‘My mother and father? They haven’t been here.’ She looks at him blankly, yet with distrust, out of her sparkless eyes.
‘Oh, yes, indeed — they were here this morning. I was in the corridor when they came out of the doctor’s study. He was saying good-bye to them. I saw them and heard the name quite distinctly.’ The Italian boy seems to be only interested in his food, but really he is all attention, all on the alert.
Zèlie takes a mouthful of veal from her plate. Suddenly she grasps the meaning of what has just been said to her; the implication of the words dawns upon her. She lets her knife and fork fall. ‘My mother has been here… and she went away… without seeing me!’
Her chair is on the side of the table nearest the double doors. The doors are almost immediately behind her chair. She has only to get up and take two or three steps and then she is out of the room. For a moment everything hangs in suspense. The waiters stand poised with their dishes. There has been no noise, no disturbance: for a moment no one seems to realize what has happened. Then the girl’s nurse rises and follows her. Here and there about the room other figures also get to their feet and go out. The young Italian bends low over his plate. His mouth is crammed full of food, his jaws solemnly chewing. But an impish glee crinkles the ends of his eyes: he is happy.
Zèlie runs across the hall towards the chief doctor’s study. The main door of the clinic is wide open and her pursuers will naturally assume that she has gone out that way. It is not with the idea of eluding them that she goes to the study, but simply because the Italian said he had seen her mother there. Of course, the room is now empty; but the french window is still open as the doctor left it, and Zèlie passes through. Now she is on a grass bank that slopes down to a pine wood. She runs down the steep bank, moving clumsily, tripping and stumbling in her high-heeled shoes which do not fit very well. In the wood she still finds it hard to run because the pine needles are slippery, and treacherous roots are continually tripping her up. She is out of condition and soon feels exhausted. Her breath makes a painful sobbing sound in the quiet wood, her heart-beats sound loud and continuous like a waterfall, her face, streaked with her tumbled hair, is glazed over with sweat, one of her shoes has gone and she is completely dishevelled. She does not know why she is running or where. One word, ‘Mother! Mother!’ keeps crying out in her head.
Suddenly she is pulled up short. A wire fence, twelve feet high and strong enough to imprison a herd of wild beasts, marks the boundary of the estate. Zèlie is running so blindly that she does not see the wire and crashes against it. Her hands beat on the fine mesh, her awkward body staggers and falls to the ground. She lies collapsed on the pine needles under the indifferent trees. The small harmony of the wood, which her clumsy irruption has broken, slowly renews itself. A wood pigeon starts to coo over her head. That gentle summer sound, which when she was a child always made her think of her mother’s sewing machine, is more than Zèlie can bear. Her heart breaks, she clutches handfuls of the sharp pine needles which pierce her flesh, while from between her thick lips, smeared with saliva and rouge, issues a desolate keening that soon leads her pursuers in the right direction.
V
It is quite early, just after seven o’clock, on a beautiful summer morning. The sky is pale blue, cloudless, serene and mild, like an immense arch, not awe-inspiring, but full of benevolence and protectiveness. The untroubled lake is opalescent, half solid looking as if one could walk across it. The mountains withdraw their stern faces behind gauzy mist veils. On the first slope of the hillside above the lake the main building of the clinic stands washed in the clear new sunshine, a fine mansion with flowers edging the balconies and a pillared terrace in front. Everything is peaceful, orderly and reassuring. In a steep hayfield above the road some labourers are already at work with their scythes, moving rhythmically, their brown, nude torsos gleaming like statuary. A car comes along the highroad from the town and smoothly loops its way up the private road to the clinic. It stops in front of the main entrance which is in shadow, on the side of the building that faces away from the lake. Here the aspect of the new day is slightly less comfortable, owing perhaps to the dark, wide shade from the house and the huge black trees that point severely away from the world.
A man and a young woman emerge from the car. They have been travelling all night. The man is about forty, rather well-looking in the heavy Roman emperor style, young for his age, in spite of the fact that his face is unshaven and wears a harassed expression. He has the indescribably, almost imperceptibly, false look of a person who is outwardly friendly and kind but inwardly barren and self-absorbed. He is large, and altogether somewhat dishevelled after the journey. The woman, who is several years younger than he, is almost in a state of collapse and has to be helped up the steps into the clinic. Nevertheless, she has managed to achieve a fairly normal appearance. Her green dress is in order, her fair hair is smoothly combed, there is powder on her face and lipstick on her mouth: probably her last living impulse would be to attend to these things. She does not speak or look about her, but passively allows herself to be led into a room facing the lake where there is sunshine and a large vase of antirrhinums on a round table. Here she subsides on to a sofa. The pupils of her eyes are dilated, she sees only a blur of afflicting brightness, she is really hardly conscious of what is going on. The man sits in a chair near her, drumming nervously on the table with his thick fingers. Neither of the two utters a word.
A girl in a white overall brings in a tray of coffee. She is attractively fresh looking and glances with curiosity at the travel-worn strangers, particularly at the woman who now seems to be on the verge of losing consciousness altogether and falling off the sofa on to the floor. The attendant speaks to her, pours out a cup of coffee and puts a cushion under her head. With colossal effort the other pulls herself back to life sufficiently to murmur some half audible comment, shading her eyes with her hand. The nurse goes to the window and quietly closes the shutters: then she goes out of the door with a last backward glance. Now there is only a green, subaqueous dimness left in the room, striated with bands of brightness. The man, in unbroken silence, and, as it were, gloomily, apprehensively, absent-mindedly, swallows the hot coffee, directing from time to time upon his companion a look of automatic anxiety which really conceals a sort of resentment. The other cup of coffee, untasted, slowly steams on the table.
After a few minutes the chief doctor comes into the room. Although it is so early in the morning, he is immaculately turned out and has an air of brisk and vital efficiency about his handsome person. He shakes hands with the visitor who rises to greet him, immediately sinking back heavily into his chair. Then the doctor goes to the fair-haired woman and takes her limp hand. There is an exchange of preliminary talk between the two men. The stranger briefly outlines certain medical details with which the physician has already been made familiar by letter. The large man speaks in the halting manner of someone who forces himself to discuss a matter subconsciously repugnant to him. He often fails to finish a sentence, one gets the impression that his real attention is wandering, that he longs to dissociate himself from the whole situation. The doctor, although he listens with polite attention, realizes that the other, unable or unwilling to acknowledge responsibility, will say nothing of any value, and his dark eyes continually turn to the silent woman across the room. Finally he addresses her: