Part 16

On that resolution he turned back abruptly and at daybreak found himself outside the gate of the town. He had to wait till it was opened, and then the morning was so far advanced that he had to go straight to work at his office at the Toulon Admiralty. Nobody noticed anything peculiar about him that day. He went through his routine tasks with outward composure, but all the same he never ceased arguing with himself. By the time he returned to his quarters he had come to the conclusion that as an officer in war-time he had no right to take his own life. His principles would not permit him to do that. In this reasoning he was perfectly sincere. During a deadly struggle against an irreconcilable enemy his life belonged to his country. But there were moments when his loneliness, haunted by the forbidden vision of Escampobar with the figure of that distracted girl, mysterious, awful, pale, irresistible in her strangeness, passing along the walls, appearing on the hill-paths, looking out of the window, became unbearable. He spent hours of solitary anguish shut up in his quarters, and the opinion amongst his comrades was that Réal’s misanthropy was getting beyond all bounds.

One day it dawned upon him clearly that he could not stand this. It affected his power of thinking. “I shall begin to talk nonsense to people,” he said to himself. “Hasn’t there been once a poor devil who fell in love with a picture or a statue? He used to go and contemplate it. His misfortune cannot be compared with mine! Well, I will go to look at her as at a picture too; a picture as untouchable as if it had been under glass.” And he went on a visit to Escampobar at the very first opportunity. He made up for himself a repellent face, he clung to Peyrol for society, out there on the bench, both with their arms folded and gazing into space. But whenever Arlette crossed his line of sight it was as if something had moved in his breast. Yet these visits made life just bearable; they enabled him to attend to his work without beginning to talk nonsense to people. He said to himself that he was strong enough to rise above temptation, that he would never overstep the line; but it had happened to him upstairs in his room at the farm, to weep tears of sheer tenderness while thinking of his fate. These tears would put out for a while the gnawing fire of his passion. He assumed austerity like an armour and in his prudence he, as a matter of fact, looked very seldom at Arlette for fear of being caught in the act.

The discovery that she had taken to wandering at night had upset him all the same, because that sort of thing was unaccountable. It gave him a shock which unsettled, not his resolution, but his fortitude. That morning he had allowed himself, while she was waiting on him, to be caught looking at her, and then, losing his self-control, had given her that kiss on the hand. Directly he had done it he was appalled. He had overstepped the line. Under the circumstances this was an absolute moral disaster. The full consciousness of it came to him slowly. In fact, this moment of fatal weakness was one of the reasons why he had let himself be sent off so unceremoniously by Peyrol to Toulon. Even while crossing over he thought the only thing was not to come back any more. Yet while battling with himself he went on with the execution of the plan. A bitter irony presided over his dual state. Before leaving the Admiral, who had received him in full uniform in a room lighted by a single candle, he was suddenly moved to say: “I suppose if there is no other way I am authorized to go myself,” and the Admiral had answered: “I didn’t contemplate that, but if you are willing I don’t see any objection. I would only advise you to go in uniform in the character of an officer entrusted with dispatches. No doubt in time the Government would arrange for your exchange. But bear in mind that it would be a long captivity, and you must understand it might affect your promotion.”

At the foot of the grand staircase in the lighted hall of the official building Réal suddenly thought: “And now I must go back to Escampobar.” Indeed he had to go to Escampobar because the false dispatches were there in the valise he had left behind. He couldn’t go back to the Admiral and explain that he had lost them. They would look on him as an unutterable idiot or a man gone mad. While walking to the quay where the naval boat was waiting for him he said to himself: “This, in truth, is my last visit for years--perhaps for life.”

Going back in the boat, notwithstanding that the breeze was very light, he would not let the men take to the oars. He didn’t want to return before the women had gone to bed. He said to himself that the proper and honest thing to do was not to see Arlette again. He even managed to persuade himself that his uncontrolled impulse had had no meaning for that witless and unhappy creature. She had neither started, nor exclaimed; she had made no sign. She had remained passive and then she had backed away and sat down quietly. He could not even remember that she had coloured at all. As to himself, he had enough self-control to rise from the table and go out without looking at her again. Neither did she make a sign. What could startle that body without mind? She had made nothing of it, he thought with self-contempt. “Body without mind! Body without mind!” he repeated with angry derision directed at himself. And all at once he thought: “No. It isn’t that. All in her is mystery, seduction, enchantment. And then--what do I care for her mind!”

This thought wrung from him a faint groan, so that the coxswain asked respectfully: “Are you in pain, mon lieutenant?” “It’s nothing,” he muttered and set his teeth with the desperation of a man under torture.

While talking with Peyrol outside the house, the words “I won’t see her again,” and “body without mind,” rang through his head. By the time he had left Peyrol and walked up the stairs his endurance was absolutely at an end. All he wanted was to be alone. Going along the dark passage he noticed that the door of Catherine’s room was standing ajar. But that did not arrest his attention. He was approaching a state of insensibility. As he put his hand on the door handle of his room he said to himself: “It will soon be over!”

He was so tired out that he was almost unable to hold up his head, and on going in he didn’t see Arlette, who stood against the wall on one side of the window, out of the moonlight and in the darkest corner of the room. He only became aware of somebody’s presence in the room as she flitted past him with the faintest possible rustle, when he staggered back two paces and heard behind him the key being turned in the lock. If the whole house had fallen into ruins, bringing him to the ground, he could not have been more overwhelmed and, in a manner, more utterly bereft of all his senses. The first that came back to him was the sense of touch when Arlette seized his hand. He regained his hearing next. She was whispering to him: “At last! At last! But you are careless. If it had been Scevola instead of me in this room you would have been dead now. I have seen him at work.” He felt a significant pressure on his hand, but he couldn’t see her properly yet, though he was aware of her nearness with every fibre of his body. “It wasn’t yesterday though,” she added in a low tone. Then suddenly: “Come to the window so that I may look at you.”

A great square of moonlight lay on the floor. He obeyed the tug like a little child. She caught hold of his other hand as it hung by his side. He was rigid all over, without joints, and it did not seem to him that he was breathing. With her face a little below his, she stared at him closely, whispering gently: “Eugène, Eugène,” and suddenly the livid immobility of his face frightened her. “You say nothing. You look ill. What is the matter? Are you hurt?” She let go his insensitive hands and began to feel him all over for evidence of some injury. She even snatched off his hat and flung it away in her haste to discover that his head was unharmed; but finding no sign of bodily damage, she calmed down like a sensible, practical person. With her hands clasped round his neck she hung back a little. Her little even teeth gleamed, her black eyes, immensely profound, looked into his, not with a transport of passion or fear, but with a sort of reposeful satisfaction, with a searching and appropriating expression. He came back to life with a low and reckless exclamation, felt horribly insecure at once as if he were standing on a lofty pinnacle above a noise as of breaking waves in his ears, in fear lest her fingers should part and she would fall off and be lost to him for ever. He flung his arms round her waist and hugged her close to his breast. In the great silence, in the bright moonlight falling through the window, they stood like that for a long, long time. He looked at her head resting on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, and the expression of her unsmiling face was that of a delightful dream, something infinitely ethereal, peaceful and, as it were, eternal. Its appeal pierced his heart with a pointed sweetness. “She is exquisite. It’s a miracle,” he thought with a sort of terror. “It’s impossible.”

She made a movement to disengage herself, and instinctively he resisted, pressing her closer to his breast. She yielded for a moment and then tried again. He let her go. She stood at arm’s length, her hands on his shoulders, and her charm struck him suddenly as funny in the seriousness of expression as of a very capable, practical woman.

“All this is very well,” she said in a business-like undertone. “We will have to think how to get away from here. I don’t mean now, this moment,” she added, feeling his slight start. “Scevola is thirsting for your blood.” She detached one hand to point a finger at the inner wall of the room, and lowered her voice. “He’s there, you know. Don’t trust Peyrol either. I was looking at you two out there. He has changed. I can trust him no longer.” Her murmur vibrated. “He and Catherine behave strangely. I don’t know what came to them. He doesn’t talk to me. When I sit down near him he turns his shoulder to me....”

She felt Réal sway under her hands, paused in concern and said: “You are tired.” But as he didn’t move, she actually led him to a chair, pushed him into it, and sat on the floor at his feet. She rested her head against his knees and kept possession of one of his hands. A sigh escaped her. “I knew this was going to be,” she said very low. “But I was taken by surprise.”

“Oh, you knew it was going to be,” he repeated faintly.

“Yes! I had prayed for it. Have you ever been prayed for, Eugène?” she asked, lingering on his name with delight.

“Not since I was a child,” answered Réal in a sombre tone.

“Oh yes! You have been prayed for to-day. I went down to the church....” Réal could hardly believe his ears.... “The abbé let me in by the sacristy door. He told me to renounce the world. I was ready to renounce anything for you.” Réal, turning his face to the darkest part of the room, seemed to see the spectre of fatality awaiting its time to move forward and crush that calm, confident joy. He shook off the dreadful illusion, raised her hand to his lips for a lingering kiss, and then asked:

“So you knew that it was going to be? Everything? Yes! And of me, what did you think?”

She pressed strongly the hand to which she had been clinging all the time. “I thought this.”

“But what did you think of my conduct at times? You see, I did not know what was going to be. I ... I was afraid,” he added under his breath.

“Conduct? What conduct? You came, you went. When you were not here I thought of you, and when you were here I could look my fill at you. I tell you I knew how it was going to be. I was not afraid then.”

“You went about with a little smile,” he whispered, as one would mention an inconceivable marvel.

“I was warm and quiet,” murmured Arlette, as if on the borders of dreamland. Tender murmurs flowed from her lips describing a state of blissful tranquillity in phrases that sounded like the veriest nonsense, incredible, convincing and soothing to Réal’s conscience.

“You were perfect,” it went on. “Whenever you came near me everything seemed different.”

“What do you mean? How different?”

“Altogether. The light, the very stones of the house, the hills, the little flowers amongst the rocks! Even Nanette was different.”

Nanette was a white Angora with long silken hair, a pet that lived mostly in the yard.

“Oh, Nanette was different too,” said Réal, whom delight in the modulations of that voice had cut off from all reality, and even from a consciousness of himself, while he sat stooping over that head resting against his knee, the soft grip of her hand being his only contact with the world.

“Yes. Prettier. It’s only the people....” She ceased on an uncertain note. The crested wave of enchantment seemed to have passed over his head, ebbing out faster than the sea, leaving the dreary expanses of the sand. He felt a chill at the roots of his hair.

“What people?” he asked.

“They are so changed. Listen, to-night while you were away--why did you go away?--I caught those two in the kitchen, saying nothing to each other. That Peyrol--he is terrible.”

He was struck by the tone of awe, by its profound conviction. He could not know that Peyrol, unforeseen, unexpected, inexplicable, had given by his mere appearance at Escampobar a moral and even a physical jolt to all her being, that he was to her an immense figure, like a messenger from the unknown entering the solitude of Escampobar; something immensely strong, with inexhaustible power, unaffected by familiarity and remaining invincible.

“He will say nothing, he will listen to nothing. He can do what he likes.”

“Can he?” muttered Réal.

She sat up on the floor, moved her head up and down several times as if to say that there could be no doubt about that.

“Is he, too, thirsting for my blood?” asked Réal bitterly.

“No, no. It isn’t that. You could defend yourself. I could watch over you. I have been watching over you. Only two nights ago I thought I heard noises outside and I went downstairs, fearing for you; your window was open but I could see nobody, and yet I felt.... No, it isn’t that! It’s worse. I don’t know what he wants to do. I can’t help being fond of him, but I begin to fear him now. When he first came here and I saw him he was just the same--only his hair was not so white--big, quiet. It seemed to me that something moved in my head. He was gentle, you know. I had to smile at him. It was as if I had recognized him. I said to myself: ‘That’s he, the man himself.’”

“And when I came?” asked Réal with a feeling of dismay.

“You! You were expected,” she said in a low tone, with a slight tinge of surprise at the question, but still evidently thinking of the Peyrol mystery. “Yes, I caught them at it last evening, he and Catherine, in the kitchen, looking at each other and as quiet as mice. I told him he couldn’t order me about. Oh, mon chéri, mon chéri, don’t you listen to Peyrol--don’t let him....”

With only a slight touch on his knee she sprang to her feet. Réal stood up too.

“He can do nothing to me,” he mumbled.

“Don’t tell him anything. Nobody can guess what he thinks, and now even I cannot tell what he means when he speaks. It was as if he knew a secret.” She put an accent into those words which made Réal feel moved almost to tears. He repeated that Peyrol could have no influence over him, and he felt that he was speaking the truth. He was in the power of his own word. Ever since he had left the Admiral in a gold-embroidered uniform, impatient to return to his guests, he was on a service for which he had volunteered. For a moment he had the sensation of an iron hoop very tight round his chest. She peered at his face closely, and it was more than he could bear.

“All right. I’ll be careful,” he said. “And Catherine, is she also dangerous?”

In the sheen of the moonlight Arlette, her neck and head above the gleams of the fichu, visible and elusive, smiled at him and moved a step closer.

“Poor Aunt Catherine,” she said.... “Put your arm round me, Eugène.... She can do nothing. She used to follow me with her eyes always. She thought I didn’t notice, but I did. And now she seems unable to look me in the face. Peyrol too, for that matter. He used to follow me with his eyes. Often I wondered what made them look at me like that. Can you tell, Eugène? But it’s all changed now.”

“Yes, it is all changed,” said Réal in a tone which he tried to make as light as possible. “Does Catherine know you are here?”

“When we went upstairs this evening I lay down all dressed on my bed and she sat on hers. The candle was out, but in the moonlight I could see her quite plainly with her hands on her lap. When I could lie still no longer I simply got up and went out of the room. She was still sitting at the foot of her bed. All I did was to put my finger on my lips and then she dropped her head. I don’t think I quite closed the door.... Hold me tighter, Eugène, I am tired.... Strange, you know! Formerly, a long time ago, before I ever saw you, I never rested and never felt tired.” She stopped her murmur suddenly and lifted a finger recommending silence. She listened and Réal listened too, he did not know for what; and in this sudden concentration on a point, all that had happened since he had entered the room seemed to him a dream in its improbability and in the more than lifelike force dreams have in their inconsequence. Even the woman letting herself go on his arm seemed to have no weight as it might have happened in a dream.

“She is there,” breathed Arlette suddenly, rising on tiptoe to reach up to his ear. “She must have heard you go past.”

“Where is she?” asked Réal with the same intense secrecy.

“Outside the door. She must have been listening to the murmur of our voices....” Arlette breathed into his ear as if relating an enormity. “She told me one day that I was one of those who are fit for no man’s arms.”

At this he flung his other arm round her and looked into her enlarged as if frightened eyes, while she clasped him with all her strength and they stood like that a long time, lips pressed on lips without a kiss and breathless in the closeness of their contact. To him the stillness seemed to extend to the limits of the universe. The thought “Am I going to die?” flashed through that stillness and lost itself in it like a spark flying in an everlasting night. The only result of it was the tightening of his hold on Arlette.

An aged and uncertain voice was heard uttering the word “Arlette.” Catherine, who had been listening to their murmurs, could not bear the long silence. They heard her trembling tones as distinctly as though she had been in the room. Réal felt as if it had saved his life. They separated silently.

“Go away,” called out Arlette.

“Arl....”

“Be quiet,” she cried louder. “You can do nothing.”

“Arlette,” came through the door, tremulous and commanding.

“She will wake up Scevola,” remarked Arlette to Réal in a conversational tone. And they both waited for sounds that did not come. Arlette pointed her finger at the wall. “He is there, you know.”

“He is asleep,” muttered Réal. But the thought “I am lost” which he formulated in his mind had no reference to Scevola.

“He is afraid,” said Arlette contemptuously in an undertone. “But that means little. He would quake with fright one moment and rush out to do murder the next.”

Slowly, as if drawn by the irresistible authority of the old woman, they had been moving towards the door. Réal thought with the sudden enlightenment of passion: “If she does not go now I won’t have the strength to part from her in the morning.” He had no image of death before his eyes but of a long and intolerable separation. A sigh verging upon a moan reached them from the other side of the door and made the air around them heavy with sorrow against which locks and keys will not avail.

“You had better go to her,” he whispered in a penetrating tone.

“Of course I will,” said Arlette with some feeling. “Poor old thing. She and I have only each other in the world, but I am the daughter here, she must do what I tell her.” With one of her hands on Réal’s shoulder she put her mouth close to the door and said distinctly:

“I am coming directly. Go back to your room and wait for me,” as if she had no doubt of being obeyed.

A profound silence ensued. Perhaps Catherine had gone already. Réal and Arlette stood still for a whole minute as if both had been changed into stone.

“Go now,” said Réal in a hoarse, hardly audible voice.

She gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and again they stood like a pair of enchanted lovers bewitched into immobility.

“If she stays on,” thought Réal, “I shall never have the courage to tear myself away, and then I shall have to blow my brains out.” But when at last she moved he seized her again and held her as if she had been his very life. When he let her go he was appalled by hearing a very faint laugh of her secret joy.

“Why do you laugh?” he asked in a scared tone.

She stopped to answer him over her shoulder.

“I laughed because I thought of all the days to come. Days and days and days. Have you thought of them?”

“Yes,” Réal faltered, like a man stabbed to the heart, holding the door half open. And he was glad to have something to hold on to.

She slipped out with a soft rustle of her silk skirt, but before he had time to close the door behind her she put back her arm for an instant. He had just time to press the palm of her hand to his lips. It was cool. She snatched it away and he had the strength of mind to shut the door after her. He felt like a man chained to the wall and dying of thirst, from whom a cold drink is snatched away. The room became dark suddenly. He thought, “A cloud over the moon, a cloud over the moon, an enormous cloud,” while he walked rigidly to the window, insecure and swaying as if on a tight rope. After a moment he perceived the moon in a sky on which there was no sign of the smallest cloud anywhere. He said to himself: “I suppose I nearly died just now. But no,” he went on thinking with deliberate cruelty, “oh no, I shall not die. I shall only suffer, suffer, suffer....”

“Suffer, suffer.” Only by stumbling against the side of the bed did he discover that he had gone away from the window. At once he flung himself on it violently with his face buried in the pillow, which he bit to restrain the cry of distress about to burst through his lips. Natures schooled into insensibility, when once overcome by a mastering passion are, like vanquished giants, ready for despair. He, a man on service, felt himself shrinking from death and that doubt contained in itself all possible doubts of his own fortitude. The only thing he knew was that he would be gone to-morrow morning. He shuddered along his whole extended length, then lay still gripping a handful of bedclothes in each hand to prevent himself from leaping up in panicky restlessness. He was saying to himself pedantically, “I must lie down and rest, I must rest to have strength for to-morrow, I must rest,” while the tremendous struggle to keep still broke out in waves of perspiration on his forehead. At last sudden oblivion must have descended on him because he turned over and sat up suddenly with the sound of the word “Ecoutez” in his ears.