She says good morning, then carelessly drops on the bed the sponge, the soap, the essence which she has brought back from the bath, and goes to the window where she stands staring out at the mist that hides everything behind its sad, opaque, colourless veil. The peasant girl hurries to pick up the things from the bed and arranges them carefully in their proper places. As she finishes her work she glances all the time at the other woman who stands there so still, looking away from her, as if in another world. The graceful cyclamen robe fills the beholder with admiration. ‘How wonderful it must be to wear such a dress,’ she thinks in her simple heart. ‘She looks like an angel with her hair hanging down so bright’: and she touches her own drab head with a sort of surprise.
‘The room is done now,’ she says at length, timidly, in the bad French which she speaks only with difficulty.
The woman in front of the window makes no reply, no movement at all. Perhaps she has not understood, perhaps she has not heard.
The other takes out her brooms, her cloths, her polish, and puts everything down in the corridor. Then she goes back and loiters a moment or two inside the bedroom door. She knows she ought to get on with her work, to hurry into the next room and start polishing the floor there, instead of wasting her time; but somehow she cannot bear to go away without some response from that motionless figure whose hands are now clutching the scrolls of the iron grille.
‘Don’t stand there, madame,’ she says in her awkward way; ‘madame will catch cold — let me dose the window.’ She crosses the room and actually reaches towards the glass, brushing the other’s sleeve as she does so. The physical touch breaks the spell of the elder woman’s abstraction and she turns her head. The servant is horrified to see her eyes overflowing with tears which slowly and without any concealment run down her cheeks.
‘Oh, madame…’ she stammers, ‘what is it…? Don’t cry…’
Scarcely realizing what she does, she loosens the clenched, cold fingers, chilled by their prolonged contact with the metal lattice, and leads the other away from the window. The fair-haired woman submits passively, like a child, without words: too violent or too painful emotion, too long endured, seems to have deprived her of all vitality. She might be a mechanical figure but for the tears which continue their soundless rain, leaving dark spots where they fall on the purplish silk. Suddenly she stumbles over the hem of the long gown and would fall were it not for the strong young arms which support her on to the edge of the bed. This pathetic loss of dignity in one so remote, so perfect, is altogether too much for the peasant girl, already emotionalized by the sight of those incongruous tears.
Forgetting their different social status, forgetting the possibility of observation, forgetting even her work, she embraces this unhappy being as she would embrace a hurt child in her native village, murmuring inarticulate sounds of comfort. The other, who for so long has remained obdurate, confronting her equals with a disdainful, unchanging face, can allow herself to relax a little in such an uncouth clasp. It is as though she found solace in the subhuman sympathy, the mute caresses of an affectionate dog.
‘Why are you being kind to me…? What are you saying? What language is that?’ she asks at length, vague, out of her unreal world.
‘It is Romansh, madame; I come from the Grisons,’ the girl answers in French. The moment is slipping away, she already begins to feel a trifle awkward, incipiently aware of herself. Yet she still encircles the thin shoulders with both arms. reluctant to withdraw her support. ‘Don’t cry,’ she says once again. ‘Don’t be so unhappy. It’s not really bad here… And you’ll go away soon — back to your home. Can’t you think of it as a little holiday?’
‘I’m frightened… quite alone… and so far from everything,’ the other replies in a whisper, tasting the tears on her mouth. She is still as if in a dream, unconscious of the inappropriate situation.
The maid, who understands nostalgia only too well, searches her brain for some consolation.
‘But it’s so comfortable here, madame!’ she exclaims; ‘and the food…! Yesterday I brought you asparagus for lunch, and to-day there will be strawberries — I know because I saw the men picking them. And look — the mist is breaking! The sun will shine soon.’
Just at this moment she hears someone calling her name in the passage; it is one of the other work girls who has been sent to find out why she is being so slow over the rooms this morning.
‘Yes, yes — at once — I am coming!’ she cries out. She stands upright immediately; but then she bends down and impulsively plants a warm peasant’s kiss on the wet cheek before she crosses the room in a clumsy rush and vanishes into the corridor.
The other woman sits on in the same position, alone. Her tears have almost ceased falling: and now, for the first time in many days, there appears on her face the difficult inception of a smile.
VII
A charming eighteenth-century house stands just at the edge of the lake. It is really a small château with turrets which give it a sophisticated, frivolous, dashing air, well suited to the residence of the mistress of some distinguished personage, as which it was originally designed. The building is in an excellent state of repair, the flowering magnolia on its façade has been skilfully trained and pruned, everything indicates an appreciative and careful proprietor. Only a very sensitive observer might notice about the place an almost indescribable air, not exactly forlorn, but deprived of something, lacking the touch of individual affection, like a child brought up in an efficient institution instead of a home. There is an indefinably impersonal look about the rooms visible through the windows which are all wide open to the hot summer afternoon.
A number of people are having tea on the lawn between the house and the lake. They sit in groups round tables set in the shade of lime trees and tall acacias. Two or three women among them seem to be acting as hostesses, encouraging conversation which tends to flag and, even under their stimulus, has an oddly spasmodic character.
Marcel is the centre of his particular group. For several minutes he has been talkative, amusing, gay, with a smile that comes and goes easily on his wide, flexible mouth. The vigilant hostess looks with approval upon this young man opposite her, dressed in white flannels, who is entertaining the table so well. Suddenly he observes her appreciative glance, his smile changes, loses its rather winning spontaneity, and becomes cynical, sardonic.
‘Well, I’ve been a good boy long enough,’ he thinks to himself: ‘it’s someone else’s turn now.’
He looks at his watch, rises with a polite excuse, and picks up a racquet that has been lying on the grass near his chair. It is time for him to go to his game of tennis.
The court where he is supposed to be playing is higher up the hill, near the main building of the clinic to which all this property belongs. Swinging his racquet, Marcel saunters round the elegant little chateau that now houses guests so different from its original occupant. With the animation gone from his face one sees that he is not so young as he seemed at the tea table; he is at least thirty — perhaps a few years older. A trace of grey has already appeared at the sides of his dark hair, there are lines on his expressive face, his eyes have a slightly strained look, a slightly over-emotional brightness.