She forbade her to talk. But when her aunt was silent, it was even worse, thanks to what she did not say, her sighs, her look of distress. And Annette was storing up an increasing irritation against this poisonous public opinion which she pretended to ignore.
If she had been prudent she would at least have avoided occasions for coming in contact with it. But she was too much alive to be prudent. People are only prudent when they have suffered from not being so. Human nature is so made that Annette, who contemptuously turned her back on the judgment of the world, burned to know what people were saying behind her back. And, dreading every morning that the day would not pass without bringing her the echo of some disturbing remark, she was ready to go out in search of them when no such remarks came. She was spared the trouble. From her family, from her cousins of both sexes, with whom she maintained only the most distant connection, she received scandalized letters and lectures that she could hardly endure. Their claim to pose as judges of her conduct and champions of the family honor should have seemed less irritating than grotesque to one who, like Annette, had been only too well informed by her father about the secret history of the family and knew how to take the measure of these Aristarchuses. But Annette was in no laughing mood: she would seize her pen and send off a biting reply, which added spite to their other motives for condemning her and rendered the latter implacable.
These austere censors could invoke as an excuse for their intervention the much abused but still customary rights of relationship. But what rights did strangers have to be severe with her, strangers who were not harmed in any way because she did as she chose with herself? Meeting in the street some amiable society woman in whose drawing-room she had once been received, she would stop to exchange a few civil words. The other, looking her over curiously and letting her talk, scarcely answering herself, would presently pass on with a cold politeness. One woman, to whom Annette had written asking for some information, did not reply. Pursuing her inquiry, Annette wrote to a friend of her mother's, an old lady whom she respected and who had shown some affectionate feeling for herself; she suggested going to see her. In reply came an embarrassed letter, expressing regret that the latter was unable to receive her: she was leaving Paris. These little constantly repeated affronts wounded Annette's sensibility. She was afraid of other rebuffs, but the strange thing was that this fear led her nervously to provoke them.
For example, in the case of her friend Lucile Cordier. The two young women had known each other for a long time. In the society where they moved Lucile was the person whom Annette liked best; and without being very intimate they had always enjoyed seeing each other. Annette learned from her aunt that Lucile's sister was going to be married. She had had no word of this from Lucile. She wrote to congratulate her. Lucile remained silent. Annette knew she ought not to insist. And yet she did insist, through a strange need of being sure, of suffering.
She went to Lucile's house. There was a sound of voices in the drawing-room. It was her day at home. Annette remembered this just as she entered the room. It was too late to turn back. The conversation was animated. A dozen persons, almost all known to Annette. At her appearance the voices stopped point-blank. Only for a few seconds. Annette, anxious, but feeling that she was committed to a fight, entered. With a smile on her lips, without looking to right or left, she went up to Lucile. Lucile rose, embarrassed. Small and blonde, with half-open, caressing, gentle and yet shrewd eyes, a tired little smile, a mouse-like expression and rather prominent teeth, lively, indifferent to people and ideas while appearing to be devoted to the former and attached to the latter, she was cautious, weak, and not very frank; she liked to please; she was anxious not to fall out with anyone and to get along with everyone. So far as she was concerned, Annette's conduct had not troubled her at all. Her sharp, inquisitive nose, always on the alert, was amused by scandal. The adventure struck her as absurd and would merely have diverted her if, from the worldly point of view, it had not been embarrassing. When Annette wrote to her that she was coming back, Lucile had thought, "What bad luck! How am I going to answer her?"
She did not want to hurt Annette. On the other hand, she did not wish to run the risk of being misjudged. Not being able to think of anything to say in reply, she had put it off from day to day. She expected to see Annette, but later (there was no hurry about it!)—when people would not know about it. This did not prevent her from talking at Annette's expense and assuming a scandalized air when she was with others.
And now Annette's sudden appearance placed her—("This is too much!")—under the obligation of making an immediate choice. Lucile was much more angry with Annette for playing this mean trick on her than for having had a child. ("Two, if she likes, if she would only leave me alone!")
With a furious little light in her eyes that was quickly extinguished, she took the hand that Annette held out to her, answering her smile with that honeyed smile of her own which Annette knew so well. (No one could resist its tender seductiveness.) It lasted only for a moment. With all those eyes flashing about her, with every ear alert, Lucile at once perceived the irony of the company. Instantly her expression froze; after a few words of welcome she affectedly resumed the interrupted conversation, and with an unexpressed understanding everyone began to talk again.
Annette, left outside the conversation, realized that she was rejected. But she did not accept this at all. She knew the weakness of Lucile's character. Armed with her proud smile, seated in the midst of a group which, without appearing to see her, seemed to be wholly occupied in exchanging words that were as empty as they were lively, she glanced about with her calm eyes at everybody in the room. The glances of the others, meeting hers, turned aside to avoid her. One pair of eyes, however, did not have time to escape. They remained fixed upon her, full of annoyance and spite. Annette recognized the large doll-like face of Marie-Louise de Baudru, the daughter of a rich lawyer, the wife of a judge, whose family had always remained socially on cordial terms with the Rivières while cherishing towards them a deep-seated antipathy. Marie-Louise de Baudru incarnated in her stout person the most substantial qualities of the upper bourgeoisie: order, probity, the lack of curiosity, of charity, especially of intelligence, all the legal virtues, a firm verbal faith, empty as a butcher's shop of doubts and thought, and the religious worship of propriety, all the proprieties, her family, her property, her country, her Church, her moral code, her tradition and her negations. In short, a massive and compact ego like a block obstructing the sun. No room, near her, for the tub of Diogenes! Nothing was so repugnant to the Baudrus as independence of any kind, religious, moral, intellectual, political or social. A natural aversion! They confounded all its forms under the common taunt of "anarchism." This anarchism they had always suspected in the Rivières. And instinctively Marie-Louise, like the rest of her family, had distrusted Annette. She could not pardon the liberty which Annette had enjoyed in her education and her life as a young girl. There may have been a touch of envy in these unkind judgments. One sole consideration kept her from expressing them, the Rivières' fortune. Wealth commands esteem: it is one of the pillars—the firmest—of the social order. But this is on condition that it does not disturb the basis of everything, the legally established family. The supporters of society are on the watch there: hands off! Annette had struck at the cardinal principles. The watch-dog had awakened, though it held its peace, for it does not bark in society. But its look spoke for it, Annette perceived the bitterest scorn in that of Marie-Louise de Baudru. Her eyes rested calmly on those of her plump judge; and, addressing her with a little familiar bow, she forced her to respond. Marie-Louise, choking with anger at not being able to resist the injunction, bowed also, avenging herself by giving her coldest look. Annette had already turned indifferently away, and her eyes, which were making the tour of the drawing-room, returned to Lucile.
Quite unembarrassed, she threw herself into the conversation that had begun. She cut into the story Lucile was telling with a general remark and obliged her to reply. They had to make room for her. They could not help listening to her politely, with interest and even pleasure, for she was so witty. But they did not reply, their minds wandered, they talked about other things. The conversation died away, started up again in little bursts, jumping from subject to subject. In the silence Annette heard herself talking in a detached tone, and she listened to her own voice as if it were that of a stranger: true woman that she was, fine, sensitive and proud, she missed none of these little humiliations. Accustomed from childhood to understand and use the equivocal language of drawing-rooms, she could divine, under the veil of deliberate inattentiveness, dubious smiles, disingenuous politeness, the wounds that were intended for her. She was hurt, but she laughed, and she went on talking. The others were thinking, "What poise that girl has!"