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Introduction
ANTHROPOCENE FUTURES
Over a time span of just a century and a half, humanity has become a formidable geological force of change in its own right, altering the Earth’s atmosphere and natural landscape in ways that are unprecedented. For the first time, the outer limits of Nature’s capacities to adapt to the destruction of its natural cycles of carbon, phosphorous, and nitrogen are in sight (see Rockstrӧm et al. 2009). The overall rate of temperature increase has nearly doubled (NASA Earth Observatory 2015) in the last 50 years. Global average surface temperatures have risen to 0.9 degrees Celsius while in the oceans, warming has occurred from the surface to a depth of roughly 2300 feet where most marine life dwells (National Geographic 2016), causing sea levels to rise. On land, global net yields of stable food crops are declining steadily in direct proportion to temperature increases (see International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, March 2009).
According to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Working Group II Report on Food Security and Food Production Systems (2014b), there is a critical climatic threshold beyond which point essential food crops will not grow. If the current pace in global warming is not decelerated, the likelihood is that climate change will eventually overpower our capacities to adapt and large-scale humanitarian disaster will ensue.1 So grave are these dangers that many scientists believe humanity has entered a new geological age known as the Anthropocene (Oldfield 2015). The core idea of the Anthropocene
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
T. Skillington, Climate Justice and Human Rights, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_1
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is that the climate risks we face today are essentially our own doing. The human species in effect has overtaken other forces of nature to become the most significant driver of destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. Knowledge of this event forces a compelling reframing of more traditional assumptions regarding the relationship between humanity and nature in favour of a cognitive framework that assigns a determining role to humanity in shaping the direction of future changes in the biophysical and biological systems of planet Earth. Humanity is tasked with deciding how the future of this planet will unfold. Not only must an objectivist account of nature’s outer limits and a complementary scientific understanding of its biological, chemical, and physical substance, be mastered, but humanity now must also begin to reflexively engage in a hermeneutic reconstruction of how it has arrived at this point of destruction in its historical development (Strydom 2015)? As the most significant metanarrative of human development in the twenty-first century, the arrival of Anthropocene forces us to think again about how human interests are best defined and the political will found to forge a better system of planetary stewardship for the future (Berkhout 2014: 1).
For Beck (2015), the type of epochal changes that have been ushered in by the Anthropocene have certain ‘emancipatory effects’. For one, the anticipation of grave environmental catastrophes fundamentally alters ways of being in and thinking about this world. Normative horizons of justice and an ethics of care are extended as new scenes of crisis unfold and affect communities everywhere. The type of ‘anthropological shock’ generated by scenes of disaster (e.g., Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Hurricane Sandy, 2012; Typhoon Haiyan, 2013) provokes a deeper reflection on disturbing truths. The international community is forced to face up to the fact that preventable environmental disasters are inflicting untold harm and suffering on the poorest, most vulnerable communities. In this moment of catharsis, the imagination of catastrophe forcibly enters the everyday consciousness of global communities at risk. No longer vague and futuristic, the existential threat of major disaster provokes sentiments of urgency, anxiety, and a growing desire for change. The realization is that a reform of economic, social, political, and legal practices must ensue, even if this realization is no more than a ‘latent side effect’ of attempts to adjust to a series of globally interdependent crises (e.g., severe resource depletion and biodiversity erosion). Norms, imperatives, and cultural ideals of ‘progress’ that have guided the worlds of capitalism for centuries are critically reevaluated through the ‘imagination of a threatening future’ (Beck 2015). 2 T.
Concerned citizens, science experts and environmental groups come together to voice their concerns and call on world leaders to decarbonize the global economy, invest more seriously in sustainable energy systems ($100 billion a year) and adaptation programmes (e.g., see The Earth Statement 2015).
The realization is that to be truly transformative the ‘emancipatory potential’ of climate change catastrophism (Beck 2015) must also be disclosing. It is not enough for publics to express dissatisfaction or frustration with a regulatory system that is clearly failing to deliver on promises of a more sustainable future for all. What is also required is a disclosure of those underlying aspects of modern social life that steer cultural ideals and social practices towards carbon-intensive models of desirable social living and simultaneously away from less ecologically destructive alternatives. An ‘implicatory denial’ (Cohen 2001: 7) of the consequences arising from such lifestyle choices does not deny the wider reality of climate change, but it does suppress any serious debate on the implications of carbonintensive models of social living for the future of the planet. Implicatory denial holds much of the contemporary climate change discourse captive to a metaphysics of presence where the only truly politically relevant subject of justice is a living, proximate one. In many ways, the sheer pervasiveness of this element of short-sightedness makes the Anthropocene a particularly belligerent era in the history of humanity. Its most violent tendencies are reflected in its lack of commitment to reversing ecological damage, in spite of increasing knowledge of the devastation thereby caused. Violence against Nature continues to intensify and reaches monumental proportions as further large-scale extractive ventures (e.g., the pursuit of further, more penetrative deep-sea drilling for minerals, gas, and oil) are enthusiastically welcomed and defended vehemently against the warnings of opponents.
We may commiserate with those who fall victim to some of climate change’s worst effects (e.g., displaced populations), but few concerted attempts are being made at present to address the underlying causes of such peoples’ misfortunes, or alleviate those additional regimes of violence they have to endure when attempting to flee circumstances of poverty and ecological devastation (denied legal entry to safer lands, no recognition in law of their status as refugees and, therefore, as persons entitled to special privileges). Ongoing efforts to deny the ecological, social, and political costs of what has been to date a highly destructive transition to the Anthropocene age are not likely to succeed in the long term. The
critical social actor has played a particularly strategic role in stimulating a logical reconstruction of some of the most problematic elements of the Anthropocene, including an analytical penetration of how its values and ‘norm laden practices’ (Strydom 2015: 286) have managed to sustain a dangerous anthropogenic interference with the planet’s climate system for too long. As initiators of a more reflexive moment in collective selfunderstanding, these social agents challenge the international community to acknowledge what has been largely denied to date—that current rates of depletion of essential resources are not sustainable and that the future survival of humanity requires urgent co-operative action. Various parties may not agree entirely with each other’s interpretation of how such cooperation might best proceed in the future. For those who support the continuation of a predominantly state-bound model of climate justice, for instance, the ‘domestic’ sphere is the preferred location for any deliberation on further co-operation since concentrated forms of co-operation already exist between different interest groups within national settings. Others point to the fact that states are networked into global capitalist economic systems that support transnational corporate bids to privatize as much of the resource commons as possible (e.g., water reserves), and for such reasons, their interests may be in some ways be compromised. The competence and responsibilities of economic agents are said to be so obviously directed towards the pursuit of private profit that proposals regarding further ‘cooperation’ from this quarter are seriously questioned. Certainly, many of the world’s larger corporations have been particularly vocal in their desire to see a reform of property rights to essential resources. Any moves to create a regulatory framework that encourages greater resource sharing as a co-operative ideal may not necessarily be seen from this perspective to be in the best interests of capitalism’s future. In particular, its need to acquire new resource supplies quickly, cheaply, and in a legally pro-efficient manner.
The potential for disagreement on how greater co-operation ought to proceed is considerable and no doubt will continue to be explored as a ‘dynamical object of the commind’ (Pierce 1998: 478) in the years ahead. Nonetheless, the urgencies of such co-operation have encouraged at least some within the international community to turn a more conscious eye towards the ecological present, rather than away from it through a denial of its risk potential. The understanding in this instance is that a more concerted effort must be made to reconfigure the catastrophic dimensions of deteriorating climate conditions as an immanent reality whose trajectory
must be immediately interrupted with a more conscious effort at societal transformation. The critical social actor has played a particularly important role in highlighting the necessity of agency and linking such agency to democracy. Coalitions such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid, or Climate Action Now encourage a ‘thinking forward’ to scenarios where climate adversities are shared and managed more equally among all members of the international community. ‘Now time’ (Benjamin 2003) is said to offer humanity the opportunity to reflect on experiences to date and re-assess what is common to our circumstances. In this moment, new imaginaries of a good and sustainable life are presented, and publics are encouraged to view humanity as ‘the cause of its own advance toward the better’ (Kant [1798] 1957), as much as the cause of its own advance towards ecological destruction.
Ultimately, the realization of a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world cannot be confined to some future project of humanity but rather must be located in the energies, the experiences, and critical reflexive capacities of the ‘now-time’ of the present. Opportunities to make real this alternative future are said to require an equally alternative conception of the historical intelligibility of our civilizational development, a movement away from the current dichotomization of a relatively stable, even if fragile, ecological present confronting a distant and endangered future, to an understanding of how our actions today intricately shape the ‘not yet’ moment of collective futurity. The starting point of this new phase of critical thinking is the realization that we are all trapped in what Beck (2009b: 56) describes as ‘a shared global space of threats—without exit’. Occupying this space in a sort of ‘empty time’ (Benjamin 1968: 261) of ecological destruction, campaign groups argue, will not will these problems away, neither will responding to them through a national defence of difference. The transborder nature of shared ecological problems means that, as a subject of a collective willing, climate solutions cannot be limited de facto to members of one particular community but, rather, must be the concern of a more indefinite commons, in both geographical and generational terms.
It is for the world community to decide whether this moment of uncertainty presages wider conflict, deepening inequality and the erosion of the rule of law, or is used to renew institutions for peace, prosperity and human rights. Now is the time to act…It is within reach. From pragmatic beginnings could emerge a visionary change of direction for the world. (UN 2005: 6)
As the most relevant enclosure of this commons, ‘our endangered planet’ draws the critical actor back to older, more cosmopolitan notions of community where the connectivity of different peoples and species is both transterritorially and transtemporally defined. Already the campaign for greater intergenerational justice is gaining momentum internationally. Governments are coming under pressure to demonstrate their commitment to future inhabitants of this planet as legitimate and rightful subjects of justice and to recognize how their fate is unjustly served by the current reckless borrowing of their environmental capital [see World Future Council 2011; The Cousteau Society (2010: Bill of Rights of Future Generations)]. The challenge now, as various climate justice coalitions point out, is to begin to push such critical reflexive thinking towards creative new ways of imagining and realizing a sustainable Anthropocene future for all. In the face of growing humanitarian crises, practices of sharing limited reserves of precious resources, such as water, can no longer be disregarded as political taboo. The type of radical resource inequalities we see merging today require action, ‘irrespective of whether their elimination involves the movement of resources across national political boundaries’ (Shue 2011: 110). The traditional Rawlsian notion of the world’s various communities of peoples mapping exclusively and neatly onto specific territories and their resource reserves may well prove the exception rather than the rule in the future, as the effects of climate change spread across the politically constructed borders of individual states. Rights to the resources of the global commons have never been defined exclusively along sovereign lines, a point that is proving increasingly important today in political negotiations. As issues of resource entitlement become more politicized, the definitional boundaries of an ‘equitable management’ of humanity’s remaining precious reserves is prised open to international debate. The UN (2012a, b) has made its position in this discourse quite clear. It supports moves towards a greater degree of co-operation among the sovereign communities of this world in the interests of peace and the long-term survival of all of humanity. The definitional boundaries of ‘equitable resource management regimes’, it adds, must be understood creatively. States, it claims, are required to embrace their role as agents of sustainable development and as facilitators of democratic inclusion with equal vigour (UN 2012a: 20).
There is, of course, a notable degree of resistance to do so at present. Particularly tentative is the level of disagreement among various parties: What is actually common about our ‘common future’ (e.g., the
legal value of property rights over more traditional entitlement claims to remaining water reserves, land, energy sources, etc.) as well as how an effective and legally consequential internationally co-ordinated response to climate change can be put in motion? How will the rights of the climate displaced, or those of peoples of sinking states, for example, be situated within a wider social framework of rights, including the rights of others? Do these peoples have a legitimate right to claim safe haven elsewhere on less threatened territories? How will entitlement to compensation be evaluated and in what form will it be distributed? All of these issues require greater ethical consideration on the part of the wider international community and given the immanent nature of threat, serious practical engagement as well. Campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid, and the Mary Robinson Foundation have played a particularly important role in highlighting such issues and in demonstrating how democratic freedoms embedded in legal rights are being actively undermined by the ongoing failure of states to control pollution levels. The current lack of clarification as to the nature of duties and responsibilities calls into question the effectiveness of current governance arrangements when addressing such issues. Before examining some of these problems in more detail, the following section outlines how the major risks posed by climate change have been interpreted by the international community to date and institutional responses developed accordingly.
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SOCIO-COGNITIVE FRAMING OF CLIMATE CHANGE SINCE THE 1990S
International efforts to combat climate change to date have occurred in three main phases. The first came to fruition in the early 1990s when state parties finally agreed to sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ((UNFCCP) 1992), an international treaty obliging states to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would ‘prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ and endorse a principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ according to which more industrialized states would take the lead in cutting emissions, while the less-developed countries would take significant action only in the future (see UNFCCC, Article 3, 1992). By 1995, a second phase in international efforts to address climate change had begun following a meeting of delegates in Berlin. Here negotiating parties agreed to the ‘Berlin Mandate’ outlining a two-year Analytical
and Assessment Phase (AAP) as well as a comprehensive list of actions for states to tackle climate change in the future. By this stage it was already clear that the voluntary emissions reductions agreed upon in Rio were not effective and, therefore, a new stronger level of commitment was required. The subsequent meeting of the parties in Geneva (1997) laid the foundations for more collaborative efforts to begin, but it was the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 that finally set binding targets for GHG reductions for developed states. With the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, state parties now pledged to reduce emissions to agreed safety levels within designated commitment periods (the first period covered the years 2008–2012 while the second runs from January 2013 until the end of 2020).
By 2009, 183 countries had signed the Protocol and agreed to reduce their yearly emissions of carbon, as measured in six GHGs, by amounts averaging 5.2 % by 2012 as compared to 1990 levels. In the years since, some states have opted out of the Protocol (e.g., Canada, Russia (phase two), and Japan), while the USA and Australia decided against becoming a party to this agreement from the outset. For its critics, the Kyoto agreement has unwisely granted concessions on the goal of limiting overall emissions levels and has allowed states to meet their commitments through buying unused capacity from others. When delegates met in Marrakesh in 2001, the general consensus was that the large concessions granted to states in the period from Kyoto to Marrakesh had contributed detrimentally to efforts to reduce overall emissions levels (there has been a 61 % increase in CO2 emissions since 1990 (IPCC 2013)). In spite of a fall in international rates of economic growth, predictions were that emissions levels would either match or eventually exceed those estimated if the plan had been ‘business as usual’. The sad realization was that in the period since the Earth Summit, negotiating parties had failed in their efforts to reduce overall emissions levels. In November 2013, Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, announced its plans to reduce its emissions target for 2020 from 25 % to 3.8 % (i.e., 3.1 % above 1990 levels), having been forced to re-assess its heavy reliance on nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster (The Japan Times 2013). In December 2011, Canada made public its decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol and withdraw its previous commitments to reduce emissions levels to pre-1990 levels. In fact, its emissions levels in 2011 were 33 % higher than those recorded in 1990 (Black 2011). By this period, a third phase in international efforts to address climate change had begun, one that would see a formidable backlash against concerted efforts to reduce global emissions. Generally,
the understanding is that this backlash was not triggered by a weakening of confidence in the science of climate change per se, but rather the realization that alarming rates of global warming required a fundamental shift in values and priorities, one, it seems, many were, for various reasons, unwilling to take.
Although the Bonn-Marrakech Agreement (2002) did allow for punishments to be imposed on those who fail to stay within agreed emissions levels, those punishments cannot be enforced on any state that has not ratified the amendments allowing for punishments to be brought into effect. For critics, international efforts to tackle climate change to date have proven largely ineffective because of insufficient normative pressure being brought to bear on all states to comply with set targets. Earlier pledges to reduce net carbon emissions by 60 % to prevent concentrations in the atmosphere from doubling by the end of the twenty-first century now seem like a distant memory. We are currently on a warming trajectory where a 2°C rise seems immanent, propelling us ‘into completely uncharted waters’ (The Earth Statement 2015) and bringing ‘high risks’ of regional crop failure and severe water shortages in low-latitude, lessdeveloped areas (see IPCC, Climate Change 2014a—Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Global and Sectoral Aspects: 811). The real danger is that continuing political apathy will pave the way for temperature increases far beyond 2°C, resulting in aggregate economic losses and greater food insecurity worldwide. In the lead up to the Paris UN Climate Conference in November 2015, the UN spoke of the importance of devising a practical model of global development that is ‘safe, durable and beneficial to all’. ‘The success of the whole planet’, Fabius (President Designate of COP (Conference of Parties) 21 and CMP 11) adds, depends upon it. It is no longer a matter of doubting the likelihood of these projected futures, but of choosing which one we want to see realized (see Ban Ki-moon 2008).
Several theorists, including Gardiner (2004) and Jamieson (2010a), have tried to understand how the international community has arrived at this point of political stalemate in its attempts at establishing a safe climate future for all peoples. The primary concern of states from the start of climate change negotiations, as they point out, has been the issue of cost effectiveness. Indeed, the emphasis on cost has also shaped the justifications states offer for not complying with set targets in the years since 1992. (e.g., Canada’s Minister for the Environment bemoaning the excessive costs to Canada’s economy of meeting obligations under the Kyoto Protocol ($13.6bn) see Black 2011). With an emphasis on the financial
costs of stringent emissions targets comes an inherent bias towards the interests of present generations (See also Brown 2002). Repeatedly, the issue of economic security is put forwards as the primary reason why the burning of fossil fuels must continue, even as its detrimental effects on climate conditions are acknowledged. Climate justice campaigners point to the fact that moves to unlock remaining reserves of fossil fuels for private capital gain do not add up to a coherent plan for a sustainable future (e.g., the Leave it in the Ground Campaign, The Guardian 2015a). Global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by a record 36 billion metric tons in 2013 (Garside 2013). In the same year, there was a 2.1 % rise in global CO2 emissions levels (Olivier et al. 2015). More than half of the total agreed global carbon budget (a trillion tons of carbon to avoid a temperature rise of over 2°C limit was agreed in Copenhagen in 2009) has already been consumed, leaving a remainder of 450 billion tons. For the internationally agreed 2°C safety limit to be maintained, the majority of the remaining fossil reserves would have to be left in the ground or consumed at a gradual pace to allow the atmosphere to absorb the carbon fossils fuels produced. However, given the lobbying power of gas and oil exploration companies globally, as well as the coal industry in various parts of Eastern Europe, this does not seem likely at present. The substantial benefits derived from consuming the remaining gas, oil, and coal reserves are consistently portrayed as outweighing any catastrophic costs incurred for doing so. In the years since the Kyoto agreement, negotiating parties have tended to base their decisions on new proposals on whether such actions would benefit co-patriots directly. The emphasis throughout has been on the needs and economic interests of present humanity, a bias that has systematically underscored ‘the tragic structure’ of consecutive climate change negotiations since the 1990s (Gardiner 2004). Commitments to reduce emissions levels in the interests of the ‘long-term sustainability of the earth’ have been waning now for some time, a situation with drastic implications for the 45 % of the world’s population who are ‘vulnerable to even minor shifts in natural and social conditions’ (Pogge 2007: 294). Climate change problems call for collaborative action in the interests of all of humanity—something the state communities of this world have shown little enthusiasm for to date. The possibility of realizing a low carbon future has been obstructed by a number of factors: first, the prioritization of cost over human security; second, a pre-occupation with the material needs of some of present humanity and; third, the fact that various forms of state-state domination (e.g., unequal trade agreements,
greater degrees of economic and political clout enjoyed by some) inhibit the capacity and willingness of states to act autonomously (explored in more detail in Chap. 2). All of these factors restrict the likelihood of a more effective co-ordinated response to climate change emerging. Add to these challenges the fact that a significant change in dominant interpretive framings of climate change has occurred since 2008. Unlike earlier decades when the focus was predominantly on the issue of mitigation and from the early 2000s, adaptation to climate change, the emphasis now has moved quite explicitly back to the question of ‘homeland security’ and the serious threat posed by climate change to the long-term viability of state resource reserves, the likely mass displacement of populations in regions subject to severe drought, storms or flooding, a greater incidence of conflict among resource deficient communities, political insurrection, and even terrorism (see US Department of Homeland Security Climate Change Adaptation Report 2010). The dominant interpretive approach of the USA and Russia is to frame climate change as a major national security concern. Similarly, the EU has sought a new ‘preventative security policy’ framework to address the threat posed by ‘destabilized’ regions ‘most affected’ by climate change (see Report from the High Representative of the European Commission to the European Council on Climate Change and International Security, March 2008c). From this dominant security perspective, climate change is now a major ‘threat multiplier’, posing a serious risk to the political and economic integrity of industrialized states. At the same time as reports of conflict among drought-ridden populations in various climate vulnerable regions have inspired states to reread climate change as a high security threat on par with the threat posed by global terrorism and war, the UN has begun to interpret emerging scenarios of humanitarian crises as a stimulus to another type of action—the need to come to the rescue of such people in the name of human rights security.
In March 2008, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 7/23 acknowledging how climate change poses ‘an immediate and far-reaching threat’ to communities around the world and has ‘implications for the full enjoyment of rights’. Climate change was now officially framed as a ‘human rights concern’ for the international community, one in urgent need of ‘a global solution’ (p. 1).2 Also in 2008, the UN Panel on Human Dignity defined global climate change as a ‘priority issue’ for an international community legally obliged to protect all peoples’ right to food, water, settlement, health, and safety. The demonstratable reality of adverse climate effects on vulnerable communities was now officially
acknowledged as a serious challenge to the realization of legal human rights commitments.3 In March 2009, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 10/4 referring to specific regions most at risk and specifying in more detail the various ways in which climate change affects the enjoyment of rights, both directly and indirectly. The strong likelihood of humanitarian disaster was said to justify a pre-emptive move to ensure that human rights commitments would be upheld in the future. In December 2010, the outcome document of the COP in Cancún made explicit reference to Human Rights Council Resolution 10/4 and stressed that ‘parties should in all climate change-related actions, fully respect human rights’ (Decision 1/CP.16, 2010). On September 30, 2011, the Human Rights Council adopted another resolution (18/22) on ‘human rights and climate change’, tabled by the Philippines and Bangladesh, with the support of 43 co-sponsors, including the Maldives, Germany, and Spain. This new resolution referred to the effects of climate change on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation and recalled how ‘in no instance should a people be deprived of their means of subsistence’. Pursuant to resolution 18/22, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) convened a seminar in February 2012 addressing in more detail the adverse impacts of climate change on the full enjoyment of rights. A summary report was presented at the June 2012 session of the council and was made available to the 18th session of the COP to the UNFCCC (COP18) in Doha, Qatar (November–December 2012). In February 2015 at the UNFCCC ADP meeting in Geneva, Costa Rica led the Geneva Pledge for Human Rights in Climate Action. Signed by 18 countries, this pledge recognizes the importance of integrating human rights commitments into climate action programmes for the future, a move, it adds, that can only be achieved ‘through participation, sustainability transparency, accountability, education and access to information’.4 The following month, the Human Rights Council hosted two discussion panels dedicated to the issue of climate change and its human rights implications. Speakers included the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change, Mary Robinson, who also noted how a more explicit ‘human rights framing to our development and climate responses’ in recent years has encouraged a greater focus on the importance of ‘inclusion, participation and equality’. Also speaking at this event, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vitoria Tauli-Corpuz, drew attention to the significance of this discussion to indigenous communities and their right to be included in decision-
making on issues that centrally affects their lives. An interactive dialogue with civil society groups followed these discussion panels where again a common emphasis was placed on the importance of the right of publics to participation in decision-making on climate change policies, as well as a recognition of the impact of climate change on their economic, social and human rights.5
Various agencies attached to the UN have played a particularly important role in drawing international attention to the human rights implications of climate change. However, it would be a mistake for us to assume, as the International Council on Human Rights Policy (2012: 1) points out, that they have acted alone in this regard. A broad range of civil society organizations have also played a prominent role, including a number of high-profile legal agencies supporting the campaigns of local communities affected by climate change. One such actor is Leigh Day. Established in 1987, this legal actor has fought and won several cases against corporate giants such as Shell, BP, Anglo-American, and Unilever, forging, in the process, a reputation for being a fierce defender of the human rights of those deeply affected by corporate pollution activities (Vidal 2015). Another legal actor advocating a human rights approach is the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Since it was founded in 1989, the CIEL has assisted the various campaigns of ‘public interest movements around the world’ with a view to extending the relevance of ‘international law and institutions’ to the creation of ‘a just and sustainable society’ (CIEL 2007). In December 2005, the CIEL assisted the Inuit people in making a submission to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights detailing how their traditional way of life in the Arctic and the natural resource wealth upon which they depend were being undermined by global warming. The communication requested the Inter-American Commission to investigate its claims and to declare the USA as ‘in violation of rights affirmed in the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other instruments of International Law’, including the right to life (Article I), residence (Article VIII), and the preservation of health and well-being (Article XI) due to its failure to control emissions of GHGs. The Inter-American Commission ultimately decided not to pursue the Inuit Petition as a contested case on the grounds that it did not demonstrate sufficient evidence of a violation of rights protected in the American Declaration. It did, however, invite the petitioners to testify at an information hearing (without an outcome) on March 1, 2007, examining the relationship between global warming and human rights.6 In September
2008, the CIEL assisted the people of the Maldives in making a submission to the OHCHR outlining how the collective failures of the international community to reduce emissions to safe levels has led to extensive human rights violations.7 Other states, however, took a different view of the situation. The USA in its submission to the OHCHR explained how it did ‘not share the view that an environment-related human right exists under international law and indeed the sheer number of different formulations of this “right” is indicative of the fact that it does not have a basis in international law…neither the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights nor any other universal human rights treaty of which the United States is aware provides for such rights’ (Observations by the United States of America on the Relationship between Climate Change and Human Rights 2009: 3). It, therefore, advised against the international community taking a human rights–based approach to climate protection on the grounds that it is ‘unlikely to be effective’ (Observations by the United States of America on the Relationship between Climate Change and Human Rights 2009: 1).8 In the run-up to the Paris Agreement, the USA again voiced its concerns, expressing particular unease with more protracted references to human rights and the likelihood of this discourse ‘sabotaging’ a 2015 climate agreement (Duyck 2015). In spite of some states’ reservations about the alignment of human rights with climate change issues and their decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (or be bound legally by its terms), it doubtful as to whether these same states can opt out of their human rights commitments.
An increasing number of human rights, including rights to selfdetermination, the right to life, and development are seen as peremptory international law (ius cogens) and in that prevail over any climate treaty law (including that emerging from the UNFCCC process). Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties explains how ‘a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character’.9 In recognition of the ‘higher authority’ of international human rights law, the Cancún Agreement, for instance, requires that all climate-related actions and agreements under the UNFCCC process from heretofore respects human rights law.10 According to this clarification, any disagreements that may arise regarding the terms of environmental agreements do not in any way take from, or undermine the higher authority of human rights law
to which all states are aligned constitutionally (and with which they are legally obliged to comply). However, that is not to say that there can be no overlap between environmental treaties and human rights legislation. The principles of the former may be interpreted in accordance with obligations stemming from the latter. This clarification potentially has serious implications for future climate action, and as human rights continue to become an ever more prominent element of international climate change negotiations, it is likely they will prove increasingly important to the process of ensuring the legal compliance of all members of the international community with agreed emissions targets in the future.
Legal actors such as CIEL and Leigh Day point to the significant potential offered by existing legal mechanisms to form legitimate, human rights–based claims against major polluters and to practices of upholding the rights of communities to accountability for harms caused to their health, well-being, and natural resource supplies. The campaign efforts of these actors do not stop at a diagnostic critique of corporate or state pollution practices and their corrupt political and economic dealings. They also encompass an important reconstructive critique of how peoples’ human rights can be better protected when aligned with institutionally activated political rights to participation, information, transparency in decision-making, freedom from interference, and so on. The existing legal regime and its accompanying standards, procedures, methods, and values are, therefore, seen to provide certain opportunities for a closer alignment to be established between democratic rights and human rights. Indeed, this has been one of the most important societal contributions of these actors to date—the notion that it is possible for communities to generate a transformative moment in non-ideal justice arrangements via democratic legal processes. For these actors, the Anthropocene is a world capable of reshaping its future through a critical reflexive learning as to the ongoing legal and social value of human rights and democratic freedoms. It is a world that, in spite of its destructive tendencies, is capable of regenerating democratic potentials through legal and political institutional means, if the collective will to do so is present, a perspective expressed recently by Vinuta Gopal (2015), Executive Director of Greenpeace India:
…the power we need to challenge is one of our own making, an all-powerful government we all elected, and in which we invested collective hope. A government that promised good governance and development for all…we
[must] hold it to the commitment it signed up to, of truly representing us (Vinuta Gopal, Greenpeace India, August 14, 2015).
A strong ethical assertion is being made here as to the importance of further activating political rights and, specifically, the need to address violations of these rights. The wider social and political currency of democratic freedoms provides these actors with a foundation not only for affirming the value of democratic liberties to our society, but also for taking an interest in the freedoms and rights of others (e.g., communities in the developing world, indigenous communities in the Arctic, and future peoples). A greater consciousness also of the human rights implications of climate justice has triggered an important conceptual transformation of the language of climate change discourse more recently. It has proven particularly important to the coalition-building efforts of environmental groups and legal activists who together explore how principles already embedded in law can be applied to new scenarios of injustice, including a principle of resource equity [see UNFCCC, supra note 15, art. 3(1); see also International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), supra note 16, art. 2(2)], as well as a ‘do no harm’ principle [established originally in the Trail Smelter Case (U.S. v. Can.), 1941], in a manner that combines them with human (e.g., a right to life or development) and political rights legal norms (a right to participation). Collectively, these efforts illustrate how law continues to offer powerful normative tools that campaign actors can use to appraise the inadequacies of current resource consumption and management arrangements, as well as decision-making procedures.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on occasion has found such rights violated by polluting parties. For instance, in the case of LopezOstra v. Spain, it ruled that the pollution and fumes from a particular waste treatment plant forced the plaintiffs to move from their homes [20EHRR 277, ECHR 16798/90 (1994)]. In the case of Oneryildiz v. Turkey [Eur. Ct. H.R. 20 (2005)], the European Court ruled that Turkey had failed to take measures to maintain a healthy environment and prevent an explosion at a waste dump and in that had violated the right to life (protected in Article II of the ECHR). The decision in this case opened the door subsequently for further findings by the European Court that environmental damage violates human rights (e.g., Dubetska and Others v. Ukraine (2011)—violation of Article 8 ECHR the right to privacy and family life) (see ECHR Environment Cases 2015). Similarly, the African Commission
on Human and Peoples’ Rights has begun to recognize polluting practices as a violation of human rights to life, health, and property, all of which are protected under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In its 2001 ruling in the Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC) v. Nigeria, the African Commission ruled that Nigeria’s participation in and failure to stop extensive oil spills and water contamination violated the Ogoni peoples’ right to life, health, and property, among other rights. More recently, the District Court of The Hague (June 2015), referring to obligations embedded in the European Convention on Human Rights and those incorporated in the Dutch constitution (e.g., Article 21 referring to the state’s duty to safeguard the living environment), ordered the Netherlands to reduce its GHG emissions by 25 % by the end of 2020 (see Case C/09/456689/HA ZA 13-1396). It claimed the Dutch state’s failure to reduce emissions levels represented a breach of both European and national law. The Urgenda Foundation, along with 900 co-plaintiffs, originally filed a case against the Dutch state in 2013 on the grounds that it had failed in its basic function, that is, to protect its citizens and for such reasons, it had no choice but to seek such protection from a court of law.11
By grounding social representations of the human costs of contemporary climate destruction in the collectively shared language of human rights, legal campaigns have furthered the cause for greater institutional accountability and responsibility for environmental wrongdoing. According to existing human rights legislation, those whose human rights have been violated are entitled to effective remedies in the form of compensation for damages incurred, as well as aid to prevent further harm. More recently (ruling of The Hague Court), a legal argument has been made that communities are entitled to see states honour their commitments to reduce emissions levels.12 Human rights are proving to be an evermore prominent component of the socio-political and legal-normative interface that regulates engagements between the various peoples of this world. They are also, simultaneously, the crucibles (Tarrow 1992) out of which newer understandings of justice and democracy are being forged in response to the ecological challenges that are peculiar to the Anthropocene age. For climate justice campaigners the project of emancipation remains that of the realization of an underlying, if somewhat frustrated, potential for democracy and freedom. Legal cases prove important opportunities to learn how a socio-cultural elaboration of the principles of justice, equality, and right continue to evolve in the contemporary world.
The good news is that our judiciary is remaining strong and independent and continuing to hold out hope for us all (Gopal, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace India, 2015).
However, the realization also is that we are only free to engage in a transformative praxis to the extent that we are free members of democratic societies. As Gopal (2015) further explains, publics must continue ‘to ask questions, voice opinions, and speak up in defense of those—like us—who dare to disagree with those in power. People have begun to reclaim the belief that dissent is vital in a democracy’. For ActionAid (2012c), such freedoms begin at a rudimentary level and at an early stage within the micro contexts of everyday social life.
So just as much as we can demand that our rights be fulfilled, we also have an obligation to make sure that we live up to human rights standards in our own behavior to others. This calls for tolerance, compromise, gender equality and empathy—the ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives. These values must be reflected in meetings where people have the confidence to speak out, listen carefully and respond respectfully to one another; it must be reflected in the way government officers interact with citizens, in schools where teachers must respect students, in civil society organisations where leaders must respect their members and in the family where men and women, young and old, must respect one another. Learning about democracy and human rights is one thing, but to live out these values is quite another challenge (ActionAid 2012: 7).
Honneth (2014: 131–255) similarly draws attention to the importance of building solid social foundations for freedom, tolerance, and respect for the perspective of others. Individuals, he adds, can perform the type of reflexive acts required for the creation of democratic societies only if they interact socially with others who do the same. Socially embedded practices of freedom are thought to be shaped initially by the institutions of the family, the school system, employment, as well as friendships, intimate relationships, and wider civil society engagement. It is here that the foundations of a reciprocal freedom are nurtured. Today the potential to foster a socially embedded culture of freedom is enhanced further by new communications technologies, which at least hold out the possibility of a greater reciprocal exploration of social freedoms well beyond the confines of local context. Public perceptions of global climate risk have come to be heavily shaped by new technologically mediated spaces of global communication, spaces that transnational climate justice campaigners have
utilized very effectively to globalize their messages of protest (e.g., Twitter, facebook campaigns) and build solidarity networks that reach across multiple settings, adding a distinctly ‘glocal’ (Robertson 1992; Beck 2002: 23) dimension to their campaign activities.
The global public domain created by such technologies allows for a freer expression of human interests. Knowledge of climate change today exists in predominantly transnational forms and is interpreted and reinterpreted by a whole variety of actors, including climate justice movements within, across, and beyond individual states. Many thinkers, including Paehlke (2011: 144), remain optimistic that a more decentralized action plan on climate change will eventually emerge as the normative pressure created by dispersed networks of aggrieved publics campaigning on a variety of issues continues to grow. Across the EU, Australia, the USA, Russia, India, and China, mini-publics emerge encouraging new divisions to arise between official government responses to climate risk (i.e., directed largely at the question of border security and an exclusion of the other) and more cosmopolitan communities whose liberating prerogative is the forging of new imaginaries of political belonging and civic solidarity with globally dispersed others campaigning for justice on similar issues (e.g., efforts to build cosmopolitan communities of resource justice). Such developments reflect a ‘cosmopolitanization’ of the global risk society (Beck 2008: 29), where community alliances begin to extend outwards beyond the nation state to form more internationally distributed configurations of political communication and action. For instance, those engaged in campaigns to protect the atmospheric commons, or those who align with ‘common struggles to build real solutions to the global climate crisis’ (see Climate Justice Now 2009).
From disenchanted urban middle-class youth, to disenfranchised tribal elders. From firebrand activists to philanthropic foundations. From petition signers to panchayats to pensioners. We’ve all had our voices ignored, diminished, curtailed or stifled. But not for long (Vinuta Gopal, Co-Executive Director of Greenpeace India, 2015).
One significant effect of these cosmopolitan communities’ efforts has been their capacity to stimulate an increased propensity among publics more generally for cognitive liberation, or the reconceptualization in the minds of publics of ‘unintended’ acts of ecological destruction as deliberate episodes of harm, arbitrary interference, and blatant injustice (Skillington 2012a). Transnational in scope and somewhat more versatile than their traditional domestic counterparts, globally sustained communities of
protest have gradually transformed the way publics think more generally about the causes and consequences of climate change and, in the process, have helped to resituate the state within a broader framework of culpability and democratic accountability.
POLLUTION PRACTICES AS PRACTICES OF DOMINATION
Cognitive liberation has allowed publics to see that those who pollute the atmosphere at excessive rates and in full knowledge of the consequences of doing so interfere arbitrarily with the choices of others to live in a safe and sustainable environment. In the process, practices of excessive pollution come to be seen as practices of domination. For Pettit (2010: 73), domination is a relationship in which one actor exerts ‘a power of arbitrary interference’ over the choices of another. Interference is experienced in various forms, including, though not limited to, an obstruction of everyday community life (through a pollution of vital water reserves, for instance), deception (e.g., cover-up of polluting activities or the dangers of chemical released into local water supplies), coercion (new energy exploration projects promoted without the full consent of local communities), or the manipulation of the terms of trade agreements between states. In the absence of a sufficiently open reasoning ensuring the power of choice, as well as channels of mutual control, poor and more economically vulnerable communities are unable to exert sufficient control over choices on resource management and distribution (e.g., land leasing arrangements with large global corporations). Foreign parties, for example, may come to exercise a form of ‘alien control’ over such communities, exerting their power through interference (e.g., upstream states overconsuming shared water reserves), as well as political and/or economic intimidation. Transnational economic institutions who dictate the terms of bailout agreements (e.g., the International Monetary Fund) also exercise a form of domination by restricting the degree to which developing countries and transnational organizations occupy common spaces of unhindered reason and relationships of mutual respect and freedom can prevail. The real implications of such relations of domination, in all their variety, are in terms of their impact on individual human lives.
In opposition to relations of domination, human rights principles take as given the notion that each individual is free to make choices and form beliefs in a reason-sensitive manner, as well as establish through ongoing
communicative exchange, projects of mutual co-operation and respectful gain. Acts of excessive pollution are interpreted by the climate justice actor as a deliberate interference with such freedoms and the self-realization capacities of the individual. Individuals are denied not only choices in terms of their future but even more fundamentally, the capacity to realize a future of security. Those who today face the destruction of their lands and homes due to rising sea levels or prolonged periods of drought find no solace in the unimplemented words of the UNFCCC (1992) that ‘the specific needs and special circumstances of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change’ will be ‘given full consideration’ (UNFCCC 1992, Article 3: 4). Similarly, the UN’s ideal of ‘larger freedom’ (1945) occasionally draws criticism from some who claim that, in truth, there are no exact achievements of this ideal and that the best we can hope for is that representative political regimes will work towards trying to reduce inequalities and tendencies towards domination. Nonetheless, larger freedom remains a highly significant motivating impulse towards transformative action for those campaigning against ‘the scandal’ that is global poverty and pollution (Christian Aid 2012) and defending the rights and freedoms of all victims of ‘economic and ecological crimes’ (Westra 2009). For these actors, larger freedom can be realized if the political will to do so is truly collective.
In the reasoning of climate justice campaigners is the understanding that the achievement of ‘larger freedom’ requires the actualization of the full range of human rights, as well as political rights to ‘free, prior informed consent’, ‘equitable benefits’, and ‘effective participation’ in decision-making processes whose outcomes profoundly affect their quality of life (CIEL 2012: 17–18). Just as campaigns for a greater recognition of the civil and political rights of marginalized peoples in the past were grounded in concerns about imbalances in power, today similar concerns are expressed in relation to the disproportionate amount of power yielded by global corporate giants and more economically dominant states. The domination exercised by these actors over communities everywhere overshadows a recognition of ‘the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’ (see International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966). Populations have a right to security from the type of excessive pollution generated by these actors and the risks that follow, including a greater threat of storm surges, drought, land degradation, crop failure, and so on and further, loss of income, home, health, and dignity. Growing numbers
are threatened by a loss of rights to property, access to essential sources of food, water, as well as a basic means of subsistence. More still are denied a right to preserve the natural wealth and long-term viability of their territories (e.g., the peoples of disappearing states), placing the ‘equal rights and self-determination’ of such peoples in serious jeopardy (UN Charter Article 1(2), 1945). Columbia and Nigeria have already taken steps to protect their populations’ right to a clean environment by placing it under constitutional guarantee. Citizens can now claim the impact of climate change as a violation of their civil and political rights to life, home, dignity, and personal security.
Climate justice coalitions point to the fact that such domination is not restricted to living communities. Climate powers also exert considerable control over humanity’s capacities for a sustainable future. Inadequate reserves of essential resources are being set aside for generations to come, thereby threatening the resource base of future humanity. The quality of life enjoyed by descendants of present humanity depends on the latter’s choices and willingness to act responsibly on the basis of knowledge of the determining role they play in shaping the future of this planet. Growing awareness of the consequences of large-scale resource depletion means that our choices can no longer be justified by a ‘veil of ignorance’ regarding future outcomes. Instead, the expectation must be that present humanity will work towards securing the ‘larger freedoms’ of future humanity by actualizing a principle of non-domination (Pettit 2010: 88) when deciding on energy policy or rates of carbon consumption, for instance. For future generations to enjoy their status as independent and free subjects, their capacity to do so must be protected.
Such protection requires that the ‘who’ in justice deliberation be extended (Fraser 2010: 31) to include hypothetical peoples of the future. The intrinsically border-crossing dimensions of an intergenerational climate justice require a broader range perspective where the ideological injustice of historically embedded conceptions of justice is finally challenged and generations are forced to think in less self-interested terms. As Rawls puts it, justice requires that ‘for anyone in the next generation, there is someone who cares about him [or her] in the previous generation’ (Rawls 1971: 129; see also Held 1995: 98–101). One of the great injustices of the present age is the lack of concern for the resource needs of future humanity, a subject of justice that has been unfairly ignored until now, according to campaigners such as the World
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XVII
René a, en conscience, rempli la mission dont Mademoiselle l’avait chargé. Il a questionné, adroit et discret, autant qu’un vieux policier ; et il connaît maintenant tous les potins — vrais ou faux — qui circulent sur le ménage de Vausennes. Il n’ignore plus que madame est l’épouse très coquette, réputée pour de légères aventures, — assez voilées en effet pour ne lui avoir pas enlevé sa qualité de femme du monde ; — l’épouse d’un mari qui aime vraiment trop, pour la sécurité de son foyer, les voyages d’exploration. Tout adonné à ses curiosités géographiques, il paraît désintéressé absolument des curiosités sentimentales et autres de sa femme qui tient une place fort menue en son existence de travailleur.
Leur fille Régine a toutes les chances pour être, dans l’avenir, une seconde édition de la mère. Les garçons poussent au petit bonheur dans un foyer où chacun pratique, avant tout, la loi du bon plaisir.
Ces divers renseignements, donnés avec détails, ont rempli René d’une vertueuse indignation contre sa sœur qui accepte des relations avec une femme tarée et laisse Guillemette fréquenter un pareil milieu.
Il a préféré ne point manifester son sentiment à son beau-frère, parce qu’entre hommes, les propos peuvent aisément prendre une gravité fâcheuse en la circonstance. Mais rentré de Trouville à
l’heure du chien et loup et trouvant, par extraordinaire, sa sœur seule à travailler devant son métier — une série d’invités vient de disparaître ; Guillemette est en auto avec son père… — il part résolument en guerre car il estime que c’est son devoir… Peut-être sa sœur ignore-t-elle, en somme, ce qui se dit de Mme de Vausennes… Alors, elle doit être avertie.
Et il interroge :
— Marie, est-ce que tu connais beaucoup les de Vausennes ?
Étonnée de la question, elle s’arrête de broder :
— Qu’appelles-tu « beaucoup » ?… Il y a plusieurs années que nous les voyons… nos filles avaient été au cours et au catéchisme ensemble ; et ils sont nos voisins de campagne. Pourquoi me demandes-tu cela ?
Il a une hésitation… Le rôle d’accusateur lui est odieux… Et Mme Seyntis a l’air si loin de se douter où il veut en venir ! Elle répète, piquant avec soin son aiguille :
— Pourquoi ? René.
La pensée qu’il s’agit du bien de Guillemette balaie son hésitation. Et son accent a une fermeté presque dure quand il répond :
— Parce que j’ai entendu tenir sur le compte de Mme de Vausennes certains propos qui m’ont fait trouver très surprenant que tu la voies.
Mme Seyntis conserve toute sa sérénité :
— Mon pauvre ami, on raconte tant de choses ! C’est parce que tu arrives d’Afrique que tu prends garde à ces potinages ! Moi, il y a bien longtemps que j’ai renoncé à le faire…
René sent que la bonté naturelle et la charité évangélique de Mme Seyntis lui mettent sur les yeux un bandeau singulièrement opaque.
— Alors, tu ne crois pas, Marie, qu’il puisse y avoir jamais quelque chose de vrai dans ces potinages, comme tu dis ?
— En ce qui concerne Mme de Vausennes, non vraiment, je ne le crois pas… Je t’accorde qu’elle est, pour mon goût, trop mondaine ; que peut-être, il n’y a pas, dans sa tenue, la réserve qui fait qu’une femme ne peut jamais être mal jugée ; mais de même que mon mari, je la tiens surtout pour une aimable personne avec qui les relations sont agréables.
Ici, un silence. Dans la pièce voisine, en entend les gammes rageuses de Mad et la voix assourdie de Mademoiselle qui proteste contre les notes fausses.
— Soit, Marie, l’opinion que Mme de Vausennes donne d’ellemême est fausse… Après tout, je ne demande pas mieux que de l’admettre !… Et je reconnais que toi-même, tu es assez impeccable…
Mme Seyntis a un geste instinctif de protestation modeste.
— Assez impeccable pour ne pas avoir à redouter certaines relations. Mais tout le monde n’a pas ton indulgence pour juger… cette dame et son milieu. C’est pourquoi je regrette très fort que Guillemette puisse y être rencontrée. Va chez elle si cela te convient, mais, crois-moi, n’y envoie pas ta fille !
Cette fois Mme Seyntis ne songe plus à bien ombrer ses fleurs, et reste, au contraire, l’aiguille en l’air. Elle est troublée, envahie secrètement par la crainte de s’être mise en faute… Ce qui lui est très désagréable.
— Mais que veux-tu dire ? René ; que t’a-t-on raconté ?
— Certaines… anecdotes qui m’ont prouvé que la maison de Mme de Vausennes n’est pas de celles où puisse être vue une fille bien élevée comme la tienne ; car les habitudes, les conversations, les hôtes doivent lui en demeurer totalement étrangers.
— Comment le sais-tu ? A peine, tu es allé deux ou trois fois chez elle.
Brièvement, il dit :
— Une personne qui porte un sincère intérêt à Guillemette m’a parlé à ce sujet et m’a prié de t’avertir de ce que tu ignorais sans
doute.
Mme Seyntis a joint les mains sur le rebord de son métier et regarde, perplexe et désolée, les lointains de la mer qui se voilent sous le crépuscule de septembre. Dépitée, elle s’écrie dans son désarroi :
— Mais enfin, Mme de Vausennes n’a pas plus mauvais genre, à sa façon, que Nicole, par exemple… Nicole, que tu considères comme une femme du monde… que je reçois… Après tout, ta rigidité trouve peut-être que j’ai tort de le faire !
René a un involontaire geste d’irritation.
Il lui demeure insupportable d’entendre blâmer Nicole. De son amour autrefois, il lui reste au cœur une pitié tendre pour elle, un désir de la protéger contre elle-même et les autres… Et à l’attaque de sa sœur, il répond :
— Pourquoi la repousserais-tu ? la pauvre Nicole. Elle est tant à plaindre… si jeune et si seule…
Quelque chose dans l’accent de son frère éveille chez la douce Mme Seyntis des instincts combattifs :
— Seule ? Elle a des parents excellents, dévoués, qui ne demandent qu’à être toujours auprès d’elle !…
— Oui… mais ce ne sont pas ses parents qui devraient se trouver près d’elle…
— Son mari, veux-tu dire ? Pour ce qu’elle tient à lui ! Elle se laisse consoler, en tous cas, de leur rupture !… Mais ce n’est pas de Nicole qu’il s’agit !
— Non, c’est de Guillemette.
— Oui, de Guillemette que tu crois devoir honorer de ta protection puisque, à ton gré, son père et moi ne suffisons pas à cette tâche.
Il lui jette un coup d’œil stupéfait. Sa sœur presque agressive, c’est pour lui une inconnue. Il a l’intuition que, dans son amourpropre maternel, elle est froissée, inconsciemment jalouse… De
quoi ? de la preuve de sollicitude qu’il vient de donner à Guillemette ?
— Marie, il est impossible que, sérieusement, tu me saches mauvais gré de prendre intérêt à ta fille ?
— Je trouve seulement que tu es peut-être encore un peu jeune pour jouer auprès d’elle ce rôle superflu de tuteur… Voilà tout…
II éprouve la bizarre impression d’un choc violent qui le blesse. Repoussant son fauteuil, il se lève :
— Si tu penses cela, Marie, il ne me reste plus qu’à te prier de recevoir mes excuses pour m’être mêlé de ce qui ne me regardait pas, en effet… Je croyais que mon affection pour tes enfants, pour ta fille, m’autorisait à être à leur égard une espèce de frère aîné. Je me suis trompé. N’en parlons plus !
L’accent de René calme soudain l’irritation de Mme Seyntis ; la confusion l’envahit pour les paroles qu’un obscur élan a fait jaillir de sa pensée.
Elle tend la main vers son frère.
— René, ne sois pas susceptible… J’ai été trop vive, mais, tu comprends, j’étais si bouleversée de ce que tu m’apprenais… et dont je ferai mon profit !
Il sent la sincérité de ce regret et ne repousse pas la main conciliante qui vient à lui. Toutefois la secrète blessure que lui ont faite les paroles de sa sœur garde son acuité. La voix brève, parce qu’il fait effort sur lui-même, il répond :
— Tu agiras, Marie, comme tu le jugeras bon. Le rôle malencontreux que j’ai dû remplir est achevé… Tu es avertie de ce que tu ignorais…
— Oh ! oui, de ce que j’ignorais ! avoue-t-elle, remplie de componction… Moi qui veille si soigneusement sur ma Guillemette ! Ah ! grâce à Dieu ! elle n’est encore qu’une petite fille et il me reste quelques bonnes années pour la conserver près de moi… Oh ! non, nous ne voulons pas la marier de bonne heure !… Et heureusement, elle ne le souhaite pas du tout…
René ne répond rien. Son visage a des lignes d’une fermeté presque dure, dans l’ombre qui s’empare insensiblement du salon. C’est vrai, Guillemette ne paraît nullement désireuse de donner son âme. Elle a encore le rire insouciant des petites filles. Mais combien de mois, de jours, demeurera-t-elle ainsi ?
Quoi qu’en dise sa mère, elle est à l’âge où il suffit du hasard d’une rencontre pour que l’étincelle jaillisse… Et soudain, dans son cerveau, s’anime la vision d’une Guillemette devenue femme, ayant aux lèvres, dans les yeux, le je ne sais quoi d’incomparable que l’amour y fait luire.
Et cette Guillemette-là possède le charme troublant de Nicole…
René a un léger sursaut, en entendant sa sœur dire, la voix amicale, avec un désir évident d’effacer sa fâcheuse sortie :
— Bien avant d’aller au mariage de Guillemette, nous irons au tien, mon cher grand… Et je voudrais de tout cœur que ce fût bientôt…
Un geste d’impatience échappe à René et il se met à arpenter la pièce que le crépuscule ombre d’une cendre grise.
— Oh ! Marie, Marie, je t’en supplie, ne me persécute pas ainsi…
— Mais, mon ami, je ne veux que ton bonheur, tu le sais bien ! Quand tu es arrivé en France, tu paraissais tellement désireux de te créer bien vite un foyer !
Il s’adosse à la cheminée, les bras croisés :
— Quand je suis arrivé en France, j’étais devenu quelque peu un sauvage, j’imagine ; par suite, un être très primitif et j’étais naïvement persuadé que rien ne me serait plus facile que de rencontrer la jeune fille pourvue de qualités de tout repos qui répondrait à mon idéal de l’épouse…
— Eh bien ?
— Eh bien, en m’abandonnant à cette illusion, j’étais parfaitement aveugle et j’en suis aujourd’hui bien convaincu !
Elle arrête sur lui des yeux saisis et, dans l’ombre grandissante, cherche à deviner sa pensée sur son visage.
— René, tu plaisantes ? n’est-ce pas…
— Ah ! nullement, et je t’assure que je n’en ai guère l’envie… Depuis six semaines, tu fais défiler devant moi un certain nombre de jeunes personnes parmi lesquelles, évidemment, j’avais toute sorte de chances pour découvrir l’élue ; eh bien, à cette épreuve, tout mon enthousiasme, mon ardeur, ma confiance sont tombés… Et je n’ai que le désir de demeurer dans ma solitude… du moins, quelque temps encore !
— Oh ! René, tu me désorientes tout à fait… Car enfin Louise de Mussy, Suzanne Danville sont parfaites et tu n’aurais qu’un mot à dire…
— Ah ! leur perfection ne m’en donne guère envie… Elles me produisent l’effet de modèles de vertu… non de femmes…
— René !… Mais René !!! je ne te reconnais plus !
— Moi non plus, je ne me reconnais plus ! La vie de France est en train de me compliquer de façon déplorable !
Mme Seyntis ne relève pas ces incompréhensibles paroles, car un coup discret est frappé à la porte et le maître d’hôtel, apparaissant, demande :
— Madame veut-elle que la cloche du dîner soit sonnée bien que Monsieur et Mademoiselle ne soient pas encore rentrés ?
— Sonner la cloche ?… Est-il donc l’heure déjà ?
— Oh ! oui, madame, l’heure passée…
Toute à sa conversation avec René, en effet, Mme Seyntis n’a pas pris garde que le temps fuyait. Une sourde anxiété l’étreint :
— Comment, Raymond et Guillemette ne sont pas ici, à plus de sept heures ? Et pourtant Raymond n’aime pas à rentrer à la nuit en cette saison ! Mon Dieu, pourvu qu’il ne leur soit rien arrivé ! Oh ! ces autos !…
La même inquiétude a traversé l’esprit de René. Que sait-on ? Aussi bien, il peut s’agir d’un simple retard amené par quelque cause banale, comme de l’un de ces accidents qui sont des
catastrophes… Brutalement, une seconde, il voit Guillemette inerte, blessée, plus peut-être. Ah ! tout plutôt que cela !
Mais il se raidit aussitôt, surpris et impatient de ce brusque désarroi de ses nerfs. Où donc est le sang-froid qu’aucun danger n’a jamais pu altérer en lui ?… Pourquoi tout de suite imaginer un malheur ?… C’est absurde !
Absurde, soit. Mais le calme ne revient pas en sa pensée quoiqu’il n’en trahisse rien, pour ne pas ajouter à l’émoi de Mme Seyntis qu’il voit grandir… Et chez lui aussi, l’inquiétude monte silencieusement avec les minutes qui s’enfuient et emportent la sécurité où sa volonté prétendait le maintenir ; — alors qu’il a perdu cette sécurité au moment même où il apprenait le retard inexpliqué…
— Oh ! René, ne trouves-tu pas bien… singulier qu’ils ne soient pas encore de retour ?… Pourquoi ? Qu’a-t-il pu arriver ?
Il essaie de la rassurer, — avec la conscience que les paroles sont tellement vaines ! Ses yeux ne quittent plus les aiguilles de la pendule qui marquent huit heures un quart.
André, Mad et Mademoiselle sont entrés dans le salon, comme chaque soir, pour attendre le dîner. Mademoiselle est remplie de compassion pour Mme Seyntis et lui adresse de pieuses paroles réconfortantes. Mad est prête à pleurer, et André impatiente sa mère avec ses assurances juvéniles que, bien sûr, rien du tout n’est à craindre, qu’il est tout à fait inutile de se tourmenter, etc.
Et les minutes fuient toujours.
René, ayant pitié de sa sœur, la laisse aller sur la terrasse inspecter la route ; lui-même sort, dévoré d’un besoin instinctif d’activité, d’une soif de faire quelque chose… Quoi ? Où aller les chercher ? Comment savoir ?…
La nuit est absolue, une de ces nuits de septembre épaisses de brumes. Avidement, il sonde les lointains obscurs pour y trouver le feu de la voiture… Une fois, deux fois, il a un tressaillement d’espoir, en tendant le grondement d’une auto. Mais la voiture ne s’arrête pas
et passe en tourbillon devant la villa. Une autre s’enfonce dans une propriété voisine…
Oh ! qu’elle lui est devenue chère, Guillemette. Aurait-il jamais cru, deux mois plus tôt, qu’il pût éprouver un pareil supplice parce qu’il la craint en danger ?… Même pour sa sœur, il ne pourrait être plus profondément bouleversé ; il n’aurait, plus violente, cette terreur d’une catastrophe qui domine chez lui tout raisonnement.
A son tour, Mme Seyntis est venue devant la grille… La pensée enfiévrée, une incessante prière aux lèvres, elle regarde dans la nuit avec des yeux que troublent les larmes… Mais la route est toujours déserte. Le vent fait bruire les feuilles. La voix de la mer invisible paraît formidable dans ce grand silence.
— Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! pourquoi est-ce qu’ils ne reviennent pas ! murmure-t-elle, ainsi qu’une plainte.
— Marie, il faut rentrer. Tu es glacée… Et cela ne sert à rien de demeurer ici !
Elle se laisse ramener, habituée à l’obéissance conjugale. Dans la salle à manger, sur son ordre, le dîner a été servi pour Mademoiselle et les enfants. André, seul, dévore à son ordinaire, fort de sa conviction qu’il s’agit d’une simple panne. La grande pièce, généreusement éclairée, a sa physionomie coutumière. Le domestique, impassible, fait le service. Comme les choses, il conserve sa physionomie de chaque jour.
Ah ! pourquoi ne pouvoir se réfugier dans la bienheureuse confiance qu’il s’agit d’un simple retard !…
Pour obéir à son frère, Mme Seyntis essaie d’avaler un peu de potage ; mais elle a la gorge trop serrée. Ses yeux sont à tout instant sur le grand cartel dont les aiguilles avancent, avancent… Elles ont passé la demie de neuf heures et approchent de dix heures.
René, lui, est ressorti, ne pouvant supporter le décor paisible et familier du home. Une fièvre brûle ses nerfs, lui enlève toute maîtrise sur sa pensée. II ne doute plus d’un accident. Quelle en est la gravité ?…
Voici maintenant que la brume se change en pluie sans qu’il en ait conscience. Il écoute… Il lui semble entendre le grondement lointain d’une auto… Dans la nuit, encore une fois, un feu grandit… Est-ce enfin la voiture que tout son être attend ?… Tant d’autres passent sur ces routes…
Machinalement, il se lance en avant et crie, sans réfléchir :
— Raymond, est-ce vous ?
Pas de réponse. De sa voix forte de commandement, il répète son cri. Maintenant la voiture est près, tout près… Il croit la reconnaître… Mais pourquoi ce silence ? Et il jette un nom :
— Guillemette ! répondez… Est-ce vous ?
— Oui… oui ! oncle. Nous voilà !
René Carrère peut vivre très vieux… Jamais il n’oubliera la sensation d’allégresse éperdue qui, soudain, lui fait bondir le cœur. C’est donc vrai que l’horrible cauchemar est fini ?… La voiture s’arrête devant lui.
— Oncle, c’est bien vous, n’est-ce pas ?… Ramenez-moi à pied, voulez-vous ? Je suis glacée !
Hâtivement, il demande :
— Vous n’êtes blessés, ni l’un ni l’autre ?
La voix de M. Seyntis explique dans l’obscurité :
— Mais non… Seulement une terrible panne qui nous a retenus très longtemps. Nous vous raconterons cela ! Mais fais courir
Guillemette jusqu’à la maison, je te prie… Elle est transie.
— Oncle, je crois bien que l’humidité m’a ankylosée… Je ne peux plus me remuer… S’il vous plaît, recevez-moi dans vos bras !
Oh ! cette voix gaie !… Que René trouve bon de l’entendre !…
Guillemette s’est dressée dans la voiture, enveloppée du lourd manteau qui transforme sa silhouette. Elle lui tend ses deux mains et saute en chancelant. Il la reçoit contre sa poitrine, ainsi qu’une enfant très précieuse et murmure, sans réfléchir à ses paroles :
— Ah ! chérie, petite chérie, petite aimée… Quelle peur vous m’avez faite !
Une seconde, ni lui ni elle ne bougent dans la douceur, elle, de se sentir très chère, lui, de l’avoir vivante entre ses bras, après l’horrible crainte.
La tête appuyée sur l’épaule de René qui l’enveloppe étroitement, elle répond, la voix assourdie :
— Merci, oncle, d’avoir eu peur pour moi !… Je regrette de vous avoir tourmenté…
Près d’eux, l’auto s’ébranle bruyamment et fuit. Ils sont seuls dans la nuit, sous le large ciel noir. René en prend soudain conscience. Il desserre aussi tôt son étreinte.
— Vite, Guillemette, pour vous réchauffer… Marchons !
— Me réchauffer ! j’en ai besoin !… Courons plutôt, mon oncle, si possible !
— Alors, chérie, donnez-moi le bras, la nuit est tellement noire que vous pourriez buter !
Elle obéit ; et ils vont, à travers l’obscurité, sous la pluie qui reprend, échangeant de brèves paroles ; et leur course est si rapide que, en quelques minutes, ils atteignent les Passiflores. Guillemette, ranimée, s’élance dans le vestibule où tous sont encore réunis autour de M. Seyntis qui enlève sa pelisse ruisselante. Elle, sous son capuchon, est toute fraîche, les yeux brillants, de petits cheveux fous ébouriffés autour des tempes. Elle court à sa mère qui, délivrée de son angoisse, pleure à gros sanglots, assise sur une banquette, sans souci du décorum, malgré les baisers de Mad, les encouragements de son mari et les exclamations d’André dont les pronostics se sont trouvés vrais.
— Maman, ma pauvre maman, que je suis fâchée que vous ayez eu cette inquiétude, mais puisque rien de tragique n’est arrivé, soyons gais !… Et puis, maman, si vous saviez comme j’ai faim !…
La courte soirée est, en effet, joyeuse autant que l’a souhaité Guillemette. Mais René est gai, seulement en apparence, d’abord,
parce qu’une brève réflexion de son beau-frère l’a impressionné désagréablement. Comme il lui disait quelle crainte ils avaient eue d’un accident grave, Raymond Seyntis a répondu, d’un étrange accent :
— Un bon accident qui, en une seconde, m’eût délivré de la vie ?… Mon cher ami, si je n’avais pas été avec Guillemette, vous n’auriez rien pu me souhaiter de meilleur !
Est-ce une boutade ?… Le cri involontaire d’un tourment qui se cache ?… Raymond Seyntis possède pourtant tout ce qui fait qu’un homme aime la vie… Alors ?…
Mais ce soir-là, René est incapable de s’appesantir sur cette question qui demeure, pour lui, secondaire. Obstinément, dans sa pensée calmée, un travail s’accomplit dont il a peur de voir la fin…
Tant qu’il est au milieu de tous, l’impression est confuse. Mais quand il a regagné sa chambre, que le silence s’est fait dans la villa sans qu’il ait bougé du fauteuil où il s’est jeté pour réfléchir, le mystérieux travail d’analyse reprend en lui qui n’a jamais voulu se dissimuler la vérité. Pourquoi donc a-t-il eu cette terreur qu’un accident eût soudain enlevé Guillemette ?… Pourquoi a-t-il conscience que, durant les heures où il l’attendait, impuissant à la préserver, il eût sacrifié toutes les autres créatures pour que tout mal fût éloigné d’elle ?… Serait-ce donc qu’elle est devenue pour lui plus qu’une enfant, une jeune sœur très aimée ?
— Mais ce serait insensé !… Insensé ! répète-t-il, se dressant hors de son fauteuil et se prenant à arpenter la pièce comme il fait quand une préoccupation grave bouleverse sa maîtrise de lui-même. Pour cette petite, je suis seulement un oncle, rien qu’un oncle, un vieil oncle ! Elle rirait et se moquerait gentiment de moi, si je m’imaginais de prétendre à quelque chose de plus !… Et Marie !… comme elle dirait que j’ai abusé de sa confiance et me trouverait ridicule de m’être laissé griser, comme un gamin de vingt ans, par le charme d’une fillette !…
René éprouva la sensation de stupeur d’un être qui, soudain, voit devant lui un abîme insoupçonné. Parce que, toujours, il a été, avant
tout, un homme d’action, de travail, scrupuleusement fidèle aux principes que sa conscience reconnaissait, dont la pensée était ferme et droite, l’âme étrangère aux complications sentimentales ; parce qu’il n’a jamais songé à s’observer vivre, il n’a pas vu vers quelle tentation il allait, pour s’y heurter fatalement.
Et maintenant que faire ?…
Que faire ? Mais la seule chose raisonnable, celle qui s’impose, sans discussion possible. Partir, s’en aller, oublier une petite fille qui ne songe guère à lui, qui ne possède ni ses goûts, ni ses idées, surtout qui est trop jeune, oh ! bien trop jeune pour lui…; coûte que coûte, guérir de cette folie !… — car il n’est pas d’autre nom pour le sentiment qui l’a envahi sans qu’il en ait conscience… Loin d’elle, distrait d’elle, revenu à sa vie d’antan, il retrouvera nécessairement la pleine possession de lui-même et l’incompréhensible ivresse se dissipera ; d’autant plus vite, qu’il y emploiera sa forte volonté.
Forte ?… Il se la figurait ainsi…, comme il se croyait sûr de son cœur. Il s’en allait dans la vie, orgueilleusement confiant en la réalisation de sa destinée qu’il prétendait faire selon les idées qui ont toujours gouverné sa vie. Et parce qu’une enfant s’est trouvée sur son chemin, tous ses desseins se sont écroulés, pareils à des collines de sable qu’un souffle bouleverse.
Plus René réfléchit, et plus il est dominé par une humilité et un découragement qu’il n’a jamais encore connus. A quoi donc lui a servi de s’être fait, depuis des années et des années, une loi inflexible d’accomplir toujours strictement les plus petits comme les plus grands devoirs ? Qu’y a-t-il gagné, sinon de devenir trop absolu dans ses jugements ; d’avoir, comme dit Guillemette, la sagesse intransigeante ; de s’être accoutumé à embarrasser sa vie de scrupules plus ou moins inutiles… Et aujourd’hui encore de jouer peut-être son bonheur par une conception trop étroite de ce qu’il doit faire…
Des heures et des heures, René songe ainsi, désemparé, scrutant son passé, puis l’avenir auquel il rêve, hanté par le souvenir
de la minute où Guillemette était sur sa poitrine, confiante et tendre comme une enfant qui se sent infiniment aimée…
XVIII
— Enfin vous voilà ! oncle. Ce n’est pas bien de m’abandonner ainsi pour votre dernier jour à Houlgate !… Si vous voulez que je vous pardonne, venez encore une fois faire un peu de footing avec moi ?…
Et Guillemette regarde René Carrère avec l’expression câline et confiante qui l’attire invinciblement vers elle. Sous couleur de renseignements à préciser, il a, en effet, passé une partie de l’aprèsmidi à Trouville, et, le soir même, il quitte les Passiflores pour aller faire, avec un camarade, l’excursion projetée dans le Midi, à Biarritz. Il n’hésite jamais à accomplir une résolution prise, même au prix d’un effort pénible. Quand il a fait part de ce dessein à sa sœur, elle a vivement protesté, redoutant que ce départ inattendu n’ait été motivé par sa regrettable sortie lors de leur conversation sur les de Vausennes. Il l’a facilement tranquillisée. Comme elle n’use pas de prétextes, même en sa vie mondaine, elle croit toujours à la sincérité des assurances qu’elle reçoit. A son beau-frère, il n’a eu aucune explication à donner, car dès le lendemain de l’inoubliable promenade en auto, Raymond Seyntis est reparti à l’aube pour Paris.
Quant à Guillemette, elle a écouté, sans dire un mot, les détails qu’il a donnés à table sur son projet, de cet accent un peu bref qui trahit une résolution bien arrêtée. Ensuite, elle n’a fait aucune allusion même à ce départ, qu’elle a paru accepter comme tout
naturel, la laissant indifférente. Et ce silence a été singulièrement dur à René. Sa conviction s’en est affermie, qu’il agissait pour le mieux en voulant la guérison. Sous des prétextes divers, il a fui Guillemette pendant les quelques jours où il lui fallait encore séjourner aux Passiflores ; il a cherché la solitude des sentiers que les pluies de septembre font déserts ; et il y a marché, droit devant lui, au hasard des chemins, exaspéré contre lui-même, maudissant son congé qui lui a donné le loisir de devenir ainsi ridiculement sentimental, et son dédain de se distraire comme les autres jeunes hommes, par les plaisirs qui leur permettent d’attendre le mariage. Il a pensé à demander d’être immédiatement remis en activité, avant même la fin de son congé, à solliciter une garnison lointaine, au lieu du poste qui l’attend à l’état-major de Paris et le rapprochera forcément d’elle…
Et puis, le jour du départ arrivé, après de sombres heures à Trouville, morose et odieux dans le désarroi de la saison finissante, il a repris le train pour Houlgate qu’il doit quitter dans la soirée ; et il s’en est allé vers la plage, parce que le soleil couchant est très beau, parce qu’il sait — oh ! faiblesse ! — que Guillemette aime à venir le voir descendre dans la mer. Il s’est dirigé vers la tente où Mademoiselle travaille, surveillant Mad. Et elle aussi est là, debout, regardant le flot qui monte sur le sable, cambrée dans sa vareuse de laine rouge, les plis de sa jupe soulevés un peu par la brise sur les pieds fins, fermement posés. Des cheveux volètent autour de ses tempes, sous son feutre gris pâle, où palpitent de longues ailes.
Une exclamation de Mad lui fait tourner la tête. Elle l’aperçoit. Aussitôt dans l’iris violet, luit ce regard qui l’attire invinciblement vers elle.
— Oncle, nous marchons, n’est-ce pas ?
Ce n’est peut-être guère sage de s’accorder ainsi la douceur d’une solitaire causerie avec elle, à cette heure du crépuscule qui fait les âmes plus proches… Pourtant, sans hésiter, il répond, usant d’un ton paternel :
— Je suis à vos ordres, petite fille.
— Alors, filons, mon oncle.
Et ils partent d’une vive allure, comme elle l’a souhaité. Ils ont le même pas rythmé d’êtres souples et jeunes, en qui palpite, ardent, le flot de la vie. Cette course rapide, ensemble, réveille en leur pensée le souvenir du soir où ils ont ainsi marché, l’un près de l’autre, après qu’un instant, il l’a tenue blottie contre lui, comme un trésor perdu et retrouvé… Et René se rappelle quelle allégresse éperdue chantait alors en lui ! Il a été un peu fou, ce soir-là !
Près de lui, s’élève la voix fraîche, avec l’accent même qu’il a tant souhaité lui entendre :
— Oncle, c’est triste que vous partiez ! Nous allions être si bien entre nous, maintenant que les invités de maman se font rares !… Si vous restiez encore un peu… Dites ?
— Ce n’est pas possible, Guillemette, il faut que je je parte !
Sans en avoir conscience, il a appuyé sur ces mots : « il faut ». Il s’en aperçoit à la surprise qui passe dans les yeux qu’elle lève vers lui, une seconde. Elle a eu cette même expression, interrogative presque gravement, lorsque, pendant le déjeuner, elle a appris son départ.
— Ah ! il faut ?… C’est vrai, vous êtes attendu, avez-vous dit ?
— Et la saison qui avance me presse.
D’un ton un peu étrange, elle reprend :
— Il fait encore très beau dans le Midi. Ma tante d’Harbourg, qui est à Luchon avec Nicole, l’a écrit ce matin à maman.
Un choc ébranle René ; et, brusquement, il interroge :
— Comment, Nicole est dans le Midi ?
— Oui… Vous ne le saviez pas ?
— Mais non !… Comment l’aurais-je su ? Je ne suis pas au courant des pérégrinations de Mme de Miolan.
— C’est vrai, fait-elle, posément, sans rien trahir, de la sensation de délivrance qu’elle éprouve parce qu’elle est certaine qu’il ne va pas rejoindre Nicole… C’eût été indigne de lui !
Ils font quelques pas en silence. Devant eux, à l’horizon, le soleil s’abaisse vers la mer. Une brise fraîche trace des moires sur le sable où les roches, luisantes de varechs, découpent des silhouettes noires. La plage est presque déserte.
— Vous serez absent combien de temps ? mon oncle.
— Je ne sais… Je dois aller chasser en différents endroits pour terminer mon congé. Peut-être ne nous retrouverons-nous qu’à Paris.
— Oui, si vous ne désirez pas qu’il en soit autrement, c’est vrai !
— Guillemette, ne soyez pas injuste !
— Mon oncle, je ne le suis pas… Après tout, c’est tellement naturel que vous ayez envie de votre liberté, après être resté prisonnier de la famille pendant deux grands mois…
— C’était une prison qui m’était très chère.
Elle comprend, à son accent, combien il est sincère, et elle incline un peu la tête.
— Oui, vous n’aviez pas l’air de souhaiter partir, jusqu’au moment où, tout à coup, cette idée s’est emparée de vous !
— Non, pas tout à coup ! protesta-t-il, saisi de la crainte irraisonnée qu’elle ne devine la vérité ! Vous savez bien que j’ai toujours parlé de ce voyage d’automne…
— Je sais… oh ! je sais… Mais je m’imaginais, naïvement, que c’était un propos en l’air… Que notre été s’achèverait comme il a commencé… vous, auprès de nous !… Et je ne pensais guère que ce serait vous qui le termineriez…
— Parce que je ne puis faire autrement, Guillemette.
— Si vous en êtes sûr, soit. Je crois bien que vous allez me manquer très fort ! oncle.
Il tressaille. Comme elle dit cela simplement !… Parce qu’elle s’adresse à un oncle. Autrement, elle n’aurait pas cet abandon ! C’est doux et triste de l’entendre parler ainsi…
— Je vous remercie, Guillemette, de me regretter un peu… Alors, dites-moi, vous ne me trouvez plus aussi ennuyeux qu’à mon arrivée ?
Son rire sonne dans la mélancolie du crépuscule.
— Je ne vous ai jamais trouvé ennuyeux, mon oncle, mais trop sage pour moi ! Je me sentais écrasée par votre supériorité. Maintenant, je ne sais comment la transformation s’est accomplie, vous êtes bien plus à ma portée… Vous ne me faites plus l’effet d’appartenir à la sérieuse phalange des parents…
— Pauvres parents ! Comme vous les considérez !
Elle a, pour l’arrêter, un geste presque suppliant :
— Oncle, je vous en prie, comprenez-moi… J’adore maman… Et pourtant… pourtant, comme nous vivons moralement loin l’une de l’autre !… Jamais je ne m’aventurerais à lui confier les papillons fous qui tourbillonnent à travers ma cervelle. Sa sagesse aurait si vite fait de les balayer ou de les écraser !… Voyez-vous, mon oncle, quand j’entends des mères se plaindre que leurs filles ne soient pas confiantes avec elles, j’ai toujours envie de leur murmurer que ce n’est pas, très souvent, la faute des filles !
— C’est possible, fait-il, pensif, étonné que sa jeunesse ait tant de clairvoyance et de réflexion.
— Plus tard, si j’ai des filles, je m’appliquerai à devenir leur meilleure amie… celle à qui l’on dit tout, parce qu’on est sûre que, même les enfantillages, même les sottises, grosses et menues, seront écoutées avec indulgence… Non pas sévèrement condamnées et exécutées !… Mais je ne sais vraiment pas pourquoi je vous raconte tout cela… Sans doute, parce que j’avais pris, peu à peu, l’habitude de bavarder avec vous sans crainte de me voir rabrouée par la vertu sévère des Carrère… O mon oncle, comme c’est triste ce qui finit…
— En ce moment, qu’est-ce donc qui finit ? Guillemette, interroge-t-il machinalement, étreint par la tentation douloureuse de l’attirer dans ses bras comme une enfant adorée, qu’il emporterait jalousement pour en faire son bonheur…
— Ce qui finit maintenant ?… Notre vie telle qu’elle a été depuis deux mois…
— A Paris, Guillemette, vous serez encore ma bien chère petite amie… comme ici…
— A Paris, mon oncle, vous serez pris par votre service, par le monde, et, un jour ou l’autre, par la tante parfaite que vous m’aurez enfin découverte !…
— Comme vous, bientôt, par le neveu parfait que vous me réservez…
Les mots lui sont échappés parce qu’il lui semble impossible de partir sans avoir entrevu un peu ce qu’elle pense… Que va-t-elle répondre ?
Maintenant, ils reviennent vers Houlgate, estompé dans un brouillard gris, comme la mer, comme le ciel qui s’embrume. L’apothéose, au couchant, s’est éteinte dans les eaux.
Guillemette marche le front penché.
— Vous avez raison, mon oncle, nous allons tous les deux vers un tournant de notre vie… Mais ce neveu parfait qui sera mon mari, je sais que j’aurai une peine infinie à le rencontrer… Encore plus, maintenant que je vous connais !
— Pourquoi ? Guillemette…
— Pourquoi ?… Parce que vous m’avez appris… — oh ! sans le vouloir !… — ce que c’est de se reposer absolument sur un autre être… Il faudra donc que l’homme qui deviendra tout pour moi soit sérieux autant que vous pour m’inspirer le sentiment délicieux d’une foi sans limites… Et, en même temps, il faudra qu’il m’aime… très follement… — ne soyez pas scandalisé ! mon oncle, — qu’il m’aime… comme les hommes aiment les femmes qui ne sont pas leur bien… Aussi, je me doute que je cherche un bonheur très difficile à rencontrer !
Il l’écoute sans l’interrompre d’un mot, recueillant l’intime révélation de cette âme qui s’ouvre à lui et l’attire à lui donner le vertige… Combien, tout ensemble, elle lui apparaît proche et
