The fear of living

Every morning Alice Dulaurens said to herself that she would spend the day inducing her parents to give their consent to this marriage of which the thought alone filled her with happiness; and every evening, having said nothing, she waited for the next day. But she soon had to make up her mind, for her friend Paule informed her of the date on which the definite offer was to be made.

On the eve of Madame Guibert’s visit she had still said nothing. Feeling anxious, she was late in going to sleep and got up very early, thinking to gain time. The hours sped rapidly, and her love-stricken heart trembled. She watched first her father and then her mother, in order to get one aside to listen to her request, and like all timid people she never found the right moment.

“Mamma is alone in her room,” she thought. She ran there but came out quickly, for her mother was busy writing.

“It will be better to come back presently,” she said to herself.

With some color in her cheeks she started at once to look for her father.

“Papa is going round the garden,” she said. But he was talking to the gardener. Thus she found a hundred weak reasons for keeping back her confidence. At last she made up her mind to speak after lunch.

“That is the time when one feels best disposed,” she assured herself, to find an excuse for her cowardice.

Unhappily for her plans, Madame Orlandi came to lunch. On the stroke of twelve she arrived, carrying her pug Pistache, which she never left behind her, and she began her mild and friendly Italian prattle.

“I am not putting you out? You are so kind. I hate lunching by myself. Isabelle and the maid have gone to Lyons to see about her trousseau, you know. A wedding makes such a fuss. My poor head is splitting.”

“What a good idea to come to us,” said the extremely bored Madame Dulaurens. And M. Dulaurens gravely agreed:

“The preparations for a wedding are certainly very disturbing to the peace of the house. But it is in keeping with social usage that this ceremony should remain in our memories if only on account of all the trouble it gives us.”

“You don’t mind the darling lunching with us?” said Madame Orlandi, pointing to the pug as they entered the dining-room.

“Certainly—we should never be cruel enough to separate you!”

Madame Orlandi seated Pistache at her side and at once made him the object of conversation.

“Yesterday my dear little pet had a sad time. We went to see M. Loigny, uncle of that dear Jean Berlier who is such a good friend to my daughter. He lives near Chambéry in a villa, all covered with roses. His house is a scented bower. He has great taste, this old man, but very little politeness. He lives in his garden quite forgetful of mankind and manners. Pistache destroyed a young rose-tree, and the flower-maniac threw him out of the door. I departed in a most dignified way leaving my daughter behind, M. Jean being kind enough to escort her home in the evening, when he made profuse apologies.”

“Is M. Landeau away?” said Madame Dulaurens, rather shocked at the way in which Madame Orlandi interpreted her maternal duties.

Quite unmoved, the Italian Countess answered:

“M. Landeau is away. He is doing splendid business at present. My girl will scarcely see him before the day the contract is signed. He is not exactly beautiful to look upon. Isabelle is very artistic. But she will get used to him. You can get used to everything, except being no longer beautiful after you have once been so.”

Regrets for her lost youth made her sigh. She lowered her face, smothered with violet powder,—that face which for a long time she had not dared to gaze upon in the mirror. When the butler offered her a dish of choice fruits, she looked at it with a gasp and, turning to Madame Dulaurens, asked:

“Are there no sweets?”

“No,” answered Madame Dulaurens, rather surprised.

“How tiresome!”

Madame Dulaurens, now really astonished at her behavior, remarked:

“You didn’t tell us, dear friend, that we were to have the pleasure of your society to-day.”

“Oh,” said the Italian, not in the least disconcerted, “I am very easily pleased and I understand your ways. But it is Pistache. He won’t understand. Every day he has his three courses and a sweet. He will think that I have punished him, and he hasn’t deserved it.”

Madame Dulaurens was quite out of patience, but she had a white of egg beaten with some sugar, which was offered to the idol. As they rose from table the little dog, under the influence of his greed, insisted on staying behind, in spite of the frantic calls of his mistress. He paid for it, however. The butler saw him, and having made sure that the coast was clear and the company all gone, with a well-directed kick sent him flying to the other end of the dining-room. Pistache gave vent to a dull growl, but was not at all astonished. All he knew of life consisted of extremes, and he travelled philosophically from kisses to kicks, from the drawing-room to the pantry.

Immediately after lunch M. Dulaurens, assuming a busy and important air, which imparted a comical cast to his placid face, bowed to the ladies and departed to his workroom, where one of his tenants was waiting. It was a question of rent in arrears. The tenant naturally claimed a deduction. Labor was dear, money tight, and the harvests had been bad.

“Bad!” cried M. Dulaurens with that hardness which he appeared to keep for his tenants and tradesmen, and which redeemed him in his own eyes from the weakness which he displayed toward his wife.

“Bad! But what about all last year’s wine? What have you done with it? There were barrels and barrels of it. You haven’t sold it?”

“Oh, Sir, you can’t think that. It would only have fetched a poor price. It was a disgrace. We preferred to drink it ourselves.”

M. Dulaurens, forgetting his peaceful instincts when his interests were concerned, was going to fly into a rage, when his eyes fell on a work lying on his table between a society novel and a book on heraldry. It was Nicole’s handbook: “The Methods of Peace among Mankind.” He had bought it cheap on account of its title and had contented himself with the reading of that alone, which was sympathetic to the natural tranquillity of his disposition. Calming himself, he sent the peasant away with many kind words, but without the slightest concession.

“Landlords are really to be pitied,” he protested. “They do not know what to do. My friend M. Timoléon Mestrallet himself has great difficulty in getting out of debt.”

M. Mestrallet was an old miser in the neighborhood, who spent his holidays in complaining of the bad times and the difficulty he had in making ends meet. But he never said anything about the enormous sums he saved every year.

As the tenant was going away, inwardly reproaching himself for having gained nothing by the interview, Alice came into the room. She carried a cup of coffee made as her father liked it. She counted on the favorable effect the fragrant beverage would have on her father, who was inordinately fond of it and accepted the cup now with an angelic smile of pleasure. While he was taking little satisfied sips, she sat down, then got up, and could not remain still. Confused and frightened, she trembled violently as she forced out these simple words:

“Father, you are going to have a visitor presently.”

“Well, my dear, your mother is in the drawing-room. And who is it?”

“Madame Guibert,” replied a choking voice, which should have revealed the young girl’s secret to Monsieur Dulaurens, if the latter had not a long time ago abdicated his privileges as head of the family and neglected the knowledge of his own children.

“Madame Guibert? She never goes to see anyone since she became a widow. It is an honor that we shall appreciate.”

And drawing up his little figure to show his appreciation, he said, with a great air of superiority:

“She is not very used to society, but she is a good woman, and her sons have succeeded very well.”

Alice thought his praise rather inadequate and murmured, “Her husband saved my life, Father. You remember when I had typhoid fever?”

“Yes, yes,” he said quickly. He also remembered that the doctor’s bill might not have been settled, and he did not wish to go into the matter very deeply. Could Madame Guibert be coming to claim this old debt? But surely not, she would not be so impertinent—especially now, when her son and daughter were so kindly received at La Chênaie. She would be unwilling to spoil such good social relations by the intrusion of business. Why then this visit, for which Alice had been prepared beforehand?

“Did she tell you she was coming?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa.” And then in a very low voice she spoke again. “Madame Guibert is coming on my account.”

M. Dulaurens, who was taking short steps up and down the room for the sake of his digestion (for this room with its ever closed bookcases was particularly useful to him for this health-giving exercise), stopped suddenly and seemed to realise at last that something unusual was going on in his house.

“On your account?” he repeated uneasily.

With the brusque quickness of the irresolute, Alice at once burnt her boats:

“Father, don’t you wish me to be happy?” she asked.

“Certainly, certainly! We wish it above all things.” And already he saw all sorts of difficulties to disturb his peaceful existence in the future and even his digestion at the present time. However, he loved his pretty Alice, whose gentleness harmonised with his own character, and he would even have adored and spoilt her, had he not been restrained by the fear of his wife and the vain desire to imitate in her absence her authoritative ways. Distracted between so many feelings, whose complexity frightened him and hardened his usually benign face, he demanded an explanation.

“You talk to me about Madame Guibert and then about your happiness. I don’t understand.”

Alice hesitated no longer, and her nervousness itself prevented her from guessing her father’s thoughts.

“She is going to ask for my hand on behalf of her son.”

“The captain?”

“Yes.”

She went on more falteringly, the whole force of her love summed up in the poor little hope which her words expressed:

“Father, I beg you, you must consent and persuade Mamma.”

But for the closing phrase M. Dulaurens would have been touched. He took in things in detail, and the last words always made most impression on his mind.

“Persuade Mamma!” he cried. “It is always your mother,” he said sharply, and began once more his walk up and down.

He made sure that the door was closed, stopped to listen, and then, encouraged by the silence and sure of their privacy, he let himself go boldly:

“Your mother! Don’t you know, my dear, that my consent is of far more importance? The law demands that. And this law is just. There must be one supreme authority in a household, and this authority is vested in the head of the family, the Paterfamilias!”

He threw a rapid glance at the mirror to study his own omnipotent appearance. He seemed to have forgotten the serious subject of the interview, which the trembling Alice feared to recall to him. Must she again pronounce the burning name of Marcel Guibert?

But coming down to earth again M. Dulaurens spared her at least this new exhibition of courage, as he repeated word for word a sentence of his wife’s:

“This young man is a hero. Heroism makes him one of us!”

By which his wife had meant, that one might safely receive Marcel Guibert in a drawing-room so distinguished as that of La Chênaie!

Not wishing to commit himself, he hastened to raise several objections:

“But you wish for a life of calm, I suppose, my dear Alice. You don’t want a husband who goes about conquering the world. You have a tranquil and peaceful nature. Will Marcel remain at Chambéry?”

“Father,” said the girl, remembering Paule’s lesson of heroism, “a wife must help her husband and not hamper his career.”

“His career? Well, he can follow that near us. Chambéry is a garrison that is very much sought after. He can exchange—nothing is easier—and we have influence with the War Office. Or he might resign. But then he has no money.”

Alice was silent, and her father, coming nearer, saw her tears. His heart was stirred, and the real foundation of his nature was laid bare, a nature which snobbishness and the habit of dependence had overlap. He gently stroked his daughter’s face with his hand.

“Don’t cry, darling. I want you to be happy.”

But all his hankerings after self-assertion fled at once like birds before the beater; for the door opened and Madame Dulaurens, having at last gotten rid of Madame Orlandi and growing uneasy about Alice’s prolonged absence, entered the study in her turn. The little imperious air which had adorned M. Dulaurens’s face for his daughter’s benefit was no more, and his final tenderness had gone. Instinctively he assumed the modest attitude which suits a clerk in the presence of his chief. Robbed of all conjugal courage and only wishing to avoid a family scene, he fled with a well-turned phrase:

“I leave our daughter to you, my dear. She wants to get married and will tell you all about it.”

Turning to Alice, he added:

“Here is your mother. Arrange matters with her. Whatever she does is well done.” And with these words he effaced himself, above everything anxious to be at peace with all the world.

Madame Dulaurens had not replied to her husband’s speech. For the first time in her life she was jealous of him. Was he not mixing himself up with Alice’s confidences? She loved her daughter with a selfish and absorbing love, and by the continual encroachments of her power as a mother had, little by little, extinguished (without noticing it herself) the personality of this delicate, shrinking girl, already by nature too indolent and overprone to unquestioning submission. She enjoyed her daughter’s beauty as if it were her own possession, and treated this young life precisely as though she had but a helpless new-born infant to deal with. It was impossible for a guileless, affectionate disposition not to recognise such unfaltering devotion and not to be affected by it. Alice strove by her obedience to please her domineering mother, whose eyes she felt incessantly upon her; but this watchful regard was paralysing her with fear.

As the door closed on her husband Madame Dulaurens, glorying in the impression she had made and already on her guard against the danger which she guessed, came up to the girl and, putting her arms round her, sat beside her on the chair.

“My little Countess de Marthenay,” she whispered in her ear as she kissed her.

But the girl was still silent, and her tears began to flow.

“You want to marry, don’t you? And you confided in your father. Nothing could please me better. We shall never be parted. Armand has promised me that.” Still unwilling to doubt the realisation of her plans, after a pause, she continued:

“He will get on. If he cannot get the position he wants he will resign. Your fortune will be sufficient to live on without his working, and, besides, in society one always has something to do.”

Alice’s tears and persistent silence at last warned her mother that the trouble she feared was a reality.

“I was mistaken then, dearest child? You refuse to be his wife? You don’t care for him?”

Yes, that was it. Alice made an affirmative gesture and Madame Dulaurens knew with absolute certainty that her daughter’s heart was given to Marcel Guibert. She was mistress enough of herself to hide her discomfiture, and she even began at once to think out a way of avoiding an event which she considered without hesitation or reflection to be a great catastrophe. So much was she guided by her unrestrained prejudices and preconceptions, and by a maternal passion whose selfishness was incapable of sacrifice.

“You don’t want to marry yet, dearest,” she murmured softly. “Is it because you want to stay with me? But I want you so much to be happy that I cannot agree to keep you—although I shall feel the separation bitterly—so long as I know that you are happy, and can see with my own eyes daily that my darling is contented. But you don’t answer. It isn’t that, then? Have you given way to your feelings without my permission? Can you have defied me to that extent?”

The rebuke, which had only the effect of redoubling Alice’s tears, escaped Madame Dulaurens in an unguarded moment. Now her diplomacy returned to her. She stopped short, and when she began again it was in a coaxing voice.

“Am I not your best friend and confidante? Have you any secrets from me? Dearest, I have not deserved this. If you don’t love M. de Marthenay, if you love someone else, you must tell me. And we will arrange your future together.” A new hope filled the girl’s heart and at last she sighed out:

“Yes, Mamma.”

“And who is it?” asked Madame Dulaurens, kissing her. “Who has stolen my darling’s heart? Your lips are quite near my ear. Tell me his name.”

She knew the name quite well, yet she wanted to hear it from the trembling mouth. Alice could not resist this gentleness. She dried her eyes and managed to say, with one of those quivers of the whole body which follow a violent fit of sobbing:

“Madame Guibert is coming presently.... She wants to speak about me ... for her son.”

“For the captain?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my dearest! How you hurt me!”

And she left her daughter and seated herself in a chair close by. She hid her face in her hands and sat motionless, in a most despairing attitude. Alice, drying her own tears, tried to console her.

“Why have I hurt you, Mother dear?”

Madame Dulaurens lifted her head slowly and with an expression of the deepest sorrow replied:

“Because I see quite well that you are going to leave me. M. Guibert will take you far away from us—into some wretched little town in France, or even to Algiers. He might even want to take you with him on some expedition. Love will not keep these conquering heroes back for very long from glory and danger. How could you love him? You are so gentle and so home-loving.”

Standing beside her mother, her eyes guiltily lowered to the ground, Alice murmured:

“Oh, Mamma, I don’t know. Perhaps because I am weak ... and he is strong.”

With her chin in her hand and without looking at the girl Madame Dulaurens went on as if she were seeking an explanation for herself.

“I can understand his wanting to marry you. The Guiberts have been all but ruined since the Doctor made himself the savior of that banker at Annecy. They say that there was no bankruptcy, that everything was paid up. But one never knows. That suicide and failure were very curious. And then that expedition to Madagascar! Oh, I agree that the Captain distinguished himself, there is no doubt about that, and I made him feel it clearly enough. And he has every reason to be thankful to me. Instead of that he proposes to take my daughter away from me. That expedition into an unhealthy country was terrible. All our soldiers got the fever there. Yes, all of them, my dear. I would not want you to marry an invalid. It is my duty to see to that. Oh, I only want you to be happy. You see, dear, young girls like you know nothing of life. They have young loving hearts only too ready to admire heroism and courage, and then they confuse admiration with love. It is not the same thing, my dear Alice. You will find it out for yourself some day. I only hope you will not find it out too late!”

With a few short, cutting sentences she destroyed the happiness of which Alice had seemed so sure. Little by little, the girl had drawn back into the window. Half hidden in its recess, she began to cry again, quietly wringing her hands in despair.

Seated upright in her armchair, Madame Dulaurens coldly renewed the attack:

“Now I really thought that M. de Marthenay pleased you. He is very attractive, isn’t he? A good name, a fine figure, and fortune. He is a cavalryman, and rides divinely. He dances perfectly. I chose him in preference to anybody else. And you were going to stay with us. We were to have our part in your happiness, and you want to take this away from us altogether.”

“Mamma!” cried Alice reproachfully.

“Children are horribly ungrateful,” continued her mother. “You, of whom I took so much care in your delicate childhood and during your typhoid fever, now you are already thinking of leaving me!”

Attempting to conceal the selfishness of this complaint, she added:

“If only I were sure that your happiness is there! But not to be able to look after your health; to live in daily fear that you might be ill, so far away—in some garrison where there was no doctor; to be always afraid for the peace and comfort of your home, which I should never see; not to be there to welcome your babies, if God sends you any ... that will be my sad life hereafter.”

Alice, deeply touched by this show of tenderness and motherly devotion, held out her arms.

“Mother, Mother,” she cried, “I will never leave you. I will stay with you.”

This half-victory was so quickly won that Madame Dulaurens, thinking it sufficient, insisted no further on her plans and did not pronounce Armand de Marthenay’s name again.

“Little Alice, my darling little Alice, I have won you back to me,” she said, pressing the girl to her heart. “I love you so. You don’t know how much I love you. I think I love you too much. I want you to be happy.”

These words came naturally to her lips at the very moment when she was breaking her daughter’s heart. But Alice, leaning on the motherly shoulder, saw through the open window a woman in heavy mourning, coming down the avenue towards the house. Slow and bent, Madame Guibert was coming confidently to ask her hand for Marcel. At this sight the girl shuddered and released herself from her mother’s embrace.

“She has no warning of what is coming,” she thought. “It is too late. Poor, poor woman!”

Madame Dulaurens, astonished and made uneasy again by her daughter’s face, was thinking, “Can she be on the point of changing her mind a second time?”

Alice had left the window to avoid the painful sight.

“How she will suffer! I won’t do it! I won’t!” she said to herself, a prey to despair and dragging herself from one chair to another.

Pity dominated her, even in the ruin of her shattered dream of love. To retard the inevitable blow hanging over this poor woman, already so bowed down under the burden of fate, she did not even remind her mother from whom the fatal refusal ought to come. She kept her near her with idle words. No doubt her father would procrastinate, would decline to give any definite reply. Like all weak people, who were content with the smallest successes, she wished only to spare Madame Guibert too sudden a blow, and would not admit to herself that she felt already incapable of saving her, though she had been the first to weep over it and must weep over it for the rest of her life.

After several minutes of anxious expectation Madame Guibert was announced in the drawing-room.

“I will go to her,” said Madame Dulaurens, and, kissing the daughter whom she was sacrificing, she went out of the room. Scarcely was the door shut when Alice, her heart beating wildly, sprang forward and with trembling hands tried in vain to open it.

“Mamma,” she cried through the partition, “I love him, I love him! Say yes, I beg of you.”

She opened the door at last. But the corridor was empty. Madame Dulaurens had gone. She had heard that last heartrending cry. Accustomed to treating the girl as a child who must be governed, she attached no importance to this. Calmly, without compunction, fully persuaded that she was acting as a tender and devoted mother, she went down to receive Madame Guibert and when she entered the drawing-room, she had already prepared the polite and amiable formula of her refusal.

Seeing herself deserted, Alice was crushed. She stood motionless and panting, trembling in every limb, ready to sink to the ground. All at once she pulled herself together, ran hurriedly down the staircase, and finding a gate to the park open, fled far away from the house. She ran to hide her pain in the shadow of the oaks—the same oaks under which she had heard from Paule’s lips the avowal of Marcel’s love. She sat down on the dead leaves. She would have liked to lie upon the gentle earth, to lie there forever, lifeless and forgotten.

It was here, in this spot full of mystery, that she had felt the first consciousness of her youth. Here her eyes had first wakened to the loveliness of nature. Here she had suddenly understood the joy of life. To her it seemed the very shrine of that fair existence which came to its close so soon. She had no courage left, and her only thought was of death.

She never knew how long she was in the wood. There she wept her heart out, telling herself she would be faithful to her lover’s memory, and that if she could not belong to him she would belong to no one. But she did not tell herself that this promise in itself was a renunciation. So she stood self-condemned, incapable of that active love which strives and triumphs.