In a flash, Pecresse and Jacques Grant were on their feet. Pecresse looked at the rescue workers, one after the other. He hopped oddly from one foot to the other, and finally broke down in tears, repeating with a dull voice and such shamelessness that no one pitied him, “At the same place where we met for four years, following my military service…”
Soon other search-and-rescue farmers entered. They didn’t deign to answer the patrons’ questions. The only one they knew was Pecresse. To him they explained, “We left her on the riverbank. Tomorrow the mayor will come and make the official report. There’s no reason, because she was alone…”
Maud thought she had been seen in the field by the Dior, but it soon became obvious: no one was looking at her and the farmers’ words were not at all ambiguous. She regained her calm, a calm that prevented her from feeling the least bit of emotion. She finally dared to look at her brother; he was leaving his friends. A look of satisfaction, discreet but obvious, showed on his face.
The Barque Inn closed up. Maud found herself alone on the road while the night was still pitch-black, having left before everyone else.
The more she tried to put together the drama of the night, the more she was afraid of her brother’s attitude, which appeared cowardly and intense at the same time. How strangely conciliatory he had shown himself to be! The face he was wearing as he came down the stairs kept passing before her eyes, both mocking and terrified, although she could not grasp the meaning of it.
Hadn’t she just helped Jacques out without knowing it, by not revealing that the young woman had certainly not committed suicide in front of the Pecresse place? She didn’t regret having encouraged her brother in that way to confront John, but she understood at the same time that she would have no rest before having some kind of certainty about the reasons for the young woman’s demise. Maud sank into senseless hypotheses, and sometimes her doubts carried her quite far; evil took on a form so far removed from anything she had known until now that she could hardly stand its view.
It was at the crossroads of the highway to Bordeaux and the road to Semoic that George caught up with her. She was neither happy nor surprised. George confronted her abruptly. “What John Pecresse said was true; your brother made life impossible for that poor girl. He began to hate her after shamelessly possessing her; I know too much now to keep quiet. There are things that are appalling even if they don’t affect one directly. I did everything I could to keep him from acting the way he did, out of respect for you and your mother, but Jacques is a nasty fellow…”
Maud was not ignorant of the kind of torture Jacques could inflict on a woman who had begun to displease him. However, she wondered why George had wanted to be there that evening, knowing the circumstances. Instinctively, she tried again to defend her brother.
“Why do you attack Jacques? I thought you were his friend. Furthermore, if he were as guilty as you say he is, he would not have gone up to Pecresse so confidently, earlier on.”
George’s voice quickly lost its habitual indifference. It took on a tone that Maud did not recognize, expressing his anger laden with hurt. “Jacques wasn’t proud; you know it yourself, Maud. The young woman was also involved with Barque, whose child she was expecting. She was never paid, and your brother figured out a way to push her over the edge… I don’t deny that John Pecresse had a lousy role in it, far from that. But I’ve known John for a long time. He would never have made her suffer like that—he doesn’t have Jacques’s ingenuity and temperament…”
Maud wanted George to stop talking about her brother.
“Moreover, you better be careful yourself, Maud,” he continued. “God knows what Jacques will come up with to gain Pecresse’s confidence back! I don’t know you well, but when I saw you encouraging your brother this evening, I saw how important he is to you, and how your family is united around him.”
George wanted to go back to Uderan with Maud. He was now speaking without her encouraging him, either by word or by action.
Once they were in the dining room at Uderan, there was a long stretch of silence before she knew what to say to him. She had the impression he was there on account of weakness, so he wouldn’t have to go home alone after this night. She had waited for this moment for so long but didn’t feel any happiness in being with him, as if from now on it was too late to continue loving each other. She thought once again that she didn’t feel anything for George and that everything was destroyed: her illusions, her will to be happy, her strength, without her knowing why.
George was smoking, leaning up against the chimney and speaking to Maud from time to time, continuing to clarify his thoughts. They both put on formal airs; despite themselves, they took on the embarrassed, somber look of people who find themselves caught in misfortune.
Maud believed that the time to admit what she knew would not come again. She had to tell George now. Such an unexpected confidence would create a shock and break the bad spell that had been over them this night, and would perhaps bring him back.
She murmured, “Last night, after the storm, I discovered her in front of our field, below the railroad tracks. I’m sure she drowned there. I suppose it would have been possible to think she had ended up there, but it would have been unlikely after coming from the mill.”
George did not reply right away. “It doesn’t surprise me that you kept silent. You won’t always be able to keep him out of trouble, fortunately…”
She had thought that George would judge her to have self-esteem and was vexed. Now the unbelievable moment of his departure was approaching, and even if she knew she had charm, she felt she no longer had the means to hold on to him…
Suddenly someone knocked several times on the shutter. A moment went by and the muffled, oppressed voice of Jacques Grant could be heard. “Maud, open up!” The voice was pleading, with childlike gentleness.
Maud stepped toward the door. George held her back and covered her mouth with his hand to prevent her from responding. They waited for a moment like that, and, even though it was no longer necessary, George didn’t let go; tears dropped onto his hand and he drew Maud close, holding her tight against him. The young woman understood that he felt the same deliverance that she did: together they came out of a dark and difficult night.
George leaned over and said very quietly, “I’ve loved you for a long time, Maud. Can you believe that Jacques claimed you were engaged to Pecresse? That’s why I fled…”
Jacques walked around the house. They heard him knocking on the shutters of the bedrooms, discreetly, without impatience. Coming back to the dining room, he began to call his sister again. While still speaking in a low voice, he wrote something against the shutter. For a moment, the scratching of a pencil broke the silence; then Jacques slid a note into the crack of the door and walked away.
They rushed to get it, and Maud read aloud from her brother’s small and almost undecipherable writing: “My dear Maud, I advise you to keep to yourself everything you have seen and heard tonight. You are old enough to understand that our mother must know nothing about this.—Jacques.”
George said in a softened tone, “I know he loves your mother deeply, in his own way…” He was struck by the exultant expression on the young woman’s face when she responded.
“We all love Jacques, as extraordinary as that may seem, even Taneran, his first victim. Although Jacques makes people unhappy, he also manages to suffer for it sometimes and regret not being better. He’ll probably walk around all night like a madman; he came to talk to me. When he’s like that, he’s afraid of himself.”