Part 8 (1/2)
”Yes,” said Pierre, ”the time is short.”
”All the more reason not to run!” said Luce. ”One gets too soon to the end. Let us walk slowly.”
”But it's time that hurries along. Hold on to it well.”
”I'm holding onto it; I'm holding,” said Luce, grasping his hand.
Thus back and forward, tenderly, gravely, they talked like a pair of good old friends. But they took good care that the table should stay between them.
And behold, they perceived that the night had filled the room. Pierre rose hurriedly. Luce did nothing to retain him. The short hour had pa.s.sed. They were afraid of the hour that might come. They said _au revoir_ to each other with the same constraint, the same low and choked voice as when he came in. On the threshold their hands scarcely dared to press each other.
But when the door was shut, just as he was about to leave the garden, as he turned his head toward the window of the ground floor, he saw in the last gleam of the copper-colored twilight, on the pane, the outline of Luce, who was following his departure into the uncertain depths of the gleam-filled obscurity with a face full of pa.s.sion. And turning back to the window, he pressed his lips against the closed pane. Their lips kissed through the wall of gla.s.s. Then Luce moved back into the shadows of the room and the curtain fell.
FOR the past fortnight they had been unaware of anything that was going on in the world. In Paris people might make arrests and issue condemnations as hard as they could. Germany might make treaties and tear up those she had signed. Governments might lie, the press denounce and armies kill. They did not read the papers. They knew there was the war somewhere all about them, just as there is typhus or else influenza; but that did not touch them; they did not want to think about it.
The war recalled itself to them that night. They had already gone to bed (they spent their hearts so freely in those days that when evening came they were worn out). They heard the alarm signals, each in his or her respective quarter, and declined to get up. They hid their heads in their beds under the bedclothes as a child will during a thunder-storm--not at all from fear (they were positive that nothing could happen to them) but in order to dream. Listening to the air rumbling in the night, Luce thought:
”It would be delightful to listen to the storm as it pa.s.ses, in his arms.”
Pierre stopped his ears. Let nothing trouble his thoughts! He insisted on picking out on the piano of memory the song of the day pa.s.sed, the melodious thread of the hours, from the first minute that he entered Luce's house, the slightest inflections of her voice and her gestures, the successive images which his eyes had hastily snapped up--a shadow under the eyelids, a wave of emotion that pa.s.sed beneath the skin like a s.h.i.+ver across the water, a smile just brus.h.i.+ng against the lips like a sun ray, and his palm pressed on, nestled against the nude softness of the two extended hands--these precious fragments that endeavored to reunite the magic fantasy of love in a single close embrace. He would not permit that noises from without should enter there. The outside was for him a tiresome visitor. The war? Oh, I know, I know. Has it come?
Let it wait.... And the war did wait at the door, patiently. War knew that it would have its turn. He knew that also; that is why he had no shame in his egotism. The rising billow of death was about to seize him.
So he owed death nothing in advance. Nothing. Let death come back again at the date of the contract! Up to that day let death be silent! Ah, up to then at least he did not want to lose anything of this marvelous time; each second was a golden grain and he the miser who paws over his treasure. It's mine, it's my property. Don't you dare touch my peace, my love! It's my own up to the hour.... And when will the hour come?
Perhaps it will not come at all! A miracle? Why not?...
Meantime the stream of hours and days kept on flowing. At each new bend of the channel the roaring of the rapids drew nearer. Stretched out in their barque Pierre and Luce listened and heard. But they had no more fear. Even that enormous voice like the ba.s.s notes of an organ cradled their amorous dream. When the gulf should be there they would close their eyes, press closer together and all would be over in one blow. The gulf spared them the trouble of thinking about the life that was to be, that might possibly be, afterward, about the future without an issue.
For Luce foresaw the obstacles that Pierre would have to encounter if he wished to marry her; and Pierre less clearly (he had less taste for clearness) feared them also. Let us not look so far ahead! Life beyond the gulf was like that ”other life” they talked about in church. They tell you that we shall find each other again; but they are not so very sure. One sole thing is sure: the present. Our own present. Let's pour into it without any taking of stock the whole of our part in eternity!
Even less than Pierre did Luce inform herself about the news. The war did not interest her in the least. It was only one misery more amongst all the various miseries which form the web and woof of social existence. Those who can be astonished about it are those only who stand sheltered from naked realities. And the little girl with her precocious experience who understood the struggle for one's daily bread--_panem quotidianum_ ... (G.o.d does not grant it for nothing!)--revealed to her _bourgeois_ friend the murderous war which, for poor folks and particularly for women, reigns cunningly deep and without a truce below the lie of peace. She did not talk too much about it, however, for fear of depressing him: on seeing the excitement into which her accounts threw him, she had an affectionate feeling of her own superiority. Like most women she did not entertain with regard to certain ugly facts of life the physical and moral disgust which upset the young fellow. There was nothing of the rebel in her. In still worse circ.u.mstances she would have been able to accept repugnant tasks without repugnance and quit them quite calm and natty, without a stain. Today she could not do that any more, for since she had come to know Pierre her love had caused her to be filled with the tastes and distastes of her friend; but that was not her fundamental nature. Calm and smiling by reason of her race, not pessimistic at all. Melancholy, and the grand detached airs of life were not her business. Life is as it is. Let us take it as it is! It might have been worse! The hazards of an existence which Luce had always known to be precarious, on the look-out for expedients--and particularly since the war--had taught her to be careless of the morrow. Add to this that every preoccupation concerning the beyond was a stranger to this free little French girl. Life was enough for her. Luce found life delightful, but it all hangs by a thread and it takes so little to make the thread break that really it is not worth the trouble to torment oneself about what may turn up tomorrow. Eyes of mine, drink in the daylight that bathes you as you pa.s.s! As to what may come after, O, my heart, abandon yourself in confidence to the stream!... And since anyhow we can not do otherwise!... And now that we love each other, isn't it just delicious?
Luce well knew that it could not be for long. But neither her life nor she herself, either, would be for long....
She did not resemble much that little fellow who loved her and whom she loved, tender, ardent and nervous, happy and miserable, who always enjoyed and suffered to excess, who gave himself, who flew into a rage, always with pa.s.sion, and who was dear to her just because he resembled her hardly at all. But both of them were in accord as to a mute resolve not to look into the future: the girl through the carelessness of the resigned rivulet that sings on its way--the other through that exalted negation which plunges into the gulf of the present and never desires to emerge again.
THE big brother had come back again on furlough for a few days. During the first evening at home he perceived that there was something changed in the family atmosphere. What? He could not tell; but he was vexed. The mind possesses antennae which perceive at a distance before consciousness is able to touch and consider the object. And the finest of all antennae are those of vanity. Philip's agitated themselves, searched about and were surprised; they missed something.... Did he not have his circle of affection which rendered unto him the customary homage--the attentive audience to which in miserly fas.h.i.+on he doled out his stories--his parents who brooded him under their touched admiration--the young brother?... Stop there! It was he, exactly he who was missing to the appeal.
He was present of course but he did not exert himself about his big brother; he did not beg for confidences as was his wont, which the other used to take pleasure in denying. Pitiful vanity! Philip, who on former occasions affected in regard of the ardent questions of his younger brother a sort of protective and bantering lackadaisicalness, was hurt that he did not put them this time. It was he who tried to provoke them: he became more loquacious and he looked at Pierre as if he wished him to feel that his talk was meant for him. At another time Pierre would have thrilled with joy and caught on the fly the handkerchief that was tossed him. But he quietly permitted Philip to pick it up for himself if he had any desire to do so. Philip, feeling piqued, tried irony. Instead of being troubled, Pierre answered with composure in the same detached tone. Philip wanted to discuss, became agitated, harangued. After a few minutes he found that he was haranguing all by himself. Pierre looked on at his efforts wearing an air of saying:
”Go ahead, my dear boy! If that is any pleasure to you! Continue! I'm listening....”
That insolent little smile!... Their roles were reversed.
Philip stopped talking, much mortified, and observed his young brother more attentively, who, however, did not occupy himself further with him.
How he had changed! The parents, who saw him every day, had not noticed anything; but the penetrating and moreover jealous eyes of Philip did not find any more the well known expression after several months of absence. Pierre had a happy, languid, thoughtless, torpid air, indifferent as to persons, inattentive to what is about them, floating in an atmosphere of voluptuous dream, like a young girl. And Philip felt that he counted for nothing in the little brother's thoughts.