“I think you would eat with more appetite in the dining-room than in your own room. I have given orders for your place to be laid there again.”
This was the Bernard she had known at the time of the enquiry: the ally who wanted to save her at any price. And now he was unreservedly anxious she should get well. Yes, it was clear he had been frightened. Thérèse watched him, sitting opposite her, and stirring the fire, but she could not guess what those great round eyes of his were seeing in the flames:—the red and green drawing from the Petit Parisien.
Incessant as the rain had been, not a single puddle was left in the sand of Argelouse. In the very depths of winter, after an hour’s sunshine, one could walk dry-shod in country sandals, along the road, on that dry and yielding carpet of pine-needles. Bernard was out shooting all day, but came back to meals: he was anxious about Thérèse, and more attentive than he had ever been. There was but little constraint in their relations. He made her weigh herself every three days, and not smoke more than two cigarettes after each meal. On Bernard’s advice Thérèse took long walks: “Exercise is the best digestive,” he would say.
She was no longer afraid of Argelouse: it seemed as though the pines were moving further off, opening their ranks, and signalling to her to make her escape.
One evening Bernard had said to her: “I am only asking you to wait until Anne’s marriage: we must be seen in company once more by the whole neighbourhood: after that you will be free.” She had not been able to sleep during the following night: her joy made her restless and her eyes would not close. At dawn she heard the innumerable cocks, who did not seem to be answering each other: they were all crowing together and filling earth and heaven with their united clamour. Bernard would let her loose into the world, just as in days gone by he had let loose on the moors that wild sow he had not been able to tame. When Anne was at last married, people might say what they liked: Bernard would fling Thérèse into the depths of Paris and then hurriedly retire; this was understood between them. There would be no divorce or official separation; some reason of health would be invented for the sake of appearances,—“She is never well except when she is travelling.” And Bernard would render, every All-Saints’ Day, an exact account of the income from the sale of her resin.
Bernard did not question Thérèse about her plans, let her go and hang herself somewhere else. “I shan’t have any peace,” he said to his mother: “until she is off the premises.” And she had replied: “I’ve no doubt she will take her maiden name again ... however, if she gets into trouble, you will be dragged into it fast enough.” “But Thérèse,” he said, “only kicked in harness; no one could be more sensible when she had her freedom.” In any case, they must take the risk. That was Monsieur Larroque’s opinion also. All things considered, it was better that Thérèse should disappear; she would be more quickly forgotten, and people would get out of the habit of talking about her. Silence was the essential thing. This notion was so firmly fixed in their minds that nothing could have uprooted it. They must get Thérèse out of harness; and how impatient they were to do it!
Thérèse loved to watch the close of winter despoiling the already barren land, though the oaks had never shed their stubborn mantle of dead leaves. She discovered that the silence of Argelouse had no real existence. In the calmest weather the forest moaned like a sorrowing human soul, and lulled itself to sleep: and the nights were full of a murmur that never ceased. In her future life; that unimaginable life before her, there would be dawns so barren that she would perhaps regret the hour of awakening at Argelouse: that marvellous clamour of myriad cocks. She would remember, in the summers to come, the grasshoppers by day and the crickets by night. Paris: no longer the torn and battered pines, but human beings to be feared: a world of men, no longer a world of trees.
Husband and wife were astonished that their relations were so little constrained. Thérèse reflected that people become endurable as soon as we are sure we can get away from them. Bernard was interested in Thérèse’s weight,—but also in her conversation. She spoke more freely in his company than she had ever done: “In Paris ... when I am in Paris ...” she would begin: she would live in a hotel and perhaps look for a flat. She would take up a course of study, and go to lectures and concerts; “begin her education all over again.” Bernard never thought of watching her, and ate his soup and drank his wine, quite unconcerned. Doctor Pédemay, who sometimes met them on the Argelouse road, said to his wife: “What is so amazing is that they don’t look as if they were acting.”
CHAPTER XIII
On a warm morning in March, about ten o’clock, the stream of humanity had begun to move, and was already surging against the Café de la Paix outside which Bernard and Thérèse were sitting. She threw away her cigarette, and carefully stamped it out, as people from the Landes always do.