Anne de la Trave was wearing a grey squirrel cloak, and a felt hat without any ribbon or bow. (“But,” as Madame de la Trave said, “it cost more just as it was, than our hats did with all their feathers and aigrettes. It is the best felt, certainly: it comes from Lailhaca, but it is a Reboux model.”) Madame de la Trave stretched out her boots to the fire, and her face, at once arrogant and weak, was turned towards the door. She had promised Bernard she would be equal to the situation, but she had warned him that she would not kiss Thérèse. “You cannot ask your mother to do that, it will be dreadful enough for me to have to touch her hand. My feeling is this: what she did was awful enough, God knows; but it isn’t that that revolts me the most. One already knew that there were people capable of committing murder ... but it’s her hypocrisy! That really is awful! Don’t you remember what she said: ‘Mother, do take this chair, you will be more comfortable....’ And don’t you remember when she was so frightened of giving you a shock? ‘The poor darling has such a horror of death, a consultation would be the end of him....’ God knows I didn’t suspect anything; but ‘poor darling,’ coming from her, did surprise me....”
At present, in that Argelouse drawing-room, Madame de la Trave was only conscious of the embarrassment that every one was feeling; and she noticed young Deguilhem’s goggle eyes fixed on Bernard.
“Bernard, you ought to go and see what Thérèse is doing ... perhaps she is feeling worse.”
Anne, who seemed indifferent and aloof from anything that might happen, was the first to recognise a familiar step, and said: “I hear her coming down.” Bernard, with a hand against his heart, was seized with a palpitation; he was a fool not to have come the day before; he ought to have arranged the scene with Thérèse in advance. What would she say? She was quite capable of upsetting everything without precisely doing anything that she could be called to account for. How slowly she came downstairs! They were all standing up, turned towards the door, which Thérèse at last opened.
Bernard was to remember, for many years after, that at the approach of that wasted form, that small, white, painted face, his first thought was: The Assize Court. But not because of Thérèse’s crime. In a flash, he saw before him that coloured picture from the Petit Parisien, which among so many others adorned the wooden closets in the garden at Argelouse; while amid the buzz of flies, and the shrill voices of the grasshoppers on a blazing day of summer, his boyish eyes stared so earnestly at that red and green drawing which depicted a poor wretched girl who had been imprisoned and starved by her parents at Poitiers.
So now, he watched Thérèse as she stood there, bloodless and emaciated, and realised his folly in not having got rid of this terrible woman,—as one flings into the water an infernal machine which may burst at any moment. Whether consciously or not, Thérèse suggested tragedy,—worse than that in fact: the tragedies of the Sunday Newspapers. She could be nothing but criminal or victim....
The Family broke into a murmur of astonishment and pity, so obviously genuine, that young Deguilhem began to doubt his conclusions and did not know what to think.
“It is quite simple,” said Thérèse. “The bad weather stopped my going out, so I lost my appetite. I was hardly eating at all. It’s much better to get thin than fat.... But I want to talk about you, Anne, I am so delighted....”
She took Anne’s hands (she was sitting down and Anne was standing) and looked at her. In that face, which looked so ravaged, Anne could clearly recognise the expression whose persistence used to irritate her in days gone by. She remembered how she used to say. “When you have finished looking at me like that!”
“I am delighted to hear of your happiness, my little Anne.”