This same evening Marguerite waited for Bergeot to come, as she had waited the past four nights, expecting a message that he was going to stay at the Prefecture. Even she hesitated to go back there at nine or ten o’clock to remonstrate. She would scold on the telephone, but very often his secretary brought a letter and explained—the real object of his visit—that the Prefect had been forced to ask the exchange not to put through any calls before eight the next morning. She had lost the impudence to argue her way through this barrier.
She had lost, she was beginning to realise, much of her self-confidence. It seemed that an impulse to change your life destroyed your energy without placing any new weapons in your hand. I’m growing old, she said to herself, not better, but older. Was it age that kept her from visiting her friend Léonie, or an instinct warning her that she would not be able to deliver herself from any temptation she met there? Age or a shapeless fear that pushed her to pray now and then, shamefaced, behind a locked door? She sat in her room thinking about a future when she and Émile would be secure, with no need to oblige anyone. Her thoughts were as vague as the Loire, ripples starting from a sandy island to die in mid-stream without touching either bank. As she had longed for excitement, money, power, she longed for goodness—but what was behind her longing? Nothing. Not a fever of flesh and spirit, not the hunger of her fingers clinging painfully to ledge after ledge of her climb.
She avoided thinking about her daughter. It was easy, seeing her every day, to feel a thin security. It blew away the instant she tried to touch Catherine’s mind, which eluded her as easily as her heart. The girl, all smiles and amiability for her mother, was as distant as an eagle. It would be as much use trying to tame her. Better not think about her. Better avoid rousing this new anguish she felt when she remembered the tears a child had wept because she was being sent away, and was so unlikely to weep now that the mother reproached herself as if for a great crime that her daughter had learned to be self-possessed. She suffered if she let herself think: I neglected her. Better think about a child she had never neglected, because he was not born yet. . . .
Bergeot came in. He was tired and smiling. He told her, as if it were the most remarkable of his news, a miracle, that it was raining, and then that the Germans had crossed the Marne at three places. Evidently you could not expect two miracles in the same day.
“I know,” Marguerite said. “Well?”
He sat down and leaned his head on her shoulder. “How cool you feel. I’m so thankful to be with you, my love.”
“What have you been doing?”
“What do you think? Working.” With his familiar nervous gaiety, trying to startle her, he said he was preparing to arrest Thiviers, Labenne, “even Ernest Huet if he pushes his rat’s nose in here. He’s in Tours now, pestering Ministers to let him spoil something, if it’s only a piece of official paper.”
“Are you mad?”
“Not in the least. Paris is going to be defended. That means Orléans, Dijon, Le Mans, will be defended. And Seuilly. I think you and Catherine had better move tomorrow, to the Hotel Buran. An isolated house isn’t safe. And I can see you more easily there.”
Marguerite did not answer at once. The shock had reawakened all her energies. It was her future happiness, her future honesty, that were at stake. To save them, she would pretend to anything now, tell without a qualm as many lies as were needed. Or her infant qualms were inaudible, they had been smothered by her coaxing hands and voice, which were playing parts they knew too well to need prompting. So with her terrible will, which fastened itself ruthlessly on what she wanted.
“Have you seen Piriac?” she asked mildly.
“Yes. Yesterday morning.”
“What did he tell you? Is the Army falling back here? Has he had orders——?” She broke off, not wanting to tell him she had spoken to Thiviers. “Are you sure that Piriac knows what he’s talking about? He’s senile, you know. Would they have left him in charge here if they had had any intention of defending the Loire?”
“Why not? He wouldn’t be in charge of the defence, he would be subordinate to the divisional general. No, no, the point is that he encouraged me to go on. And he’s not gloomy, he doesn’t think we’re going to be defeated.”
He is putting his own ideas into Piriac’s mouth, she thought. She had caught the over-emphasis in his voice, and knew he was boasting. She smiled. It was an effort. For the first time, her body was protesting a little against going through its tricks.
“You don’t usually rely on General Piriac.”
“I rely on myself,” Bergeot retorted. “I knew there were no Ernest Huets among our real leaders. They understand that the Germans mean to finish us this time. Even if it ruins us, we’re forced to fight.”
“Of course it will ruin us.”
Bergeot shrugged his shoulders. “I would rather be dead than take orders from a German lieutenant. They do so enjoy giving them.”
“And you’d rather I were dead——”
“Hush,” he said. “Decent people don’t say these things.”
“I’m not decent. I love you and I want us to live.”
He put his arms round her, and she felt the weight of his body becoming part of hers, as in sleep. She tried to think coolly. Surely something she could say would move him from his maddening self-confidence? Her thoughts were terribly disordered; an old actress, deserted by her cunning, would feel the same weakness and despair.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Bergeot said, “you’re not a coward. Besides, it’s not in my hands, I’m an official, a Government servant.”
“You don’t know whether peace terms are being discussed. They must be—or you would have had special orders.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference. If—I don’t believe it—but if we’re going to make peace, I shall have to make other plans . . . to carry on here. . . .”
“By then you will have been ruined. Thiviers and Labenne will have ruined you.”
He pushed her gently away from him, to be able to see her. “What are you talking about, Marguerite?”
She felt stupid with fear. Something she could not control was happening to her, her ears sang, she imagined that she was being drawn into a black whirlpool. It was not unpleasant—a little alarming. It was the first time in her life that she had fainted, and it lasted less than a minute. When she recovered she was lying uncomfortably on the floor; Émile, who had lost his head completely, was gripping her by her shoulders. The circle of light round her widened slowly to include what they had been talking about before she fainted. Smiling, and closing her eyes to enjoy another minute of freedom and irresponsibility, she said,
“You are killing me.”