A Life (18 page)

And the great house seemed to echo emptily, sunk in gloom, its front stained with long grey streaks by the rain.

At the end of January the snow came. Far away to the north the thick cloud could be seen arriving across the dark sea; and the white flakes began to fall. In the course of a single night the whole plain was buried, and the trees appeared next morning draped in what seemed like frozen spume.

Wearing high boots and looking particularly hirsute, Julien spent his time at the far end of the copse, hidden just behind the ditch separating it from the heath and on the look-out for migrating birds. From time to time a shot would shatter the frozen silence of the fields; and wheeling flocks of black crows would take off from the tall trees.

Occasionally, out of boredom, Jeanne came downstairs and stood on the front steps. Sounds of life could be heard in the far distance, echoing across the slumbering tranquillity of the bleak, ghostly expanse.

Soon all she could hear was the dull boom of the waves in the distance and the faint, steady whisper of the icy powder falling softly, ceaselessly, to earth.

And the level of the snow rose inexorably beneath the endless cascade of this thick, feather-light foam.

On one such pale morning, Jeanne was warming her feet at the bedroom fire while Rosalie, who seemed more changed with every day that passed, was slowly making the bed. Suddenly Jeanne heard a whimper of pain behind her. Without turning her head, she asked:

'What's wrong?'

The maid replied as usual: 'Nothing, my lady,' but her voice sounded exhausted, almost on the point of extinction.

Jeanne's mind was already on something else when she realized that she could no longer hear the girl moving about:

'Rosalie!' she called.

Nothing stirred. Then, thinking that she had quietly left the room, she called out 'Rosalie!' more loudly and was about to reach for the bell when a deep groan, close by, startled her, making her shiver in sudden apprehension.

The servant-girl, her face completely white and with a wild look in her eyes, was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wooden bedstead with her legs stretched out in front of her.

Jeanne rushed towards her:

'What is it? What is it?'

The girl said nothing, made no gesture of reply, but simply stared at her mistress with a crazed expression, gasping as though she were riven by some dreadful pain. Then suddenly she arched her entire body and slid down onto her back, biting back a cry of distress behind clenched teeth.

Then, beneath her dress, which was stretched tight across her parted thighs, something moved. And all at once there came a strange noise, like lapping, a strangled, choking sound. Then suddenly there was a long, cat-like mewling, a frail lament already charged with suffering, the first cry of pain of a child entering upon life.

Jeanne understood in a flash and rushed blindly to the staircase shouting:

'Julien! Julien!'

He answered from below:

'What is it?'

She had great difficulty in getting the words out:

'It's . . . it's Rosalie. She's . . .'

Julien dashed up the stairs, two at a time, and burst into the room, where he lifted the girl's dress in a trice and revealed a hideous little lump of crumpled, fretful flesh, a slimy, huddled thing writhing about between two bare legs.

He straightened up with an evil look on his face and began to hustle his distraught wife out of the room:

'This is none of your concern. Away. Fetch Ludivine and Père Simon for me.'

Trembling all over, Jeanne went down to the kitchen and then, not daring to return upstairs, proceeded into the drawing-room, where no fire had been lit since the departure of her parents; and waited there anxiously for news.

Soon she saw the pantry-boy running out of the house. Five minutes later he came back with the widow Dentu, the local midwife.

Presently there was a great commotion on the staircase, as though an injured person were being carried somewhere; and then Julien came to tell Jeanne that she could go back up to her room.

She was shaking as though she had just witnessed a fatal accident. She sat down once more in front of the fire in her room and asked:

'How is she?'

Preoccupied and tense, Julien was pacing up and down the room: he appeared to be seething with anger. He did not reply at first. Then, after a few moments, he stopped:

'What are you going to do with the girl?'

She did not understand and looked at her husband:

'What? How do you mean? I've no idea.'

And suddenly he shouted, as though he had lost his temper:

'But we can't keep a bastard in the house.'

Jeanne was thoroughly nonplussed for a moment. Then, after a long silence, she said:

'Well, in that case, dearest, perhaps it could be sent out to a wet-nurse?'

He did not let her finish:

'And who's going to pay? You, I suppose?'

Again she thought for a long while, trying to find a solution, till finally she said:

'But the father will take responsibility, for the child I mean; and if he marries Rosalie, then the problem is solved.'

Julien, furious, as though he had lost all patience, retorted:

'The father! . . . the father! . . . And do you know who he is, this father of yours? . . . No, you don't, do you? Well, do you? . . .'

Jeanne, upset, was roused:

'But he simply won't abandon the girl like this. He'd be a coward! We'll ask his name, we'll go and see him, and then he'll have to explain himself.'

Julien had calmed down and begun to walk about again:

'My dear, she refuses to give the man's name. And she's no more likely to tell you than she is me. . . . And then, what if he wants to have nothing to do with her? . . . We cannot keep an unmarried mother and her bastard under our roof, do you hear me?'

Jeanne refused to give in and repeated:

'Well, he's a miserable wretch then, whoever he is. But we're bound to find out one day who it is, and then he'll have us to reckon with.'

Julien, now red in the face, was becoming angry again:

'But what happens in the meantime?'

She could not think what was best, and so asked him:

'Well, what do
you
suggest then?'

At once he gave his opinion:

'Oh, as far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly simple. I'd give her some money and send her and her brat packing.'

But his young wife was indignant and would have none of it:

'No, never. That girl and I shared the same wet-nurse when we were babies, we grew up together. She has done wrong, I accept that, but that's not a reason for me to throw her out. And if necessary I'll bring the child up myself.'

At this Julien let fly:

'Oh, and some reputation we'll have then, won't we, us with our name to think about and our relations! Everyone will go round saying that we harbour vice, that we give shelter to sluts, and no respectable person will want to set foot here again. But really, what are you thinking of? You must be off your head.'

She had remained calm:

'I shall never allow Rosalie to be turned out. And if you don't wish to keep her, then my mother will take her back. Anyway, we're bound to discover sooner or later who the father of her child is.'

Thereupon he left the room in exasperation, slamming the door and shouting:

'Women and their daft ideas!'

That afternoon Jeanne went upstairs to visit the new mother. The maid, watched over by the widow Dentu, was lying quite still in bed, with her eyes open, while the nurse rocked the newborn child in her arms.

As soon as she saw her mistress, Rosalie began to sob, hiding her face under the sheets and shuddering with despair. Jeanne wanted to embrace her, but Rosalie would not let her, and continued to hide herself. Then the nurse intervened and uncovered her face; and she stopped resisting, still weeping, but more gently now.

A meagre fire was burning in the hearth; it was cold, and the child was crying. Jeanne did not dare mention the little thing in case she brought on a further outburst. She had taken her maid's hand, and kept repeating in a mechanical tone:

'Everything will be all right, everything will be all right.'

The poor girl was watching the nurse out of the corner of her eye, and gave a start every time the infant cried; and as each wave of unhappiness swept over her, temporarily choking her and erupting in a convulsive sob, the tears she was trying so hard to restrain gurgled in her throat.

Jeanne kissed her again and whispered softly in her ear:

'We'll take good care of it, my dear, you'll see.'

Then, as a new bout of crying began, she promptly made her escape.

Each day she returned, and each day Rosalie would burst into tears at the sight of her mistress.

The child was sent out to a wet-nurse nearby.

Meanwhile Julien scarcely spoke to his wife, as if he were still very angry with her over her refusal to dismiss the maid. One day he returned to the subject, but Jeanne took from her pocket a letter in which the Baroness asked for the girl to be sent to her immediately if they decided not to keep her on at Les Peuples. Furious, Julien exclaimed:

'Your mother's as mad as you are.'

But he stopped insisting.

A fortnight later the young mother was able to get up and resume her duties.

Then Jeanne sat her down one morning, took hold of her hands, and said with a penetrating look:

'Now then, my dear, tell me the whole story.'

Rosalie began to tremble, and stammered:

'What, Madame?'

'Whose child is it?'

Then the maid was once more overcome with terrible misery, and tried desperately to free her hands so that she could cover her face.

But Jeanne embraced her against her will and tried to console her:

'Yes, of course, it's all very unfortunate, my dear. You had a moment's weakness, but it happens to lots of people. If the father marries you, that will be that, and we'll be able to take him into service with you.'

Rosalie continued to groan as if she were being tortured, and from time to time she would try to tug herself free and run off.

Jeanne went on:

'I realize that you're ashamed; but you can see that I'm not angry, that I'm speaking quite calmly to you. If I ask you to tell me the father's name, it's for your own good, because I can see from your unhappiness that he's abandoned you and I want to prevent that. Julien will go and find him, you see, and we'll force  him to marry you. And since we'll have both of you here, we shall soon see to it that he makes you happy as well.'

This time Rosalie gave such a sudden tug that she managed to withdraw her hands from her mistress's and ran off like a wild thing.

That evening, at dinner, Jeanne said to Julien:

'I tried to get Rosalie to tell me the name of her seducer, but I had no success. Why don't you have a try, so that we can force the miserable wretch to marry her?'

But immediately Julien grew angry:

'Look here, I don't want to listen to another word about this business. You were the one who wanted to keep her, so keep her, but stop pestering
me
about it.'

He seemed to have become even more irritable since the birth; and he had developed this habit of always shouting at his wife when he spoke to her, as though he were in a permanent temper, while she, on the contrary, lowered her voice and tried to be gentle and conciliatory in order to avoid argument. And often she cried, at night, in her bed.

Despite his constant irritation her husband had resumed his amorous ways, having neglected them since their return from honeymoon, and it was rare for him to go three nights in succession without crossing the conjugal threshold.

Rosalie was soon entirely better and became less miserable, although she remained in a state of nervous alarm, as though haunted by some unidentified menace.

And twice more she escaped when Jeanne tried to question her again.

Julien, too, seemed suddenly more agreeable; and his young wife once again began to entertain some vague hopes for the future, and to find amusement in things, although she occasionally felt unwell and experienced peculiar, unpleasant sensations which she mentioned to no one. The thaw had still not set in; and, for nearly five weeks now, stretching over the uniform blanket of hard, gleaming snow, the sky had remained as clear as blue crystal by day, and by night strewn with stars which looked like hoar-frost, so sharp and bitter chill was the air in the vast reaches of space.

The farms, each one isolated in its square of yard behind screens of tall, rime-powdered trees, seemed to be lying asleep in their white nightshirts. Neither man nor beast ventured forth; only the cottage chimneys provided signs of hidden life, as slender threads of smoke rose straight up into the ice-cold atmosphere.

The heath, the hedgerows, and the boundaries of elm all seemed dead, as though they had been killed off by the cold. From time to time a cracking sound could be heard coming from the trees as if their wooden limbs had snapped beneath the bark; and occasionally a large branch would come away and fall to the ground. The relentless frost was turning the sap rock-hard and splintering the grain.

Jeanne waited anxiously for the mild winds to return, attributing to the terrible rigours of the weather all the ill-defined ailments that were now afflicting her.

Sometimes she could not eat, and felt nauseated by the sight of food; sometimes her pulse raced wildly; sometimes her meagre repasts made her feel sick with indigestion; and her nerves, always tense and on edge, made her life one of constant and intolerable restlessness.

One evening the thermometer fell yet further, and Julien, who was shivering with cold as they left the dinner-table (for the dining-room was never properly heated on account of his constant endeavour to save on firewood), rubbed his hands together and whispered:

'It'll be good to share a bed tonight. . . . What do you say, my sweet?'

He laughed in his good-natured way of old, and Jeanne threw her arms round his neck; but she did in fact feel so out of sorts that evening, beset with such pains and so strangely on edge, that she asked him softly, kissing him on the lips as she did so, to allow her to sleep alone. She told him briefly what ailed her: