The Bacchantes. Leon Daudet
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true. He scares me, and now that his father’s dead, I’m wondering how to escape his persistence.”
“You don’t like him, then?”
“Not at all. He’s much too savage and violent. He’s only touched me four times in two years, but every time I thought he was going to strangle or stifle me.”
“You let him do it?”
“I had to. What a scandal if I had cried out and called for help—and what a shock for my old husband!”
An old song came to the scientist’s lips, which he hummed while caressing the young woman’s forearm:
I shall try to be a good wife,
Old Robin is such a good husband.8
She smiled prettily. “That was my entire program.”
“And what are your plans now?”
“To take care of the farm.”
“With your stepson?”
“How can it be otherwise. He’s inherited Les Arges, along with me.”
“Will you let me help you? I have some experience of the land and the region.”
She looked at him, astonished and emotional. “You, such a great man, concern yourself with an insignificant woman like me! You can’t be thinking of it, Maître Ségétan! Why such a sacrifice?”
He drew closer to her, his face inflamed with desire, and his hand moved along that arm, so gentle and so pure, outside the blue silk, trembling.
“Because I want you, do you hear?”
She replied simply, offering him her lips and closing her eyes: “Me too.…” But she added, in a whisper: “Oh no, not this time. My hip hurts too much…and not here.… Abrice…Marianne.…”
The reasons were good. He obeyed. At the same instant, his repressed desire brought him a reflection concerning the waves of time, which he had never previously made. He fixed it in his rapid memory, while delightedly aspiring Tullie’s little mouth, like the calyx of a flower, moist, warm and profound.
At that moment, someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he said, getting up.
Marianne showed her rustic head. “It’s Madame’s stepson, asking, like this, whether Madame can see him.…” She made a gesture signifying: no way of avoiding it.
Ségétan slipped into the neighboring dressing-room and left the door ajar. He was thus able to see without being seen. His heart was beating as it once had in the first days of his cohabitation with Lili, when he was afraid that she might rejoin the pimps.
The young man went to the bed, hesitantly, his limbs stiff.
“Bonjour, Tullie. How are you today? It seems a long time since I saw you, since my father’s death. It was a beautiful funeral, you know.”
“Bonjour, Jean. Yes, so I’ve been told. Sit down.”
He brought up a chair, which Ségétan heard scraping the parquet. Then there was a silence, and a sight that came from the boy. In a strained voice, he articulated: “So now we’re the two owners of Les Arges, you and me. When are you coming back? I’m all alone. I’m missing you.…”
“The doctor is still forbidding me to get up.”
“Oh yes, Bienallé—the other one’s friend. They both intend to keep you here. They want to subject you to their devilries, their waves. They’ve already killed six of our animals. If it goes on, all the livestock and people in Brancheville will disappear.”
“Shut up, you great fool—you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At that moment, Ségétan inferred that the boy got up and went to her, then leaned over her violently.
The bed-frame creaked and a “No, no, oh no, not that—get off, not that here!” emerged, in a breathless supplication, from the lips of the beautiful victim.
Then there was a hoarse: “Yes, yes, I want to, I want you again, and right away.…”
“Oh, you’re hurting me. Enough, oh, leave me alone!”
“No—I’ll take you whether you like it or not, you hear me—in spite of him!”
“Oh, you’re mad! Let me go, you’re scaring me. Oh…oh! Help me! Help me! He’s going to kill me!”
Ségétan emerged from hiding and threw himself upon the black manikin who was struggling over the white skin. On hearing and seeing him, Jean Calvat released his beautiful prey, who tried in vain to shove him away, for he was already between her fleshy, taut legs. His face, pale beneath his bristling brown hair, had something faun-like and murdererous about it. With two bounds, he extracted himself from the grip of the scientist, who was off balance, then reached the door and disappeared.
Tullie was weeping, her arms adrift on the tangled sheets, and the scientist consoled her, kissing her awkwardly, savoring the salt of her shiny tears. With a sigh, she said: “Close the door.” And then, in an even lower tone: “Lock it.”
All of that had happened rapidly, and the two lovers never knew whether the servants had heard the noise or seen Jean Calvat running away. That evening, however, a repentant letter arrived from the latter, in which he declared, in a baroque style, that he had acted in a moment of delirium and distress caused by the sudden death of his father, humbly begged his stepmother’s pardon, and begged her to apologize to the master of the house for him. If Tullie demanded it, he would go away for a time, leaving the administration of the farm to her. In that case, he would ask the notary, before the testamentary dispositions made by the deceased were effected, for an advance on his inheritance of a few thousand francs.
* * * *
The prolonged sojourn of Tullie Moneuse at the Villa Dyonisos caused a great deal of talk, but the mixture of admiration and dead inspired by the “big brains” confined the rustic suggestions to the ironic and jesting form handed down from folktales to our own day. Besides which, the Paris newspapers and local rags were full of a frontier incident that might set France and Germany at odds again, and the apprehension of such a catastrophe deflected minds from everything else. On the same day that Tullie was due to return to the farm at Les Arges, Ségétan was summoned to Paris by the Minister of War.
Immediately received by the minister, the latter made him party to the political anxieties that were sending an alarm to the technical services and the general staff, and asked him where he was with his work on the disruption of the engines of aircraft in flight by means of waves. The scientist replied that he had, indeed, studied the subject at one time, and carried out a few experiments, with results that were worse than uncertain. At that moment his attention had been distracted by the problem of waves of duration, which now absorbed him completely.
“I know,” said the minister. “I’ve read several articles on that subject in the papers. It’s doubtless of more interesting, but it’s a less immediate interest. Would it not be possible for you, my dear Master, in view of the circumstances, to return to your previous love—the disruption of engines at a distance? You’d be doing your country a great service. Of course, we’d put all the necessary means and personnel at your disposal, with the most absolute secrecy guaranteed.”
“I’d like to, Monsieur le Ministre, but the disruption of determined research in favor of other research is one of the most difficult mental exercises there is. The spirit of investigation, when it’s involved in the genesis of some X—or, more precisely, an ensemble of Xs—adopts by the same token a certain method, a certain atmosphere, a certain color. To abandon them for another method, another atmosphere and another aspect is almost impossible.”
The minister, who was not stupid, sighed. “I suspected as much. What can I say? Do your