At the end of the afternoon, a white vapor coming from the oak woods and the Pellegrain plateau descended gently along the Riotor. It raced toward the Dior valley, where it would soon blend with a thick fog. The Dedde girl exited the barn with a basket on her arm and headed to the west field, toward The Pardal, to pick some vegetables. “When the mist descends like that, it’s because the bad weather is over. Look how beautiful it is. On the other side you can hardly see,” she said to Maud.
The tall poplars of the Riotor, frosted by the mist, stood still as she passed by. The estate found itself isolated from the surrounding region, which seemed to melt into the fog.
Mrs. Taneran came out of the house, headed toward the pond, and stood in front of the hollow road that remained the only way out toward the main route. She was nervous and murmured with a sigh, “Who knows where your brothers are? In an hour we won’t be able to see anything with this fog, and Henry’s out roaming the roads in Terry’s car. I prefer not to know.”
Maud had the desire, after this break, to stretch her legs. “I’m going to the main road to see if he’s fishing on the banks of the Dior.”
She put her hooded cape back on and took to the road with a quick step. It was true, she had forgotten the cause of her apprehension a bit earlier. In the weather’s emerging calm, the memory of George softened and lost some of its importance.
Perhaps the man’s indifference had seemed so insurmountable that she had given up hope. Why, following the dinner at Uderan, had she persuaded herself so easily that he would seek her out? Even if, for a few moments, he had looked at her, she had to be crazy to jump to the conclusion that he loved her. And then, perhaps she had also behaved awkwardly during his visits…
When she got to the road, she was surprised by the silence that had followed the outburst of the storm in the Dior valley. One would think oneself to be in the bottom of a damp well. “Henry!” Her voice reverberated in a brief echo that was unrecognizable. With no desire to return to the tenant farm, she sat down on a border stone at the corner of the property. “He’s at Barque’s, too,” she thought.
Beside her, with enormous jolts, the trees shed the water weighing down their branches, though Maud could perceive no particular cause for their sudden upheavals. Soon a kind of gentle babbling emerged from the silence. Rivulets slid down the hill to the road, crossing at Maud’s feet with twists and turns.
Maud realized that she was no longer thinking about George. Frightened by what she thought to be her fickleness, she determined to go to Barque’s that very evening and was comforted by her decision.
After a moment, she called out for her brother again. A silence, as hard to break through as a wall would have been, responded to her call, while on the grounds the same fairylike sounds of water continued to play. Listening to them, Maud thought she heard sweet, melodious voices. “I’ll go all the way to the Dior,” she told herself, “but it will soon be night.” She firmly resisted fear.
In the elm enclosure, at the corner of the field along the border of their property, Maud had once played. The memory suddenly came back to her: at ten years old she had played with Henry and Louise Rivière every Thursday. Taneran would come to lovingly watch his little boy. He wore an old khaki jacket and his hunting gaiters and already looked old, even then. When Jacques arrived, he would chase away his stepfather like a scarecrow and then would organize the games, stretched out on the grass, cheerful and charming as a prince who does as he wishes. The children, flattered by Jacques’s involvement, meekly accepted his reprimands. The mood was peaceful; no one had any pity on Taneran; Jacques was king.
The mist, bitter and cold, enveloped everything now. Maud was quite sure that her younger brother was not fishing on the banks of the Dior; she felt the need, nevertheless, to go down to the edge of the stream. By hanging on to the acacia trunks in order to avoid sliding, she reached the railroad tracks. At the bottom of the hill on which the property was situated, a spring ran swiftly, surging up by leaps and bounds. As Maud crossed the field, the second train, whose whistle she could hear from Semoic onward, went by very quickly in the fog.
Then, in the jumble of reeds that bordered the banks, between the two mills of Semoic and Ostel, Maud perceived, as vague as a shadow, but nevertheless frighteningly precise, a woman’s dead body floating by in the water. She cried out and instinctively ran back up the slope as quickly as she could.
Halfway up she stopped, suddenly clearheaded again, as if she felt abruptly outside of fear’s bounds. Who was this woman…? She hadn’t recognized her face, having only seen her through the semidarkness. Clearly the stranger had died in the waters coming from the direction of the Semoic mill, alongside the fields that extended to the valley of the Uderan domain. This idea was suddenly unbearable, and she could not make up her mind to leave.
An instant later she realized that her cry had not been heard. A moment of reflection cautioned her not to notify anyone. What if she went to make sure the woman’s floating body hadn’t been stopped by the reeds in front of their property? And if it had been, what could Maud do? More than anything Maud had to see.
What was most difficult was to go back down the field she now crossed as calmly as if someone were watching her. Arriving at the embankment, she knelt on the ground in order to see as far as possible down the river.
Sometimes haltingly, sometimes moving with docility, the dead woman was being carried by the current. Maud followed her with her eyes until the floating body went beyond their fields and slowly penetrated into the alder woods that separated the Pecresse lands from their own. Just before the river’s bend, by the day’s last glimmer, Maud made out two black braids dragging along beside the corpse…
When she arrived at the road level, Maud saw a shape that made her step back: her mother! She felt acutely how much Mrs. Taneran, more sensitive and impressionable than her children, needed to be spared.
“I’ve been waiting and calling for quite a while. Where are you coming from?” The trembling voice of the older woman revealed her weakness.
“From the Dior, seeing if Henry wasn’t there. He must be at Barque’s.”
“Mrs. Dedde invited both of us,” added Mrs. Taneran. “I have to admit that it makes a nice change from the Pecresses.”
Partially reassured, Maud’s mother started off again on the conversation she had had with their neighbor the other night. “Believe it or not, that crazy Pecresse woman came to ask your hand in marriage for her son. The people around here don’t suspect a thing! On top of that, she’d get a double deal. John is having an affair around here, the Deddes’ daughter probably told you.”
Maud was barely listening, not taking it in. The words whizzed by her ears, striking her head, which was already dizzy. She kept herself from showing the terrible revulsion she felt, not knowing its source.
“What’s the matter, Maud? It’s better than it was a while ago, my dear…” Her mother took her arm, but Maud shook it off in anger and walked more quickly. Mrs. Taneran followed her with sadness and repeated, without understanding the full scope of her words, “What holidays, my dear! We’re two unhappy women, it seems, and sometimes I tell myself that if you weren’t there it would be worse…”
When she was seated at the table in the bright light, Maud appeared overcome with fatigue, as if she had accomplished a task beyond her strength. In her weariness, everything became simpler. Her anxiety did not prevent her from chatting and eating heartily, though. Reassured, Mrs. Taneran entertained the tenant farmers.