Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “Now, now, you are exaggerating,” said Fellaire.

  The shadows were closing round them; but they were all three very happy, and two at least would have stayed on contentedly, had not the business man suddenly remembered the Café de Colmar; it was time to play his game of billiards and to meet his friends, the brokers and advertising agents.

  “Children,” he said, knitting his thick eyebrows while consulting his watch, “time is flying, and I have an important engagement. Besides, it is going to rain.” The wind was rising, driving the clouds furiously across the sky, while a full red moon seemed to be scudding in the opposite direction. They went towards the narrow lane which leads from lower Meudon to the station on the heights. Hélène took René’s arm. She walked hesitatingly in the uncertain light, and they were silent; all at once she began to shiver.

  “I am frightened,” she said.

  A tall thin man, with feet disproportionately long, and dressed in rags, started up in front of them.

  He pulled off a tattered straw hat, and showed a pale lean face, with two dull hollow eyes. He muttered some sort of a prayer for charity, as he held out his hand.

  Hélène pressed closely against René and drew him away.

  “Did you see?” she said. “He looked like — oh, I am frightened!”

  René himself could not suppress a feeling of uneasiness. The beggar, as a matter of fact, did look like Mr. Haviland; and what made it more painful was that his appearance was so mournful and so dilapidated, he wore such an expression of irremediable suffering, that he suggested the frightful vision of Haviland — not as he used to look, but as he must look then, at that moment.

  They climbed on, up the steep path bordered with hedges and walls, the pebbles slipped and rolled under their feet. Hélène stopped to look fixedly at something in the shadow. René could see nothing in front of her but a bed of nettles growing beside a milestone. But the widow saw more than these; she flung up her hands with a loud cry and fell backwards.

  Fellaire tried to prop her against the stone. René, who was bending over her, told him to let her lie full length.

  She was stiff and motionless. Only her lips moved, and a little froth gathered at their corners; her eyes stared blankly at the sky.

  By-and-by, when she recovered consciousness, she did not seem to think of anything beyond her extreme fatigue. On reaching home, she begged her father to stay the night. She was frightened, she repeated. She gave René her hand — it was limp, lifeless, and icily cold; and she looked at him with an expression of utter hopelessness and discouragement.

  CHAPTER XII

  POOR terrified Hélène never ceased trembling. The visitors who came to see her, the friends whom she expected, and who for some reason did not come — noise, silence, her own apartments, the street itself, everything frightened her. She started at every encounter. Her old school friend Cécile, who had married years before into the money market, came with much ceremony. Between her airs and graces and babble, she showed a lurking curiosity which was torture to Hélène. The paragraph signed “Spectator” had piqued Cécile’s curiosity, but she almost had to go away without satisfying it.

  She was standing up, saying her farewell, when she thought better of it, and reseated herself.

  “These journalists,” she said; “they really have no common sense. What was it one of them said about the frightful misfortune which had befallen you, my poor dear? and its just proportions — proportions? I don’t know what one means by proportions!”

  Hélène answered in a scared voice:

  “I don’t understand you; I assure you that I am—”

  She stopped before committing an irreparable blunder. She was just about to affirm her innocence.

  She sent for the number of the journal, and could not sleep after reading it.

  In the meantime, a criminal affair had come before the magistrates at Avranches, who were examining into it carefully. A certain Reuline, a pettifogging business agent of somewhat bad reputation, had been found murdered in his lodgings, Rue de Gesvre, Granville. Suspicion first fell on a drunken, debauched longshoreman, who had been to see Reuline about five o’clock the evening before the discovery of the crime. The grocer occupying the ground-floor of the house had seen this man coming down from Reuline’s room, evidently in a state of violent excitement. But after a long and careful cross-examination, he was discharged.

  Forced to turn his attention to another quarter, the magistrate went over the scene of the crime again. He noticed that the packets of papers which had evidently been taken out of the secretary, turned over rapidly and flung down on the body of the victim, formed several distinct groups — each one was wrapped in a paper envelope, with a name and address written on it. This mass of papers had been prudently left as it was when discovered. The body of the murdered man was drawn from under it with every precaution. One envelope was empty. From its position on the top of the pile, it must have been among those last examined by the assassin. On it was written, “Monsieur Groult, care of Monsieur Haviland, Paris.”

  The name of Groult was found, not at Granville, but at Avranches, on the register of the Red Horse Inn. Groult was still there, when a warrant was issued against him, and he was arrested.

  Hélène, after passing an atrocious night, learnt this piece of news from the papers.

  She had seen her husband again; the frightful apparition had reappeared before her. It neither reproached her nor showed signs of hatred or anger; it merely stood looking at her in the grisly form in which her imagination clothed it. How could she continue to live if it came to her thus every night?

  When her father arrived at lunch-time, she flung herself on him in a delirium of affection and fear; she lifted supplicating eyes to him; she held him so tightly that he said:

  “Why, what is the matter? You are hurting me.”

  Then he added that though he had always mistrusted Groult, this was a most unexpected revelation. The wretched man’s crime made him shiver; but in the night, he added, he had had an inspiration. He would find Samuel Ewart himself: he had that very morning written to the French Ambassador to England on the subject. He would follow up the search. And as he said it, his eye took on a sharp, keen look which seemed to pierce the ceiling.

  It distressed Hélène to see him attaching himself to the dead man’s interests.

  “Father,” she said, “wouldn’t you like to go away with your daughter — far, far away?”

  “Where?” said he, with busy good-nature. The idea of leaving the Café Colmar seemed to him absurd and monstrous. Recovering his surprise, he kissed Hélène on the brow.

  “Baby,” he murmured.

  Then with his easy and indiscreet kindness, he brought forward a reason which would, he thought, keep the young widow in Paris.

  “Our friend Longuemare would be disconsolate if you went away.”

  She replied gravely that Monsieur Longuemare must only think of marrying some innocent young girl. Then, with clasped hands and in a voice which seemed to come from the very depths of her soul:

  “My God, my God! what a pitiless thing life is!”

  He took her hands in his, and said in his unctuous, comfortable voice:

  “What are you saying? what are you saying, my child?”

  Laying his leather portfolio on the table, he lighted a big cigar, wreathed in the smoke of which he proceeded to draw up a memorandum about Samuel Ewart.

  From that day Helene’s terror and remorse continually increased, from no external reason, but merely by the workings of her sick brain. The visions became more frequent and more precise. It was difficult for her to distinguish them from reality.

  As a result of Groult’s cross-examination the magistrate ordered his domicile to be searched. A police commissioner, accompanied by a locksmith, appeared at the hôtel one morning. Madame Haviland was told that he had seized certain papers found in the lodge, and that he asked the favour of a few minutes’ interview with the mistress of the h
ouse in the course of the next hour or two.

  This request fell on Hélène like a blow from a mallet. She distinctly saw her husband in his room, decomposed, but correct, calm, and well satisfied. She saw him seated, turning over the pages of a review tranquilly, as a man who has just returned to his home.

  Although his eyes had almost entirely disappeared and were mixed with clay and earth, he noticed a scrap of thread on the table-cloth, and removed it delicately, with the gesture so familiar in his lifetime. Then he vanished.

  Hélène was now the prey of new fears. In her ignorance of things she imagined that justice, bent on dragging the confession of her most secret thoughts from her, would hound her on to the same scaffold as the servant Groult. She remembered everything she had read about the execution of Marie-Antoinette; she could feel the cold steel of the executioner’s scissors on her neck. The madness of fear took complete possession of her. The rustling of her own dressing-gown made her half faint from fright.

  Towards ten o’clock she heard a door bang. She flung open a window, whether with the idea of suicide or escape she did not know. It was only her nephew George returned at his usual time from school. He threw his books impatiently on the table, and, happening to look at his aunt, said:

  “How big your eyes are to-day!”

  He then began while waiting for breakfast to turn over his books, grumbling and pouting because he had some Greek to prepare. Sitting on the edge of his chair, one leg tucked under him, his chin resting on the table, he turned over the leaves of his dictionary.

  He really translated well, in spite of his grimaces, but he wrote carelessly, blotting his paper, and licking up the ink with his tongue.

  She listened stupidly to the noises from outside, and trembled each time that the boy kicked his foot against the bars of his chair. He was imitating the grave, affected voice of his professor.

  “You will notice, gentlemen, the harmony of Sophocles’ verses. We don’t know how to pronounce them; we pronounce them all wrong, but still what harmony! Monsieur Labrunière, you will conjugate the verb ‘didomi’ ten times. Yes, what harmony!”

  Then in his own squeaky voice:

  “Auntie, I swear to you that my professor wears paper collars. We call him Python; do you know why? One day he said: ‘Gentlemen, Python was a monster of repulsive ugliness and malignant spitefulness’; and Labrunière whispered, ‘Just like you.’ Labrunière is awfully funny. Do you know, Auntie, you are really a very pretty woman?” At last he fixed his wandering mind on the Greek text, which he went over, word by word, like a magpie, filling the room with his high-pitched tones, calling out the lines as he wrote them down, and stopping every now and then to count his marbles.

  “Kara theion, the divine head,’Iokastes of Jocasta, Tethneke is dead. (How stupid this is!) She went — pros ta numfika leche towards the nuptial couch, which means the bedroom. You notice, gentlemen, what a happy expression! how harmonious! komen spos tearing her hair; kalei she calls; Laion, Laïus; nekron dead. You see, Auntie, in French a laïus means a sermon, but in Greek it means an old fellow whom Jocasta had married, and the marriage had not turned out happily. Tearing her hair she calls the dead Laïus.

  From these scraps of Greek and French Hélène could make out an antique and noble story of a woman’s despair.

  George hurried on, eager to get to the end.

  “Kremasten ten gunaik we saw the woman hanged.” He signed his initials at the bottom of the paper, stuck out his tongue, all violet with ink, and chanted, “Hanged! hanged! I’ve finished.”

  Hélène rose and went to her room. She was so calm, so precise, so certain of what she had to do; she seemed like a statue of Necessity.

  Wrapped in her black shawl and her widow’s veil, she went down the servants’ staircase.

  CHAPTER XIII

  WHEN she reached the street she staggered, dazzled by the brilliant morning sunshine, in which every object showed with extreme clearness. The carriages, the trees, the kiosks of the news-vendors, the most distant passers-by were all so distinctly outlined despite their smallness that they appeared close at hand. The light was painful to her; she saw everything with unconscious eyes. The most insignificant things, such as the numbers on the cabs and the names over the shops, engraved themselves on her vision in such minute detail as to be fatiguing to her worn nerves; they seemed to strike at her and wound her. She would have gone back, but she could not stop; all power of reflection had left her. A Jiving woman had never before been so empty of thought. An idea had come to her, so simple, clear, and definite, it excluded all others. She walked on not even aware that she was walking, feeling as if she were flying and yet very weak, possessed only by this idea, incapable of a voluntary effort.

  A little girl trotted in front of her carrying a baby and a bottle of milk. She watched the white drops as they fell one by one on the pavement; all the mental faculty that remained to her fixed itself on the spilt milk. Each drop that splashed over gave her a feeling as of physical pain.

  When she reached the quays the freshness of the wide, open space, the effect of the light on the water, and the cool breeze from the river, drew a sigh from her.

  She hesitated a moment, then, turning to the right, went on. The Quai d’Orsay was perfumed with the scent of flowers in the neighbouring gardens. A stream of omnibuses, cabs, business men, and agile work-girls pouring from the Rue du Bac to the Pont Royal stopped her for a few seconds. She crossed the bridge without looking at the water, and, turning again to the right, went down the steps to the shore, where, by a group of willow-trees, the floating baths were moored. She passed over the plank and on to the boat, which smelt of hot water and tar.

  She waited quietly, biting the top of her parasol, while the white-aproned attendant prepared her bath; and went quietly into the cabin, saying she would ring when she wanted her bath-robe.

  As soon as the little door closed behind her she drew back the calico curtains with an impatient gesture, and, opening the window, leant out, breathing deeply. The Seine flowed beneath with little shining ripples. From the washerwomen’s boat moored on the opposite bank came the muffled sound of their wooden beaters. A buzz of voices rose above the men’s enclosure at the side.

  She looked on the bright scene with an indifferent, almost happy eye. With her black cashmere shawl drawn tightly round her shoulders, her widow’s veil flung back over her bonnet and floating like a funereal cloud about her head, she was more beautiful than she had ever been. Her whole being seemed to exhale a voluptuous calm.

  The screw of a steamer splashed as it drew near. The floating bridge of the bathing establishment oscillated slightly, and a steamer going to Point du Jour passed so close to her she could hear the voices of the passengers. Two vulgar looking young men leaning over the side eyed her boldly, thinking, no doubt, of the toilet she was going to lay aside.

  She noticed them, and she heard the elder of the two, who was fair and had red patches on his cheeks, say:

  “What a pretty woman! One wouldn’t mind—”

  But the boat had passed; the funnels were already being lowered under the arches of the Pont Royal.

  Was it disdain or satisfaction that raised the corners of her mouth in a slight smile? She was calm; her eyes wandered quietly from one point to another without betraying the slightest uneasiness. She raised her pretty arms with a graceful gesture which would have fascinated more than one man, and passed her hand across her brow; then she closed the window, evidently indifferent to all she saw from it.

  It was noon-day.

  Two o’clock came, and she had not rung. At ten minutes past two the attendant, surprised at not having been called, opened the door of the cabin and asked if Madame needed anything.

  There was no one in the bath, but opposite it, between the window and the looking-glass, a tall, dark figure hung.

  The girl fled shrieking for help.

  Hélène Haviland had hanged herself with one of her nephew’s neckties to a clothes’-
hook. She was wearing round her shoulders the shawl which René had wrapped her in a month before in the arbour at Meudon. Her knees were stiff, and the tips of her boots touched the floor. The body was leaning to the left against a chair, which had no doubt been placed there on purpose. The face was covered with her widow’s veil. When this was raised, the face showed congested; the tongue, black and swollen, protruding from the mouth.

  When the police commissioner appeared on the scene he remarked:

  “Well, I have seen many women who have committed suicide; but this is the first I have seen who has hanged herself.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  LONGUEMARE was profoundly grieved at the hideous and ill-omened end of the woman he loved, though at first he did not appear overcome by it. He worked furiously at his profession; but he grew sombre, hard, and brutal. He showed none of his good qualities, save his zeal and intelligence as a surgeon. Quarrelsome with his companions, cynical with women, he wore out the most patient of his friends, and they left him alone. His irritability reached such a pitch he could not take a meal in his crémerie without disputing with the waiters, the landlord, or the young lady behind the counter.

  A somewhat brusque observation from the head physician at the hospital caused him to send in his resignation, and one fine day he arrived unexpectedly at his father’s house, in the depths of the Ardennes, without books, clothes, or linen, a three-weeks’-old beard and a sulky air.

  The land surveyor was a little, dried-up, old man, who pruned his trees, bottled his wine, cemented the dilapidated tiles in the flooring of the rooms, chopped his firewood, and came and went, always busy and always interested in the smallest details of life. He shrugged his shoulders when he saw his son lying all the day long in the garden, an empty pipe in his mouth, and a tattered straw-hat on his head.