Slowly Madame Guibert went into the house.
“Poor dear mother,” thought Marcel. “How often I have made you anxious about me. And you will be anxious again. This map lying before me, silent and indifferent, holds the secret of future terrors for you! For the mother’s milk you have given me, for the soul that your soul has transmitted to me, for my childhood and youth, may you be blessed! I love you. But, if I must go, forgive me....”
A young girl’s fair face rose up in his memory. After the refusal he had seen nothing of Alice Dulaurens. Several times he had leaped over the little barrier separating the tall trees of La Chênaie from the Chaloux road. There, under that ancient shade, he had boldly waited for her. Knowing that she loved him, he wanted above all things to speak to her, to exchange a promise with her. The glory he was going forth to seek and her patient waiting would give her to him. But, either by chance or because she was watched, she did not come.
Was he to go thus? In a few days his leave, for an extension of which he had refused to ask, would be up and he must go to Oran, where Jean Berlier, who had been gazetted to the first regiment of Tirailleurs, was to precede him. A hundred impossible ideas crowded into his mind, and he chafed against his slavery as a young horse champs its bit.
While he was thinking how he could manage to see the girl whom he considered his fiancée with all the obstinate perseverance of a man of action, his friend, Jean, got up.
“I want to say good-bye to your mother before I go,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” replied Marcel, also rising.
And suddenly making up his mind to speak, he added, almost in a whisper:
“Listen; I must see Mademoiselle Dulaurens. You can help me. Will you?”
The two men were united by a strong friendship. The one had thrown into the relationship the tender indulgence of an elder brother, the other the warm admiration of a younger one. Both gave to it the dignity which distinguishes brotherly love. By degrees they had drawn from it an incentive to nobler feelings. It gave them also that peace which is born of mutual trust and similarity of nature and tastes. But they did not confide much in each other. Therefore Jean was surprised to hear his friend tell his secret, though he had long since guessed it. A discreet observer, he had uneasily followed the domestic drama which was being played at La Chênaie, and had been a witness to Madame Dulaurens’s desperate efforts to champion the cause of Armand de Marthenay as a suitor for her daughter’s hand. Knowing Marcel’s concentrated strength and pride, he was more interested in this passion whose violent despair frightened him, than in the slight diversion that his own love affairs gave him. He knew what this wild desire to take part in the Sahara expedition meant, this feverish need for activity, this new ambition which had suddenly stirred his friend. But Marcel never betrayed himself. There must, therefore, be some weighty reason to make him decide to speak, and that was why this question alarmed his friend.