Chapter 18

In the dimly lit halls, the faint notes of a piano's melodies rippled through the air, accompanied by the sweet voices of children singing. The house itself hummed with a profusion of sounds and the pulse of life, from the clatter of dishes to the rhythmic thud of footsteps echoing on wooden floors.

Seeking solace from the chaotic bustle, I retreated into the library. Finding myself surrounded by the walls of books, my gaze fell upon the immaculate shelves that housed the complete collection of Revue des Deux Mondes, each volume meticulously aligned, dating back to its inaugural issue. Next to them stood the works of Louis Veuillot and Montalembert, alongside the sermons of Lacordaire, the speeches of the Count de Mun, and every piece written by Joseph de Maistre.

Perched atop the pedestal tables, paintings of stern-faced men with formidable sideburns and equally imperious old gentlemen bearing distinguished beards caught my eye. I was taken aback to learn that these imposing figures were all Liliane's ancestors, staunch Catholics each and every one. Despite being long departed, their presence was palpable, as if their spirits still lingered within these walls. Amidst this gallery of dead old men and their pretentious faces, Liliane seemed almost ethereal—too young, too delicate, and, above all, too full of radiant life.

The sudden chime of a bell broke the spell, calling us to the dining room. Her family was immense, a sprawling assembly that filled the large dining table. I recognised everyone except the grandmother, who presided at the head of the table, a matriarchal figure from a bygone era. Her hair was a snow-white crown, elegantly coiled around her head, framing a face that was the very essence of grandmotherly warmth. Yet, despite her prominence, a fleeting impression was all I gleaned from our brief encounter, a mere glimpse of her authority in the middle of the cluttered family dinner that endured with the tiresome persistence of a buzzing fly.

Liliane's older brother, gallant in his newly donned soutane, had recently entered the Saint-Sulpice seminary. He was engrossed in animated discussion with Villette and Monsieur Goulet, their voices rising and falling over the topic of women's suffrage—a subject prone to perpetually ignite their gatherings. The argument followed a familiar pattern: yes, it was indeed scandalous that a mother, the cornerstone of a family, possessed fewer rights than a drunken labourer. But Monsieur Goulet countered vehemently, pointing out that within the working classes, there were more female Communists than male, a fact underscored by their ruthless participation in the Paris Commune of 1871. In the end, the sum of his argument rested on a dire prediction that should such a law pass, and women were granted the vote, it would ultimately serve the enemies of the Church.

Liliane remained silent. Her lips pressed firmly together in a serene, impassive mask that betrayed nothing of her inner thoughts. At the far end of the table, the twin girls were engaged in a surreptitious battle, tossing bits of bread at each other with impish glee. Meanwhile, Madame Goulet observed their antics with a smile, taking no action. For the first time, I perceived her as deceitful, and it became abundantly clear to me that her smile was but a façade that concealed a more insidious intent.

It was at that point of realisation that I understood the true nature of Liliane's existence. I had often envied her seeming independence, the careless audacity with which she navigated her private microcosm. Yet, as I observed her now, it struck me that she was far less free than I had imagined. Behind her loomed the oppressive history of her forefathers, their resolute faces fossilised in portraits and their austere beliefs entombed in every corner of the house. Around her, this impressive, stately residence and her extensive, omnipresent family formed an invisible prison. Each door and every window was a barrier carefully guarded, ensuring that the boundaries of her gilded cage remained firmly in place. In contrast, my own life, though less resplendent, felt suddenly wide and spacious, the constraints upon me a mere summer breeze compared to the clangour of heavy chains that bound Liliane.

"Well? What do you make of us all?" asked Villette, getting straight to the point with impetuous directness.

I blinked, caught off guard. "Oh, I wasn't thinking of anything, really. Why do you ask?"

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "You've been looking at everyone around the table. Surely, something must have crossed your mind."

"Only that there are so many of you, that's all," I replied, struggling to hide acute embarrassment overtaking my confidence. But inwardly I chided myself. I made a mental note to master the art of hiding my true feelings, realising how easily my face betrayed me.

"You should show Emilie the garden," Madame Goulet suggested to Liliane as we rose from the table.

"Yes, I will," Liliane responded, her tone ever dutiful and compliant.

"Take your coats, too. It gets cold out in the evening," Madame Goulet added.

Liliane retrieved two loden wool coats from their pegs in the hallway. The doves in the aviary were already asleep, their cooing silenced by the night. We stepped out through the back door that led towards the servants' quarters. Somewhere, between the storeroom and the woodshed, a dog was whimpering, tugging unhappily at its chain.

Liliane made her way to the doghouse. "Come on, my poor little Gobert," she called soothingly, "I'll take you for a walk, you poor thing."

She unfastened the chain, and Gobert sprang onto her with exuberant joy before bounding ahead, showing us the path.

"Do you suppose animals possess souls?" Liliane asked softly, almost wistfully.

"I don't know, Lily."

"If they don't, it seems too unfair! They're unhappy and suffer just as people do, but they don't understand why," she continued in a voice that betrayed sadness. "It's far worse when one doesn't understand."

The early evening air was crisp, the far-flung stars above like detached, uninvited witnesses to our conversation. As we walked, the stillness of the vast estate welcomed us, broken only by the rustling leaves and Gobert's occasional bark. I glanced at Liliane, seeing her profile illuminated by the setting sun. As much as it pained me, I wondered at the state of her mind, and the unhappiness that seemed to persist just beneath the surface of her outwardly calm appearance.

Here, in this secluded corner, away from the imposing house and its weighty traditions, Liliane's words resonated with unexpressed meaning. The world, with all its intricacies and cruelties, often left us groping for understanding, much like poor Gobert in his futile struggles against the chain.

I remained silent, allowing Liliane's contemplative thoughts to linger in the air unanswered. For so long I had anticipated this evening that it felt like an eternity! I had convinced myself that at last, I would be granted entry into the sanctum of Liliane's emotions, the core of her life, and yet, she gave the impression of being more distant than ever before. The Liliane I knew had changed. She was no longer the same Liliane—not since her secret had a name.

We walked silently along the poorly maintained paths, where mallow and cornflowers grew in untamed profusion. The grounds were a patchwork of majestic trees and vibrant flowers, their beauty almost mocking the tension within us.

"Let's sit over there," Liliane suggested, gesturing towards a grassy mound at the foot of an ancient cedar. She seated herself and gazed up at the setting sky, the first stars tentatively appearing above us.

Finally gathering my courage, I broke the silence. "Lily, what's going on? Please, tell me."

"I suppose Mama told you everything," Liliane replied, overcome with resignation. "She insisted on picking you up herself..."

"She mentioned your friend Philippe. You never once told me about him."

"I couldn't talk about Philippe with you, Emi," Liliane confessed, her voice barely making a ripple of sound. Her left hand absently grasped at a tuft of grass beside her. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings, not after that letter you wrote to me. But now it's become public knowledge."

"Lily, we don't have to discuss it if you don't want to," I interjected uneasily, hoping to banish her discomfort.

"No, it doesn't matter now," Liliane accepted, turning her gaze to me. Her eyes searched mine, seeking answers I could not provide. "We can talk about it, Emi. If not with you, who else can I share it with?" She blushed, a rarity I had seldom witnessed, and one that made her seem even more alone. "What did Mama tell you?"

"She told me how you and Philippe became friends and that she has forbidden you from ever seeing him again."

"She's forbidden me, Emi," Liliane said, her admission laced with bitter spite. "Mama thinks our friendship is inappropriate and a threat to the family's reputation. The night I arrived, I went for an evening walk with Philippe after dinner. I returned later than I'm allowed to stay out. Mama was waiting for me, and I could tell immediately that something was wrong. She had this strange look on her face. She asked me a lot of questions," Liliane shrugged, her annoyance obvious. "She even asked if we had kissed!" Her frustration and revolt came alive in her gestures. "Of course, we kissed! We love each other."

She paused, her eyes drifting back to the sky, as if seeking solace in its vastness. "Philippe made me feel understood, like no one else ever has. But Mama... she doesn't see it that way. She only sees the scandal, the potential for disgrace."

I averted my gaze, the impact of her statement settling heavily on my mind. Liliane's unhappiness was a burden I could scarcely bear, yet its nature felt foreign to me, its complexities a world apart from my own pitiful desires. The kind of love that involved kissing held only one person in my reality—Liliane herself. A sharp twinge settled within my chest.

"Mama spoke such horrible things to me," she went on, drawing her coat tighter, as if trying to shield herself from the memory.

"But why?" The question slipped from my lips, laced with bewilderment. "Why can't you be friends with a boy?"

"His family's wealth far exceeds our own, but they exist outside our social circles, entirely removed. It seems that in Canada, they lead an unconventional kind of life, very irreverent and dissolute," Liliane revealed, her voice taking on a sententious edge. "And then there's the fact that Philippe's mother is Jewish," she added quietly after hesitating for a moment, almost as if the words were taboo.

I glanced at Gobert, lying motionless on the grass, his ears pointed towards the stars. His silent companionship mirrored my own inability to articulate the turmoil inside me.

"What happened then?" I prompted, needing to understand the full depth of her predicament.

"Mama went and spoke to Philippe's father, and he agreed with her completely, or so she says. He supposedly told her I wasn't a good match for Philippe. His family decided to take him to Arcachon for the summer vacation, and then they'll head back to Canada. Philippe is quite healthy now," Liliane finished, her revelation trailing off into the night.

The scope of her story simmered awkwardly between us, like a long-suppressed secret. I reached out and gently took her hand, offering tentative support. She was cold, and the stars above seemed indifferent to our plight, their faraway light oblivious to my unwavering love for her.

"Has he already left?" I asked, split between my desire to be alone with Liliane and wanting her to be happy.

"Yes. Mama forbade me from saying goodbye to him, but I disobeyed her," Liliane admitted, her whisper quavering with emotion. "You don't know how awful it is to make someone you love suffer," she continued. "He was upset; of course he was!"

"How old is he?" I prodded her gently. "What's he like?"

"He's sixteen, but he knows nothing about life," Liliane replied with a sad smile. "No one has ever truly cared about him, except me. Here, I have a small photograph of him," she added, rummaging through her pockets.

She handed me the photograph, and I gazed at the young boy who had tasted the softness of her lips, and who held a cherished place in her heart. His large, pale eyes, like twin pools of moonlit innocence, reflected a youthful hubris, while his dark hair evoked the image of Roman emperor Saloninus.

"He has his father's eyes and cheeks," Liliane noted, "but you can see the sadness in his mouth. He seems to apologise for his very existence on this earth."

Liliane leaned back against the tree, her eyes tracing the constellations in the darkening sky. "At times, I convince myself it would be better if he were dead; then, at least, I would be the only one suffering."

Her hand, tangled in the grass, pulled at the blades absentmindedly. "I can't stand the idea that, at this very moment, he's consumed with worry over me."

"You will see each other again!" I insisted, trying to infuse my words with hope. "You will find each other again because love never dies! One day you'll be adults."

Liliane sighed, the sound mingling with the rustle of leaves and the distant call of a night bird.

"In six years, I will be twenty-one, Emi. That's a long time. At our age, that's too long to wait. No," said Liliane in despair, "I know very well that I'll never see him again."

Never. It was the first time that word struck me with its cursed prophecy, its weight as oppressive as a granite millstone around my neck. Beneath the uncaring, boundless sky, I whispered it to myself, feeling its echoes reverberate in the deepest recesses of my being until the realisation finally pierced through the hazy veil of my cognition with a painful clarity. She will never love me the way I loved her. She will never fathom this all-consuming reverence that has become the very reason for my earthly pilgrimage—the invisible force propelling each breath from my lungs. Never was the sum total of my affection, my unending devotion to her, encapsulated in a single, betraying word.

Each glance she cast at me, each smile that lit up her face but wasn't meant for me, only served to deepen the wound. Every shared minute became a poignant reminder of the growing fracture that lay between us. I desired for nothing more than to bridge that void, to find some way—any way—to make her see the true extent of my feelings. But a deceitful voice within echoed the futility of my love, the hopelessness of my quest.

In vain were such hopes and dreams. For, truly, I knew now with acute yet inescapable simplicity that it was a fruitless endeavour. She simply could never reciprocate what I felt for her. As the immutable laws of nature precluded water from flowing upward or flames from not scorching, so too was this love fated to be eternally unrequited.

This Never became the cruel metric of my adoration, a relentless boundary that delineated my yearning and my sorrow. The more I tried to ignore it, the more this Never tightened its grip on my being, becoming a cage from which there was no escape. It was as if I were trapped in a labyrinth with no exit, each turn leading me back to the same inescapable truth. I was a prisoner of my own heart, shackled by infatuation that would never be reciprocated.

Here we were, sitting side by side, so close that our shoulders brushed, yet worlds apart from one another. Her delicate hand still lay nestled in mine, a fleeting comfort, a ghost of what I longed it to be—innocently entwined with my own. I looked at her profile, and for an instant saw myself reflected in her own heartache and pain.

"When I got home after saying goodbye to him forever," Liliane began, her whisper scarcely more than a revealed confession, "I climbed all the way up, onto the roof of the house. I wanted to jump."

A glacial freeze engulfed us as her admission sank in. "You mean... you wanted to kill yourself?" The words escaped my lips before I could stop them.

She shrugged listlessly. "I stayed there for two hours," her eyes met mine, but her gaze was disengaged, as if adrift in the depths of an infinite, black ocean. "Two hours on the roof to make up my mind, arguing with myself whether to take that final step over the edge. I told myself it didn't matter if I were damned. If God is so unmerciful as to allow this torture, then I want no part of His heaven."

Liliane huddled closer to me, so close I could smell tears and kisses in her hair. "But in the end, I was still afraid. Not of death itself. Quite the opposite, I desperately wished for death. What I truly feared was hell. If I ended up in hell, it would be for eternity, and I would never see Philippe again."

"But Lily, you will see him again in this life!" I insisted, gripping her hand tighter.

She shook her head slowly, dark locks falling across her pallid cheeks. "It's over," she sighed, her tone fatalistic—a steel door slamming shut on all dreams and possibilities.

Suddenly, she stood up. "Let's go back, Emi. I'm cold."

We walked across the lawn in a tense silence, the grass wet with dew beneath our footsteps. Liliane secured Gobert's leash to post before leading me upstairs to her bedroom.

"I didn't admit to Mama that I'd seen Philippe again," she confessed once we were safely behind closed doors. "I don't want to listen to the things she'd say to me."

I hesitated, feeling torn between loyalty to my dearest friend and the obligation placed upon me by her mother. Madame Goulet was a figure who pried into everyone's secret without shame or mercy, and I found it difficult to like her, but she was Liliane's mother.

"She's very worried about you," I finally said, unable to meet her searching gaze.

Liliane sighed, sinking down onto the bed. "Yes, I suppose some misguided sense of maternal concern motivates her actions."

Liliane was the third of six Goulet children and the second-eldest daughter. Her mother, overwhelmed by the demands on her, had rarely had time to fuss over her. From an early age, Liliane had bonded more closely with her brothers, their friends, and cousins, adopting their boyish ways. She had always been seen as mature beyond her years, entrusted with adult responsibilities that few of her age could shoulder.

It occurred to me that Liliane's rebellion was not against her mother or her family, but against the very role she had been assigned to play all her life. I could see it in the way her hands trembled slightly when she spoke of Philippe, in the shadow of defiance that lurked in her eyes. The strain of fulfilling everyone's demands was becoming too much to bear.

As we stood in her room, surrounded by relics of her childhood, I saw not only the strong, resilient girl I had always known, but also the vulnerable, conflicted young woman, weighed by the anguish of persistent misgivings and quelled desires. Liliane was struggling to reclaim her identity, to carve out a space where her own voice could be heard above the clamour of others' wishes and expectations. Only now, in the closing days of our childhood, those foundations of unquestioning obedience were finally beginning to show cracks.