The Debacle - Emile Zola [121]
‘Yes, I felt sure you knew, that you had seen… My dear, you mustn’t judge me too harshly. He’s an old friend, I told you about him and me at Charleville in the old days, don’t you remember?’
She spoke more softly still and went on sentimentally but with a little giggle:
‘He begged so hard yesterday when I met him again… Just think, he’s fighting this morning and he might get killed… I couldn’t refuse, could I?’
It was heroic and charming in its tender gaiety, this last present of pleasure, this night of happiness freely bestowed on the battle eve. That was what was making her smile, with her bird-brained frivolity, despite her embarrassment. She would never have had the heart to shut her door, since everything worked together to facilitate the meeting.
‘Do you blame me?’
Henriette had looked very serious while she was listening. Such things took her aback because she did not understand them. Perhaps she was different. Since first thing that morning her heart had been with her husband and her brother out there under fire. How could anyone sleep so peacefully and go in for such carefree dallying when loved ones were in peril?
‘But my dear, doesn’t it make your heart ache not to be with your husband, or even that young man? Don’t you think all the time that at any minute they may be brought back to you broken and disfigured?’
With a quick movement of her adorable bare arm Gilberte thrust away the awful vision.
‘Oh my God, what are you saying? You really are horrid, spoiling my morning like this! No, no, I refuse to think about it, it’s too depressing!’
Even Henriette could not help smiling. She recalled their childhood, when Gilberte’s father, Major de Vineuil, was appointed customs officer for Charleville after being invalided out and had sent his daughter to a farm near Le Chêne-Populeux because he was worried about her cough. He was haunted by the death of his wife who had been carried off very young by tuberculosis. The little girl was only nine, and already she was restless and coquettish, went in for play-acting, dressing herself up as a queen in any old things she could find, keeping silver paper from chocolate to make bracelets and crowns. She remained like that later, and at twenty had married Maginot, a forestry inspector. She disliked Mézières, all shut in by its ramparts, and continued to live in Charleville, where she preferred the freer life brightened up with parties. Her father had died and she enjoyed absolute freedom with an easy-going husband who was such a nonentity that she had no scruples. Provincial gossip had given her many lovers, but she had only really let herself go with Captain Beaudoin out of the vast numbers of uniforms she had lived among thanks to the former connexions of her father and her relationship with Colonel de Vineuil. There was no vice in her, she simply loved pleasure, and it seemed quite clear that in taking lovers she had been indulging her irresistible need to be beautiful and gay.
‘It’s very wrong to have started up with him again,’ Henriette finally said in her serious tone.
But Gilberte at once shut her mouth with one of her pretty, affectionate gestures.
‘Oh my dear, but how could I do anything else, and it was only for once… You know I would rather die than deceive my new husband.’
They both stopped talking and stayed in an affectionate embrace, though so profoundly unlike each other. At that moment they could hear the beating of their hearts and might have understood the different languages of those hearts – the one living for her own happiness, giving herself, sharing herself, the other filled with a single devotion with the great silent heroism of noble souls.
‘Yes, they’re fighting, it’s true,’ cried Gilberte at long last. ‘I must hurry up and get dressed.’
Since they had been silent the sound of gunfire had indeed seemed louder. She jumped out of bed, got Henriette to help her, not wanting to call her maid, putting on shoes, getting quickly into a dress so as to be ready to receive anybody or go downstairs if necessary.