The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume VI Part 24
"Not at all well, sir. He cannot last much longer."
The drawing-room, into which George was shown, was hung with pink and blue chintz. The tall and wide windows overlooked the town and the sea.
Duroy muttered: "By Jove, this is nice and swell for a country house.
Where the deuce do they get the money from?"
The rustle of a dress made him turn round. Madame Forestier held out both hands to him. "How good of you to come, how good of you to come,"
said she.
And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. Then they looked at one another. She was somewhat paler and thinner, but still fresh-complexioned, and perhaps still prettier for her additional delicacy. She murmured: "He is dreadful, do you know; he knows that he
is doomed, and he leads me a fearful life. But where is your portmanteau?"
"I have left it at the station, not knowing what hotel you would like me to stop at in order to be near you."
She hesitated a moment, and then said: "You must stay here. Besides, your room is all ready. He might die at any moment, and if it were to happen during the night I should be alone. I will send for your luggage."
He bowed, saying: "As you please."
"Now let us go upstairs," she said.
He followed her. She opened a door on the first floor, and Duroy saw, wrapped in rugs and seated in an armchair near the window, a kind of living corpse, livid even under the red light of the setting sun, and looking towards him. He scarcely recognized, but rather guessed, that it was his friend. The room reeked of fever, medicated drinks, ether, tar, the nameless and oppressive odor of a consumptive's sick room. Forestier held out his hand slowly and with difficulty. "So here you are; you have come to see me die, then! Thanks."
Duroy affected to laugh. "To see you die? That would not be a very amusing sight, and I should not select such an occasion to visit Cannes.
I came to give you a look in, and to rest myself a bit."
Forestier murmured, "Sit down," and then bent his head, as though lost in painful thoughts. He breathed hurriedly and pantingly, and from time to time gave a kind of groan, as if he wanted to remind the others how ill he was.
Seeing that he would not speak, his wife came and leaned against the window-sill, and indicating the view with a motion of her head, said, "Look! Is not that beautiful?"
Before them the hillside, dotted with villas, sloped downwards towards the town, which stretched in a half-circle along the sh.o.r.e with its head to the right in the direction of the pier, overlooked by the old city surmounted by its belfry, and its feet to the left towards the point of La Croisette, facing the Isles of Lerins. These two islands appeared like two green spots amidst the blue water. They seemed to be floating on it like two huge green leaves, so low and flat did they appear from this height. Afar off, bounding the view on the other side of the bay, beyond the pier and the belfry, a long succession of blue hills showed up against a dazzling sky, their strange and picturesque line of summits now rounded, now forked, now pointed, ending with a huge pyramidal mountain, its foot in the sea itself.
Madame Forestier pointed it out, saying: "This is L'Estherel."
The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to express his admiration, "It is stunning."
Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: "Let me have some fresh air."
"Pray, be careful," was her reply. "It is late, and the sun is setting; you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you."
He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: "I tell you I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or a day later, since I am done for?"
She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring, already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers which sprang up along this sh.o.r.e. A powerful scent of turpentine and the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.
Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones: "Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar."
His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in s.p.a.ce, her forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have liked to have chatted with the invalid and rea.s.sured him. But he could think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: "Then you have not got any better since you have been here?"
Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. "You see very well I have not," he replied, and again lowered his head.
Duroy went on: "Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes, it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the afternoon."
"Anything new at the paper?" asked Forestier.
"Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the _Voltaire_, to do your work, but he is not up to it. It is time that you came back."
The invalid muttered: "I--I shall do all my work six feet under the sod now."
This fixed idea recurred like a knell _apropos_ of everything, continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of sable and crimson. The chimney-gla.s.s, reflecting the horizon, seemed like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.
Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to listen to. "How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty, perhaps thirty--no more. You have time before you; for me it is all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was still here." He was silent for a few moments, and then continued: "All that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is horrible. I shall see nothing--nothing of all that exists; not the smallest things one makes use of--the plates, the gla.s.ses, the beds in which one rests so comfortably, the carriages. How nice it is to drive out of an evening! How fond I was of all those things!"
He nervously moved the fingers of both hands, as though playing the piano on the arms of his chair. Each of his silences was more painful than his words, so evident was it that his thoughts must be fearful.
Duroy suddenly recalled what Norbert de Varenne had said to him some weeks before, "I now see death so near that I often want to stretch out my arms to put it back. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend's beard, rend my heart and cry to me, 'Behold!'"
He had not understood all this on that occasion; now, seeing Forestier, he did. An unknown pain a.s.sailed him, as if he himself was sensible of the presence of death, hideous death, hard by, within reach of his hand, on the chair in which his friend lay gasping. He longed to get up, to go away, to fly, to return to Paris at once. Oh! if he had known he would not have come.
Darkness had now spread over the room, like premature mourning for the dying man. The window alone remained still visible, showing, within the lighter square formed by it, the motionless outline of the young wife.
Forestier remarked, with irritation, "Well, are they going to bring in the lamp to-night? This is what they call looking after an invalid."
The shadow outlined against the window panes disappeared, and the sound of an electric bell rang through the house. A servant shortly entered and placed a lamp on the mantelpiece. Madame Forestier said to her husband, "Will you go to bed, or would you rather come down to dinner?"
He murmured: "I will come down."
Waiting for this meal kept them all three sitting still for nearly an hour, only uttering from time to time some needless commonplace remark, as if there had been some danger, some mysterious danger in letting silence endure too long, in letting the air congeal in this room where death was prowling.
At length dinner was announced. The meal seemed interminable to Duroy.
They did not speak, but ate noiselessly, and then crumbled their bread with their fingers. The man servant who waited upon them went to and fro without the sound of his footsteps being heard, for as the creak of a boot-sole irritated Charles, he wore list slippers. The harsh tick of a wooden clock alone disturbed the calm with its mechanical and regular sound.
As soon as dinner was over Duroy, on the plea of fatigue, retired to his room, and leaning on the window-sill watched the full moon, in the midst of the sky like an immense lamp, casting its cold gleam upon the white walls of the villas, and scattering over the sea a soft and moving dappled light. He strove to find some reason to justify a swift departure, inventing plans, telegrams he was to receive, a recall from Monsieur Walter.
But his resolves to fly appeared more difficult to realize on awakening the next morning. Madame Forestier would not be taken in by his devices, and he would lose by his cowardice all the benefit of his self-devotion.
He said to himself: "Bah! it is awkward; well so much the worse, there must be unpleasant situations in life, and, besides, it will perhaps be soon over."
It was a bright day, one of those bright Southern days that make the heart feel light, and Duroy walked down to the sea, thinking that it would be soon enough to see Forestier some time in course of the afternoon. When he returned to lunch, the servant remarked, "Master has already asked for you two or three times, sir. Will you please step up to his room, sir?"
He went upstairs. Forestier appeared to be dozing in his armchair. His wife was reading, stretched out on the sofa.
The invalid raised his head, and Duroy said, "Well, how do you feel? You seem quite fresh this morning."
"Yes, I am better, I have recovered some of my strength. Get through
your lunch with Madeleine as soon as you can, for we are going out for a drive."
As soon as she was alone with Duroy, the young wife said to him, "There, to-day he thinks he is all right again. He has been making plans all the morning. We are going to the Golfe Juan now to buy some pottery for our rooms in Paris. He is determined to go out, but I am horribly afraid of some mishap. He cannot bear the shaking of the drive."
When the landau arrived, Forestier came down stairs a step at a time, supported by his servant. But as soon as he caught sight of the carriage, he ordered the hood to be taken off. His wife opposed this, saying, "You will catch cold. It is madness."