Her voice trembled. I took her hand.
“Olivier will repay you, I vouch for it.”
She made an effort to recover herself.
“Yes, I am mad to speak so; as if I hadn’t three sons. When I think of one, I forget the others. … You’ll think me very unreasonable, but there are really moments when reason isn’t enough.”
“And yet what I admire most about you is your reasonableness,” said I baldly, in the hopes of calming her. “The other day, you talked about Oscar so wisely. …”
Pauline drew herself up abruptly. She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s always when a woman appears most resigned that she seems the most reasonable,” she cried, almost vindictively.
This reflection irritated me, by reason of its very justice. In order not to show it, I asked:
“Anything new about the letters?”
“New? New? … What on earth that’s new can happen between Oscar and me?”
“He was expecting an explanation.”
“So was I. I was expecting an explanation. All one’s life long one expects explanations.”
“Well, but,” I continued, rather annoyed, “Oscar felt that he was in a false situation.”
“But, my dear friend, you know well enough that nothing lasts more eternally than a false situation. It’s the business of you novelists to try to solve them. In real life nothing is solved; everything continues. We remain in our uncertainty; and we shall remain to the very end without knowing what to make of things. In the meantime life goes on and on, the same as ever. And one gets resigned to that too; as one does to everything else … as one does to everything. Well, well, goodbye.”
I was painfully affected by a new note in the sound of her voice, which I had never heard before; a kind of aggressiveness, which forced me to think (not at the actual moment, perhaps, but when I recalled our conversation) that Pauline accepted my relations with Olivier much less easily than she said; less easily than all the rest. I am willing to believe that she does not exactly reprobate them, that from some points of view she is glad of them, as she lets me understand; but, perhaps without owning it to herself, she is none the less jealous of them.
This is the only explanation I can discover for her sudden outburst of revolt, so soon after, and on a subject which, on the whole, she had much less at heart. It was as though by granting me at first what cost her more, she had exhausted her whole stock of benignity and suddenly found herself with none left. Hence her intemperate, her almost extravagant language, which must have astonished her herself, when she came to recall it, and in which her jealousy unconsciously betrayed itself.
In reality, I ask myself, what can be the state of mind of a woman who is not resigned? An “honest woman,” I mean. … As if what is called “honesty” in woman did not always imply resignation!
This evening Olivier is perceptibly better. But returning life brings anxiety along with it. I reassure him by every device in my power.
“His duel?”—Dhurmer has run away into the country. One really can’t run after him.
“The review?”—Bercail is in charge of it.
“The things he had left at Passavant’s?”—This is the thorniest point. I had to admit that George had been unable to get possession of them; but I have promised to go and fetch them myself tomorrow. He is afraid, from what I can gather, that Passavant may keep them as a hostage; inadmissable for a single moment!
Yesterday, I was sitting up late in the studio, after having written this, when I heard Olivier call me. In a moment I was by his side.
“I should have come myself, only I was too weak,” he said. “I tried to get up, but when I stand, my head turns round and I was afraid of falling. No, no, I’m not feeling worse; on the contrary. But I had to speak to you.
“You must promise me something. … Never to try and find out why I wanted to kill myself the other night. I don’t think I know myself. I can’t remember. Even if I tried to tell you, upon my honour, I shouldn’t be able to. … But you mustn’t think that it’s because of anything mysterious in my life, anything you don’t know about.” Then, in a whisper: “And don’t imagine either that it was because I was ashamed. …”
Although we were in the dark, he hid his face in my shoulder.
“Or if I am ashamed, it is of the dinner the other evening; of being drunk, of losing my temper, of crying; and of this summer … and of having waited for you so badly.”
Then he protested that none of all that was part of him any more; that it was all that that he had wanted to kill—that he had killed—that he had wiped out of his life.
I felt, in his very agitation, how weak he still was, and rocked him in my arms, like a child, without saying anything. He was in need of rest; his silence made me hope he was asleep; but at last I heard him murmur:
“When I am with you, I am too happy to sleep.”
He did not let me leave him till morning.
XII
Edouard and Then Strouvilhou Visit Passavant
Bernard arrived early that morning. Olivier was still asleep. As on the preceding days, Bernard settled himself down at his friend’s bedside with a book, which allowed Edouard to go off guard, in order to call on the Comte de Passavant, as he had promised. At such an early hour he was sure to be in.
The sun was shining; a keen air was scouring the trees of their last leaves; everything seemed limpid,
