Soon, the first drops of rain from the storm began to fall. She had to go in. She thought, with a stupid obstinacy, of the bed in which she had found herself after she had fainted. Was her bedroom at Uderan open? Could she go to George Durieux’s place? No, anything except a return like that, which he would misinterpret.
Go to the tenant farm? Wake up the tenant farmer’s daughter by knocking on the shutters? But the domestic help would get up to welcome her in, and inventing an excuse seemed beyond her capabilities.
Thus she concluded there was no other shelter but the night, right up until the morning. She didn’t for a minute think about returning to the Pecresses’. This now seemed so impossible that it didn’t even cross her mind.
The Dior was running beside her, young and virile, against its faithful banks. All she had to do was roll over. She would have been caught up and carried away in a moment. But that was not in her thoughts, and she would have been astonished if someone had spoken to her about suicide, because she didn’t associate her despair with any thoughts of heroism. With difficulty she rose and climbed up the small hillock of the railway tracks. The rain was falling and blinding her. She took huge steps forward, stumbling and bracing herself against the moist clumps of earth; she crossed the tracks and then the road. A bright light caught her for an instant in its beam and went by quickly, as an engine roared. She didn’t straighten up but continued to drag herself toward Uderan. Just as she was headed up the sloped path of the yard, she thought she sensed the presence of someone around the house. She continued, unconcerned, and stopped in front of the closed door. “I knew it—they locked it this afternoon to keep me from going back in.”
She tried in vain to turn the handle. Leaning against the door panel, she began to hit it with all her might. After every blow she waited, knowing, however, that no one would answer and how foolish her continued effort was.
All at once, a name came out of nowhere—a voice taking care not to frighten her. She stopped to answer, her voice barely registering surprise. A vague worry swept over her attentive, frozen face.
“Maud. What are you doing here? Are you crazy? I’ve been waiting for you all day. You left like a thief this morning.” George Durieux. He was laughing, happy to have found her again, but she looked at him gravely, not understanding why he was there.
“Oh, thank goodness it’s you. I wasn’t expecting you, you know.”
In the glow of his flashlight, he saw that she was pale, with a gaze that revealed an extreme fatigue. His laugh was suddenly cut short.
She took refuge against the door, as if expressing with her body what she didn’t have the strength to say. He was embarrassed by her odd behavior. “What do you want? Say something!”
“George, I would like you to open this door. I promise that tomorrow I will explain everything to you, but for the moment, open this door. They’ve closed it, and I’m tired.”
He rattled the door without succeeding in opening it. “You can see it’s not going to open,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen, listen to me, will you…” She left after making a sign for him to wait.
He heard her go down the path that led to the abandoned greenhouse in the main part of the building and ferret around in the big mass of scrap metal and wood below the shed. He stayed where he was, unable to resist her request.
It was late. What was she doing still outside? Wasn’t it clear? She’d been running around with someone. John, perhaps…? He suddenly wanted to leave. When he recalled how naturally she had offered herself to him the night before, he was overwhelmed by disillusionment.
She appeared, moreover, not very concerned about him. As she hadn’t come back up, he imagined she must be groping around in the dark. Suddenly remembering the logs that the tenant famer had piled above the scrap metal, he worried that the pile might have fallen on her. He imagined her struggling under the wood and ran toward the stairs. Then, by the feeble light of his flashlight, he saw her come back up, with a bar of iron in her hand. “Here, do it with this!”
George shoved the bar into the crack that separated the two door panels, and it opened with a loud bang that echoed into the empty rooms. When he saw her in the bright light, he noticed the upheaval in her features and the change that had brusquely occurred in their expression. Maud’s gray eyes had almost disappeared under her swollen eyelids, and the very appearance of her face seemed ruined. Her mouth, pale and chapped, wet strands of hair strewn all over, and the big dirty stain that soiled her damp dress all made her unrecognizable.
His feelings for her were no match for this challenge. He didn’t even try to understand. He stood in front of her without moving.
She lay down, pulling the sheet up under her chin in a childlike, egotistical movement that shoved him firmly out of her thoughts. She asked him something, her eyes half-closed. He drew the heavy curtains, then lit a little oil lamp on the night table, filling the room with a flickering glow.
At last he sat down near the pedestal table and, as Maud had done the night before, examined the room, looking mechanically at this sad, luxurious decor. Usually she received him in the dining room. Everywhere a thick layer of dust was visible, from the canopy on the four-poster bed to the garnet-colored curtains.
She didn’t say anything more. Her breathing was so regular that he thought she was asleep, and suddenly this sleep represented all of human perversion for him. She was hiding from his questions. “Maud, are you ever going to say something to me?”
She stretched painfully but smiled, refreshed by this first plunge into sleep. “I’m sure it’s the Pecresse woman; I saw her this morning at the end of the lane when I was leaving your place…” He jumped up and pushed her to answer his questions in a voice that was curt and crisp.
“At what time did you leave…? How did they make you understand that…?”
He didn’t wait for the answer, finally deducing, through his questions, what she had hidden from him. Then, with a gentler voice, he queried, “You ran away from them, didn’t you?” Without speaking, she hid her face in her pillow.
Standing at the foot of her bed, he watched her sleep. His long silhouette leaned over to see her better. She seemed to be watching him ironically, through her thick eyelashes, the shadow of which the light of the little lamp lengthened right down to her cheeks. He would never have thought that a sleeping face could have such a moving profile. The thought that she had slept a whole night at his side troubled him as much as if he hadn’t known her.
She had been courting danger for weeks now, but what had he done to deserve her silence? He naturally shied away from her.
Occasionally the room was refreshed by a waft of air from the poorly shut door. Maud turned over and over again in bed. From time to time she smiled or murmured some indistinct words.
For the first time, George thought wearily about the next day. He calculated precisely the violence of the crossfire that The Pardal and the Pecresse woman were aiming at Maud and would have liked to escape it.
A deep peace still reigned over the countryside and the grounds. George left, suddenly worried that with the arrival of dawn someone might find him there. The frosty air gave off an earthy smell. He breathed it in with all his might. A feeling of freedom overtook him. Wasn’t he being a little ridiculous? He was going to have some problems with the family, but it was in Jacques’s best interest to spare him… the unfolding of events would help him; the Tanerans would not take long to leave. Uderan would be sold. Maud would disappear.
Yet for an instant, he wished that she would reappear one more time before their departure.