In the Mountains Part 4

Perhaps if he remembered he would tell his wife, and she would wish me luck too. I did very much long to-day to be wished luck.

But Antoine, if he had ever known, had obviously forgotten. He was doing something to the irises when I came down, and though I went out and lingered round him before beginning breakfast he took no notice; he just went on with the irises. So I daresay I looked a little wry, for I did feel rather afraid I might be going to be lonely.

This, then, I thought, giving myself a hitch of determination, was the moment for manual labour. As I drank my coffee I decided to celebrate the day by giving both the Antoines a holiday and doing the work myself.

Why shouldn't my birthday be celebrated by somebody else having a good time? What did it after all matter who had the good time so long as somebody did? The Antoines should have a holiday, and I would work. So would I defend my thoughts from memories that might bite. So would I, by the easy path of perspiration, find peace.

Antoine, however, didn't seem to want a holiday. I had difficulty with him. He wasn't of course surprised when I told him he had got one, because he never is, but he said, with that level intonation that gives his conversation so noticeable a calm, that it was the day for cutting the lawn.

I said I would cut the lawn; I knew about lawns; I had been brought up entirely on lawns,--I believe I told him I had been born on one, in my eagerness to forestall his objections and get him to go.

He said that such work would be too hot for Madame in the sort of weather we were having; and I said that no work on an object so small as our lawn could be too hot. Besides, I liked being hot, I explained--again with eagerness--I wanted to be hot, I was happy when I was hot. '_J'aime beaucoup,_ I said, not stopping in my hurry to pick my words, and anyhow imperfect in French, '_la sueur_.'

I believe I ought to have said _la transpiration,_ the other word being held in slight if any esteem as a word for ladies, but I still more believe that I oughtn't to have said anything about it at all. I don't know, of course, because of Antoine's immobility of expression; but in spite of this not varying at what I had said by the least shadow of a flicker I yet somehow felt, it was yet somehow conveyed to me, that perhaps in French one doesn't perspire, or if one does one doesn't talk about it. Not if one is a lady. Not if one is Madame. Not, to ascend still further the scale of my self-respect enforcing attributes, if one is that dignified object the _patrone_.

I find it difficult to be dignified. When I try, I overdo it. Always my dignity is either over or under done, but its chief condition is that of being under done. Antoine, however, very kindly helps me up to the position he has decided I ought to fill, by his own unalterable calm. I have never seen him smile. I don't believe he could without cracking, of so unruffled a gla.s.siness is his countenance.

Once, before the war--everything I have done that has been cheerful and undesirable was before the war; I've been nothing but exemplary and wretched since--I was undignified. We dressed up; and on the advice of my friends--I now see that it was bad advice--I allowed myself to be dressed as a devil; I, the _patrone_; I, Madame. It was true I was only a little devil, quite one of the minor ones, what the Germans would call a _Hausteufelchen_; but a devil I was. And going upstairs again unexpectedly, to fetch my tail which had been forgotten, I saw at the very end of the long pa.s.sage, down which I had to go, Antoine collecting the day's boots.

He stood aside and waited. I couldn't go back, because that would have looked as though I were doing something I knew I oughtn't to. Therefore I proceeded.

The pa.s.sage was long and well lit. Down the whole of it I had to go, while Antoine at the end stood and waited. I tried to advance with dignity. I tried to hope he wouldn't recognise me. I tried to feel sure he wouldn't. How could he? I was quite black, except for a wig that looked like orange-coloured flames. But when I got to the doors at the end it was the one to my bedroom that Antoine threw open, and past him I had to march while he stood gravely aside. And strangely enough, what I remember feeling most acutely was a quite particular humiliation and shame that I hadn't got my tail on.

'_C'est que j'ai oublie ma queue_....' I found myself stammering, with a look of agonised deprecation and apology at him.

And even then Antoine wasn't surprised.

Well, where was I? Oh yes--at the _transpiration_. Antoine let it pa.s.s over him, as I have said, without a ruffle, and drew my attention to the chickens who would have to be fed and the cow who would have to be milked. Perhaps the cow might be milked on his return, but the chickens--

Antoine was softening.

I said quickly that all he had to do would be to put the chickens' food ready and I would administer it, and as for the cow, why not let her have a rest for once, why not let her for once not he robbed of what was after all her own?

And to cut the conversation short, and determined that my birthday should not pa.s.s without somebody getting a present, I ran upstairs and fetched down a twenty-franc note and pressed it into Antoine's hand and said breathlessly in a long and voluble sentence that began with _Voila_, but didn't keep it up at that level, that the twenty francs were for his expenses for himself and Mrs. Antoine down in the valley, and that I hoped they would enjoy themselves, and would he remember me very kindly to his _maman_, to whom he would no doubt pay a little visit during the course of what I trusted would be a long, crowded, and agreeable day.

They went off ultimately, but with reluctance. Completely undignified, I stood on the low wall of the terrace and waved to them as they turned the corner at the bottom of the path.

'_Mille felicitations_!' I cried, anxious that somebody should be wished happiness on my birthday.

'If I _am_ going to have a lonely birthday it shall be _thoroughly_ lonely,' I said grimly to myself as, urged entirely by my volition, the Antoines disappeared and left me to the solitary house.

I decided to begin my day's work by making my bed, and went upstairs full of resolution.

Mrs. Antoine, however, had done that; no doubt while I was arguing with Antoine.

The next thing, then, I reflected, was to tidy away breakfast, so I came downstairs again, full of more resolution.

Mrs. Antoine, however, had done that too; no doubt while I was still arguing with Antoine.

Well then, oughtn't I to begin to do something with potatoes? With a view to the dinner-hour? Put them on, or something? I was sure the putting on of potatoes would make me perspire. I longed to start my _transpiration_ in case by any chance, if I stayed too long inactive and cool, I should notice how very silent and empty....

I hurried into the kitchen, a dear little place of white tiles and copper saucepans, and found pots simmering gently on the stove: potatoes in one, and in the other bits of something that well might be chicken.

Also, on a tray was the rest of everything needed for my dinner. All I would have to do would be to eat it.

Baulked, but still full of resolution, I set out in search of the lawn-mower. It couldn't be far away, because nothing is able to be anything but close on my narrow ledge of rock.

Mou-Mou, sitting on his haunches in the shade at the back of the house, watched me with interest as I tried to open the sorts of outside doors that looked as if they shut in lawn-mowers.

They were all locked.

The magnificent Mou-Mou, who manages to imitate Antoine's trick of not being surprised, though he hasn't yet quite caught his air of absence of curiosity, got up after the first door and lounged after me as I tried the others. He could do this because, though tied up, Antoine has ingeniously provided for his exercise, and at the same time for the circ.u.mvention of burglars, by fixing an iron bar the whole length of the wall behind the house and fastening Mou-Mou's chain to it by a loose ring. So that he can run along it whenever he feels inclined; and a burglar, having noted the kennel at the east end of this wall and Mou-Mou sitting chained up in front of it, would find, on preparing to attack the house at its west and apparently dogless end, that the dog was nevertheless there before him. A rattle and a slide, and there would be Mou-Mou. Very _morale_-shaking. Very freezing in its unexpectedness to the burglar's blood, and paralysing to his will to sin. Thus Antoine, thinking of everything, had calculated. There hasn't ever been a burglar, but, as he said of his possible suppurating wounds, '_Il ne faut pas attendre qu'on les a pour se procurer le remede._'

Mou-Mou accordingly came with me as I went up and down the back of the house trying the range of outside doors. I think he thought at last it was a game, for as each door wouldn't open and I paused a moment thwarted, he gave a loud double bark, as one who should in the Psalms, after each verse, say _Selah_.

Antoine had locked up the lawn-mower. The mowing was to be put off till to-morrow rather than that Madame in the heat should mow. I appreciated the kindness of his intentions, but for all that was much vexed by being baulked. On my birthday too. Baulked of the one thing I really wanted, _la transpiration_. It didn't seem much to ask on my birthday, I who used, without so much as lifting a finger, to acquire on such occasions quite other beads.

Undecided, I stood looking round the tidy yard for something I could be active over, and Mou-Mou sat upright on his huge haunches watching me.

He is so big that in this position our heads are on a level. He took advantage of this by presently raising his tongue--it was already out, hanging in the heat--as I still didn't move or say anything, and giving my face an enormous lick. So then I went away, for I didn't like that.

Besides, I had thought of something.

In the flower-border along the terrace would be weeds. Flower-borders always have weeds, and weeding is arduous. Also, all one wants for weeding are one's own ten fingers, and Antoine couldn't prevent my using those. So that was what I would do--bend down and tear up weeds, and in this way forget the extraordinary sunlit, gaping, empty little house....

So great, however, had been the unflagging diligence of Antoine, and also perhaps so poor and barren the soil, that after half an hour's search I had only found three weeds, and even those I couldn't be sure about, and didn't know for certain but what I might be pulling up some precious bit of alpine flora put in on purpose and cherished by Antoine. All I really knew was that what I tore up wasn't irises, and wasn't delphiniums, and wasn't pansies; so that, I argued, it must be weeds. Anyhow, I pulled three alien objects out, and laid them in a neat row to show Antoine. Then I sat down and rested.

The search for them had made me hot, but that of course wouldn't last.

It was ages before I need go and feed the chickens. I sat on the terrace wall wondering what I could do next. It was a pity that the Antoines were so admirable. One could overdo virtue. A little less zeal, the least judicious neglect on their part, and I would have found something useful to do.

The place was quite extraordinarily silent. There wasn't a sound. Even Mou-Mou round at the back, languid in the heat, didn't move. The immense light beat on the varnished wooden face of the house and on the shut shutters of all the unused rooms. Those rooms have been shut like that for five years. The shutters are blistered with the fierce sun of five summers, and the no less fierce sun of five winters. Their colour, once a lively, swaggering blue, has faded to a dull grey: I sat staring up at them. Suppose they were suddenly to be opened from inside, and faces that used to live in them looked out?

A faint shudder trickled along my spine.

Well, but wouldn't I be glad really? Wouldn't they be the dearest ghosts? That room at the end, for instance, so tightly shut up now, that was where my brother used to sleep when he came out for his holidays.

Wouldn't I love to see him look out at me? How gaily he used to arrive,--in such spirits because he had got rid of work for a bit, and for a series of divine weeks was going to stretch himself in the sun!

The first thing he always did when he got up to his room was to hurry out on to its little balcony to see if the heavenly view of the valley towards the east with the chain of snow mountains across the end were still as heavenly as he remembered it; and I could see him with his head thrown back, breathing deep breaths of the lovely air, adoring it, radiant with delight to have got back to it, calling down to me to come quick and look, for it could never have been so beautiful as at that moment and could never possibly be so beautiful again.

I loved him very much. I don't believe anybody ever had so dear a brother. He was so quick to appreciate and understand, so slow to anger, so clear of brain and gentle of heart. Of course he was killed.

Such people always are, if there is any killing going on anywhere. He volunteered at the very beginning of the war, and though his fragility saved him for a long time he was at last swept in. That was in March 1918. He was killed the first week. I loved him very much, and he loved me. He called me sweet names, and forgave me all my trespa.s.ses.

And in the next room to that--oh well, I'm not going to dig out every ghost. I can't really write about some of them, the pain hurts too much.

I've not been into any of the shut rooms since I came back. I couldn't bear it. Here out of doors I can take a larger view, not mind going to the places of memories; but I know those rooms will have been kept as carefully unchanged by Antoine as I found mine. I daren't even think of them. I had to get up off the wall and come away from staring up at those shutters, for suddenly I found myself right on the very edge of the dreadful pit I'm always so afraid of tumbling into--the great, black, cold, empty pit of horror, of realisation....

That's why I've been writing all this, just so as not to think....

_Bedtime._

I must put down what happened after that. I ought to be in bed, but I must put down how my birthday ended.

Well, there I was sitting, trying by writing to defend myself against the creeping fear of the silence round me and the awareness of those shut rooms up stairs, when Mou-Mou barked. He barked suddenly and furiously; and the long screech of his chain showed that he was rus.h.i.+ng along the wall to the other side of the house.