That evening Elizabeth did not go to bed until very late. She came back into the drawing-room after her mother-in-law had gone, and tried to read a book to cool her fever. To concentrate her attention, she put her hands on either side of her face. Half an hour passed and she had not turned one page. She was still reading the same words—
"He is traveling—he is traveling."
She recalled the uncommon trips on which she had accompanied her husband to Germany, Munich and Nuremberg, to Touraine, to the castles on the bank of the Loire. The departure was to Albert an exuberant happiness, a "joy of conquest" he called it:—he was going to take possession of new countries. In the picture-galleries, as he stood before a landscape rich in historical association, he would grow enthusiastic, explain, comment, make comparisons that she did not even try to grasp. Little by little this good humor changed—he became distrait, absorbed in himself, and ceased to tell her his impressions. And their return was silent and unresponsive. Why?
Why? She had never inquired. Dull and passive, she asked herself very few questions, and did not try to live her own life, or even Albert's with him. What companionship did she give him? As soon as she began to question herself thus, a quantity of small forgotten details came back to her mind.—How much luggage she had always needed! And what importance she had attached to the thousand inconveniences which no traveler avoids! She needed so many things, she complained of everything, as if Albert could keep the trains from smoking, the rain from falling, the sun from overheating, the hotel kitchen from smelling, the tradesmen from stealing, the women from wearing big hats in the theaters, and fatigue from coming. The worst of all was that she had no curiosity. Curiosity is an incentive which lessens the annoyances of the trip for the sake of the pleasures which are before us. "Nothing interests you," he had said one day with a forced laugh. She now understood the mistake she had made in giving the same value to the petty necessities of life as to serious, vital, new experiences. But most women make this mistake, and that was one excuse. Of what use was an excuse with a husband like Albert who had so often offered to guide her?
She got up slowly to look in the dictionary, then in an atlas for this mysterious Iran. She found it on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, in the heart of the Basque country. He had planned this journey a long time ago. It was a necessary voyage for material for one of his volumes on "The Peasant." There, he said, in the shelter of the mountains, the traditions of the family were preserved in their primitive purity. Some time ago he had suggested taking her there, but with little insistence, when he learned that comforts had to be dispensed with. She found in a Baedeker of Spain with which he had provided himself in advance, praise of the countries which bathe the Bidassoa, and an account of the customs peculiar to the province of Guipuzcoa. These strange syllables which had formerly amused her, now made her thoughtful. She, who had never, so to speak, exercised her imagination, saw clearly, on an evening richer in warmth and color than those of Dauphiné, a peasant cart at Iran, driving along a road separated from a river by leafless bushes, and on the back seat of the cart, close to each other, sat Anne de Sézery and Albert, who was covering his companion's shoulders with an old horse blanket. "Thus clad, she had never appeared more charming to me"—a little sentence from his diary which was indelibly engraved on her heart. That woman would never take account of any inconveniences on a journey, or glance anxiously, with her much praised golden eyes at the changing scene.
Elizabeth fell asleep thinking of these sad pictures. The next day, she was vexed with the old lady, whom she blamed for her nightmares. When the postman came, she was surprised to find herself watching the mail, to see if there were a letter from Albert to his mother. One day a letter came, bearing the postmark of Paris. She was a little relieved by it, as if the intimacy which was torturing her would be lessened by the return.
The embarrassment which had crept in between her mother-in-law and herself increased like a thick fog in which neither could distinguish her real feelings. What comfort could she expect from this presence? Anything which reminded her of Albert irritated her, weakened her, and everything did recall him. Did Mme. Derize take into account the uselessness of her intervention? She manifested a desire to return to Grenoble. October gave every indication of being cold. The morning of her departure, succeeding in overcoming her fear, she at last said to Elizabeth that which she had been preparing since the day after her arrival:
"My child, have confidence and be patient. Your time will come. It cannot fail to come. Only you must not find morbid pleasure in your sorrow."
But the young wife showed an expressionless face.
"I do not understand you, Mother. I have no sorrow. I never give a thought to it."