a wisp of grass, Antoine had a shock; a first glimpse had not revealed the entire inscription: “Roxane Rachel Goepfert.” The “Roxane” had been hidden, and he had only seen
her
name. For some seconds he stood there, lost in thought.

“Now then,” Rachel admonished him. “Let’s get down to it! We’ll begin here.”

Antoine “got down to it” with a will; he was no believer in half-measures. In his shirt-sleeves, brandishing pruning-hook and shovel, he very soon was sweating like a ditch-digger.

“Now for the wreaths,” she said. “Pass them to me and I’ll clean them one by one. Hallo, there’s one missing! Can’t you find it? It’s Hirsch’s, the best of the lot. In china flowers, it was. Well, I must say, that’s a bit thick!”

Antoine watched her with amusement; hatless, the red tangle of her hair burning in the sunlight, lips curling with scorn and indignation, her skirts tucked up and sleeves rolled to her elbows, she raged about the churchyard, from first to final grave, muttering imprecations.

“Someone’s gone and lifted it, the dirty thief—damn him!”

When she came back she seemed disheartened.

“And I was so fond of it! They’ve chopped it up into trinkets, I suppose. Yes, they’re a primitive lot, all right! Still”-—her anger evaporated as if by magic—”I’ve spotted some yellow sand over there which will brighten things up no end.”

With the passing minutes the little grave was taking on a new aspect; the cross, trued up again and hammered into the ground, rose high above a brick rectangle, meticulously cleared of weeds; a narrow border of sand, laid all around it, added the finishing touch to a neat, well-kept grave.

They had not noticed the horizon clouding up, and some premonitory raindrops took them by surprise. A storm was gathering above the valley. Under the leaden sky the tombstones seemed to grow whiter yet, the grass more green.

“Hurry up!” Rachel cried. She cast a mothering glance towards the tiny grave. “Yes, we’ve made a good job of it. Why, it might be a little cottage garden!”

Antoine had espied in a corner of the graveyard two saffron-hearted roses on a drooping branch, tossing in the breeze. He thought of laying them in token of farewell on little Roxane’s grave, but could not bring himself to make the romantic gesture, which would come so much better from the child’s mother. He picked the roses and handed them to Rachel.

Taking them from his hand, she thrust the stems hastily into her blouse.

“Thanks,” she said, “but we must hurry or my hat will be ruined.”

Without looking back, she ran to the carriage, holding up her skirts under the downpour.

The driver had taken out his horse, and man and beast were sheltering in a hollow of the hedge. Antoine and Rachel took cover under the hood, spreading on their knees the heavy apron reeking of musty leather. She was laughing, amused at the trick the elements had played on them, and rejoicing, too, in a sense of duty done.

It was only a summer shower. Soon the rain abated, the clouds sheered off towards the east. Across the clear, pellucid air the setting sun shone out again in blinding splendour. The driver began to harness his horse, and some children came along the road, driving before them a flock of rain-drenched geese. A little boy of nine or ten climbed onto the step and hailed them in a shrill, childish voice:

“It’s nice to be in love, ain’t it, mister?”

He jumped off again; they heard his clogs clattering down the road.

Rachel burst out laughing.

“Back numbers?” Antoine chuckled. “The rising generation strikes me as being very much up-to-date.”

At last the vehicle was ready to take the road. It was too late to catch the train at Caudebec and they had to drive directly to the nearest main-line station. As Antoine had not arranged for a substitute at the hospital on Monday morning, he was bound to return to Paris that night.

The driver persuaded them to halt at Saint-Ouen-la-Noue for supper. The inn was thronged with the usual Sunday night crowd of topers. The new-comers were allotted one of the back rooms.

They ate in silence. Rachel’s joviality had spent itself and she was musing on the past—that evening when at this very hour, after the funeral, she had driven to this inn in a similar, perhaps the same, conveyance; but then the famous tenor had been her companion. Most vivid memory of all was the dispute that had flared up between them almost at once. Zucco had grown violent and dealt her a blow —just there it had happened, in front of that corn-bin. But that very night she had given herself to him again in one of the bedrooms overhead, and for the next four months she had once more put up with his brutal ways, his boorishness. Still, she bore him little malice; there was even a certain sensual thrill in her memories of the man and of the blow he had inflicted. But she took good care not to tell Antoine the story; she had never confessed to him in so many words that the singer used to beat her… . Then another and more poignant memory loomed through the darkness of her thoughts, and now she realized that she had dallied all this time with other fancies only to shake off its obsession.

She rose.

“Shall we walk to the station?” she suggested. “The train’s not due till eleven. The driver can bring along the luggage.”

“What? A five-mile tramp along these muddy roads, in the middle of the night?”

“Why not?”

“I never heard of such an idea!”

“Oh,” she sighed, “then I’d have got there fagged out and that would have done me no end of good!” But, without further protest, she followed him to the waiting carriage.

The night was pitch-dark, the air refreshed by rain. No sooner was she seated than she prodded the driver’s back with her parasol.

“Drive slowly, please; as slowly as you like. We’ve heaps of time.” Then she snuggled up to Antoine, murmuring: “It’s such a lovely night; I’m so comfy, like this.”

But when, a moment later, he lightly stroked the cheek that nestled against his shoulder, he felt it wet with tears.

“My nerves are all upset,” she exclaimed, and moved her face away. Then suddenly she flung herself into his arms. “Oh, my darling, keep me, hold me close, close in your arms!”

They were silent now, locked in each other’s arms. Trees and houses, briefly lit up by the carriage-lamps, flickered into phantom life and died into the darkness. A host of stars spangled the zenith. Rachel’s drooping head swayed to and fro on Antoine’s shoulder with each lurch of the ramshackle conveyance; now and again she drew herself up and her arms tightened round his shoulders.

“Oh, how I love you!”

They were the only passengers awaiting the Paris train on the platform of the little junction. They took shelter under a shed. Rachel, still in silent mood, held Antoine’s arm.

Porters were bustling hither and thither in the darkness, swinging their lanterns over the rain-drenched platform and lighting it with evanescent gleams.

“Stand back for the express!”

With a rattle and a roar the express hurtled past, a black fire-eyed mastodon, whirling aloft whatever might take wing, draining away the very air behind it. The tumult passed; silence closed in again. Suddenly above their heads the thin, exasperating buzzing of an electric bell announced the coming of their train.

There was only half a minute’s halt and they had barely time to scramble into a compartment, no time to choose one. Three other passengers were in their carriage, sound asleep; visored in blue, the roof-lamp glimmered wanly. Rachel took off her hat and sank into the only remaining corner-seat. Antoine sat down at her side, but, instead of leaning towards him, she pressed her forehead against the window.

In the half-light her hair, which glowed in sunshine orange-yellow, almost pink, had lost its normal hue, changed to a white-hot, molten fluorescence, like spun glass or a metallic floss. Her cheeks were bathed in a phosphorescent sheen which made the skin seem insubstantial, wraithlike. Antoine clasped Rachel’s hand, which lay drooping on the cushions. Thinking he had seen her shiver, he questioned her in a low voice; her only response was a febrile pressure of his hand; she did not turn in his direction. He had no inkling of what might be passing in her mind. He remembered her demeanour in the graveyard, her nervous attack at the inn; could the errand which had brought them there account for it? Yet she had seen it through cheerfully enough. He could make nothing of her present mood.

When they reached Paris, and their fellow-travellers, struggling to their feet, unmasked the lamp, he noticed that her eyes were fixed on the ground. He followed her in silence through the crowd and only when they were in the taxi did he venture a question.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me what it is, Rachel.”

“Leave me in peace! Can’t you see it’s over now?”

“No, I won’t leave you in peace. I’ve the right … Now do tell me what it is.”

Raising her tear-stained face, she gazed at him with a look of utter despair.

“No, I can’t tell you what it is.” But then her self-control broke down and she flung herself into his arms. “I’ll never have strength enough, my darling; never, never, never …!”

In a flash he knew his happiness was drawing to an end; Rachel would leave him, pass from his life—and there was nothing, nothing at all, that he could do against it. He realized the bitter truth without a word from her and long before he guessed what lay behind it, even before the sorrow of it touched his life; it was as if he had always, from the first, been prepared for this to happen.

In silence they climbed the stairs and entered Rachel’s flat. She left him to himself for a few moments in the pink room. He stood there, bereft of thought, gazing vacantly at the bed, the dressing-table, the alcove—at all that had become a second home to him. She had taken off her cloak when she came back to the room. He watched her enter, shut the door, come near him, her eyes veiled by the golden lashes, her lips close-set and enigmatic.

His courage gave way, and he stumbled towards her, stammering:

“But you can’t mean it, surely you can’t? You’re not really going to leave me?”

Then she sat down and in a weary, broken voice asked him to face it calmly; she had a long journey before her, a business trip to the Belgian Congo. She launched into explanations. Her father’s estate, every sou he had, had been invested by Hirsch in an oil-refinery which hitherto had done very well indeed and paid good dividends. But recently one of the managers had died, and now she had learned that the other manager, who was running the factory at present, was hand in glove with some wealthy business-men from Brussels who had just established at Kinchassa—in close proximity, that was—a rival factory, and the Belgians were doing their utmost to ruin the concern in which she, Rachel, was interested. (As she went on, her voice grew rather more assured.) The situation was complicated, moreover, by political intrigues. The Miiller group was backed by the Belgian government. There was no one she could trust on the spot. Her entire fortune was in jeopardy, her material welfare and her future. She had thought things over, tried to find some other way out. Hirsch was living in Egypt and quite out of touch with the Congo at present. The only solution was to go there herself and set the business on its feet again, or dispose of it to the Miiller group at a suitable price.

Vanquished by her coolness, Antoine heard her out, pale-faced, with tight-set lips.