“I have suffered so much,—I am worn out ...” she began, in low tones; but she soon relapsed into silence. It was no use talking; he was not listening, he was not even looking at her. He cared very little about Thérèse’s feelings. One thing and one thing only mattered to him; his upward progress to the Senate might be impeded and even endangered by this wretched daughter of his: all women, in his opinion, were either hysterical or stupid. Fortunately her name was no longer Larroque: she was a Desqueyroux. Now that they had managed to avoid a trial at the Assizes, he breathed again: but it would be difficult to prevent his enemies keeping the wound open. He would go and see the Prefect the very next day. Thank Heaven, he could do what he liked with the Editor of the Lande Conservatrice. There was that story about those little girls!... He took Thérèse’s arm:
“Get in at once, you’ve no time to lose.”
Then the lawyer, perhaps out of malice, or possibly not liking to let Thérèse go without saying a word to her, asked if she was going back to Monsieur Bernard Desqueyroux that very evening. As she replied, “Of course I am; my husband is expecting me,” she realised for the first time since she had left the Law Courts that she would, in fact, in a few hours, cross the threshold of the room in which her husband was lying, still rather ill, and that this was the beginning of an indefinite succession of days through which she must live in this man’s company.
She had been staying with her father, just outside the little town, while the case had been under investigation, but she had, of course, often made this journey; on the previous occasions, however, she had been intent upon the necessity for giving her husband an exact account of what had happened, and her mind was full of Duros’ last words of advice, as she had got into the carriage, on the answers Monsieur Desqueyroux was to make when he was again questioned. Thérèse had then felt no distress or awkwardness at finding herself face to face once more with the sick man: what they had to consider was not what had really happened, but what they had better say, or not say. Husband and wife had never been so closely united as they were by the preparation of this defence,—drawn together across the infant body of their little daughter Marie. They concocted, for the judge’s benefit, a simple and coherent story, calculated to convince that logical mind. She used to get into the same carriage that was waiting for her this evening: but to-night she dreaded the end of that journey through the darkness which in those days she had found so tedious. She remembered how, the moment she got into the carriage, she longed to be back in that room at Argelouse, and she used to go over in her mind the instructions she was to pass on to her husband: he was to be sure, for instance, to say that she had told him one evening about that prescription which an unknown man had asked her to take to the chemist’s, on the pretext that he did not like to go himself because he owed money there,—but Duros did not advise that Bernard should go so far as to pretend that he remembered remonstrating with his wife for doing such a foolish thing.
Now that the nightmare had been exorcised, what would Bernard and Thérèse talk about that evening? She saw in her mind’s eye the desolate house in which he was awaiting her: she pictured the bed in the centre of that stone-floored room, and the lamp, turned low, standing on a table among a litter of newspapers and medicine bottles. The house-dogs, awakened by the noise of the carriage, bark and are quiet: and then the silence would descend once more, the awful silence of those nights when the wretched Bernard lay racked by frightful paroxysms of vomiting. Thérèse tried to imagine the first moment, not far distant now, when their eyes would meet; and then the ensuing night, the next day, the day after, and the weeks to come, in that house at Argelouse, where they would no longer need to compose a presentable version of the drama they had lived. There would be nothing now between them,—except what had really been there, really, and in very truth. Thérèse lost her nerve, and stammered, turning towards the lawyer,—though her words were intended for the older man:
“I expect to stay a few days with Monsieur Desqueyroux, and then, if he goes on improving, I shall come back to my father.”
“Not a bit of it, my dear,” said Monsieur Larroque, and as Gardère began to fidget on his seat, he added, lowering his voice: “Have you taken leave of your senses? You can’t possibly leave your husband at such a time. You must be inseparable,—inseparable, I tell you, for the rest of your lives.”
“Of course, father: what could I have been thinking of? Then you will come to Argelouse?”
“But I shall expect you over for the fair on Thursdays as usual, Thérèse. You will go on coming as you always did.”
She must surely understand that any departure from existing usages would be fatal. She must realise that, once and for all. He felt sure he could depend upon her, she had done the family enough harm already.