The fear of living

On the road to Rose Villa Jean breathed in the air of the loveliest of summer nights and tasted that joy which life gives when love comes to make it straight and whole, not to disturb and torture.

Jean reached his uncle’s house before he knew where he was.

“Already!” he cried. And he smiled as he noticed that all the windows of the little house were lighted up. “Is he having a party? That would be an unusual sight.”

He opened the gate and went up the little rose-bordered path which led in a straight line to the front door. Mechanically he stretched out his hand, as he often did, towards the slim bushes and in the darkness his fingers tried to gather a flower at haphazard; but they found only the leaves and the thorns.

“Some thief,” he thought, “has climbed the fence and stolen my uncle’s treasures! What a blow for the poor man!”

The door was still ajar. Jean pushed it open. It seemed as if he were walking in a field of roses. The invisible garden, under shadow of night, had apparently invaded the hall. Flowers lay in heaps, and the electric light of the ante-room revealed, on a green background of leaves, variegated patches of color—here in sharp contrast, there in insensible gradations of hue. Red roses, crimson red, poppy-red, carmine, nasturtium, flame-colored, copper, red of the dawn; white roses, dead-white, pure white, creamy white; roses of tender pink, peach-colored, bright pink; roses of pale yellow, straw-colored, canary-colored, nankin yellow, lemon yellow, sulphur, orange; all mingled their scents together.

Jean went forward stupefied. The doors of the dining-room and drawing-room, which communicated with each other and could be thrown into a single room, stood wide open and their thresholds strewn with flowering branches revealed the onward progress of the invading hordes. But after three or four steps, the young man stopped short. A voice penetrated distinctly to his ears. It was giving forth, with the monotonous regularity of a chamberlain, announcing the guests, the names of women, and at every name it sounded as if a branch were falling on the ground or as if silken stuffs were rustling.

“Madame Laurette de Messimy! Madame Jean Sisley! The Countess of Panisse! The Duchess of Edinburgh! The Duchess of Auerstädt! The Marquise de Vivens! Madame Hippolyte Jamain! Madame de Watteville! Mademoiselle Anne-Marie Cote! ...”

With a catch at his heart Jean thought, “Uncle has gone mad while I was away!”

The quiet voice seemed now to be chanting some profane litany.

“Beauty of Europe! Inconstant Beauty! Star of Lyons! Gloire de Dijon! Firefly! Grace Darling! Snowball! Golden Dream! Miniature! Surprise! Pearl of the Gardens! Streaky Pearl! Perfection of Pleasure! ...”

The young man’s face brightened with a smile; but he stood where he was.

“Fanchette, let us go into the drawing-room,” said the voice. “There are still some more.”

After a pause the names began again. But the women’s names no longer reached Jean’s ears so sharp and clear; they were accompanied by short descriptions of toilettes, rather like the accounts in fashion papers, and then by flattering appreciations addressed indiscriminately to princesses, great ladies, or beauties of the people.

“The Duchess of Morny, in pale pink, backed with silver! Viscountess Folkestone, in bright pink with salmon lights! Mademoiselle Thérèse Levet, in cherry pink! Mademoiselle Eugénie Verdier, in bright pink with white lights, and Mademoiselle Marie Perrin, in beautiful pale silvery pink!”

After this gracious group of bright robed young women, the speaker’s enthusiasm waxed warmer.

“Mademoiselle Adelina Viviand-Morel, your hue is indefinable. Your apricot, shading to canary, turns to straw yellow streaked with flesh colour! Anne-Marie de Montravel, you are certainly tiny, but your simple toilette is of the purest white. Mademoiselle Augustine Guinoiseau, your whiteness, satiny and faintly pink fascinates me. You are tall and well made, the flower of all France! Innocence Pirola, I love your slim grace and your rosy tint. Madame Ernest Calvat, there is a sweet fullness about you and your dress is a charming vivid China pink. Yet I prefer that tender rose hue, suffused with white, of the Baroness Rothschild, tall and very lovely, but without scent.”

Jean stifled a laugh when, with a brusque change of tone, the voice commanded:

“Now we must make haste, Fanchette. My nephew will be back soon.”

“And what about dinner?” asked the maid. “What time will you have it to-night? Or are you doing to dine on scents?”

M. Loigny’s voice, imperious and angry, was heard through the room.

“I tell you, girl, that I despise your dinner! Let us get on!”

The interrupted litany began again calmly.

“Madame Olga Marix, you are of medium height and the white of your robe is almost the color of living flesh. Countess of Murinais, I love you above all for your delicate pallor, for your foam-like, fragile beauty. Your grace is not of the lasting kind. You have not the charming precocity of Madame Sancy de Parabère, nor her amiable opulence, nor the lovely brightness of her vivid pink, but you are a type of discreet elegance and distinction.”

Now at last Jean could contain himself no longer, and at the risk of breaking the spell he bent forward to look at the favorite. He saw M. Loigny with pruning shears in one hand, while in the other hand he lifted the perfect flower, the white rose which he loved and praised the most. Kneeling on the floor, Fanchette was grouping the countless stalks which her master threw to her after gazing at them fondly, classing them by their families, and calling them by their names. The armchairs, the table, the carpet, all the country drawing-room was hidden under the roses. It seemed as though they had fallen from the ceiling in a scented rain, an odorous avalanche. And through the open bay window the young man saw in the dining-room huge bouquets standing in a row, with dashes of red-purple in them that looked like wounds. These strangely decorated rooms were the death-chamber of the revived garden.

“There are only three or four princesses left,” said the rose-lover, somewhat regretfully, to calm his angry servant. And quickly he went over them.

“Princess Beatrice, tall and nonchalant, in bright pink; Princess Marie, whose pink is like the cheek of a shy maiden; Princess Louise, who may be compared to some fresh face with its brilliant coloring toned down by a clumsy powderpuff.”

“Why has he ruined his garden?” Jean uneasily asked himself.

Through the windows he looked out into the night, and fancied he could hear in the wind which idly stirred the branches, the plaint of the mutilated rose-bushes.

At last M. Loigny noticed his nephew and his face assumed at once an expression of contrition and timidity.

“Here is every one of my roses,” was all that he said.

The young man was thinking: “He is not even interested in my engagement.” But happiness made him tolerant and he even wished to flatter his uncle’s innocent whim.

“Why did you gather them this evening?” he asked.

The agitated old man pursued the line of his own thoughts.

“Not one was spared, and my whole garden is there. The finest have women’s names, but the Chinese gardeners show the most poetical imaginations in naming the many colored beauties of the earth.”

“I heard you a few moments ago,” went on Jean pleasantly, “and I supposed you were talking to a crowd of charming shadows.”

“About a hundred and fifty,” said his uncle.

“It is a goodly number.”

“What is it compared with the incessantly increasing number of the various kinds of roses? There are several thousands of them. And one forgets all those that our grandfathers cultivated, of which one can find only in old books and among some rare specimens in old gardens. In our day too, Jean, new roses make their appearance every year from the hands of their clever growers. Look on the ground and you will see represented by choice specimens the roses of Bengal and China, the Miss Lawrence varieties, the many-flowered roses, whose trails are suited to borders and baskets, the roses of Provence, the moss-rose, the tea rose, the noisette, in whose delicate coloring the note of yellow is predominant. Cold-hating plants these Tea and Noisette roses! We have to protect them against the severities of winter, but they reward us for our trouble by flowering abundantly.”

Once started on his hobby, like a dog running round a cornfield, he rushed about, sniffing the air, gesticulating and heedlessly threatening all the knick-knacks of the drawing-room with sudden ruin. All at once he walked up to a little desk, opened a drawer and drew out a volume, which he brandished in the air as he came back toward his nephew.

“Lecoq’s ‘Cultivation of Vegetables,’” he murmured. “A weighty work, admirable, inimitable!”

He turned over the pages, and smiling happily began to read this passage in a loud voice:

“Whatever the size of a bed, however small may be the corner of ground at an amateur’s disposal, whatever useful knowledge he may gain, whatever curious experiments he may make, and whatever joy he may attain when by artificial cultivation he succeeds in enriching his garden, his friends, even his country, with some new creation which owes its existence to his care and intelligence.” He looked at his nephew over his book, and then finished the quotation: “Everyone may act in his own sphere, in his own corner, may be silent if he is not successful (which is rare), and may justly boast if something remarkable comes to crown his efforts.”

As if he had equalled Napoleon or Cæsar in the gratification of his ambition, M. Loigny murmured sadly as he closed the learned work:

“Yes, I have dreamed of emulating the rose-grower Gonod or Louis Scipio Cochet. I, too, have created a rose! She is lying there with all the rest. I wanted to call her the ‘Souvenir of Loigny the Rosarist’ so that by means of her sweet scent and delicate coloring my name might be transmitted through the ages to all garden-lovers. I, even I, have aspired to glory.”

“That is splendid. Show her to me,” said Jean. “Then let us have dinner, for I am dying of hunger.”

“Now that is what I call sense,” muttered Fanchette.

The hands of the clock stood at nine.

“Go to your stove, my girl,” the old man ordered with dignity. He was already on all fours on the floor, looking for his masterpiece in the heap of roses. Without getting up he handed a magnificent flower to his nephew.

“She will not bear my name—but yours. This very evening I have christened her Paule Berlier.”

“She is beautiful,” said Jean. But he was thinking of his fiancée. Then he added: “I thank you, Uncle, for your poetic homage.”

The old man was still on his knees. He stretched out his two hands with an expansive gesture and softly repeated, “Here are all my roses!”

“But why this massacre?” Jean asked for the second time. “I am sure you must have decapitated all your plants.”

“All, Jean, without exception.”

“Why this slaughter? Won’t you tell me?”

M. Loigny was contemplating the mass of cut flowers with the radiant smile of a Christian virgin led to martyrdom. He got up with difficulty and answered:

“Here are all my roses. They are for you.”

“For me?” asked Jean, surprised.

“For you, so that you may give them to your fiancée.”

“You have despoiled your garden for my fiancée? Oh, how kind you are!” said Jean. As he embraced his uncle, he noticed that the old man’s eyes were full of tears.

“But why? They are your flowers. You should not have sacrificed them for me.”

With an affection that Jean had never known in him, M. Loigny put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and said gently to him:

“Yes, Jean, it was necessary. I am not crying for my roses, but for myself. They are not, they should never have been anything but a diversion instead of occupying all my time. Can you forgive me, Jean?”

“Forgive you?”

“Yes, I had positively forgotten life. I was afraid of its sorrows and troubles, and I took refuge in my garden. Many people commit the same cowardice, in another way. They are wrong, like me. Just now on the road, at the sight of your astonished face, I suddenly understood the harm I had done. For the sake of a rose, for a wicked autumn-flowering China rose, dark red turning to purple, I had lost sight of your happiness, your love, and my own duty. But all my flowers are there. When I came in I fell upon my rose bushes with this weapon.” He still had the pruning shears in his left hand, instrument of his atoning sacrifice.

Jean tried to interpose.

“But you loved flowers....”

“No, no,” said the old man. “Don’t attempt to make excuses for me. Your father and mother are dead, Jean. It was my business to replace them as well as I could. Everyone has his obligations. If it is not towards his family, it is towards his neighbor. While I was watering my plants, you were growing up in my house, and I never even noticed it I am only too happy to give you these roses for her whom you have chosen. My life is changed from now on. I have thought more in a few hours than during the last twenty years. In the future, Jean, count on me. I want to help your young household. I have spent my little fortune vainly on my rose-bushes instead of thinking of your welfare.”

“We won’t think about that,” broke in the young man, now overwhelmed with emotion.

“On the contrary, we will think about it,” said his uncle. “Late in the day I am going to be of some use. The autumn roses are often the finest.”

Jean took him in his arms.

“I love you, my dear uncle.”

“To-morrow you will take those bouquets to Le Maupas.”

“We will divide them in two lots, if you agree,” said Jean. “We will put one on my parents’ grave and we will offer the other to Paule.”

“Yes,” agreed the old man, and repeated without knowing it the very words of the younger when he came back from Africa. “We must honor the dead but have faith in life.”

Thus the rose-lover found peace of mind in the ruin of his garden.