“Aren’t you going to get up?”
“Yes, presently,” answered Yvette. “I’ve thought a great deal, mother,” she continued slowly and seriously, “and this … this is my decision. The past is the past; let us say no more about it. But the future will be different … or else … or else I know what I shall have to do. And now let us have done with this subject.”
The Marquise, who had thought that the explanation was all over, felt somewhat irritated. She had had more than enough. This great goose of a girl ought to have understood long ago. But she made no answer, only repeating:
“Are you going to get up?”
“Yes, I’m ready now.”
The mother acted as maid to her daughter, bringing her her stockings, her corset, and her petticoats. Then she kissed her.
“Shall we go for a walk before dinner?”
“Yes, mamma.”
And they walked along the bank of the river, talking almost entirely of the most trivial affairs.
IV
Next morning Yvette went off alone to sit in the place where Servigny had read over the history of the ants.
“I will not leave it,” she said to herself, “until I have come to a decision.”
The river ran at her feet, the swift water of the main stream; it was full of eddies and great bubbles which swirled silently past her.
She had already envisaged every aspect of the situation and every means of escape from it. What was she to do if her mother failed to hold scrupulously to the condition she had laid down, if she did not give up her life, her friends, everything, to take refuge with her in some distant region?
She might go alone … away. But whither? How? What could she live on? By working? At what? Whom should she ask for work? And the melancholy and humble life of the working girl, of the daughters of the common folk, seemed to be a little shameful, and unworthy of her. She thought of becoming a governess, like the young ladies in novels, and of being loved and married by the son of the house. But for that role she should have been of noble descent, so that when an irate parent reproached her for stealing his son’s heart, she could have answered proudly:
“My name is Yvette Obardi.”
She could not. And besides, it was a rather commonplace, threadbare method.
A convent was scarcely any better. Besides, she felt no call towards a religious life, having nothing but an intermittent and fleeting piety. No one—since she was the thing she was—could save her by marrying her, she could not take help from a man, there was no possible way out and no certain resource at all.
She wanted something violent, something really great, really brave, something that would be held up for all to see: and she decided to die.
She came to this resolution quite suddenly, quite calmly, as though it were a question of a journey, without reflecting, without seeing what death means, without realising that it is an end without a new beginning, a departure without a return, an eternal farewell to earth, to life.
She was attracted immediately by this desperate decision, with all the impulsiveness of a young and ardent spirit. And she pondered over the means she should employ. They all appeared to be painful and dangerous to carry out, and to demand, too, a violence which was repulsive to her.
She soon gave up the idea of dagger or pistol, which might only wound, maim, or disfigure her, and which required a steady and practised hand—rejected hanging as vulgar, a pauper’s sort of suicide, ridiculous and ugly—and drowning because she could swim. Poison was all that remained, but which poison? Almost all would hurt her or make her sick. She did not want to suffer, or to be sick. Then she thought of chloroform, having read in a newspaper of a young woman who suffocated herself by this means.
At once she felt something like pleasure in her resolve, a secret self-praise, a prick of vainglory. They should see the manner of woman she was!
She returned to Bougival and went to the chemist’s, where she asked for a little chloroform for an aching tooth. The man, who knew her, gave her a very small phial of the drug. Then she walked over to Croissy, where she procured another little phial of poison. She got a third at Chaton, and a fourth at Rueil, and returned home late for lunch. As she was very hungry after her walk, she ate a hearty meal, with the sharp enjoyment of a hungry athlete.
Her mother, glad to see her excellent appetite, felt now quite confident, and said to her as they rose from the table:
“All our friends are coming to spend Sunday here. I’ve invited the prince, the chevalier, and Monsieur de Belvigne.”
Yvette turned slightly pale, but made no answer. She left the house almost at once, went to the railway station, and took a ticket to Paris.
Throughout the afternoon she went from chemist to chemist, buying a few drops of chloroform from each.
She returned in the evening, her pockets full of little bottles. Next day she continued her campaign, and happening to go into a druggist’s, she was able to buy half a pint all at once. She did not go out on Saturday—it was stuffy and overcast; she spent the whole of it on the veranda, lying in a long cane chair. She thought about nothing, filled with a placid resolution.
The next day, wishing to look her best, she put on a blue frock which became her marvellous well. And as she viewed herself in the mirror she thought suddenly: “Tomorrow I shall be dead.” A strange shiver ran through her body. “Dead! I shall not speak, I shall not think, no one will see me any more. And I shall never see all this again.” She scrutinised her face carefully, as though she had never seen it before, examining, above
