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I felt a great need for fresh air and light. What the nature of this hunger and thirst was I cannot tell.... The sunshine suddenly lighted up the window-frame. Its golden rays coming through the open casement and falling obliquely upon the objects in my room filled it with numerous fires. It was a salute.
To be out of doors, to walk, to feel the sun on my skin!
I had a letter to mail. The thought of it brought me to my feet, impatient, ready.
Should I take the little one along? But how about a good long walk, the semblance of distraction?... I decided to go alone.
With my eyes close to the image in the mirror, I powdered my face and puffed my hair on each side under my hat as I used to do. How the least prinking helps a woman! Instead of the really ugly pointed little face smeared with pallor, which, without arousing my shame, had visibly lengthened these past weeks, there was a face of warm, even whiteness and of an oval not so pronounced, eyes which, even if dark-rimmed, had lost their fixity, and a shower of red tendrils like coppery breaths blown on my forehead.
The early spring was making itself felt. A raw wind was raising the dust of the streets. Assailed at the first step by the blue, dancing, swirling air, I walked falteringly, like a prisoner who has just been released and doesn't know where to turn.
Everything the same. The old bridge still stretching its badly joined planks from the paved street to the road where the wistaria bloomed. The patched, mossy roof of the old wash-house a few steps from the mill still displaying its dog's-eared edges. The same vistas across the green breaches between the houses.
Every corner of the town held out a memory to me—here a two-year-old memory, here a distinct vision crouching. I called to the vision and welcomed it. My life was not dead, and my heart was open and there was still a man to love me....
I had been unjust in the black moment of despair. My share of love and light still remained. Did he know I was a widow? Since he had been taken prisoner six months ago, no news had reached me and I didn't know if he had received any of my letters.
The broad sunshine expanded my chest and warmed up a vision so tender—a hope or a memory—that I was stung by a pang of remorse and almost felt like chasing it away.
I reached the center of the town, where there were more people and especially more well-to-do people.
Feminine figures, which I recognized, came toward me at a dull gait. I knew them; I had seen these old ladies at prayers two years before. They wore the same dresses and the same hats, the sort you don't see anywhere except in the provinces.... Hypocritical hands as I passed the houses, lifted the crocheted curtains. I was preceded by mystery and followed by whisperings.
Every passerby seemed to be blaming me for the dazzling sunlight which my eyes were embracing; every house scowled, and the whole street, in spite of the pleasant weather, wore veritable mourning, not mere sadness and solemnity, but mourning, and the people looked as though they were in a slow funeral procession, the women strangled in black, upholstered in crepe, and buried alive in their hoods and veils.
The Cathedral square was resplendent with profane joy. The birds swooped from one to the other of the great, white-dappled plane-trees, and every now and then one perched on the statue in the fountain, a clumsy girl with petticoat of stone and turned-up sleeves, a decent bosom bared, a sheaf in one arm, and an eternally dried-up urn in the other arm. Through its high lanceolate windows and the tracery of the two rose-windows Notre Dame was drinking in light and making mock of its ancient front.
It was a brilliant day, and the world rejoiced. I tasted the savor of living. In spite of myself I fell into the nervous, elastic step of old and drank in the living air like an intoxicating elixir.
An idea took lodgment—he was familiar with this scene, these crabbed shops, hostile promenaders, and square of bourgeoning; he had walked on these cobblestones; and at the edge of the town was his little summer villa. The idea went round and round, very fast; and I was weak; so I clutched at it for support.
Another veiled woman in black....
That figure tending to heaviness but graceful and in the very mould of femininity is not unfamiliar. I have seen the woman before. You can tell from a distance that she wears the mark of the widow, a hood-like hat faced with white.
She too;...
I am interested in her. In the country you are interested in everybody you meet.
Who is she, I wonder. She seems to be about forty, but neither her hair nor her cheeks have lost their freshness. Who....
My heart bursts, alarm comes rushing, misfortune approaches.... She walks toward me—she is only a few feet away.... If she would only stop ... it is she ... his wife!
In the time it takes to walk only a few feet you can undergo the acutest agony. I held my breath and for a second time felt death strike me with its thunderbolt. I had time to become a widow too.
She advanced terribly: it was death advancing along the sidewalk. I felt I must detain and implore her. With jaws set I restrained a great convulsive outcry and flung myself in her way.... My lips gave a sort of cluck.... She fixed her eyes straight ahead and turned away deliberately as if from a drunken beggar.
I looked and looked after her....
She departs—forever—her skirt grazing the ground. Her veil carries away the remnant of my joy, leaving me there stupefied and convulsed, alone under the sun. She departs....
My God!...