[XV]
FORTUNATELY for Jean, the summer was a mild one; in September frequent storms turned the leaves red. Cadette's grandson brought in the first mushrooms, smelling of forest loam, and diverted him with ortolans taken at dawn, which he would fatten in the dark and serve to Monsieur Jean soaked in old armagnac. Flights of wood-pigeons foretold an early winter, and soon the decoys would be prepared.
Jean had always loved the autumn; he felt a secret affinity with the fields of harvested millet, with the tawny heather-lands known only to solitary ring-doves, to sheep, and to the wind. The scent that came in through the window, opened at dawn to make his breathing easier, reminded him of those melancholy October afternoons when he used to come slowly back from his shooting. He was not allowed to wait peacefully for his release. Noémi did not understand that silence is due to the dying, and just as in the early days she had been unable to conceal her disgust, she could not now spare him the sight of her remorse. Her thirst for his forgiveness was insatiable, and as she bent over his hands, wet with her tears, he whispered: "I am the one who chose you, Noémi. I was the one who should have considered you ..."; but his words were in vain. She shook her head; Jean was dying for her sake; this thought banished everything else from her mind. Oh, the bigness, the nobility of him! How she would love him if he were to recover! She would pay back a hundredfold any affection that he might show her now. How was she to know that the moment when Jean became convalescent must mark the beginning of a fresh desire to be rid of him, and that he had to be at the point of death before she could love him? Young, ignorant and sensual, she could not possibly know her own mind, but her desires were sincere and she had communicated them to God. She kept clumsily insisting that Jean should set her free from remorse and he soon lost heart; his one idea now was to avoid being left alone with her. This would have been difficult to manage, a host of imagined ills having rivetted M. Jêrome to his bed, but for the frequent visits of the young doctor. Jean wondered at such extraordinary attention from a stranger, and, though unable to converse with him, enjoyed his presence.
One afternoon late in September he roused himself after a long period of inertia and saw that Noémi was sitting in a chair by the window asleep, with her head resting on her shoulder. He listened for a moment to her regular breathing, and then closed his eyes. The door-latch clicked, the doctor came in softly, but Jean, too weak to utter a single word of greeting, pretended to be asleep. There was a squeak of hunting boots, and then the room was still. The silence excited Jean's curiosity and he opened his eyes again; the doctor was standing near his sleeping wife, he was leaning ever so slightly towards her, and his big hand trembled.... Then Jean shut his eyes and heard Noémi's low voice: "Oh, do forgive me, doctor; I didn't hear you come in. I must have been asleep. Our patient is having a bad day to-day; the weather is so oppressive. Look at the leaves; they're not moving." He answered that there was a breath from the South-West; then Noémi went on: "It comes from Spain; there'll be a storm...." The man's pale face and his burning eyes were the portents of the storm that was imminent, and they were as clear to Noémi as any thunder-cloud. She got up and walked across the room in order to put Jean's bed between her body and those devouring eyes. The doctor stuttered: "You should take great care of yourself, if only for his sake." "Oh, I can withstand anything. I'm strong; I eat and sleep like an animal.... I envy people who can die of grief." They sat at opposite sides of the room, and Jean, apparently asleep, sang to himself without moving his lips, pausing at the cesura: Mon Péloueyre touche à son heure dernière....
Autumn with its veils of mist and its scent of tears folded him in her arms, and he was able to breathe more easily and eat a little. But during these days his mental agony was at its height. Lingering on the borderland between life and death, without distrusting Noémi he could not help wondering how, when he had gone, she would defend herself against this young man's irresistible beauty. Two persons predestined to love each other are not kept apart by the wretched ghost of a dead man. But there was no trace of these tormenting thoughts upon Jean's face and he smiled as he shook hands with the doctor. Ah, that he might live to conquer in the battle for Noémi's love! What obscure madness had produced his desire for death? Even without Noémi, even without any wife, he would have the caresses that were worth more to him than any others, those of the wind at dawn. Pouring with perspiration and sickened by the smell of the sick room, he looked with envious eyes at Cadette's grandson who had brought him the first woodcock of the season. What joy those mornings had been: dull grey pine-tops high in the blue sky, like the meek who will be exalted to glory; the strip of green grass and alders and mist in the heart of the forest that marked the wandering course of a stream whose clear waters flowed over a bed of brown sand. These pines beloved by Jean Péloueyre were the vanguard of a great army that stretched between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic, overlooking Sauternes and the hot valley where the sun warms every stem of every cluster of grapes.
With the passing of the years Jean would have become less and less a prey to emotions, and his ugliness, like all ugliness and all beauty, would have lost itself in old age. At least, he would have had the long days of hunting and gathering mushrooms. In bottles of Yquem are imprisoned the burning summers of long ago, and the sunsets of yesteryear redden the Gruau-Larose; one sits reading before the kitchen fire when the heather lands are bathed in rain and mist.... "It's not necessary for you to come to-morrow," Noémi said to the doctor, and he replied: "Oh, yes, I had better come." Was it possible that she did not understand? Had he never declared himself? Would death carry him off before he knew the result of this contest at his bedside? It was as though someone who thought the unhappy boy was leaving the world without enough suffering had hastened to bind him with the earthly ties that require the severest exertion to break. However, these fell from him one by one before his last day; peace settled upon him, and he had the same grateful smile for everyone. He no longer repeated lines of poetry, but words like these: "It is I. Fear not."
They had to keep the windows of Jean's dismal room closed on account of the late winter rains; but why did they trouble themselves about Jean's suffering, when suffering was a joy to him? The only signs of the life about him that penetrated his consciousness were the crowing of cocks, the jolting of farm carts, the church bells, and the endless patter of rain upon the tiles; and at night he heard the savage screams of birds of prey and the cries of their victims. The dim light of his last dawn came in at the windows. Cadette lit the fire, and the room was filled with resinous fumes. Through many hot summers this scent of burning pine had blown from the parched heather lands upon his face. The d'Artiailhs thought he could still hear, but no longer could see. M. Jêrome, in his soiled dressing gown, stood near the door weeping, and Cadette knelt with her grandson at the foot of the bed. The voice of the priest seemed with propitiatory phrases to be pushing open an invisible door: "Depart from this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty, Who created you in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Who suffered for you; in the Name of the Holy Ghost Who came down upon you; in the name of Angels and of Archangels; in the name of Thrones and of Dominions; in the name of Principalities and of Powers...."
Noémi gazed at him earnestly and she said softly to herself: "He was beautiful."
The people in the town mistook the bell that tolled while he was dying for the morning Angelus.