Marguerite had taken the box of letters and papers to her room. Now that she could think calmly, they made her uneasy. Why had Émile sent them? She turned them out on the floor and looked through them hurriedly. There were bills, letters from Léonie, from other people. She took one out of its envelope. It was a letter from Sadinsky, received only yesterday. He told her that he was leaving Seuilly for Bordeaux, thanked her for the help she had given him, and hoped he would see her again “in a better place.” She had laughed at his choice of words. Now she tore the letter across impatiently, and bundled the rest back into the box. She pushed it out of sight in a cupboard. . . . Has Émile been reading them? . . . She felt alarmed, and refused to think about it.
She heard Lucien’s motor-cycle at the other side of the house. That nuisance! she thought wearily. Five minutes later—she had not heard the car—Emile came into the room. She saw that he was profoundly troubled. Her heart sank. . . . How much does he know? . . . Before she knew which of her acts was going to accuse her she felt guilty of all of them; she held herself quiet, ready to repulse the attack from whichever quarter it came.
Bergeot came across to her and kissed her, putting his arms round her as though it were he who had to defend her. Against whom . . .? Her instinct warned her to seem subdued and childlike. She waited, making herself small in his arms, for him to speak and give her her cue. Bergeot released her gently and sat down. After a minute she said in a timid voice,
“Sugny brought my letters.”
He did not turn his head to look at her. “I’d rather you didn’t come to the Prefecture just now,” he said gravely.
A month ago—less than that—she would have flown out against this in a rage and scolded him shrewishly until he agreed that she was right, and he was a fool and she must forgive him. Now she hesitated. The humiliation was too severe. . . . It was not that, it was that she no longer had the strength of her savage nature. Even a little discipline had weakened it. Something—what?—when?—had broken in her. When the desire to live quietly with Émile and have his child seized her? No: not even that was the beginning.
“What was the last letter you wrote from the Prefecture?” Émile asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t remember. Perhaps to Léonie.”
“That bitch of a woman has done you nothing but harm.”
She did not answer. Since he had no idea what her life was like before she married, he did not know how much of it rested on Léonie’s unfailing loyalty. She was thankful to let him think what he liked about her friend.
“Have you seen Bonamy today?” she asked meekly.
“No. Why do you ask?”
Hardening herself, she said, “He always gives you such bad advice, you’re more reckless than ever after he has been talking to you.”
“Reckless?”
“Oh, my love’” she said in a coaxing voice, kneeling beside him and putting her head in his hands, “do let us go away. We still have time. We have enough money between us to live carefully. And when I have a child——”
Émile jerked her head back and looked directly at her for the first time. “Are you going to have a child?”
“I think so.”
“And you really want me to resign, and go away with you?”
She gave a cry of joy. “It’s the only thing I want.”
She bore his look, forcing herself to seem calm. All the energy of her will was concentrated on one point. She felt his mind wavering, caught on hers. He is going to give in, she said to herself. She hid her triumph and joy. Bergeot turned away suddenly.
“You wouldn’t be happy living a dull life without money,” he said. “I know that now.”
Her disappointment and the shock of her failure were too much. She closed her eyes, and felt herself losing control. The abyss that opened in her mind laid it bare to its depths; words sprang from this deep source before she could stop them.
“Very well, if we must stay here, at least be sensible,” she cried, “and take care if we’re defeated to be on the strongest side. The same side as Thiviers and other clever well-informed people. Even if it’s the side of the Germans. Don’t let Bonamy ruin you.”
“Be quiet,” Bergeot said.
He looked at her with contempt. She began to cry quietly. Her crying became convulsive as she ceased quickly to care whether he were moved by it. She was crying for herself now, for her terrible childhood, for all the things she had been driven, it seemed to her, to do, to save herself; and because she had wasted her motherhood; and because her daughter, who no longer loved her, had even insulted her this evening.
Émile began trying to comfort her. She was exhausted and almost indifferent. He was tired out himself: making her sit beside him on the couch, he took hold of her hand; they leaned together without the strength to move. Marguerite’s mouth felt dry. What am I? she wondered. She felt that she was lost. The different life she had been thinking about during the last weeks was a foolish, not a simply difficult dream, and she had been foolish. She felt trapped.
It did not yet enter her mind that she had set the trap herself.