I can see myself again on that afternoon walking up and down the platform of Vallorbe Station. At my side little André, aged twelve, sailor-collared and bare-legged, besieged me with questions concerning sport. It was his craze. I did my best to give him the information he wanted, while waiting impatiently for his people to reappear. I had offered to look after the ladies' luggage, but the grandmother had declined my help with thanks. Jeannine was so capable! These little jobs amused her.
The girl came out on to the platform towards us, and wanted to take back her dressing bag. I refused to allow it.
Madame Landry joined us. I took her to a seat but she refused to sit down, she was not tired. I always admired her, slim and alert at over sixty.
I had made their acquaintance at the hotel at which we had arrived together three weeks before. The old[Pg 4] lady, who was the widow of an Inspector of Finances, always began by keeping her distance. The chance discovery that I was the son of an officer in the army had prejudiced her in my favour. The Landrys had many connections with the army, and Colonel Dreher's name was not unknown to them. The grandmother had been able to prove, by the concurrence of various dates, that my father must have received his commission at the same time as her own brother, who had been seriously wounded in the year '70. This was reason enough for us to become very intimate in a few days. I learnt that Madame Landry had lost her son, a lieutenant in the Cuirassiers, twelve years before. He had been killed by a horse's kick and her daughter-in-law had died in childbirth a few weeks later, whereupon she undertook to bring up her two grandchildren.
Jeannine was quite young, eighteen or nineteen, I think—she refused to tell me her age, just for fun. She was tall and slim, and bright-eyed; her mouse-coloured hair curled and entangled itself in spite of all she could do. She had spent two years in England. It must have been there that she had picked up this rather offhand, or more correctly speaking, this playful manner, whose manifestations sometimes surprised her grandmother, though they rarely shocked her.
I who hold in equal abhorrence insipid or hypo-critical goody-goodies and brazen coquettes, had been attracted by this frank ingenuity, this assurance which was quite innocent of all effrontery. Our friendship had been formed on the tennis court. Jeannine, who was nimble and skilful and keen, was delighted to find a worthy opponent. She challenged me anew every morning. She fought obstinately and was annoyed if I paid her compliments. In the afternoon we went[Pg 5] for walks, chaperoned by Madame Landry, or the little brother, and in the evening we both enjoyed our interminable discussions on the terrace where sweet-scented breezes blew.
The grandmother only put in an occasional word from her arm-chair, a little way off. Jeannine willingly avoided topical futilities. Literature, painting, music, or even politics—why not?—the occult sciences—a fruitful subject of conversation when the mysterious night is falling—she broached them all quite fearlessly. I have always had a taste for riding headlong through these preserves of metaphysics or ethics. Philosophers only venture there too gingerly, unravelling the thread of a theory. The most delightful recreation is to disport oneself there as if in conquered territory, to breast at a gallop some hilltop or other, where one breathes in draughts of pure air, whence one may cast a bold eye on life.
Jeannine was not at all apprehensive of these giddy escapades. It was an intellectual gymnastic, satisfying apparently the same taste for action and expansion which she showed in the physical sphere. And yet after one of these flights she used to feel the necessity of drawing breath and retiring upon some graceful standpoint, in the same way in which she would make a point of doing her hair and dressing for dinner, on her return from an expedition. If I tried to lure her on again, she resisted with a smile.
"No, now let's talk seriously."
Then I would see her withdraw into a fortress built of all she definitely believed and knew, opinions, reveries, and prejudices which, though she was charmingly logical, she owed to her race and education. The best of it was that once in refuge there, in full[Pg 6] possession of her truths, the last thing she aimed at was to convert me. I, in my turn, was obliged to shut myself up behind ramparts; I had some all ready-made from whence I braved the world.
Oh! there was nothing very new in it, in this doctrine I had drawn from my reading and reflections, but I flattered myself that by having thought it over, I had made it my own private property. It was the eternal ego. Jeannine protested against it. She claimed that she was not at all a rebel to the requirements of logic, indeed I recognised her intellectual courage, her taste for sincerity. She had no religion to embarrass her, no faith with which she might be tempted to oppose the claims of her reason. Was she even a Catholic? No, simply a free-thinker, though she did not boast about it in order not to grieve her grandmother, who was, by the way, but a lukewarm dévote. She dreamt, however, that pure self-love was not the highest end, that there were great souls, and lesser ones, that from time to time, a little of the divine might inspire our dust....
Moonshine! I chaffed her: I made fun of all her would-be noble feelings; I discovered gnawing egoism in them; I raised this dreary God to a pinnacle. I went further; I was not afraid to unveil for her sometimes the depths of my nihilism. Dried up and incapable of experiencing the least emotion, I had adopted the standpoint, I told her, of considering the universe as a scene, life as a vulgar farce, denuded of rhythm and spaciousness, where each of us played a part. I did not envy that of any one else, and mine did not interest me in the least.
When I made such confessions Jeannine looked at me in silence; then she began to laugh:
[Pg 7]
"You're making fun of me!"
I denied it, guilty nevertheless of a smile which belied me. But, in my inmost conscience, I knew only too well that I had not spoken in fun. This young dialectician, whom my paradoxes amused, would have been chilled, revolted, estranged from me for ever, if she had thought that my courtesy hid nothing but this brutal scepticism, this cowardly lack of curiosity.
The train was late; Madame Landry wished to set me free:
"The time is getting on ... if you have to go as far as your cousins'...."
I naturally replied that I had plenty of time before me.
"And then you want your papers!" Jeannine insinuated maliciously.
It is true that I watched for the arrival of the Paris papers every evening. Simply a matter of habit; so little news concerned me! The day before, as it happened, the post had brought me nothing. I almost suspected Jeannine of having laid hands on the mail. In any case, my vexation and my grumbles had delighted her.
An absolute child!
The train still did not arrive. Conversation languished. I started a subject likely to interest the travellers. They were going to make a short stay on the shores of Lake Leman, a part which was strange to them, but which I said they would think they recognised, it bore so great a resemblance on the whole to the French Riviera, the neighbourhood of Cannes and Mentone, where they spent the winter. I told them of a comfortable hotel at Montreux.
[Pg 8]
Jeannine seemed preoccupied.
"We shall miss Ballaigues."
"She loves this part of the world," said her grandmother.
"I very much hope we shall be back no later than next week," continued the girl.
I teased:
"One makes up one's mind about that; and then when one is happy elsewhere...."
"Must I take my oath on it?"
"By Jove! That would make me decide to stay."
I reflected that with her away, Ballaigues would lose much of its charm. With the exception of Cipollina I had had nothing to do with the other guests at the hotel, foreigners for the most part. My holiday was nearly at an end. I did not doubt that at my request my director, accommodating creature that he was, would make no difficulties about extending my stay in Switzerland by a fortnight. But if the Landrys did not....
The girl read my thoughts.
"You know quite well," she said, "that we've arranged to go up the Dent de Vaulion."
"It will be the Pendant du Suchet."
I felt that we were going over the details of the expedition in silence.... I saw once more our start at midnight—we were quite a troop with my cousins the de Jougnes;—the formation of a column, the men waving lamps, the women helping themselves along with ice-axes; the long ascent enlivened by songs and chatter; we should have gone astray a hundred times but for the sure instinct of Doctor Claudel, an old inhabitant of the country; the cows in the fields, awakened by our torches and our laughter, getting up and[Pg 9] making their bells tinkle; the end of the ascent grown rougher, our shoes, which were unprovided with nails, slipping on the stony incline; several tumbles; a little wall skirted and then crossed. And all at once, at our side, the lights of the canton of Vaud had revealed themselves, at an immense depth, through a curtain of gloom: they might have been the lights of ships in the roads, seen from the top of a gigantic cliff. The darkness had dissipated gradually like a mist. Little by little the horizon had withdrawn to the boundaries of the world. The pure line of snowy Alps stood out against the rosy streak of dawn.... A few minutes of waiting, and Ph?bus rose resplendent and expanded, assuming many a bizarre shape, until, full-blown and triumphant, he deigned to reflect his disk in the waters of Neufchatel.
The picture held me captive. As Jeannine repeated, "In a week's time ... that's agreed, isn't it?" I acquiesced; and then said whimsically:
"Who knows what may have happened in a week's time! We may be in the midst of war!"
"Oh, come, there won't be any more war!" Then suddenly grown serious:
"You don't believe it, do you?" she went on.
I affected a certain gravity:
"Well, really, the papers were horribly pessimistic the day before yesterday...."
"Here's the train!" the little boy interrupted.
The majestic express thundered into the station. It stopped, all the breaks creaking. The passengers got out in bad tempers, to go to the custom-house. I had the luck to find places for my party; a priest with a scared face questioned me in German:
"Revitzi?nne," I said.
[Pg 10]
"Ya, ya."
He hurled himself into the corridor with his hands full of packages.
Having settled themselves in, the ladies thanked me. A particular gentleness distinguished Jeannine's tone; she announced once more that we should soon meet again; besides, whatever happened, couldn't we agree to exchange ... post-cards? I vowed myself charmed by the idea, and took note of a double address at Cape d'Antibes and at St. Mandé.
It would soon be time to start. I left the carriage and went and leant on the door where the window had been let down.
We had no more to say to each other. I wished the train would get under way.
Jeannine pulled a roguish face:
"We are keeping you standing there ... when your papers have just arrived...."
I had not time to retort with a joke. She corrected:
"No, I've teased you enough! I don't want you to have unpleasant recollections of me...."
"Don't you worry," I said, smiling; "the recollections are charming."
The train started off, without a whistle. The girl held out her gloved hand to me through the window; I seized it; she gave mine a fleeting squeeze. André waved his hat, Madame Landry bowed. I walked along beside the carriage for a few yards, and nodded a last farewell.