Little by little Sylvie grew calm. The accounts of her séances ceased to have a mysterious character; she spoke of them unfeelingly, hurriedly. She did not care to dwell on them. Soon she even ceased to mention them except with a certain constraint. And suddenly she stopped speaking of them altogether; she no longer replied to questions. Had she met with some disillusionment she did not wish to acknowledge? Or was she tired of them? She told no one. But in the long conversations she continued to have with Marc the occult world held less and less of a place, and it ended by disappearing. She seemed to have recovered her equilibrium. The passing of the ordeal was only evident to those about her by the appearance of a slight change in her age, an expression that was not more refined through suffering, but rather more material, by features that were a little heavier and a somewhat fuller figure. She still had the same grace, and she was brighter than ever. The powerful need to live avenges itself for the agony that has been endured. And new pains and new pleasures, the leaves of the falling days, the dust of the road, little by little covered the grave in her heart.
[XXXI]
A deceptive appearance.
Life began again in the Rivière household. But the catastrophe had made a breach in their souls.
The disappearance of a child is a very small event in the general order of things. We are surrounded by death; it should never surprise us. From the moment when we begin to look about us, we see it at work and grow accustomed to it. We think we grow accustomed to it. We know that some day it will come and work its will in our own homes, and we foresee our misery. But there is so much more than misery! Let each one look into his own heart! There are few who will not recognize the revolution that a death has produced in their whole existence. It marks a change of eras . . . Ante, Post Mortem. . . . A being has disappeared. Life in its entirety is affected, a whole kingdom of beings, yesterday the kingdom of the day and to-day that of the shadow. If this little stone, this one stone, falls from the vault, the whole vault falls. Nothingness has no measure. If this little I is nothing, no I is anything. What I love is nothing; I who love am nothing. For I only exist because I love. The unreality of everything that breathes becomes suddenly apparent. And everyone is aware of this, though not in the same fashion, everyone, with all his organs, his instinct, his intelligence, whether he faces it directly or averts his eyes and flees from it.
On the family tree from which the little branch of Odette had been broken off the other branches continued to grow. But the development of three at least of the four was altered.
The least affected was the father. On the day of the funeral his grief was painful; his throat and his chest panted like those of a fallen horse. But a fortnight later he was already caught up again by his business and the powerful demands of his physical life; he was working, eating twice as much as ever, travelling, forgetting.
Of the two women Annette seemed to be the real mother. She could not be consoled. Her grief became all the more bitter the more the traces of the little girl were obliterated. Odette for her was like a chosen child, a child created not of her flesh, but of her need of affection, more hers than Sylvie's, more hers than her son. She accused herself of not having loved her enough, of having begrudged the caresses of which this eager little heart had never had enough. And she persuaded herself that she alone preserved the memory of the child to which the others were false.
Sylvie exhibited now a strange, busy, agitated gaiety. She talked in a high voice, with a wearisome flow of words, flashes of jocularity, harsh tittle-tattle that made her little group of workers burst out laughing. Marc quietly drank it all in when he happened to be there and heard it flying about him. He too had relaxed; he was working less, loafing, running about the streets, always looking for opportunities to do nothing and laugh. His organism was shielding itself against the terror within. . . . What outsider could have suspected it? We are impenetrable to one another; we seem indifferent; we want to unbosom ourselves and we cannot do so. . . . "There is no communion possible in suffering."
But Annette, whose intense devotion to the dead child made her unjust to the living, saw only their egoism. In every way it was trying to return to life and let the stone of memory drop to the bottom; and she was angry with them.