"Whether you accept it or no, you must yield—for the way is barred."
"Nevertheless, I shall pass through…."
PART FOUR
Clerambault was passing through a new danger-zone. His solitary journey was like a mountain ascension, where a man finds himself suddenly enveloped in fog, clinging to a rock, unable to advance a step. He could see nothing in front of him, and, no matter to which side he turned, he could hear beneath him the roar of the torrent of suffering. Even so, he could not stand still; though he hung over the abyss and his hold threatened to give way.
He had reached one of these dark turnings, and to make it worse, the news that day, as barked out by the press, made the heart ache by its insanity. Useless hecatombs, which the induced egotism of the world behind the lines thought natural; cruelties on all sides, criminal reprisals for crimes—for which these good people clamoured, and loudly applauded. The horizon that surrounded the poor human creatures in their burrow had never seemed so dark and pitiless.
Clerambault asked himself if the law of love that he felt within himself had not been designed for other worlds, and different humanities. The mail had brought him letters full of fresh threats; and knowing that, in the tragic absurdity of the time, his life was at the mercy of the first madman who happened to turn up, he hoped secretly that he might not have long to wait. But being of good stock, he kept on his way, his head up as usual, working steadily and methodically at his daily task so as to gain the end, no matter what that might be, of the path whereon he had set his feet.
He remembered that on this day he had promised to go and see his niece Aline, who had just been confined. She was the daughter of a sister who had died, and who had been very dear to him. A little older than Maxime, she had been brought up with him. As she grew into girlhood she developed a complicated character. Restless and discontented, always thinking of herself, she wanted to be loved and to tyrannise. She had also too much curiosity; dangerous experiences were an attraction to her, and with all this she was rather dry, but emotional, vindictive and high-tempered. Still, when she chose she could be tender and attractive. Maxime and she had played the game together, and carried it pretty far; so that it had been necessary to watch them closely. In spite of his irony, Maxime had been caught by the dark eyes that pierced through him with their electric thrill; and Aline was irritated and attracted by Maxime's mockery. They had loved and quarrelled furiously, and then they had both gone on to something else. She had shot arrows into several other hearts; and then, when she thought the right time had come,—there is always a time for everything,—she had married, in the most reasonable way, a successful, prosperous man of business, head of a firm which sold artistic and ecclesiastical furniture in the Rue Bonaparte. She was about to have a child when her husband was ordered to the front. There could be no doubt of her ardent patriotism; for self-love includes one's country. Clerambault would never have expected to find any sympathy in her for his theories of fraternal pity. She had little enough for her friends, but none at all for her enemies. She would have ground them in a mortar with the same cold satisfaction that she felt when she tormented hearts or teased insects because something or somebody had vexed her.
As the fruit within her ripened, her attention was concentrated upon it; all the strength of her heart seemed to flow inward. The war receded; the cannon of Noyon sounded no longer in her ears. When she spoke of the war,—which she did less and less every day,—you would have thought that she was talking of some distant colonial expedition. Of course she remembered the dangers that threatened her husband, and pitied him naturally:—"Poor dear boy!" with a little smile as much as to say, "He has not much luck. Not very clever, you know." … But she did not dwell on the subject, and, thank Heaven! it left no traces on her mind. She had paid her score, she thought, and her conscience was at rest; now she was in haste to go back to the world's most serious task. One really would have supposed that the whole world hung on the egg that she was about to lay.
Clerambault had been so absorbed by his struggles that he had not seen Aline for months, and had therefore been unable to follow the change in her mood. Rosine might have spoken of it before him, but he had paid no attention. Within the last twenty-four hours he had heard in quick succession of the birth of the baby and of the fact that Aline's husband was missing, like Maxime, and he immediately pictured to himself the suffering of the young mother. He thought of her as he had always known her—vibrating between pleasure and pain, but always feeling the latter more keenly, giving herself up to it, and even when she was happy, finding reasons for distress. She was violent too, bitter, agitated, fighting against fate, and apt to be vexed with everyone around her. He was not sure that she was not angry with him personally, on account of his ideas about reconciliation now that she must be breathing out vengeance. He knew that his attitude was a scandal in the family, and that no one would be less disposed to tolerate it than Aline. But no matter how she received him, he felt that he must go to her and help her in any way that his affection could suggest. Expecting a storm, but resigned to it, he climbed up the stairs and rang the bell at his niece's door.
He found her lying in bed with the infant, which she had had placed by her side. She looked calm and young, with a sweet expression of beaming happiness on her face. She was like the blooming older sister of the tiny baby, at whom she looked with adoring laughter, as he lay there waving his little spidery legs, his mouth open, hardly alive as yet, still dreaming of the dark warm place from which he had come. She greeted Clerambault with a cry of triumph: