"My poor girl," he said, "have you anything to tell me?"
I was frightened. "What do you mean? Am I going to die? Am I very ill?"
He shook his head. "No. Why should you die? People don't die—" he commenced, and stopped.
"What about Mireille?" I asked, feeling terrified, I knew not why.
"Now we are speaking of you," he said, quite sternly.
Again he stopped as if expecting me to say something. I was bewildered. Perhaps the old man was a little strange in his head.
He coughed once more and his face flushed. Then he said: "I am an old man, my dear. I am a father—" He stopped again. "And I know all the sadness and wickednesses of the world. You may confide in me."
I said: "Thank you very much. I am sure I can."
There was another long silence. He seemed to be waiting. Then he got up and his face was a little hard. "Well," he said, "perhaps you prefer speaking to Mrs. Whitaker."
"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "Why—not at all."
Again he waited. Then he took his hat and gloves. "Well—as you like," he said abruptly. "I cannot compel you to speak. You must go your own way. I suppose you have your reasons." And he left the room.
I stood petrified with wonder. What did he mean about my going my own way? Why did he seem displeased with me? As I opened the door to go back to my room, I heard him in the hall speaking to Mrs. Whitaker.
"No," he was saying. "I feel sure I am not mistaken. But she would not approach the subject at all."
What a queer nightmare world we are living in!
Later.—I am expected to say something, I know not what. Everybody looks at me with an air of expectation—that is to say, Mrs. Whitaker does. But strangest thing of all, I sometimes think that Loulou does too. There are long silences between us, and when I raise my eyes I find her looking at me with a sort of breathless eagerness, an expression of anxiety and suspense of which I cannot grasp the meaning.
Late at night.—Mrs. Whitaker was very strange this evening. She came into my bedroom without warning, and found me on my knees. I was weeping and saying my prayers. She suddenly came towards me with an impulsive gesture of kindness and took me in her arms.
"Poor little girl!" she said, and she kissed me. She added, as if she were echoing the sentiments of the kind old doctor, "Chérie, I am a mother—" Then she stopped. "And I am not such a sour, hard person as I look." The tears stood in her eyes so I took her hand and kissed it. She sat down on a low chair and drew me to a footstool beside her. "Tell me," she said. "Tell me everything. I shall understand."
So I told her. I told her how unhappy I was about Louise and Mireille, I told her about Claude in the hospital. She said, "I know all that. Go on." Then I told her about Florian, how brave and handsome he was, and that we were betrothed. Then I wept bitterly and told her I thought that he was dead.
She raised my face with her hand and looked into my eyes. "Is it he?" she said.
I did not understand. She repeated her question. "Is it he? Did he—" she hesitated as if looking for a word—"did he wrong you?"
"Why? How wrong me?" I asked.
She gazed deeply into my eyes and I gazed back as steadfastly at her, wondering what she meant.
"Did he betray you?"
"Betray me? Never!" I cried. "He could never betray. He is true and faithful as a saint."
I was hurt that she should have asked such a question. Florian, who has never looked at or thought of any woman but me! Betray me!
"Well," she said rising to her feet suddenly—her expression of rather cold dignity again reminded me of the doctor. "If it had been the outrage of an enemy I know you would have told me. However, let it be as you wish. I will say only this: where I could have pitied disgrace, I cannot condone deceit."
And she left me.
Am I dreaming, or are people in this country incomprehensible and demented?
CHAPTER XIII
Louise looked her doom in the face with steady eyes. No more hope, no more doubt was possible. This was November. The third month had passed.
What she had dreaded more than death had come to pass. From the first hour the fear of it had haunted her. Now she knew. She knew that the outrage to which she had been subjected would endure; she knew that her shame would live.
In the middle of the night after tossing sleeplessly for hours, the full realization of this struck her heart like a blow. She sat up with clenched teeth in the darkness, her hands pressed to her temples.
After a while she slid from her bed and stood motionless in the middle of the room. Around her the world was asleep. She was alone with her despair and her horror.
How should she elude her fate? How should she flee from herself and the horror within her?
She turned on the light and went with quick steps to the mirror. There she stood with bare feet in her long white nightdress, staring at herself. Yes. She nodded and nodded like a demented creature at the reflection she saw before her. She recognized the aspect of it; the dragged features, the restless eyes, the face that seemed already too small for her body, the hunted anxious look. That was maternity. To violence nature had conceded what had been withheld from love. What she and Claude had longed for, had prayed for—another child—behold, now it was vouchsafed to her.
With teeth clenched she gazed at her white-draped reflection, she gazed at the hated fragile frame in which the eternal mystery of life was being accomplished. With the groan of a tortured animal she hid her face in her hands. What should she do? Oh God! what should she do?
Then began for Louise the heartbreaking pursuit of liberation, the nightmare, the obsession of deliverance.
All was vain. Nature pursued its inexorable course.
Then she determined that she must die. There was no help for it—she must die. She dreaded death; she was tied to life by a two-fold instinct—her own and that of the unborn being within her. How tenacious was its hold on life! It would not die and free her. It clung with all its tendrils to its own abhorred existence. Every night as she lay awake she pictured what it would be if it were born—this creature conceived in savagery and debauch, this child that she loathed and dreaded. She could imagine it living—a demon, a monster, a thing to shriek at, to make one's blood run cold. Waking and in her dreams she saw it; she saw it crawling like a reptile, she saw it stained with the colour of blood, she saw it babbling and mouthing at her, frenzied and insane.... That is what she would give life to, that is what she would have to nurse and to nourish; carrying that in her arms she would go to meet her husband when he came limping back from the war on his crutches.
She pictured that meeting with Claude in a hundred different ways, all horrible, all dreadful beyond words. Claude staring at her, not believing, not understanding.... Claude going mad.... Claude lifting his crutch and crushing the child's skull with it, as Amour's skull had been crushed—ah! the dead horrible Amour that she had seen when she staggered out of the room at dawn that day!… That was the first thing she had seen—that gruesome animal with its brains beaten out and its gleaming teeth uncovered. She could see it now, she could always see it when she closed her eyes! What if this sight had impressed itself so deeply upon her.... Hush! this was insanity; she knew that she was going mad.
So she must die.
How should she die? And when she was dead, what would happen to Mireille? And to Chérie?
Chérie! At the thought of Chérie a new rush of ideas overwhelmed Louise's wandering brain. Chérie! What was the matter with Chérie?
Had not she also that tense look, those pinched features, all those unmistakable signs that Louise well knew how to interpret? Was it possible that the same doom had overtaken her?
Then Louise forced herself to remember what she would have given her life to forget. With eyes closed, with shuddering soul, she compelled herself to live over again the darkest hours of her life.