VI
In spite of a three weeks’ excursion for which the couple had taken tickets, they returned unexpectedly to the Péloueyre house ten days after the wedding. Tongues began to wag, and the Cazenaves hastened, though it was not Thursday, to call and draw their own conclusions, but Noémi’s face revealed nothing of her private thoughts. The d’Artiailhs and the priest did their best to stop the flow of gossip: the young people preferred the peaceful atmosphere of home to the hubbub of hotels and stations. After High Mass, Noémi, well dressed and smiling, greeted her friends. She laughed; therefore she was happy. Her attendance at daily mass, however, was strange. Some of the women noticed that she kept her face covered for a long time after Communion, and that it showed obvious signs of suffering when she removed her hands. From this they deduced that Noémi was pregnant. Aunt Félicité appeared one day to make a furtive estimate of the size of the young woman’s waist, but Cadette was able to put her mind at rest and she refrained from further visits, being, as she said, unwilling to create the impression that she approved of this monstrous union contrived by priests. Her reappearance at her brother’s house, however, occurred simultaneously with the first warnings of an unavoidable domestic drama.
To M. Jêrome’s astonishment, his daughter-in-law cared for him with the devotion of a Sister of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. At the appointed moments she administered his medicines, ordered meals in strict accordance with his diet, and with gentle firmness succeeded in producing absolute silence for his afternoon nap. Jean, following his former custom on such occasions, slipped out of the house and made his furtive way through little winding streets to the edge of a field of millet. From his hiding-place behind a pine tree he watched for magpies. If only he could have held back each passing minute; if only evening would never come again! But the shade thickened, and in the pines, twisted by equinoctial gales, there was a faint echo of the rolling surf upon the sands of Mimizan and Biscarosse. Little cabins of heather rose up out of a thick growth of ferns, from which the sportsmen of Les Landes shot ring-doves. The smell of rye-bread came from the farm, and as the sun sank from view, Jean brought down his last lark. He made his way back to the village with increasingly slower steps; only a few moments more and Noémi would be unpleasantly conscious of his presence in the house. He tip-toed across the hall, but she was waiting for him and came forward carrying a lamp and smiling a welcome. She bent her forehead for a kiss, and felt the weight of the game-bag: the gestures of a wife, happy at the return of her beloved. But the mask was discarded after a few moments, for it had not served its purpose, and during dinner, M. Jêrome took pity on the silent couple. Now that there was a young nurse under his roof to care for him, he no longer felt the need of elaborating his symptoms, but Noémi had also undertaken to interview his farmers, so the running of his estate formed a subject for conversation. M. Jêrome was amazed to find that she was the only person in the house who understood how to check the bailiff’s figures and keep an eye on the sale of timber for pit-props, and he gave her the full credit for the four pounds’ weight he had put on since his son’s marriage.
When dinner was over, M. Jêrome dozed with his feet against the fire-dogs, leaving the two young people to face one another helplessly. Jean, sitting as far from the lamp as possible, tried to obscure himself—scarcely breathed. But he was unalterably there, and Cadette would certainly bring the candles at ten o’clock. Oh, that dreadful climbing of stairs!
A fine rain hissed upon the tiles, a shutter flapped, and a cart jolted down the street. Noémi knelt by the dreaded bed and prayed in a low voice: “Oh, God, I thank Thee for giving me the power to know and love Thee....” In the darkness, Jean was conscious that the adored body was drawing away from him, and he kept to his side of the bed. Sometimes Noémi, laying her hand upon his face—less hateful when she could not see it—felt hot tears upon his cheeks and, filled with remorseful sympathy, eyes closed and lips tight together, she clasped the wretched boy in her arms like a Christian Virgin in the arena who throws herself with sudden resignation into the jaws of death.