Little by little, the gaiety died down, as it had come. Everyone pushed his or her chair out from the table. The fires that had half died down were crackling, and, to ward off any omens, the Deddes’ daughter extinguished them completely with the poker…
The dress of flowered cotton that Maud was wearing, which appeared a little faded in the glimmer of the lamps, distinguished her from the farm women, who were still wrapped up in their woolen garb. It occurred to the young woman that once the hearths had been extinguished, the cold coming from the other rooms would slowly invade the big dining room. Gradually, even though they had had a lot to drink, the guests would soon be on their way. Thus, she threw another armful of vine shoots into the fireplace, and the fire, in a sudden burst, began purring again, devouring the dry twigs.
All of a sudden, she pricked up her ears. Although silence seemed to reign over the grounds and the whole Uderan domain, she knew before anyone else that it had just been broken. The same gallop she had perceived the night before came to her distinctly, and from the same direction. Soon the noise was so obvious that everyone stopped talking to listen to it.
“It’s George Durieux,” declared the young Pecresse. “I can imagine the look he’ll have on his face when he sees the windows lit up. It’s certainly the first time in years.”
“Where’s he going like that?” asked Maud.
“Who knows? It depends on the one he’s with at the moment. For now, it’s Semoic.”
“Oh, that’s it,” said Mrs. Pecresse, shaking her head back and forth. And right away her son imitated her gesture, which said everything.
Mrs. Taneran was anxious to have some details on George Durieux.
“A fellow from Bordeaux. He bought back a piece of property near Semoic and comes here on holidays. You know, the one you can’t see from the road. There’s a long pathway of cypress trees that leads to it. He wanted something in the region because his father had lived here for a long time; he even thought of buying Uderan.”
“Hallo, Mr. Durieux!” The parish priest had opened the window, and everyone was astonished to see that the rider was already in the yard, holding his horse by its bridle.
“I thought I was dreaming,” the rider shouted. “From the top of the road I could see the lights of Uderan.”
He finished tying up his animal and came into the room. He was a tall, dark-haired man who didn’t appear to Maud to be particularly good-looking. His careless dress highlighted instead a native elegance that struck one immediately because of the ease of his movements, which showed off a dexterity like that of an animal. He seemed a bit dazzled, with the expression on his face passing from indifference to a childlike curiosity. He looked at everyone attentively, spoke to them in a friendly way, but didn’t listen to them very long and seemed after a moment or so not to notice them anymore. From his first glance, he had fixed all the attendees in his mind and could easily pick out the landowners, even though he was far from knowing everyone in The Pardal. His politeness tinged with disdain once again gave people a sense of their social standing; sensitive to his charm, Mrs. Taneran gave such a feminine smile as soon as he entered that she appeared younger. With the arrival of George Durieux, moreover, the real meaning of the gathering appeared to Maud as an unbearable, self-evident fact.
“She’s the one people in the area are talking about and who may end up staying at Uderan,” the stranger must have thought. “One of these nights this lout will take her to his place, with her mother wishing they had gotten away. They must be seriously short of money…”
Maud lifted her eyes. They were a very light gray. Her look quickly met that of the young man, a look as clear as hers and hardened by the same will, but more practiced. In speaking, he didn’t stop staring at her. When he realized that people noticed, he turned away for a few minutes, but almost immediately began again. However, he didn’t stop talking.
“Every day,” he said to Mrs. Taneran, “I ride along the side of your property, madame”—he stressed these words as if he were mocking her—“and I know it very well. Your vines, on the side of the Pellegrains’, especially the big one that spreads out over the two slopes of the plateau, are not worth much anymore, unfortunately. It’s useless to fertilize them. All that’s left is to tear them out!”
“I thought,” argued the tall Pellegrain, “that by grafting them…” Soon everyone came to the rescue, that is, those of The Pardal. The Pecresses murmured something in their corner, wanting to play their part as well. What George Durieux was saying did not disadvantage people’s interests directly, but they felt nevertheless that their collective faith in the value of Uderan was shaken.
“No, believe me,” the young man continued, “except for burning the whole plateau and then replanting… But what good would that do—isn’t that true, madame? You never come here. When you bought it, it was already depleted to the maximum. It’s been like that for decades. You can’t do anything but leave Uderan as it is. Woe to the person who tries to change something. The region is infested with ruined landowners who used to own your domain. There’s no one but you, farmers of The Pardal, who hold on to hope for this desolate land…”
Mrs. Taneran continued smiling blissfully for no obvious reason…
“You see,” he continued, “this soil is so impoverished that you would have to invest a fortune in it to make up for lost time. Furthermore, one can live very well at Uderan, in a sense, provided that one asks of it only what it can give: a few cuttings of wood, some fruit, some fodder.”
Apparently he wanted to discourage the desire of the people of The Pardal to acquire the land. Was he lying? He expressed himself with a gentle indifference that would have fooled the most discerning, but that contrasted with the intensity of his look. When he felt that the disillusionment had begun to undermine their point of view, he spoke to them about other things. Today, moreover, he had almost won the match. Tomorrow, certainly, with the day’s dawning, when they would once more cross Uderan bathed in mists, the desire to possess it would seize them again. George knew that, but for tonight, it was enough to have put a dent in their covetousness.
John Pecresse, on the other hand, didn’t really care what George Durieux had to say. He believed that he loved Maud, but in reality found himself as much a stranger to her as George Durieux, for his part, appeared already to be part of her private life. Effectively, Maud listened to the words of the latter with passionate interest. The dancing light of the fire dug shadows under her slight shoulders, and her face possessed a beauty that Pecresse felt confusedly escaped him. Besides killing his desire, this revelation drove him to despair. Unconsciously, he held it against his mother for defending what she called her interests with such vulgarity. From that evening on, he knew he was defeated in advance, but he understood how dangerous it would have been to let Maud see it, for although she wasn’t cruel, she looked at him with empty eyes as soon as he tried to speak of himself, as if she had been struck with an insurmountable stupidity. He felt he could no longer stand the presence of Durieux and stood up.
He left. His mother followed him automatically, while her heart, like his, was overcome with anguish and vague worry. Everyone from The Pardal left behind them, as an apparent protest. But basically, people just felt tired, as happens naturally after a late evening out.
CHAPTER 7
DURING THE TWO WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED THE DINNER, George Durieux dropped in to Uderan almost every day. These days, which appeared to be so similar, were marked by unpleasant periods of waiting for Maud. In the afternoon, Mrs. Taneran went to Uderan in order to organize things she had left behind the last time and wanted to take back to Paris. Although she was always up and about in the city, she claimed that her nerves had collapsed, and most of the time, worn out in advance at the idea of furnishing the least bit of effort, she would stretch out in the easy chair on the lawn that separated the yard from the vegetable garden. There, in the warm, checkered shade of an arbor, she would sometimes sleep.