La Chamade by Françoise Sagan Read Free Book Online Page A

raining. As usual Lucile had leaned her head on the edge of the window, little raindrops sprinkled her face, she breathed in the smell of Paris, the April night, and thought of Antoine's tormented face when they had been obliged to say goodbye, half an hour earlier. Everything seemed wonderful.
    'People are more and more frightened,' she replied gaily. 'Frightened of growing old, of losing what they have, of not being able to get what they want, of being bored, they live in a constant state of panic and greed.'
    'That amuses you?' asked Charles.
    'It amuses me sometimes, and sometimes it touches me. Doesn't it you?'
    'I pay very little attention,' said Charles. 'As you know, I'm not much of a psychologist. All I notice is that more and more strangers fall into my arms and more and more of them stagger about drawing-rooms.'
    He could not say: 'I'm only interested in you, I spend hours and hours prying into the workings of your mind, I am tormented by an idée fixe , I too am frightened as you say, frightened of losing what I have, I too live in a constant state of panic and greed.'
    Lucile drew in her head and looked at him. She was filled with tenderness, she had never been fonder of him. She would have liked to share with him the wild happiness she felt in thinking of the next day. 'It's ten o'clock, only seventeen hours before I'll be in Antoine's arms. If only I can sleep late the time will pass without my noticing it.' She laid her hand on Charles'. It was a fine, well-kept hand, with a few small yellow spots that had begun to appear.
    'How was the Boldini?'
    'She's trying to please me,' thought Charles bitterly. 'She knows that I'm a man of taste as well as a businessman. She doesn't know that I'm fifty and wretchedly unhappy.'
    'Rather pretty. In his best manner. William bought it for next to nothing.'
    'William always gets everything for next to nothing,' laughed Lucile.
    'That's exactly the reflection of Diane,' answered Charles.
    There was a vague pause. 'I'm not going to be silent with embarrassment whenever he mentions Diane or Antoine,' thought Lucile. 'It's too silly. If only I could tell him the truth: I'm very much taken with Antoine, I feel like laughing with him, to be in his arms. What more dreadful thing could I say to a man who loves me? He might, perhaps, put up with my sleeping with Antoine, but not to my laughing with him. I know: to jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.'
    'Diane looked so strange,' she said. 'I was talking to Claire and Antoine when she returned to the drawing-room. Her face was tense, her expression searching ... she frightened me.'
    She tried to laugh. Charles turned to her.
    'Frightened? You mean that you felt sorry for her?'
    'Yes,' she said quietly. 'I felt sorry for her, too. Growing old is no joke for a woman.'
    'Or for a man,' replied Charles briskly. 'I can guarantee that.'
    They laughed, a laugh that rang false and chilled their blood. 'So that's the way it is,' thought Lucile. 'Very well, we'll avoid the subject, we'll joke and do whatever pleases him, but tomorrow at five, I'll be in Antoine's arms.'
    And she who detested ferocity felt delighted to discover that she was capable of it.
    For nothing, no one, no amount of pleading could prevent her from meeting Antoine the next day, from knowing once more the body, the breath, the voice of Antoine. She was certain of it, and the relentlessness of this desire in her, whose every plan depended on a mood or the weather, surprised her even more than the perfect joy that had overcome her on meeting Antoine's eyes earlier that evening. Her only love affair, at twenty, had been unfortunate and she now considered passion with a curious mixture of respect and sadness, approaching what she felt for religion: a lost sentiment. She suddenly discovered love in all its force—requited, happy love—and it seemed as though her life, instead of being confined to one being, became immense, impossible to fill, triumphal. She, whose