Oh! we see him often enough, to do him justice!
And what noble devotion to duty that doctor must have to be incessantly leaving his clinic to come and ascertain whether the state of our school is satisfactory! That school is dispersing, bit by bit at the moment; the first class to the Infants’ School, the second over there to the Town Hall.
No doubt he fears that our education may be suffering from these successive displacements, the worthy District Superintendent!
They had heard, the two of them, what I had just said – naturally, I’d done it on purpose! – and Dutertre seized the opportunity to come over to us.
Marie wanted to sink into the ground. She moaned and hid her face in her hands.
But he was decent enough to be all smiles as he approached. He slapped the silly noodle on the shoulder and she trembled with alarm:
‘Little one, what’s that devilish Claudine saying to you?
Do you preserve the flowers our handsome assistant wears?
Mademoiselle Sergent, your pupils’ hearts are thoroughly awakened, you know!
Marie, do you want me to tell your mother so as to make her realize that her daughter’s no longer a child?’
Poor Marie Belhomme!
Quite incapable of answering one word, she stared at Dutertre, she stared at me, she stared at the Headmistress, with eyes like a startled fawn and was on the verge of tears … Mademoiselle Sergent, who was not entirely delighted at the opportunity the District Inspector had found of gossiping with us, watched him with jealous and admiring eyes. She did not dare carry him off. (I knew him well enough to guess he might easily refuse to go.) As for me, I was rejoicing in Marie’s confusion, in Mademoiselle Sergent’s impatient displeasure (so her little Aimee wasn’t enough for her any more, then?) and also at the sight of our good doctor’s obvious pleasure at staying beside us.
Apparently my eyes must have expressed my mingled feelings of rage and satisfaction for he laughed, showing his pointed teeth.
‘Claudine, what’s making your eyes sparkle like that?
Is it devilment?’
I answered ‘Yes’ with my head, merely tossing my hair without speaking, an irreverence that drew Mademoiselle Sergent’s bushy eyebrows together in a frown … I didn’t care.
She couldn’t have everything, that nasty Redhead; her District Superintendent and her little assistant. No, definitely not … More offhandedly than ever, Dutertre came close to me and slipped his arm round my shoulders.
The lanky Anais watched us with curiosity, screwing up her eyes.
‘Are you feeling well?’
‘Yes, Doctor, thank you very much.’
‘Be serious.’ (As if he were being serious!)
‘Why have you always got those dark shadows under your eyes?’
‘Because the good Lord made them like that.’
‘You oughtn’t to read so much.
I bet you read in bed?’
‘A little, not much.
Mustn’t one?’
‘We-ell … All right, you can read.
What do you read? Come on, tell me.’
He was getting excited and he gripped my shoulders with a brusque gesture.
But I’m not so stupid as I was the other day and I didn’t blush – at least, not yet.
The Headmistress had decided to go and scold the little ones who were playing with the pump and drenching themselves.
How she must be boiling inwardly!
My heart danced at the thought!
‘Yesterday, I finished Aphrodite. Tonight I shall begin La Femme et le pantin.’
‘Indeed?
You are going the pace!
Pierre Louys? The deuce!
Not surprising that you … I should very much like to know how much you understand of all that. Everything?’
(I don’t think I’m a coward, but I shouldn’t have liked to continue this conversation alone with him in a wood or on a sofa; his eyes glittered so!
Besides, he obviously imagined I was about to confide smutty secrets to him …)
‘No, I don’t understand it all, unfortunately. But quite a lot of things, all the same.
Then I’ve also read, last week, Susanne by Leon Daudet. And I’m just finishing L’Annee de Clarisse. It’s one of Paul Adam’s and I simply adore it!’
‘Yes, yes. And do you get to sleep afterwards? … But you’ll tire yourself, if you go on like that.
Take a little care of yourself, it would be a pity to wear yourself out, you know.’
What was he really thinking?
He looked at me from so close to, with such a visible desire to caress me – to kiss me – that, suddenly, a shameful burning flush covered my face like rouge and I lost my self-assurance.
Perhaps he was frightened too – of losing his self-possession – for he let me go, breathing hard. He left me after giving my hair a stroke right down from my head to the tip of my longest curls, as if he were stroking the back of a cat.
Mademoiselle Sergent came up to us again, her hands shaking with jealousy, and the two of them went off together.
I saw them talking very fast to each other: she seemed to be anxiously imploring him while he lightly shrugged his shoulders and laughed.