IV The Return
M. Tabourin’s office was in the throes a war. Since Vitrolle, the head clerk, and the inseparable Dauras and Lestaque, had refused to acknowledge that the junior clerk Malaunay had won the bet concerning the Derize trial, the latter played all sorts of tricks on his colleagues, who retorted by tyranny and intrigue. The lawyer had waited many months before taking the case off the cause-list, limiting himself to requesting its adjournment, until the president, out of patience at hearing it called so often, had it stricken from the calendar. At the beginning of September, the chief having taken a holiday, the hostilities were redoubled. A client, who came down from Saint-Martin d’Uriage, re-established peace in a very unexpected way. He was a neighbor of the Derize estate, from which he had slyly drained off the water for his own profit.
“He has threatened me with proceedings,” he explained.
“It is his right,” answered Vitrolle.
The astute Malaunay interrupted:
“Who threatened you?”
“M. Albert.”
Thus he was called in the country where every house had known him as a child.
“He has come back then?”
“Why to be sure!”
The reconciliation was then an accepted fact, and Albert Derize had won his case in the most decided fashion. Thus supported by a witness, young Malaunay showed his comrades insolently that he would not be the victim of their unfairness. They all felt quite ashamed and Vitrolle was their interpreter in proposing an agreement.
“We shall go up to Saint Martin on Sunday and assure ourselves of the state of affairs. If we succeed in seeing the couple together, then very well, we shall pay the bet at once in the best hotel at Uriage. Is it agreed?”
“It is agreed,” said the other three, satisfied with this solution.
On the following Sunday, their first surprise consisted in finding Albert Derize on the train. Although he was beginning to grow gray, they recognized him by his distant air, the poise of his head, and that grace of movement which preserved his youth. When the car stopped he got out quickly, avoided the Casino and quickly walked up the path, which surrounds the Castle of Saint-Ferriol. He had not even deigned to notice them.
“I certainly won this time,” bridled Malaunay.
The annoyed opponents manifested incredulity, despite the evidence. They agreed to go up to Saint Martin in the afternoon in the heat, to install themselves in a meadow opposite the Derize house, and to observe. How could one fill up a Sunday in the country without some romance, and if one has an empty heart, there still remain the loves of other people to watch. The wait prolonged itself beyond all expectation. Coming from the inn, groups of peasants passed by, and one or the other, reeling, took some time to disappear.
“They have shut themselves in,” stated the small clerk.
But towards six o’clock in the evening, as day was dying, Albert and Elizabeth appeared on the road, preceded by Marie Louise, who was carrying heather, and Philippe, riding astride on a stick. All denial became impossible in the face of this family picture.
“It is all right,” declared Vitrolle.
And the four clerks came down across the fields to Uriage. At the Hotel du Parc, Malaunay, who had spent some time selecting his menu, ordered a sumptuous repast, for which his colleagues had to pay one-third each. Towards ten o’clock, as they were going back to Grenoble on the last car, somewhat excited by too many drinks, to their astonishment, they found themselves face to face with Albert Derize.
“It was only a visit after all,” stated Lestaque and Dauras, who regretted their money.
After his wife’s trip, Albert had spent three months in Paris—the summer months—in almost complete solitude. The information he had gathered about Anne de Sézery’s flight all tended toward Bladen Lodge. Without his knowledge she had been able to give up her flat, to dispose of her furniture, to accomplish all the complicated preparations for departure, and for a final departure at that: how he must have pained her by his incomplete love! The agency with which she had deposited her money had received orders to transfer it to London to Miss Pearson’s address, and her mail as well. Albert crossed the Channel a second time to beg Miss Pearson for information. She would not consent to give him any definite news. Anne was not in London, he would never see her again, and that was all. She advised him to be calm, to forget and to be silent; she assured him it would be best so.
Albert came back to Paris. Must he not accept reality? Alone, he would take up the burden of days, with application. He threw himself into some new work with all his heart. But in the evening, exhausted, he was so depressed that he sometimes wished it were all over.
No doubt, he would never hear from Anne again. She was alive, she could live far from him and still overpower him with that abnormal, cruel uncertainty, with which he struggled as with a nightmare. But why was Elizabeth also so silent? She had contributed to this flight, she who had not been willing to leave them to their passion, but had taken time and memories for her allies. Knowing him to be free, she had come at a most untimely occasion to remind him of his duty. If he had refused to accompany her, was that a reason for him to give up their children again? He had the right to be told of their health, of their education, of their holidays. In spite of himself, in this scorching, deserted Paris, his thoughts turned to Elizabeth, and he became set on demanding his rights, and reached the conclusion that he must not allow them to be disregarded. Nothing now prevented his claiming his children for several months of the year. He would go to Grenoble, and even to Saint Martin to find them. In this way he would be able to see Elizabeth, whom he still thought only of harassing. But to annoy her was precisely the only way of seeing her again, of seeing once more her touching eyes, her frightened face, her tense body, fragile and thin, when he had known her to be only indifferent and unresponsive. In certain more lucid hours, he reproached himself for his concern about her, as for a new impossible infidelity. But why did she not write? Had she then tired of her rôle of faithfulness?
At the end of August, exhausted by an uneasiness of mind which was unbearable to a man of decided character, he resolved to go to Dauphiné, to arrange amicably the question of the care of the children. Certain suggestions, at first put aside, later exert their influence, make their impression little by little. Elizabeth had spoken to him of settling in the Boulevard des Adieux in the vacant apartment of Mme. Derize, and of going from there to Saint Martin d’Uriage some day. Leaving Paris, where the leaves in the avenues and gardens were already turning yellow, he buried himself, as it were, at Grenoble, in the Boulevard des Adieux. Immediately he experienced that sort of distressing peace, which the tracked beast finds in his lair. The thought of his mother was strengthening. He succeeded in concentrating on the history notes which he had brought with him. The atmosphere being heavy and suffocating, he took some walks in the evening. The first was as far as the cemetery of Saint-Roch, which is nearby. Then he went to Saint-Ismier and hardly recognized the old restored castle, the park of new design, the rows of trees of which a great number had been cut down to set off the view: Anne de Sézery’s vow was realized;—even things had changed and lost their power of enchantment without her. There, she had first loved him. Yet that past which he awakened recalled nothing of her, but stirred up, on the contrary, other memories, as the step of a sportsman in the forest calls out game which he does not expect, and impels him to fire another shot. It was the time he met Mlle. Molay-Norrois in the streets and did not dare to bow to her. The pilgrimages turned against their own purpose. The Tower of London and Hyde Park, the allée of Mortemart and Chantilly, the quays of Paris, the Avenue de l’Observatoire which leads to the Luxembourg Garden as a river to the sea, the woods of Ville d’Avray, other corners of the great city and its suburbs, all these comprised the domain reserved for Anne. Dauphiné, although it had been her home, did not belong to her. Accustomed to understand the relation of landscape to human life, to give a soul to surroundings, he unconsciously felt the influence of his native country. It was, at every step, the return to years of struggle, to happy years, and it was the picture of a bright child of sixteen, Elizabeth, his youth. In his loneliness, he was walking towards the slope, whither his thoughts preceded him. He wished to stop, to leave again for Paris, and could not decide to do so. But why did she not write?
Unable to bear it any longer, he went up to Saint Martin d’Uriage one Sunday morning, opened the gate, crossed the orchard, rang at the door, although it was half open. He hesitated to enter his home without being announced. The old servant, hobbling along, came to receive him:
“Goodness me! M. Albert!”
“Good day, Fanchette.”
He kissed the cheek, wrinkled like a russet apple, and took pleasure in it. Did she not maintain in the present, a past, which, without her, would be more distant? She explained that madame was at high mass with the children.
“I will wait,” he said.
He looked on the rustic drawing-room table at the books lying about, and at the music on the piano. This examination satisfied him. Through the open windows, between the branches of the fruit trees which gravely bore their weight, he could see the huge bulk of Les Quatre Seigneurs, and farther to the right, the entrance to the Valley of Isère and the shadowy lines of the Chartreuse mountains. The horizon was bathed in that bluish mist, which comes at the beginning of autumn, to lessen the brilliant display of the summer. His heart was again reveling in the familiarity of these things, when the servant, who had left him to see to her kitchen stove, came back into the room, her forehead clouded. She began to fuss about him, as she scratched her head. Absorbed in thought, he did not see her. At last she opened her old mouth and said:
“Monsieur Albert?”
“What is it?”
“Will Monsieur lunch here? Because I have nothing but rice and boiled beef with carrots.”
He laughed at this uneasiness.
“Well, that is sufficient.”
Reassured, she went back to her kitchen. After all, Monsieur had never been difficult to feed, and he was always delighted with very ordinary dishes. At the same time Albert was saying to himself, “I am not invited, and Fanchette’s menu makes me hungry.” The peace of the surrounding country put him into a good humor. The wait growing monotonous, he left the house and went around his estate. His farmers, good folks, but somewhat indolent, welcomed him with emotion, and invited him to have a glass of wine.
“The farm has been widowed,” they assured him.
And indeed it did not take long for him to discover the neighbors’ encroachments. One was planting pear trees less than two meters from the dividing line, another was turning off the water from a spring for his own use.
“Ah, they are taking advantage of my absence!”
How would they not have abused the ignorance of a woman in the village? With his characteristic promptitude in action, he went to the encroachers and threatened them with proceedings. It was immediately known all over Saint Martin that he had come back, and that he would tolerate no trifling.
It was midday when he returned to the house. The bells of the little church were ringing out joyfully in two tones, and the sounds seemed like a release of brilliant birds flying from the old steeple. How pleasant this joyous welcome! It seemed a happy omen to him. Elizabeth had come back with the children. From the threshold of the drawing-room he saw her closing the shutters to keep out the heat. A sunbeam lit up her fair hair and her slim throat, set off by the black dress, cut low at the neck.
“Papa!” cried the children.
Although she had been told of his visit, she turned round, blushing. The bells went on ringing. This return to his house took an importance which he had not foreseen. They were both thinking of the early days of their marriage. “My work and you,” he said to her then. She had understood too late, the happiness which she had not appreciated. Quickly composing herself, she assumed a happy tone to bid him welcome. He would have preferred her to have been less at ease, and even somewhat constrained.
“Let us go in to luncheon,” she said almost at once, as if she had no doubt as to his acceptance, which was the best way of surmounting the difficulty.
As the dining-room faced the south, the window could be left open without inconvenience. It looked out on the meadows and pine woods of Chamrousse. Albert was seated opposite all this verdure. Nothing predisposes one more to peace and well-being, than the simple meals one enjoys in the country, while listening to the sound of running water, and the light rustling of the branches, swayed by the wind: evidences of the harmonious life of all things. And how well Elizabeth had been able to evade the difficulties of so embarrassing a return!
In the afternoon, when he expressed his intention of going, she did not keep him back, and he was surprised. She did not even seem to listen to Marie Louise, who talked of accompanying her father to the Castle of Saint-Ferriol. She had really treated him as a guest, with the tact of a woman who knows how to receive visitors, and to hide her pleasure or her boredom: that was, at any rate, the new impression that he took away with him. Perhaps she had tired of waiting for him, and no longer cared about a reconciliation. He was not very far from the truth. Elizabeth, in two and a half years, had accomplished such an endless series of efforts, had so eagerly desired an outcome, that she had reached that state of apparent unconcern, in which everything becomes the same to us, we need no longer reproach ourselves, nor have we any reserve strength. Now, whatever happened, might happen. She would attempt nothing more. Her failure in Paris had destroyed her moral energy which she had acquired through so much sorrow.
He returned on the following Sunday, accompanied, without his knowledge, by the whole staff of the Tabourin office. The pretext of this second visit was that he had not broached the subject of the children on the preceding Sunday, nor did he speak of it this time. Later he came several times a week.
“You are only half a papa,” his daughter said to him.
“Half a papa?”
“Yes, you come in the morning and go away in the evening like the day boarders at the convent.”
One day a tradesman’s bill had been presented while he was there. With haste, and yet embarrassment, he showed such an eagerness to pay it, that Elizabeth did not protest. And this new share in her household, which was a pleasure to her, brought him a little closer to her.
Anne had been gone for four or five months. He often estimated the time, surprised to find it so short. Then he began to indulge in retrospection. Little by little he regained his former influence over Marie Louise and Philippe, for whom he invented new games and stories. The little ones, fascinated by this art of ornamenting life, neglected their mother, who was miserable about it in secret, but when does one cease to learn to love unselfishly? However, even if this childish joy did refresh him, he was too loyal and far-sighted to hide from himself any longer the fact, that it was Elizabeth who attracted him to Saint-Martin d’Uriage. He gained an understanding of her from Marie Louise’s remarks, Philippe’s questions, and her own words. The young woman’s reserve gave way in their interviews. She showed more freely, but without display, her intelligence, circumspect, though clear and just. As he got to know her better, he manifested more eagerness to reconquer her. She neither repulsed nor encouraged him, flattered by that strange homage, which he paid her with all the resources of his mind, and proud too, of showing him what she had become, which he had not divined. In her turn, she held herself aloof, and was happy in expectation, and he was sometimes irritated by this unexpected indifference, and again promised himself to conquer her and to lay down the law.
With the exception of Philippe Lagier, who was often away, he saw no one but Elizabeth. In this charm of intimacy which so few men can resist, he confided to her his entire projects, the plans of his work. One day he brought along the manuscript of a “Popular Life of Pasteur” which he was finishing for his collection of biographies. He read it aloud, and when he had finished, humbly seeking praise, she gave him the highest: that of a deep emotion, which she felt, even to the degree of silence in listening to the story of the scientific career, so honorable and so full of enthusiasm. Another time, he did not conceal his bad humor because all the Verniers in the world were already there for the day when he arrived at Saint Martin. Blanche’s husband, in his vanity at being in close touch with a great man, took possession of him, and Albert, in spite of his desire to be pleasant to his wife’s friends, was wearied by this attitude.
“What is the matter with you to-day?” Elizabeth asked him as he was going away.
“You are never alone.”
The reproach was so droll that she burst out laughing. But he did not share her gayety. And that evening she watched him for a long time, until she could no longer see him. He did not turn around, for he gave himself up passionately to recollections of Anne, and promised himself to give up all this new life.
Two days later, he remained until after dinner, which he had never dared to do before, except on a Sunday. Elizabeth, asked to open the piano, played the “Appassionata,” which had revealed to Marie Louise the attraction of melancholy. He was behind her. Music exercised a deep influence on him. In addition to his studies in history, he had always reserved a portion of his time for it, and his works bore the trace of it. At the last chord, he bent toward her, and murmured:
“Forgive me, Elizabeth.”
For a man of so much pride, it was the most pathetic avowal. She stood up at once before him. Dressed in black, her face in darkness, she held herself like a flower on a long stem, which is awaiting the day. Her eyes wide open and bewildered, glowed in the dusk. The mask of unconcern discarded, he saw her again so fragile, so easy to destroy, no longer able to resist this state of uncertainty, just as she had appeared to him at the death bed of his mother, or in Paris in the little, drawing-room in the Paris Hotel. Softened, he repeated:
“Forgive me.”
Her mouth twisted; and it was a contraction he had noticed at the corners of Anne’s lips.
“You know quite well,” she said, and he was conscious of the deepened tone of her voice, “you know quite well that I have forgiven you. I had my faults as well.”
He answered very quickly, with the bitter knowledge of his cruelty, of his cowardice; but, cowardly and cruel, it would be necessary to love but once, to overcome that, and even then....
“I did not know how much I loved you. You are the wife of my youth, Elizabeth. I find all my love for you intact.”
“Intact?” she repeated.
And she gazed at him with large troubled eyes. Had the hour come? Trembling, ready to fall into his arms, she was waiting for one single word:
“Yes.”
He wanted to draw her to him, to press her to his heart. So many bonds were being renewed; could the distance ever be bridged? Did she read to the depth of his troubled heart? She knew his desire and gently rejected it:
“No, no, Albert, not yet, Please!”
“Elizabeth, remember, I have loved you.”
And in a lower voice, as if remorsefully:
“I do love you.”
“If you love me, go away to-night. Do not remain here. I beg you—if you love me.”
Her eyes, too intense, supplicated him, even more than her words.
“Yes, Elizabeth, I must be worthy of you.”
With a heavy heart, only half free from another passion which exaltation could momentarily cloak with a film, but not suppress, he went away into the dark and starry night. From the threshold, she tried to pierce the darkness to catch the sound of his footsteps. Bewildered, trembling, with a thrill of emotion, she thought:
“Why has he gone?”