Noémi felt herself again flooded with anger. After all this effort! But her instinct told her that she must not move too quickly or stretch the cord too tight. . . . All the same, the blow had its effect. She left.
She had seen the weakness of the enemy. She would trample on her.
[XLV]
Annette remained for some time motionless in the spot where Noémi had left her. She was exhausted after this long scene. She would have resisted better if the attack had not surprised her at a moment when she was already shaken by the double wear and tear of passion and incessant work, the uninterrupted fever aroused in her stormy soul by her participation in Philippe's struggles, the repressed remorse, the anguish that was concealed beneath her exhaustion of mind and body. This weakness gave Noémi her strength. She found the field prepared and an ally in her adversary.
Noémi herself played little part in Annette's anxieties. She cared little for her as a woman. As a rival she did not care about her at all. She considered her false, perfidious, heartless, and with jealous injustice she now denied what she had at first enjoyed, her charm. Everything about her seemed factitious except her grief. Besides, it mattered very little whether it was Noémi or someone else. . . . "She is a living creature who suffers, and I, I cause this suffering. . . ." And a strange pity preyed upon Annette's heart.
This tendency had developed, during the last few years, from the sight of so much misery, from her connection with those two deaths, Odette's and Ruth's. She had been mysteriously shaken by them. A weakness. She called it unhealthy and perhaps it was so. One could not live if one had to pause over the sufferings of the world. All happiness is nourished on the unhappiness of someone else. Life devours life, as larvæ devour the living prey in which they are laid. And everyone drinks the blood of all. . . . Annette had once drunk it without thinking of it, and this blood brought warmth and joy to her body. While she was young she had never thought of the victims. From the moment when she had said to herself, as she thought of them, "I must be hard," she had begun to weaken. She felt this; she could only be hard intermittently now. She was growing old. Ten years earlier she would not have had a moment's hesitation because of the harm she was doing Noémi. "My happiness is my right. Woe to anyone who touches it! . . ." She would have had no need to seek for pretexts. Now, in order to snatch from life her share of happiness, she had to find other reasons than her happiness. She was no longer sufficient unto herself. She had found the strength to brush aside, without scruple, the other less fortunate competitors in the hunt for bread. This bread was her son's; she was upheld by the animal instinct that makes a creature bristle to defend its young and feed them on the flesh of its fellow-animals. But the other animal instinct, the love of self—taking and keeping for oneself—was dying down and only asserted itself now by fits and starts. Maternity, by usurping the place of this other instinct, had partially destroyed it.
In the present crisis her son was no help to her. Far from it! He was one anxiety and remorse the more. Annette could not lie to herself, her passion took no account of her son. She felt guilty towards him, and she had taken pains to hide everything from him. She knew the child. In the past she had observed the jealousy that led him to drive his claws into those whom she loved. She did not blame him for this. She was glad that he wanted to be the only one to love her. . . . But to-day she was defending her treasure—against whom? Against her treasure! Passion against passion. She did not wish to sacrifice either of the two. And as both of them were jealous, obstinate, domineering, she had to hide from each the secret of the other. Had she succeeded? Marc detested the "other fellow." He knew nothing—of that she was sure—but although he did not know, had not his instinct told him? She was ashamed to conceal herself and she was even more ashamed that he might suspect. . . . No, he suspected nothing; it was for other reasons that he hated Philippe. . . .
As for Philippe himself, he did not do Marc the honor of thinking about him at all. In marrying Annette he would have been quite willing to take two or three brats into the bargain. It made no difference to him either in his feelings or financially; there was no need to be grateful to him for it. He did not dislike Marc; he thought him fairly bright, rather lazy, not very keen; he might have subjected him to a sharp discipline, but he felt no need to concern himself with the child, and he made this plain. He had a way of talking of him, a rough humor that wounded Annette to the quick. Accustomed to the coarse things of life, he had no idea of the consideration that a proud, sensitive nature demands, of the things that offend its sense of decency. In the bluntest, rudest terms he would give the boy, in his mother's presence, harsh warnings and medical advice that made both the child and the mother blush. The mother more than the child. Philippe's theory was that nothing must be concealed from the boy. This was also Annette's theory. And Marc's as well. But there are ways of putting things! Annette suffered in her very flesh. Marc, who was humiliated, stored up the bitterest resentment. Between him and Philippe there never could be anything but misunderstanding. Their two temperaments were too different. Annette could foresee the clashes, the endless discords. A terrible thought for her, the passionate lover and mother!
There was no one to whom she could turn for help in making up her mind. She had to decide alone, egoistically. Well, didn't she have the right to think of herself too? A right is nothing if one does not maintain it. Was she maintaining hers? . . . Yes, at moments, like a lioness, when she saw youth, happiness, life about to be swallowed up. . . . Happiness? . . . There was no question of happiness in a union with a man like Philippe! Something less or something more, incomparably more for a woman like Annette: a full, bold, intelligent life, not a life of repose slumbering in its security, but great winds, storms, action, struggles—with the world—with him—a life of trouble and fatigue—but together—life—a life worthy of being lived, with death at the end, when one was worn out and happy to leave the hard, fertile days behind, happy to have had them. . . . That was glorious!! But one must have the strength. . . . She had it, enough to carry the burden, once it was well adjusted, with her head up, to the end. But in order to adjust it she had to be helped and even forced a little. Philippe must place the burden on her head, impose it on her. He must say, "Carry it! For me! You are necessary to me. . . ." With these words she could surmount all her remorse. . . . Was she necessary to Philippe? He had said so during the first days when he had wanted to win her. He no longer said it, and Annette would have liked to hear it again and again, to be convinced. She saw him full of himself, used to working alone, fighting alone, extricating himself alone, putting all his pride into it; he would have felt humiliated if he had had to seek help. So she said to herself, "What am I good for?" It is the bounty of love not only to give us faith in someone else but to give us back faith in ourself. May it be charitable to us!
This was a feeling that Philippe seldom entertained. Like most of his kind, this great doctor of the body paid little attention to maladies of the soul. He never gave a thought to the doubts that preyed upon this woman whose body lay by his side. He should not have left her the time to question herself. . . . Make an end of it, marry her! . . . Annette would whisper to him softly, "Let's go away together, so that I can never take myself back!"