CHAPTER X

1

The shadows lengthen when the sun descends in the heavens; and those which, in the broad light, enhance the brilliancy of all things now overspread and gradually extinguish them. Thus do our anxieties increase when our joy lessens; and those which made us smile in the plenitude of our happiness before long make us weep....

She has lied to me! I am sure now that she has lied! What has she done?

What can she be hiding from me? I can imagine nothing that could kill the interest which I take in her, but she has lied! I was certain of it yesterday, after our talk, when I remembered her blushes and her embarra.s.sment. I wanted to write to her then and could not. Darkness has fallen suddenly between her and me; and I no longer know to whom I am speaking; I no longer know what soul hears me nor at what heart I knocked!

A friend's lie hurts us even more than it humiliates us; it tells us that we have not been understood and that we inspire distrust or fear. I remember saying to her, one day:

"I would rather know that you hate me than ever feel that you fear me.

You must hide nothing from me, unless you want to wound me deeply; for the person to whom we feel obliged to lie is much more responsible for our lie than even we are."

But how can I hope that every one of my words will be remembered and understood and turned to account! I enjoy talking into the soul of this great baby as one likes singing in an unfurnished house; and I am none the less conscious of the illusion of it all. If we are to influence a fellow-creature, we do so best without aiming at it too carefully.

Success comes with time, by intercourse and example.

2

We are now on the threshold of autumn and the days are already short. By seven o'clock, all the farms are sleeping....

When I left Rose yesterday, it was understood that she should sometimes come to see me in the evening, when her day's work has not been too hard. She is to come across the downs and tap at the shutters of the room where I sit every evening after dinner.

To-day, I was hoping that she would not come and I gave a start of annoyance when I heard her whisper outside the window:

"Mummy! Mummy, dear!"

It is a name which she sometimes gives me in play. Women who have no children and do not expect ever to have any lend to all their emotions an extra tenderness, an extra solicitude. It is that unemployed force in our hearts which is striving for union with others.

Still, her affection displeased me this evening and, while I was putting on a wrap, my hands trembled with irritation. Rose, thinking that I had not heard her, raised her voice a little and repeated:

"Mummy! It's your little girl!"

I go out into the moonless, starless night, with my eyes still full of the light indoors; and our hands meet blindly before exchanging a pressure. She says good-evening and I kiss her without answering. I am afraid of betraying my ill-humour; I feel that I am hard and spiteful, but I hope that the mood will pa.s.s; and my anger, because it remains unspoken, takes a form that favours forgiveness. If she confesses of her own accord, without being impelled to do so by my att.i.tude, I know that my confidence in her will revive.

We walk in silence through the sombre avenue. The night seems darker because no sound disturbs its stillness; only the dead leaves, swept along by our skirts, drag along, utter a cry like rending silk.

Rose sighed:

"One would think the air was listening!"

I could not help exclaiming:

"That's rather fine, what you said then!"

And silence closes in again around our two little lives, both doubtless stirred by one and the same thought.

We go a little farther and sit down in the fields, where an unfinished haystack offers us a couch. We can hardly distinguish the line of the horizon between the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits across our faces; and Rose says, quietly:

"It's flying low. That means fine weather to-morrow. I must get in the...."

And suddenly her voice breaks and she covers her face with her hands.

All is silent....

I feel myself brutally good. The certainty of the coming confession encourages me in my coldness and I remain mute, while my heart is beating with pity and excitement....

But she speaks at last and each note of that tear-filled voice, by turns faltering, violent and plaintive, brings before my eyes, staring into the darkness, every step of her soul's calvary. I listen in astonishment. And yet do we not know that every woman's existence has its secret? I see the long procession of those who have told me their story. The weakest of them had found strength to love; to yield to man's desire, the bravest had been cowardly, the truest had betrayed, the most loyal and upright had lied. Everywhen and everywhere the flame of life had found its way through rocks, thrust aside obstacles, subjugated wills. Even the woman whom nature had most jealously defended, the plain woman whom I saw imprisoned in a stunted shape and condemned to live behind an ugly mask, even she, when she told me her love-story, compelled me to believe that she had been the most beloved, perhaps, and her pa.s.sion the most heroic.

Rose, following the common law, had no strength to fulfil her own will, but all strength to obey another's. Soon after arriving at Sainte-Colombe, five years ago, she came to know a young man who had since left the district. One day, when they were alone in the farmhouse kitchen, he flung his arms around her and, without a word, overcame her feeble resistance....

I could not help interrupting her story:

"Did you love him, Rose?"

"No," she said, "I did not!"

"Then, why did you yield?... Why?"

"I don't know," she sobbed. "He had such a strange, wild look, I was frightened...."

"But what did you do afterwards?"

"He asked me to go and see him; and I went whenever he asked me...."

"Then your G.o.dmother didn't know?"

"She guessed it on the first day; and, when I refused to take anything from him, she beat me and locked me up."

"Well, what then?"

"I managed to get out at night, by the roof...."

I would not let the subject drop:

"Then you were very, very happy when you were with him?"

But she exclaimed, artlessly:

"Oh, not at all! But he loved me, he said; and I thought that he would always stay here, for my sake.... He went away soon, without letting me know. When I understood that he was not coming back, I loathed myself and him ... and I tried to do away with myself...."

She burst into fresh sobs.

I should have liked to rise and lead her away. I should have liked to say:

"Come, cease these repinings; let us walk across the silent fields and forget all this for ever! Every one feels love differently and looks at it in a different light. Come, waste no time in repentance and don't go on being angry with that man! Faults that diminish our ignorance are not faults, but almost graces which chance bestows upon us. Come! And break away from the bitterness that is spoiling your beauty!"