She had tucked her up under an eiderdown on their four-post bed because They would have all the windows open and currents of air must, above all, be avoided by women. … Elle had smiled and said that it had once been her dream to read the works of Aeschylus beside the blue Mediterranean. They had kissed each other. …
The maid beside her was saying that orfn ’n’ orfn she’d ’eared ’er farver oo was a dealer wen a lot of ol’ ’ens, say, ’ad gone to three an’ nine, say “Make it two arf dollars!” They didn’ ’ave dollars in thet country but they did ’ave arf dollars. ’N’ Capt.’n Kidd th’ pirate: ’e ’ad dollars, ’n’ pieces of eight ’n’ moi-dors too!
A wasp annoyed Marie Léonie; it buzzed almost on her nose, retired, returned, made a wide circuit. There were already several wasps struggling in the glass of cider she had just drawn; there were others in circles round spots of cider on the slats of wood on which the barrels were arranged. They drew in their tails and then expanded, ecstatically. Yet only two nights before she and Valentine had gone with Gunning all over the orchard with a lantern, a trowel and a bottle of prussic acid, stopping up holes along the paths and in banks. She had liked the experience; the darkness, the ring of light from the lantern on the rough grass; the feeling that she was out, near Mark, and that yet Gunning and his lantern kept spiritual visitors away. … What she suffered between the desire to visit her man in the deep nights and the possibility of coming up against revenants. … Was it reasonable? … What women had to suffer for their men! Even if they were faithful. …
What the unfortunate Elle had not suffered. …
Even on what you might call her nuit de noces. … At the time it had seemed incomprehensible. Marie Léonie had had no details. It had merely seemed fantastic: possibly even tragic because Mark had taken it so hardly. Truly she believed he had become insane. At two in the morning, beside Mark’s bed. They had—the two brothers—exchanged words of considerable violence whilst the girl shivered. And was determined. That girl had been determined. She would not go back to her mother. At two in the morning. … Well, if you refuse to go back to your mother at two in the morning you kick indeed your slipper over the mill!
The details of that night came back to her, amongst wasps and beneath the conversation of the unseen woman in the shed where the water ran in the trough. She had set the bottles in the trough because it is a good thing to cool cider before the process of fermentation in the bottles begins. The bottles with their shining necks of green glass were an agreeable spectacle. The lady behind her back was talking of Oklahoma. … The cowboy with the large nose that she had seen on the film at the Piccadilly Cinema had come from Oklahoma. It was, no doubt, somewhere in America. She had been used to go to the Piccadilly Cinema on a Friday. You do not go to the theatre on a Friday if you are bien pensant, but you may regard the cinema as being to the theatre what a repas maigre is as against a meal with meat. … The lady speaking behind her came apparently from Oklahoma: she had eaten prairie chickens in her time. On a farm. Now, however, she was very rich. Or so she told the little maid. Her husband could buy half Lord Fittleworth’s estate and not miss the money. She said that if only people here would take example. …
On Armistice evening they had come thumping on her door. The bell had failed to wake her after all the noise in the street of that day. … She had sprung into the middle of the floor and flown to save Mark … from an air raid. She had forgotten that it was the Armistice. … But the knocking had gone on on the door.
Before it had stood monsieur the brother-in-law and that girl in a dark blue girl-guide’s sort of uniform. Both chalk-white and weary to death. As if they leaned against one another. … She had been for bidding them go away, but Mark had come out of the bedroom. In his nightshirt with his legs bare. And hairy! He had bidden them come in, roughly, and had got back into bed. … That had been the last time he had been on his legs! Now, he having been in bed so long, his legs were no longer hairy, but polished. Like thin glazed bones!
She had recalled his last gesture. He had positively used a gesture, like a man raving. … And, indeed, he was raving. At Christopher. And dripping with sweat. Twice she had wiped his face whilst they shouted at each other.
It had been difficult to understand what they said because they had spoken a sort of patois. Naturally they returned to the language they had spoken in their childhoods—when they were excited, these unexcitable people! It resembled the patois of the Bretons. Harsh. …
And, for herself, she had been all concerned for the girl. Naturally she had been concerned for the girl. One is a woman. … At first she had taken her for a little piece from the streets. … But even for a little piece from the streets … Then she had noticed that there had been no rouge; no imitation pearl necklace. …
Of course when she had gathered that Mark was pressing money on them she had felt different. Different in two ways. It could not be a little piece. And then her heart had contracted at the idea of money being given away. They might be ruined.
