[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.
[VII]
THE shooting of wood pigeons provided Jean with an excuse for spending his days away from her to whom his mere presence was a torture. He got up so quietly in the mornings that Noémi did not wake, and when she opened her eyes he had left the house and was driving in a little cart over the muddy roads. He unharnessed his horse at a farm, hid himself close to the hut, and whittled a signal, fearing lest some doves might already be in sight. Cadette's grandson replied that all was clear, and the waiting began. Long, mist-wrapped, dreaming hours: tinkling sheep-bells, shepherds calling faintly, rooks cawing in the tree-tops.
At four o'clock Jean started for home, but in order to arrive as late as possible he went for a moment into the church. His lips did not form any prayer, but his heart bled before a hidden presence. Tears came frequently, and it seemed to him that his head was resting upon invisible knees. Later, Jean threw his day's bag of slate-coloured birds upon the kitchen table, their crops still swollen with acorns. His boots smoked when he stretched them towards the fire, and the warm tongue of a dog touched his hand. Cadette was putting bread in the soup, and Jean followed her into the dining-room. Noémi spoke to him: "I didn't know you had come back...." Then—"Aren't you going to wash your hands?" The shutters of his room were still open, and in the rain-water in the ruts the reflection of a lantern glittered coldly. Jean washed his hands without cleaning his fingernails, and at first the edge of the dining table prevented Noémi from seeing them. He watched her furtively; how white her ears were!
Noémi's appetite had gone, and Jean insisted clumsily upon her taking a second helping of mutton: "But I tell you I'm not hungry!" A little smile of apology, or perhaps the pouting suggestion of a kiss calmed his brief impatience. Noémi looked at her husband with the eyes of a God-fearing person at the point of death, and the smile that played about her mouth was forced as though to cheer a dying friend. It was Jean, Jean Péloueyre, who had banished the gleam from her eyes, and the colour from her cheeks, her lips, and her ears. His mere presence was cutting at the roots of her life, and he loved her the better for the suffering he caused her. No victim had ever been so adored by its tormentor.
M. Jêrome alone flourished. Troubles other than his own were not apparent to him, and his announcement that he was conscious of a definite improvement in the state of his health abounded everyone. His asthma allowed him a certain freedom, and he could now sleep until dawn without the help of a narcotic. To have denied admittance to Dr. Pieuchon whose son was spitting blood and undergoing treatment from his father had, M. Jêrome said, brought him good luck. He had broken with his old friend through fear of contagion, and he declared that his daughter-in-law could minister to all his needs—she was more competent than a doctor. Nothing, not even the ceremonies of his toilet, dismayed her. Under her supervision his loathsome diet became quite delicious. The juice of an orange or a lemon and sometimes a spoonful of old Armagnac filled the gaps left by forbidden condiments, and produced a thing which M. Jêrome swore he had lacked for fifteen years—an appetite. And after a few shy attempts, Noémi was able to establish the habit of encouraging her father-in-law's digestion by reading aloud to him. She was indefatigable, and could carry it through to a finish without showing that she heard his short regular breathing, the overture to sleep. One o'clock would strike; an hour less of shuddering disgust in the darkness of the room above, of waiting for the loathsome body beside her to move from the sleep simulated out of pity for her. Often the touch of a leg waked her, and she would creep into the crevice between the bed and the wall where the slightest touch made her tremble with apprehension. Then Jean, believing her to be asleep, would risk a furtive caress, and it was Noémi's turn to pretend, left he should be tempted to go further.