Then, when he saw her smile, he quickly consoled himself and grew quite gay. It was a great relief to have things settled, for the matter had long been distressing him, though he had never dared to open his mouth about it. He kissed Louise on the cheeks, and in the evening, over the dessert, he sang a merry song. Just as he was going to bed, however, he was troubled by a last disquieting thought.
'You will stay with us, eh?' he asked Pauline.
The girl hesitated for a moment, and then, blushing at her falsehood, she answered, 'Oh! no doubt.'
A whole month was required for the completion of the necessary formalities. Thibaudier, Louise's father, had, however, at once consented to the proposal of Lazare, who was his godson. There was only one dispute between them, a couple of days before the wedding, when the young man roundly refused to go to Paris and manage an Insurance Company, in which the banker was the principal shareholder. He intended remaining for a year or two longer at Bonneville and writing a novel, which was to be a masterpiece, before he started off to bring Paris to his feet. At this Thibaudier just shrugged his shoulders, and in a friendly way called him a big simpleton.
It was arranged that the marriage should take place at Caen. During the previous fortnight there were continual comings and goings, a perfect fever of journeyings. Pauline went about with Louise, seeking to divert her thoughts with all the bustle, and returning home quite exhausted. As Chanteau was not able to leave Bonneville, she had to promise to attend the ceremony, at which she would be the only representative of her cousin's family. The near approach of the day filled her with terror. She had arranged that she would not spend the night at Caen, for she thought she would suffer less if she returned to sleep at Bonneville. She pretended that her uncle's health made her very uneasy, and that she was unwilling to remain long away from him. Chanteau himself vainly pressed her to spend a few days at Caen. He wasn't ill at all, he urged. On the contrary, he was very much excited by the idea of the approaching wedding and the thought of the banquet at which he would not be present; and he was craftily planning to make Véronique supply him with some forbidden dish, such as a young truffled partridge, which he could never eat without the absolute certainty of a fresh attack of gout. However, in spite of all that could be urged, the girl declared that she would return home in the evening. She thought that this course would allow her greater facilities for packing her trunk the next morning and disappearing.
A drizzling rain was falling, and midnight had just struck as Malivoire's old coach brought Pauline back to Bonneville on the evening of the wedding. Wearing a blue silk gown, and ill protected by a little shawl, she was pale and shivering though her hands were hot. In the kitchen she found Véronique sitting up for her and dozing beside the table. The tall flame of the candle made the girl's eyes blink, full as they still were of the darkness of the journey, during which they had remained wide open all the way from Arromanches. She could only drag a few incoherent words from the drowsy servant: the master had been very foolish, but he was asleep now, and nobody had called. Then Pauline took a candle and went upstairs, chilled by the emptiness of the house, heart-sick amidst all the gloom and silence which seemed to weigh upon her shoulders.
When she reached the second floor she wished to take immediate refuge in her own room, but an irresistible impulse, at which she felt surprised, led her to open Lazare's door. She raised her candle to enable her to see, as though she fancied the room was full of smoke. Nothing was changed. Every piece of furniture was in its accustomed place, but she felt conscious of calamity, annihilation; it was a vague terror, as though she were in some chamber of death. She slowly walked up to the table and looked at the inkstand, the pen, and an unfinished page of manuscript still lying there. Then she went away. All was over, and the door closed on the echoing emptiness of the room.
When she reached her own chamber, the same vague sensation of strangeness that she had felt in Lazare's again affected her. Could this indeed be her room, with its wall-paper of blue roses and its little muslin-curtained iron bed? Was it really here that she had lived so many years? Still keeping her candle in her hand, she, who was usually so courageous, made a minute inspection of the apartment, pushed the curtains aside, looked under the bed and behind the furniture. She felt overcome by a strange kind of stupor, which kept her standing in front of the different things. She could not have believed that such keen anguish could ever have possessed her beneath that ceiling, whose every stain was familiar to her; and she now began to regret that she had not stayed at Caen. For she felt frightened in that old house, which was so empty and yet so full of memories of the past, and so cold, too, and so dark that stormy night. The thought of going to bed was intolerable to her. She sat down without even taking off her hat, and for several minutes remained motionless, her eyes fixed upon the candle-flame, which dazzled them. Suddenly, however, she started up in astonishment. What was she doing there, with her head throbbing wildly, with a violence that quite prevented her from thinking? It was one o'clock. She ought to be in bed. And she began to undress with slow, feverish hands.
Her orderly habits showed themselves even in this crisis of her life. She carefully put away her hat, and glanced anxiously at her boots to see if they had sustained any damage. She had folded her dress and laid it over the back of a chair, when her glance fell upon her bosom. Gradually a flush crimsoned her cheeks. In her troubled brain arose the thought of those two others over yonder. Alas! the harvest of love was not for her! To another were given the embraces of that husband for whose coming she herself had looked forward for so many years! Never would she be a wife or mother; the years would come and go, and she would age in utter loneliness. Then wild jealousy came upon her. She yearned to live, to live to the full, to drain the joys of life, she who loved life so dearly! She was more beautiful than that scraggy, fair-haired girl; she was stronger and healthier, and yet her cousin had not chosen her. Never now would he be hers; never, as in the past, might she again wait for him, expect him. She was tossed aside like an old rag. It was, no doubt, her own doing; and yet how awful was the thought of the others being together while she was all alone, shivering with fever in that cold, gloomy house!