The works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 5

After her return from Paris, Jeanne would not go out or take any interest in anything. She rose at the same hour every morning, looked out of the window to see what sort of day it was, then went downstairs and sat before the fire in the dining-room. She stayed there the whole day, sitting perfectly still with her eyes fixed on the flames while she thought of all the sorrows she had passed through. The little room grew darker and darker, but she never moved, except to put more wood on the fire, and when Rosalie brought in the lamp she cried:

"Come, Madame Jeanne, you must stir about a bit, or you won't be able to eat any dinner again this evening."

Often she was worried by thoughts which she could not dismiss from her mind, and she allowed herself to be tormented by the veriest trifles, for the most insignificant matters appeared of the greatest importance to her diseased mind. She lived in the memories of the past, and she would think for hours together of her girlhood and her wedding tour in Corsica. The wild scenery that she had long forgotten suddenly appeared before her in the fire, and she could recall every detail, every event, every face connected with the island. She could always see the features of Jean Ravoli, the guide, and sometimes she fancied she could even hear his voice.

At other times she thought of the peaceful years of Paul's childhood – of how he used to make her tend the salad plants, and of how she and Aunt Lison used to kneel on the ground, each trying to outdo the other in giving pleasure to the boy, and in rearing the greater number of plants.

Her lips would form the words, "Poulet, my little Poulet," as if she were talking to him, and she would cease to muse, and try for hours to write in the air the letters which formed her son's name, with her outstretched finger. Slowly she traced them before the fire, fancying she could see them, and, thinking she had made a mistake, she began the word over and over again, forcing herself to write the whole name though her arm trembled with fatigue. At last she would become so nervous that she mixed up the letters, and formed other words, and had to give it up.

She had all the manias and fancies which beset those who lead a solitary life, and it irritated her to the last degree to see the slightest change in the arrangement of the furniture. Rosalie often made her go out with her along the road, but after twenty minutes or so Jeanne would say: "I cannot walk any further, Rosalie," and would sit down by the roadside. Soon movement of any kind became distasteful to her, and she stayed in bed as late as she could. Ever since a child she had always been in the habit of jumping out of bed as soon as she had drunk her cafe au lait. She was particularly fond of her morning coffee, and she would have missed it more than anything. She always waited for Rosalie to bring it with an impatience that had a touch of sensuality in it, and as soon as the cup was placed on the bedside table she sat up, and emptied it, somewhat greedily. Then she at once drew back the bedclothes and began to dress. But gradually she fell into the habit of dreaming for a few moments after she had placed the empty cup back in the saucer, and from that she soon began to lie down again, and at last she stayed in bed every day until Rosalie came back in a temper and dressed her almost by force.

She had no longer the slightest will of her own. Whenever her servant asked her advice, or put any question to her, or wanted to know her opinion, she always answered: "Do as you like, Rosalie." So firmly did she believe herself pursued by a persistent ill luck that she became as great a fatalist as an Oriental, and she was so accustomed to seeing her dreams unfulfilled, and her hopes disappointed, that she did not dare undertake anything fresh, and hesitated for days before she commenced the simplest task, so persuaded was she that whatever she touched would be sure to go wrong.

"I don't think anyone could have had more misfortune than I have had all my life," she was always saying.

"How would it be if you had to work for your bread, and if you were obliged to get up every morning at six o'clock to go and do a hard day's work?" Rosalie would exclaim. "That's what a great many people have to do, and then when they get too old to work, they die of want."

"But my son has forsaken me, and I am all alone," Jeanne would reply.

That enraged Rosalie.

"And what if he has? How about those whose children enlist, or settle in America?" (America, in her eyes, was a shadowy country whither people went to make their fortune, and whence they never returned). "Children always leave their parents sooner or later; old and young people aren't meant to stay together. And then, what if he were dead?" she would finish up with savagely, and her mistress could say nothing after that.

Jeanne got a little stronger when the first warm days of spring came, but she only took advantage of her better health to bury herself still deeper in her gloomy thoughts.

She went up to the garret one morning to look for something, and, while she was there, happened to open a box full of old almanacs. It seemed as if she had found the past years themselves, and she was filled with emotion as she looked at the pile of cards. They were of all sizes, big and little, and she took them every one down to the dining-room and began to lay them out on the table in the right order of years. Suddenly she picked up the very first one – the one she had taken with her from the convent to Les Peuples. For a long time she gazed at it with its dates which she had crossed out the day she had left Rouen, and she began to shed slow, bitter tears – the weak, pitiful tears of an aged woman – as she looked at these cards spread out before her on the table, and which represented all her wretched life.

Then the thought struck her that by means of these almanacs she could recall all that she had ever done, and giving way to the idea, she at once devoted herself to the task of retracing the past. She pinned all the cards, which had grown yellow with age, up on the tapestry, and then passed hours before one or other of them, thinking, "What did I do in that month?"

She had put a mark beside all the important dates in her life, and sometimes, by means of linking together and adding one to the other, all the little circumstances which had preceded and followed a great event, she succeeded in remembering a whole month. By dint of concentrated attention, and efforts of will and of memory, she retraced nearly the whole of her first two years at Les Peuples, recalling without much difficulty this far-away period of her life, for it seemed to stand out in relief. But the following years were shrouded in a sort of mist and seemed to run one into the other, and sometimes she pored over an almanac for hours without being able to remember whether it was even in that year that such and such a thing had happened. She would go slowly round the dining-room looking at these images of past years, which, to her, were as pictures of an ascent to Calvary, until one of them arrested her attention and then she would sit gazing at it all the rest of the day, absorbed in her recollections.

Soon the sap began to rise in the trees; the seeds were springing up, the leaves were budding and the air was filled with the faint, sweet smell of the apple blossoms which made the orchards a glowing mass of pink. As summer approached Jeanne became very restless. She could not keep still; she went in and out twenty times a day, and, as she rambled along past the farms, she worked herself into a perfect state of fever.

A daisy half hidden in the grass, a sunbeam falling through the leaves, or the reflection of the sky in a splash of water in a rut was enough to agitate and affect her, for their sight brought back a kind of echo of the emotions she had felt when, as a young girl, she had wandered dreamily through the fields; and though now there was nothing to which she could look forward, the soft yet exhilarating air sent the same thrill through her as when all her life had lain before her. But this pleasure was not unalloyed with pain, and it seemed as if the universal joy of the awakening world could now only impart a delight which was half sorrow to her grief-crushed soul and withered heart. Everything around her seemed to have changed. Surely the sun was hardly so warm as in her youth, the sky so deep a blue, the grass so fresh a green, and the flowers, paler and less sweet, could no longer arouse within her the exquisite ecstasies of delight as of old. Still she could enjoy the beauty around her, so much that sometimes she found herself dreaming and hoping again; for, however cruel Fate may be, is it possible to give way to utter despair when the sun shines and the sky is blue?

She went for long walks, urged on and on by her inward excitement, and sometimes she would suddenly stop and sit down by the roadside to think of her troubles. Why had she not been loved like other women? Why had even the simple pleasure of an uneventful existence been refused her?

Sometimes, again forgetting for a moment that she was old, that there was no longer any pleasure in store for her, and that, with the exception of a few more lonely years, her life was over and done, she would build all sorts of castles in the air and make plans for such a happy future, just as she had done when she was sixteen. Then suddenly remembering the bitter reality she would get up again, feeling as if a heavy load had fallen upon her, and return home, murmuring:

"Oh, you old fool! You old fool!"

Now Rosalie was always saying to her:

"Do keep still, madame. What on earth makes you want to run about so?"

"I can't help it," Jeanne would reply sadly. "I am like Massacre was before he died."

One morning Rosalie went into her mistress's room earlier than usual.

"Make haste and drink up your coffee," she said as she placed the cup on the table. "Denis is waiting to take us to Les Peuples. I have to go over there on business."

Jeanne was so excited that she thought she would have fainted, and, as she dressed herself with trembling fingers, she could hardly believe she was going to see her dear home once more.

Overhead was a bright, blue sky, and, as they went along, Denis's pony would every now and then break into a gallop. When they reached Etouvent, Jeanne could hardly breathe, her heart beat so quickly, and when she saw the brick pillars beside the château gate, she exclaimed, "Oh," two or three times in a low voice, as if she were in the presence of something which stirred her very soul, and she could not help herself.

They put up the horse at the Couillards' farm, and, when Rosalie and her son went to attend to their business, the farmer asked Jeanne if she would like to go over the château, as the owner was away, and gave her the key.

She went off alone, and when she found herself opposite the old manor she stood still to look at it. The outside had not been touched since she had left. All the shutters were closed, and the sunbeams were dancing on the gray walls of the big, weather-beaten building. A little piece of wood fell on her dress, she looked up and saw that it had fallen from the plane tree, and she went up to the big tree and stroked its pale, smooth bark as if it had been alive. Her foot touched a piece of rotten wood lying in the grass; it was the last fragment of the seat on which she had so often sat with her loved ones – the seat which had been put up the very day of Julien's first visit to the château.

Then she went to the hall-door. She had some difficulty in opening it as the key was rusty and would not turn, but at last the lock gave way, and the door itself only required a slight push before it swung back. The first thing Jeanne did was to run up to her own room. It had been hung with a light paper and she hardly knew it again, but when she opened one of the windows and looked out, she was moved almost to tears as she saw again the scene she loved so well – the thicket, the elms, the common, and the sea covered with brown sails which, at this distance, looked as if they were motionless.

Then she went all over the big, empty house. She stopped to look at a little hole in the plaster which the baron had made with his cane, for he used to make a few thrusts at the wall whenever he passed this spot, in memory of the fencing bouts he had had in his youth. In her mother's bedroom she found a small gold-headed pin stuck in the wall behind the door, in a dark corner near the bed. She had stuck it there a long while ago (she remembered it now), and had looked everywhere for it since, but it had never been found; and she kissed it and took it with her as a priceless relic.

She went into every room, recognizing the almost invisible spots and marks on the hangings which had not been changed and again noting the odd forms and faces which the imagination so often traces in the designs of the furniture coverings, the carvings of mantelpieces and the shadows on soiled ceilings. She walked through the vast, silent château as noiselessly as if she were in a cemetery; all her life was interred there.

She went down to the drawing-room. The closed shutters made it very dark, and it was a few moments before she could distinguish anything; then, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she gradually made out the tapestry with the big, white birds on it. Two armchairs stood before the fireplace, looking as if they had just been vacated, and the very smell of the room – a smell that had always been peculiar to it, as each human being has his, a smell which could be perceived at once, and yet was vague like all the faint perfumes of old rooms – brought the memories crowding to Jeanne's mind.

Her breath came quickly as she stood with her eyes fixed on the two chairs, inhaling this perfume of the past; and, all at once, in a sudden hallucination occasioned by her thoughts, she fancied she saw – she did see – her father and mother with their feet on the fender as she had so often seen them before. She drew back in terror, stumbling against the door-frame, and clung to it for support, still keeping her eyes fixed on the armchairs. The vision disappeared and for some minutes she stood horror-stricken; then she slowly regained possession of herself and turned to fly, afraid that she was going mad. Her eyes fell on the wainscoting against which she was leaning and she saw Poulet's ladder. There were all the faint marks traced on the wall at unequal intervals and the figures which had been cut with a penknife to indicate the month, and the child's age and growth. In some places there was the baron's big writing, in others her own, in others again Aunt Lison's, which was a little shaky. She could see the boy standing there now, with his fair hair, and his little forehead pressed against the wall to have his height measured, while the baron exclaimed: "Jeanne, he has grown half an inch in six weeks," and she began to kiss the wainscoting in a frenzy of love for the very wood.

Then she heard Rosalie's voice outside, calling: "Madame Jeanne! Madame Jeanne! lunch is waiting," and she went out with her head in a whirl. She felt unable to understand anything that was said to her. She ate what was placed before her, listened to what was being said without realizing the sense of the words, answered the farmers' wives when they inquired after her health, passively received their kisses and kissed the cheeks which were offered to her, and then got into the chaise again.

When she could no longer see the high roof of the château through the trees, something within her seemed to break, and she felt that she had just said good-bye to her old home for ever.

They went straight back to Batteville, and as she was going indoors Jeanne saw something white under the door; it was a letter which the postman had slipped there during their absence. She at once recognized Paul's handwriting and tore open the envelope in an agony of anxiety. He wrote:

"My Dear Mother: I have not written before because I did not want to bring you to Paris on a fruitless errand, for I have always been meaning to come and see you myself. At the present moment I am in great trouble and difficulty. My wife gave birth to a little girl three days ago, and now she is dying and I have not a penny. I do not know what to do with the child; the doorkeeper is trying to nourish it with a feeding-bottle as best she can, but I fear I shall lose it. Could not you take it? I cannot send it to a wet nurse as I have not any money, and I do not know which way to turn. Pray answer by return post.

    "Your loving son,
    "Paul."

Jeanne dropped on a chair with hardly enough strength left to call Rosalie. The maid came and they read the letter over again together, and then sat looking at each other in silence.

"I'll go and fetch the child myself, madame," said Rosalie at last. "We can't leave it to die."

"Very well, my girl, go," answered Jeanne.

"Put on your hat, madame," said the maid, after a pause, "and we will go and see the lawyer at Goderville. If that woman is going to die, M. Paul must marry her for the sake of the child."

Jeanne put on her hat without a word. Her heart was overflowing with joy, but she would not have allowed anyone to see it for the world, for it was one of those detestable joys in which people can revel in their hearts, but of which they are all the same ashamed; her son's mistress was going to die.

The lawyer gave Rosalie detailed instructions which the servant made him repeat two or three times; then, when she was sure she knew exactly what to do, she said:

"Don't you fear; I'll see it's all right now." And she started for Paris that very night.

Jeanne passed two days in such an agony of mind that she could fix her thoughts on nothing. The third morning she received a line from Rosalie merely saying she was coming back by that evening's train; nothing more; and in the afternoon, about three o'clock, Jeanne sent round to a neighbor to ask him if he would drive her to the Beuzeville railway station to meet her servant.

She stood on the platform looking down the rails (which seemed to get closer together right away as far off as she could see), and turning every now and then to look at the clock. Ten minutes more – five minutes – two – and at last the train was due, though as yet she could see no signs of it. Then, all at once, she saw a cloud of white smoke, and underneath it a black speck which got rapidly larger and larger. The big engine came into the station, snorting and slackening its speed, and Jeanne looked eagerly into every window as the carriages went past her.