The coaxing Sylvie, under her charming smile, no longer concealed from the penetrating eyes of Annette a rather cold nature which, amid all its entanglements, knew where it was going. She had a small personnel of working-girls whom she managed with superlative skill. With her keen observation and her winning ways, she had chosen and drawn to herself hearts that had no other attachments. Such, for instance, was her chief assistant, Olympe, who was much older than she, more expert in the craft, an excellent worker, but entirely without ideas, and unable to take care of herself. She had come from the country and was lost in Paris, victimized and laughed at by men, women, her employers and her fellow-workers. She was intelligent enough to see this, but she did not have the strength to resist it, and she had been looking for some one who, without taking advantage of her, would make use of her work and free her from the responsibility of managing herself. It had needed no effort on Sylvie's part to bring her into line. Sylvie was merely obliged to take care that there should be a good understanding among the rival devotions that she had aroused in her personnel, making skilful use of their antagonisms in order to stimulate their zeal and, like a wise government, uniting competitors in the patriotism of the common work. The pride of the little establishment and the desire to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the young mistress delivered them over to her cunning domination, which often made them work till they were exhausted. She set the example, and no one complained. Her affectionate taunts, the droll mockery at which they would burst out laughing, would reinvigorate the weary team and make them hold out to the end. Proud of their employer, they loved her jealously; while she, who stimulated their enthusiasm, remained indifferent to them herself. In the evening, after they had left, she talked about them to her sister in a tone of cold detachment that shocked Annette. For the rest, she was ready to do them a good turn in case of need, and she never left them in the lurch if she found them ill or in difficulties. But whether they were ill or not, if she did not see them she forgot them. She had no time to think of the absent. She had no time to love very long. A perpetual activity occupied all her moments: the care of her person, housekeeping, meals, business, trying on dresses, gossip, love affairs, amusements. And everything—even to the (never very long) periods of silence, when, between the bustle of the day and her sleep at night, she found herself alone face to face with herself—everything about her was precise. Not a cranny for dreams. When she observed herself, it was with the clear and curious eye that watches others and looks upon oneself as a passer-by. A minimum of inner life: everything projected into acts and words. The need that Annette felt for moral confession found no consideration here. Annette was embarrassed in this perpetual midday. No shadow. Or, if it existed—and it exists in every soul—the door was closed tight upon it. Sylvie was not interested in what might be behind the door. Her only concern was to administer her little domain punctiliously, enjoying everything, her work and her pleasures, but everything at its own time so that nothing should be lost; consequently, she was without passions or any great excesses, for this activity, this perpetual going from one thing to another, not only did not lend itself to anything of the kind, but even destroyed its possibility in advance. No danger that her lovers would make her lose her head.
The truth was that she did not love anything very much. She loved whole-heartedly only one soul, Annette. And how strange this was! Why in the world did she love this big girl who had nothing, or virtually nothing, in common with her?
Ah, that "virtually nothing" was a great deal; who knows but that it was the most important thing of all?—the tie of blood. This does not always count for much between people of the same family. But when it does count, what a mysterious strength it has! It is a voice that whispers to us, "That other person is a part of me. Moulded in another shape, the substance is the same. I recognize myself in a different form and possessed by an alien soul."
And one wants to capture oneself in this usurper double attraction, a triple attraction: the attraction of resemblance, the attraction of opposition, of the war of conquest, which is not the least of the three.
What forces there were binding Annette and Sylvie together! Pride, independence, orderliness, will, the life of the senses! Of these two spirits, the one turned inward, the other outward—the two hemispheres of the soul. They were constituted of almost the same elements, but each, for deep, obscure reasons that sprang from the essence of their personality, repressed one half, wished only to see one half, that which emerged or that which was submerged. The uniting of the two sisters in a common life disturbed the habitual consciousness that each had of herself. Their mutual affection was tinged with hostility. And the warmer the affection was, the keener was the hidden hostility, for they realized how hopelessly unlike they were. Annette was more expert in reading her buried thoughts, and she was also more sincere: she was able to judge them and repress them. The time had passed when she had wished to absorb Sylvie in her imperious love. But Sylvie still had a secret desire to dominate her elder sister, and she was not displeased that circumstances had given her an opportunity to affirm her superiority. It was a sort of revenge for the inequalities of their lot during the girlhood of the two sisters. This unconfessed feeling, together with her real affection, gave her a sense of satisfaction which she concealed as she saw Annette working under her direction in the shop. She would have liked to have her on her pay roll. She put her in charge of receiving her customers and making charcoal designs for embroidered trimmings; she tried to persuade her that she could look forward to some important position and even to being her partner later on in the business.
Annette, who saw what Sylvie was driving at, had no intention of tying herself down. She let the offer drop, and when Sylvie pressed her she replied that she was not fitted for this work. Upon this Sylvie asked her ironically for what work she was fitted. This was a tender point with her. When one has never had to work for a living and necessity drives one to do so, it is painful not to know what work one is fitted for, not even to know whether, in spite of one's education, one is fitted for any work. But she had to face the question. Annette did not want to remain dependent on Sylvie. Of course Sylvie would never have shown that she felt this dependence: she enjoyed helping her sister. But if she was happy in spending for Annette, she knew what she was spending; her right hand was never unaware of what her left hand gave. Annette was still less unaware of it. She could not endure the thought that Sylvie, as she made up her accounts, mentally wrote her down as her debtor. . . . The devil take all money! Should it be considered between two hearts that love each other? Annette and Sylvie did not consider it in their hearts. But it was a consideration in their life. People do not live by love alone. They live by money too.
[XI]
This was a truth which Annette had ignored a little too much. She was to lose no time in learning it.
She started out in search of a position, saying nothing about it to Sylvie. Her first idea was to go to see the principal of the school for young girls where she had studied. As an intelligent student who was rich and the daughter of an influential father, she had been a favorite of Mme. Abraham, and she felt certain of her sympathy. This remarkable woman—one of the first to organize the teaching of women in France—had rare qualities of energy and judgment that were complemented—or mitigated, according to the case—by a very cold political sense which many men might have envied. She was disinterested personally, but she was far from being so where her school was concerned. She was a freethinker, and, although she did not parade the fact, she was not without a certain contemptuous anti-clericalism that could do her no harm with her clientele, the daughters of the radical bourgeoisie and young Jewesses. But in place of the dogmas she rejected she had established a civic morality which, although it lacked basis and certitude, was no less strict and commanding. (It was even more so, for the more arbitrary a rule is the more rigid it becomes.) Annette, thanks to her position in society, was intimate with the principal and had her confidence. It amused her to tease the latter about her famous official morality, and Mme. Abraham, who was sceptical by nature, found no difficulty in smiling at the whims of this saucy young thing. She smiled at them, yes, indeed, when they talked together behind her closed door. But as soon as the door was open and Mme. Abraham was reinstated in her title and her official rank, she was as firm as iron in her belief in the Tables of the laic Law, the product of the highly reasonable morality of a few republican pedagogues. It was enough to say that, if her naked conscience was indifferent to conventional morality, her clothed conscience—her usual conscience—severely blamed Annette's behavior. For she knew about it; the adventure had gone the rounds of society.
But she did not yet know of her ruin. And when Annette called, she took care not to reveal her thoughts: her first business was to find out the reasons for this call and whether the school might reap any advantage from it. She therefore gave her a pleasant though rather reserved greeting. But scarcely had she learned that Annette had come to ask a favor than she remembered the scandal and her smile froze. One can easily accept money from a person of whom one doesn't approve, but one cannot decently give it to such a person. It was easy for Mme. Abraham to find compelling reasons for averting a candidacy that was so impolitic. There was no position in the school; and, when Annette asked for a recommendation to other institutions, Mme. Abraham did not even take the trouble to make vague promises. She was very diplomatic when she was negotiating with anyone who was on top of the wheel of fortune, but she instantly ceased to be so when the wheel had flung them down. A serious mistake in diplomacy! For sometimes those who are down to-day are on top to-morrow, and good diplomacy looks out for the future. Mme. Abraham considered nothing but the present. At present Annette was drowning; it was a pity, but Mme. Abraham was not in the habit of fishing out those who were in the water. She did not disguise her coldness, and, when Annette failed to abandon her tone of calm self-possession and henceforth misplaced equality, Mme. Abraham, in order to bring her back to a more exact sense of her distance, declared that she could not conscientiously recommend her. Annette, who was burning with indignation, was on the point of expressing it. A flash of anger passed over her, but it was extinguished in contempt. She was seized by one of those rather diabolical whims of her younger days, an itching desire to mock. She rose, saying, "Well, think of me if you establish a course in the new morality."