PART II
AND EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES
I KILLED the one I loved ... Raymond Cernay had said to me on that mournful night.
It is almost the phrase of the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” which I have used at the head of this transcription:—the explanation will come later: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.”
The first note-book was dated November of the year following the death of Mme. Cernay. The second, also dated November, the month he consecrated to thoughts of the past, was written one year later, and one year therefore before my visit to the Sleeping Woods.
In the course of that same Autumn night in which I believed I had seen death, I read the two without a pause.
FIRST NOTE BOOK
November 19—
Six months, day by day, have already passed since the moment when I lost her. And already when I wish to recall them, many recollections evade and escape me, or seem inconsistent.
I shall try to fix here all that I can grasp of joy and sorrow, from our first meeting to her last breath. Thus, perhaps, I may be able to keep her nearer me. Each effort to find suitable words will help me to commune with her, as the faithful commune with God in prayer....
The first time that I caught a glimpse, between the two rows of oak trees, of the chateau of the Sleeping Woods, I thought of a scene at the opera.
Twelve years ago, on my return from Italy, I had passed the place in an automobile. The road maps were none too good, and I had lost my way. The road plunges down into the valley with many sharp turns. It was in the early days of the new mode of locomotion and I was in the habit of committing many imprudent acts. Nevertheless I was obliged to slow down, and then, fascinated by the beauty of this forgotten nook, made golden by the Autumn, as it is to-day with the light falling on the last of the leaves, I stopped my car.
To stop was, and is still, for me to experience unusual sensations.
Ordinarily my impressions of landscapes are swiftly gathered. My eye is trained to seize them at a glance, just as the snapping of the shutter of a camera is sufficient to secure an instantaneous photograph. I had never been able to stop for more than a minute or two. But now, I had a sudden impulse to stop entirely.
On the gate, which was open and sprung,—I have not wished ever to repair it—hung a sign announcing that the property was for sale. Immediately I determined to purchase it.
At that time I was twenty-five years old; all I knew of life was the intoxication of youth and strength. I was indeed one of those merciless rulers of the upper classes who do not tolerate restraint from law or men while they have, or think they have, the means of escaping it. I had at my disposal a fortune whose extent I did not measure; my whim was my guide, and I recognised no obstacle. Who would have been able to convince me that there were limits to my wishes? The friends whom I favoured or neglected at will were flatterers and parasites whom one picked up in abundance in the resorts of pleasure. If the women that I selected did not treat me with cruelty, the very nature of their choice would have prevented me from deriving any pride from it, if it had not been for the ridiculous admiration that I openly professed for myself. Crude and headstrong, what a foolish creature a young man is before he has been flayed by the plane of suffering, of compelling ambition or by love!
The chateau pleased me. Therefore I coveted the property at once. I could scarcely conceive of beauty without possession, and immediate possession.
As I approached the lodge a young girl was leaving it. She wore no hat and her beautiful hair covered her shoulders. A lock or two had blown out of place and gleamed like pure gold in the sunlight. But I thought her neither pretty nor ugly. I had noticed at once that she was only a slight, unformed girl, fourteen or fifteen years old at the most, an age which did not interest me.
“Here, little girl,” I called to her, as if I were speaking to a servant.
She turned around, revealing a startled countenance.
“What’s your name,” I continued.
She stiffened, as she answered:
“Mlle. Raymonde Mairieux, Monsieur.”
She had taught me a lesson; what right had I to address her so familiarly? But I did not understand at first, and having caught only her first name I answered:
“Raymonde? And I am Raymond.”
I burst out into a stupid laugh at a coincidence that was sufficiently trivial. My laughter completed her fear, my laughter and my goatskin motor coat as well, which gave me the appearance of some shaggy animal.
She hurried back to hide herself in the lodge, as a hunted hare seeks its form. I followed her, opened the door without ringing, entered a hall and then a room which I found to be the kitchen. There I breathed the appetising odour of a dish of potatoes au-gratin, which gave promise of being delicious. It was not far from noon and I was very hungry. In fashionable restaurants one cannot get true potatoes au-gratin. This particular dish made my nostrils dilate with desire. I leaned over it. I inhaled the odour with avidity. Nothing in the world would have induced me to leave without tasting it. Already a threatening cook, emerging from the pantry, was shrieking aloud at the sight of a wild animal in her kitchen. She shook a soup ladle in her hand, crying out at the thief.
I tried in vain to reassure her.
“No, no! My Heavens, I will pay you what you want,” I said.
The superintendent, M. Mairieux, attracted by the commotion, now ran into the room. He did not waste any time, but would have thrown me out bodily without listening to me. At last I succeeded in explaining my presence, and my desire both to buy the chateau and to devour the potatoes.
“The chateau, yes,” he replied, “the gratin, no.”
Nothing excited me like contradiction.
“I shall not take the one without the other,” I declared. “The chateau and the gratin at the market price.”
“My dinner is not for sale,” said M. Mairieux.
“Then invite me.”
“I don’t know who you are,” he returned.
This conversation was being carried on in a kitchen which I had entered by force. Despite my self-satisfaction, I had to admit that my manner of introducing myself was hardly a correct one. I opened my coat, therefore, which, incidentally, was suffocating me, and presented my card. At the same time I offered to write a cheque at once for the price of the property. At this the superintendent multiplied the number of his objections.
“It is impossible,” he said, “you have not seen the place.”
“One glance has been sufficient for me. It pleases me.”
“But we must discuss the price. It is my duty to protect the interests of Count d’Alligny. The amount which he named is not definite.”
“Then you can arrange that with him,” I said; “and now for the dinner table. That gratin should be delicious.”
My companion evidently took me for a lunatic, but an unexpected ally presented herself in the person of the cook, who, flattered by my compliment, suggested that she set another place. I clapped my hands.
“That’s right, that’s right. Quick, another place! As for my chauffeur he can have his luncheon when we have finished.”
“Your chauffeur?”
“Yes, I left him outside in the automobile. He takes care of the car and I run it. A fine machine, eh?”
While the table was being set and Mme. Mairieux was being informed of the incident I told M. Mairieux how I had happened to reach the gate with my car. He condescended at last to take me seriously on account of the automobile’s forty horse power. That was the way I lunched for the first time with my future parents-in-law.
Mme. Mairieux immediately took me under her protection, but Raymonde did not address a word to me. For my part, it is true, I paid no attention to the child.
When I was well-fed and nourished and it was time for me to go, I repeated my offer of the cheque for the property. M. Mairieux, however, would not accept it. Instead, he gave me the address of the attorney whom Count d’Alligny had put in charge of the sale.
“Is his office far from here?” I enquired.
“The town is about nine or ten miles distant.”
“I shall go there and sign the papers at once.”
“Think it over a little longer,” he said.
“I never reflect,” I replied, “and besides have I not eaten your gratin?”
“It will prove expensive,” replied my host with a laugh.
While my chauffeur was cranking his machine, I observed on M. Mairieux’s face a pre-occupied, anxious expression as if he had something to say which embarrassed him. He did not make up his mind to put it into words until just as we were leaving.
“No doubt,” he stammered timidly, “you will replace the superintendent.”
“What superintendent? You? Never in the world. On the contrary, I shall buy the property only on condition that you remain. Your cook will give her recipes to my chef.”
The cook, who had come out from the lodge in order to watch me get under way, blushed to the roots of her hair with satisfaction, before hiding behind the Mairieux family which had gathered to say good-bye. We exchanged resounding farewells. The little girl alone did not open her mouth.
My fine enthusiasm had no immediate result. I waited two years before I returned to the Sleeping Woods. Without losing a minute, I had signed the deed of transfer in due form, but once I was away other adventures less strange and more absorbing led me elsewhere. I endorsed the accounts without verifying them. How many accounts during my lifetime have I passed without verifying! In this case at least, with my scrupulous superintendent, I could do so without fear. And then one fine day, remembering my property, I took there a company of my acquaintances, with little enough to recommend them.
I had notified Mr. Mairieux by telegram. We descended upon the place like a cyclone, with champagne, patties and cakes, a rattle of dishes and an uproar of cries and laughter. It was a great scandal in the country. The Mairieux family, shut up in the lodge, did not even show their noses at the windows. And when I visited them, I encountered icy frigidity. I enquired familiarly for news of their daughter, whom I had not seen.
“And Raymonde?”
“Mlle. Mairieux is very well,” replied her father solemnly.
I left there the more depressed, because I felt that I had done wrong disturbing the peace of these good people.
But then, are you compelled to place restraint upon yourself in order to retain the good opinion of your superintendent?
Happily Mariette, the cook, comforted me with a word of welcome. But I dared not order another gratin from her. And the pretentious chef whom I had brought with me completely spoiled the one which he tried himself to prepare for me.
I wonder at landlords who live on their estates. How do they spend their time? As for me, I was always knocking about, always somewhere else.
A year later I came back again, but this time alone. I had learned my lesson. My physician, somewhat alarmed by certain symptoms of overwork—physical overwork—had prescribed a rest cure.
“You need a place where you will bore yourself,” he had said, “where you can stay a good month without any distraction. If I knew some thoroughly uncivilised spot I should send you there.”
“Ah,” I said, “don’t look. I have the thing you want, my chateau in the Sleeping Woods.”
He agreed, after some explanation, that it was perfect, and so behold me established in my own house by order of the doctor. Being distrustful of me the Mairieux family extended no invitations. They remembered my previous visit and maintained their reserve. But after all a superintendent is a superintendent, and I was certainly not going to cringe before him. My physician had condemned me to boredom; I was having it in abundance. There was no one to see, no one to talk to, and the length of the days made one believe that the sun had forgotten itself.
But—Spring was in the woods!
I thought I knew her, and I soon found that I had not known her at all. Each morning in the forest paths I discovered some new manifestation of her presence. New buds appeared on the trees, and little garlands of green leaves seemed to creep from branch to branch like insects, and little by little made a robe of themselves. On the sward and in the moss she opened the bells of the lily of the valley, and in the hedges the wild roses. In the orchards she powdered the apple and cherry trees with white and pink snow, stolen from the mountains already re-covered with a new supply and glistening in the sunlight before God! How charming were all these daily details! And before, had I delighted in this spectacle, or rather, to be more accurate, had I ever followed so closely the joyous and wonderful march of Springtime?
But at last I met Spring herself.
I met her on her fête day, which in some of our provinces is still celebrated on the first of May. Those of us who spend the greater part of our lives in the city, where one day is like another, are ignorant of the things that it is important to know, beginning with the earth’s renewal.
There are customary ways of celebrating the coming of Spring, and these ways, differing in various parts of the world, reveal the delicate or coarse tastes of the people. I recall one night, many years ago, being awakened by a frightful tumult. It was at Saint Moritz, whither I had gone for the skating and coasting. Hunting horns, fifes, clarions, trumpets, tambourines, cowbells, gongs, cymbals, rattles and castanets, as well as cans tied to the tails of maddened dogs;—there was all this in this imperial charivari. I jumped out of bed, convinced that the hotel was afire, and ran to the window. In fact, there was a red glow shaking and moving about beneath me. In the glare of torches triumphing over the night, I saw from fifty to a hundred young boys capering around like demons, blowing horns with the full strength of their lungs or drumming with their arms. The light was sufficient for me to distinguish their triumphant faces. They passed by and little by little the tempest which they had unchained died away. I looked at my watch, it was five o’clock in the morning. What could be the meaning of all this music? I was furious at such a premature reveille, but, not understanding the reason for it, I put off the search for an explanation. At a more suitable hour I attempted to obtain some information. Nobody at the hotel, however, seemed surprised by the performance.
“Did you hear that row?” I enquired.
“Most certainly,” I was told.
“What does it mean?”
“It is the birthday of Spring.”
The birthday of Spring! March had just begun, and it had snowed the greater part of the day before. All the neighbouring mountains were white, and there was not the faintest trace of verdure to be seen; even the pitch pines were hidden by the frost.
This birthday of Spring seemed to me a little precocious. In the Engadine it takes place on the eve of Shrovetide, and the formidable uproar is intended to drive away the winter, to give it its rude dismissal. Possibly that is necessary in a country where the winter is prone to fall asleep and never depart. If one did not scream in his ears “Go away” he might remain throughout the year. Therefore in that country they pray to Spring in the midst of cold and darkness.
At the Sleeping Woods such a hubbub is not necessary. Things happen differently. But that day is so important to me that, reluctant to recall it, I have interposed some other recollections. Still, nothing happened to me on that day.
Nothing happened to me on that day, and yet that day is the brightest of my life!
Little girls and boys, all of them barefooted—for those who had shoes carried them in their hands in order not to wear them out on the hard roads—appeared at the end of the avenue of oaks. I stood astonished at the window.
“What does that lot of brats want?” I thought. They marched along singing, and very quickly, too, for their little legs. When they reached the arches of the cloister, just below me, they entertained me with a song. It was an old folk song, which I had once heard sung at a concert, but had not imagined to be genuine; by that I mean to say I did not know that it was really sung in the country. Out in the open air, bursting from these youthful lips, it soared in swift flight far higher than in any theatre.
“Who taught you that?” I asked, when they had finished.
“Nobody.”
“Did you all know it when you were born?”
“Surely.”
I have kept the words of the refrain. Whoever thinks them commonplace, does not grasp their real significance:
To me this beautiful sleeping one is Nature, who stretches herself after the winter’s sleep and smiles in the woods and in the gardens.
After this the children ranged themselves on the lawn, the girls on one side and the boys on the other, and danced—upon my word—a pavane. Perhaps it was not really a pavane, but I will not call it otherwise. It deserved that beautiful name, for it included some complicated steps, embellished with graceful bows.
I threw them some coppers and even some silver pieces. They scarcely thanked me, which impaired their success with me, and ran away toward the lodge. Why several moments later did they burst out into such clamorous joy, a joy that piqued me? I came down from my room and approached them. Seated at M. Mairieux’s table they were eating, drinking and laughing with their mouths full. Then they went off with red cheeks and full stomachs to other houses and other villages.
“Everywhere,” my superintendent explained, “they gather presents of bread and butter, cheese, eggs and other provisions in accordance with each one’s resources, but no one gives them money, and in the evening they return to their own homes well laden. Even the poor offer them something. You understand, no one refuses anything to those who herald fine days. We must pay attention to these swarms of little children when we see them passing by as the days grow longer. They warn us to watch for the Spring, and to rejoice when we perceive it in the distance.”
Thus forewarned, I did not fail to meet it.
After I had followed the children, I plunged into the woods. As I reached the cross-roads that are called the Green Fountain, because of a tiny little natural basin whose clear water rests on a bed of soft starry moss, I saw Spring coming from afar.
She was riding a horse that was a golden chestnut, and I caught sight of her under the light, broken arch of an alley of ash trees, coming slowly and inattentively toward me. I held my breath, for fear that I might alarm her, for I was ignorant of the forest customs of the gods. Motionless, I awaited her approach. When she was quite near, I removed my hat, and saluted her politely, as courteously as I could.
“Good-day, Mlle. Raymonde.”
That was Spring’s name.
Quite proud of my own valour, I was to learn that the gods are sometimes afraid of simple mortals. My “Spring” turned about and fled away at a gallop, her youthful body swaying in rhythm with each stride of her horse. Soon she disappeared, leaving me, after one movement of offended pride, in a state of depression that was almost anger.
I rushed away to the lodge.
“How many horses have you?” I asked M. Mairieux.
“Only one, my old Sultan,” he answered.
“The one which your daughter is riding now?”
“Yes, I trust him, he is very gentle.”
“Well, I want two more, one for you and one for me. Set yourself to find them. We shall arrange some riding parties.”
He was accustomed to my sudden wishes, and to this one he lent himself with a good will. Together we rode through the neighbouring woods, both those of the estate, which covered close to a hundred acres, and which I, as the proprietor, explored with delight, and those of Sylve-Benite, which were more extensive and more broken.
The dead leaves amassed by the winter in the roads are soft under horses’ feet, and we rode along noiselessly. As if by magic the returning verdure covered all the branches of the trees. The forest, which seems boundless when it is bare, now enclosed us, embraced us, and hemmed us in with a jealous love. Here and there an opening, whence one or two paths branched off, restored to us our sense of space: at the end of the vaulted ways holes of light marked the horizon. Nevertheless the foliage was quite high, and the oblique rays of the setting sun shone through among the straight, slender trunks of the trees.
After these excursions, I often invited myself to the home of the Mairieux. My superintendent never accepted my invitations to dine at the chateau, although in his little house he gave me the warmest welcome in the world, and yet, I must say, with perfect simplicity and without display. Mme. Mairieux would have preferred more ostentation, but happily he restrained her. The poor woman, I recall now, never ceased to evince toward me a kind of sanctimonious admiration. Later I realised that this unmerited worship was directed toward my fortune, through an inborn and conventional respect for social distinctions. At that time, however, I thought it was due to myself, and I did not dislike it. It fed my vanity.
She questioned me incessantly about Paris, about the theatres, the fashions and what she called “the grand life,” and never noticed that her husband indulged her with a courtesy that was a trifle mocking. “We live in a desert here,” was her favourite expression, the prelude to, and the excuse for, her questions.
Although in delicate health, she was still very pretty, pretty with that grace and delicacy which one sees in the eighteenth century pastels, and which implies in most cases a shallow mind, always ready to blossom forth in society, and less fitted for intimacy. The powder which she used to excess strengthened this resemblance. I have since learned of her humble origin. In order to marry her, M. Mairieux, then an officer in the chasseurs, left the army, for she could not bring him the prescribed dowry. They settled at first at Compiègne, where an honourable place was offered the former captain, the supervision and maintenance of a part of the forest.
“We rode to hounds then, Monsieur,” said Mme. Mairieux, in recalling that brilliant phase of her existence.
Whether it was due to the too keen pleasure that she took in hunting, or to a taste for more complete isolation, or to more pressing necessities, M. Mairieux accepted an offer to bury himself at the Sleeping Woods, close to his native country, and to manage for Count d’Alligny, whom he had known at Saint-Cyr, this estate, which was in a bad enough way.
I perceive that I am not setting down my true opinion of Mme. Mairieux. She showed on every occasion that power of adaption to circumstances which is characteristic of happy natures. When the time arrived to leave Compiègne, where she enjoyed herself, I know that she did not protest, and physical ills she always faced with courage. Without doubt she loved, and still loves, glittering, stirring, noisy things; many women have the same taste. She is perfectly good and loyal. If she has never suspected the martyrdom which exhausted and then slowly killed her daughter, I cannot forget that even this lack of comprehension has perhaps helped to save me from despair by making me doubt the extent of my culpability. For her I have remained a sort of god, to whom everything is permitted, who has the right to be an unscrupulous egotist, for no other reason than because he is. Although she sometimes bores me with her trivial worldliness, which was strong enough to survive Raymonde’s death, and which will last as long as she herself does, now that I know her thoroughly, her affection touches me. My marriage only flattered her maternal pride. She has retained this somewhat childish feeling, and I cannot bear her a grudge for it.
As for M. Mairieux, although our mutual sorrow has not brought us closer together—for he has divined its cause—what can I write here that will be worthy of my respect for him? His sensitive pride, which at that time prevented his accepting my invitations to the chateau and later caused him to reject, with a certain excess of resolution, offers from a son-in-law whose highest wish was to be taken for a son; the uprightness and nobility of his character, even the courtesy which enabled him to maintain unaffectedly the proper distance between us, should have enlightened me as to his ancient lineage and the superiority of his nature; matters to which, at that time, my thoughtlessness attached no importance. The firmness underlying his kindliness, the adoration which he bestowed upon his daughter and afterwards extended to Dilette; his generosity, which permitted him to appear to attribute my ill-omened work to the fates rather than to myself, by virtue perhaps, of the unfortunate lesson he had received in his own life of the differences of taste and feelings;—all that I venerate in him brings me closer to the memory of my dear Raymonde.
Little by little, during our rides together, I saw Raymonde’s shyness and reticence melt, like the mist which rises from the earth when the dew evaporates in the light of a beautiful morning.
The first time I heard her laugh I stopped in surprise. It sounded so crystalline, so pure, so aerial, that no note of music in my memory could suggest an equivalent. She was greatly amused by my ignorance. I did not know how to distinguish an ash tree from a beech, an aspen from an elm, or a hornbeam from a sycamore. At first I was not a very apt pupil. The usefulness of this forest-lore did not impress me. I permitted myself to be instructed as a pastime, but she brought much patience to the work, for she believed in it. What do we learn at college, that we should be ignorant of such elementary things? If I had asked of her, as I asked the children about their songs, who had taught them to her, she would doubtless have answered as they did:
“No one.”
The forest, of which she was the little queen, revealed to me all its rites and mysteries; not only those which one sees from horseback in the alleys, but those also which belong to the depths of its life and which one must seek on foot, gently, under its arched trees, as one studies the aisles of a church and the ornaments of the chapels.
“A tree, like a human being, grows refined in society,” M. Mairieux explained to me. “When it stands alone we see its trunk short, stumpy and gnarled, its roots cramped in the soil, its foliage growing close to the ground and its summit bare, as if it had rolled itself up to resist the wind; but in the company of others it reveals a smooth, round shaft, bare of branches until far up, while at the top they form a thick and symmetrical group. But this elegance, this dash, this grace, I was about to say this politeness, does not preclude the competition which is the law of nature. A grove of beautiful trees rises toward the sun, each wishes to receive from on high the light of day, and the conquered ones, broken and suffocated, degenerate and soon perish. The law of selection is at work here as everywhere, for the benefit of the strong who overthrow the weak and attain to a free and higher expansion.”
Raymonde admired the victors, but disapproved of their pride.
“I believe,” she said, “that if I were changed into a tree, I should be a species of shadow.”
“A species of shadow?” I repeated in astonishment.
“Yes, there are trees of shadow and trees of light. Did you not know that?”
And then while her father listened to her tenderly as she instructed me in her turn, she obligingly taught me how to distinguish them. Trees of light are the oak, which, despite the fable, resists the storm, the exquisite but robust birch, the pitch pine, which still grows at an altitude of eighteen hundred metres, and the even hardier larch, which attains the land of external snow; the shadow trees are the fir and the beech, with their delicate organisms, sensitive to frost, the attacks of the sun and the lack of water. They too bravely attempt to storm the mountain, but they are in too close touch with the elements. Whatever affects the earth, affects them. They forecast the atmospheric changes. They experience the suffering of the sun as well as its joy, for which they hasten to smile with due gravity. In them the heart of the world beats more delicately. The others are harder and their fate simpler.
I at once placed myself among the trees of light. One morning, Raymonde picked up a seed which was supplied with a wing.
“The trees fly,” she told me. “See how the wind can carry them along!”
At the border of the forest she threw the tiny seed in the air with this incantation:
“Go find favourable soil, and grow to shelter a happy home some day.”
Before she tossed it to the wind, I studied the little wing attentively. Those of the birds had never inspired me with any desire to rival them, but this little vegetable membrane disturbed me. Later I recalled this omen of the forest....
Thus our walks were full of sweetness.
I was in love with her eighteen years. No woman, no young girl whom I had ever met, had offered me such clearness of regard, such freshness. The others, like the children of St. Moritz, had created a great uproar in order to arouse the springtime in my heart. It was too soon, or maybe the barbarians lacked the grace of our little children at the Sleeping Woods, for whom a song without such a multitude of brass pans and drums, was sufficient to announce the coming of joy.
I should have delighted in what was to me an unpublished story, in the feeling of new birth into such supreme love as it is the privilege of few lives to know; but instead I plotted an infernal scheme of which, as I confess it to-day, after so long a time, I am still ashamed. My absolute power recognised no scruples. The persons with whom I associated habitually scoffed freely at conventionalities and all moral restraint, and treated virtue, honour, and respect for women as hypocrisy. I was willing to betray without remorse the confidence of the Mairieux. As for the complicity of the young girl in my scheme, I did not imagine that the whim of a multi-millionaire could encounter obduracy. Must she not, like her mother, be dying of ennui “in this desert”? I would awaken my sleeping beauty of the woods, and carry her off to Paris. What could be more natural? What more fine?
My plan was laid. There only remained the simple task of securing Raymonde’s consent. I might obtain it by means of jewels as in Faust, or through the fascination of Paris as in Manon. The everlasting presence of her father prevented my paving the way, but I took advantage one day of a sufficiently useless forestry investigation with which I had purposely charged M. Mairieux, to propose to our Amazon that I should accompany her alone on her ride. I intended to seize the opportunity to open negotiations. Our conversation was of the shortest, and I shall record it faithfully:
“Mlle. Raymonde,” I began, “would you not like to go to Paris?”
“Of course,” she answered, “I should love it.”
“With me? Would you consent if I asked you very nicely?”
“Oh yes, with you. Because in the forest I can guide you, but in Paris you would be guide.”
She laughed as she lowered her head to avoid a branch. I can see her now!
“We’ll go as soon as possible,” I said.
“To-night, if you wish to.”
“To-night, then, I want to very much.”
And again her laugh, the laugh of a little girl, rang clear in the alley. She touched her horse lightly with her riding whip and old Sultan went off at a gallop. As I urged on my horse to rejoin her, I was stupefied by the speed of my conquest.
“Look at those little humbugs who are so reserved and discreet,” I thought. “At the first word of love they catch fire.” For the meaning of our departure, emphasized by the equivocal tone I had employed, was, I thought, very explicit. No one could possibly have been deceived by it.
Then, as suddenly as she had started off, my companion and accomplice halted.
“We must go home at once,” she said.
“What for?” I asked.
“Why, to let father and mother know we are going away.”
I opened my eyes in astonishment, which she interpreted at once.
“Let us go on,” she said, “I see clearly that it was only a joke. You were amusing yourself with my credulity. And besides;—”
“And besides?” I repeated in my bewilderment. “I am like my father—I prefer the Sleeping Woods.”
The enormity of my aberration caused me at that moment one of the keenest disappointments of my life. How could I even have thought of the possibility of realising such a preposterous scheme! So keen was my discomfort that I must have looked like a fool. But later, I detected with delight a feeling of shame that was quite new to me. When one has misused his all, such a discovery is full of enchantment. One perceives, beyond the dull fields he has travelled all too often, a shining country which draws him on, toward which he gazes as Moses must have gazed upon the Promised Land. I tried to regain my composure.
“Why?” I said at random.
“I do not know. Paris frightens me.”
Then she added gaily: “No doubt I shall never go there. So much the worse for me.”
We turned toward home. Except for a few insignificant words she said nothing more to me, as if a belated intuition had warned her not to prolong the conversation. During the following days, and up to the time of my departure, she carefully avoided a tête-à-tête. Or perhaps she did not even think of one. I too did not desire to meet her. It seemed to me that I had insulted her, and the cowardice of my intentions, if not of my acts, wounded my pride. This feeling was stronger even than her attraction for me. Her presence threw me into a state of extreme confusion which I bore with impatience. I was relieved to get away. At the Sleeping Woods I felt lowered and shrunken in my own esteem. And nothing is more unnerving.
I returned to my former life, but with this difference, that, disgusted with the gross cynicism cultivated by my free set, I went more into formal society. This was the worse for me, however, for I lost thereby that mental independence which some day might have been guided into more natural channels.
I frequented several salons, and was led to reflect bitterly not only upon the frailty of women, though I took advantage of it, but also upon their ability to forget, a frailty and an ability possessed in equal parts by those women whose broadly scattered amorous favours encourage young people in the delusion that such as they represent all womankind.
But this harmful and commonplace pessimism was of little account compared with another and much more dangerous habit of mind which I began to form. To it I attribute my unhappiness. The spectacle of society had infected me with the craze for scheming and success. I considered nothing comparable to the momentary triumphs achieved by a costume, a clever word or conversation. In things like these I saw the quintessence of glory. Should not a man seize his share of it? In my world it blazed in kohl-widened eyes, in rouged cheeks, in cunningly suggestive words and bared flesh. Like the trees of the forest, this mass of men and women flung themselves up to the light that glittered on them, and trampled down the weakest. Did not the desire to please, to prove themselves superior to each other, induce them to surpass themselves and put forth their greatest powers of seduction? And had I not recognized that I belonged to the trees of light? What did I care for closet scholars, for those creative minds whom their own thought satisfies, for lovers imprisoned by their love, for all humanity at labor? The obvious triumphs of society furnished me with sufficient excitement. Thus I began a course of frittering away a life which excessive prosperity and a lack of discipline had already marred, but which, thanks to a new emotion, I was on the point of being able to redeem, when of my own accord I threw away the opportunity.
In this way two years rolled by. They were two years of intoxication and poison. Pierre Ducal, one of those false friends whom public opinion rather than our own taste thrusts upon us, handed me the poison. His reputation he had built with a smile upon devastation and ruin, as well as upon frivolity, in which he quite understood his power, and he took pains equally with his liaisons and with his waistcoats. His assurance in the most delicate situations, that social dexterity which is often the possession of those who live only for the moment, I regarded as the refinement of intellect. He played with passions which he did not really feel. I too indulged in this dangerous game which wears away and withers the heart, and my emotions became mere vanities. By a miracle, it is true, I was going to recover my health, but in the moral as in the physical world one cannot inhale with impunity deadly germs. Their evil effects endure.
Mlle. Mairieux had taken advantage of these two years to blossom forth like a flower on a long stem. Her slender figure did not indicate weakness so much as a life in the open air. If she blushed or turned pale too rapidly it was due to a sensitiveness too exquisite, like that of the shadow trees, not to the fluctuations of an irregular circulation.
Her features were regular without being bold, and were softened by a crown of blond hair of blended shades, so thick that combs could with difficulty restrain it. And her eyes, which had been so large before, seemed to me to have grown even larger. It seemed as if the whole sky had sought to enter into them. Had I seen her again in the woods, she would have appeared to me like a huntress, more quickly frightened than the hunted game.
I have often searched my memory, in order to defend myself against the fault with which I feel charged, for any physical symptoms which at that time might have foretold the shortness of her life. I cannot recall any. Though the doctors were not able to discover the origin of that strange malady which, after having long sapped her strength, at last carried her away, I, I know whence it came, and I know too that it was not her body that was first attacked.
During our separation I had almost avoided going back to her even in my thought. What with superficial occupation, sport, travel and some sensual indulgence, ordinarily one is fairly successful in suppressing such a fancy. The instant I saw her again, however, my love revived. Had I imprisoned her in the chateau of the Sleeping Woods, and was she only awaiting my return?
The summer which I spent on my estate was warm and stormy. The forest offered us its freshness, its sheltered nooks, its peace. But why was it that we did not resume our rides? My superintendent evaded any reply to my suggestions. He had devoted more time than I to observing the external attractions of his daughter. To her I spoke only with the most scrupulous deference, for the most part in the presence of her parents, only occasionally when we met alone, these meetings having now become rare. Her clear eyes remained inscrutable to me. Why was it that she did not realise I loved her? And if she did realise it, why did she give no evidence of her joy and gratitude?
Yes, her gratitude. For there was no use in my recognising in her every moral superiority over the women that I had previously met; I was still confident that I was doing her a favour in loving her. Her father might belong to a family much older than my own; but he was nevertheless my employé. She would mount in the social scale. I would raise her to my level. Through me she would attain the summit of fortune. Out of a little sylvan nymph I was going to create one of those divinities who reign over Paris, one of those queens whose despotic tyranny and recognised fascination I had recently experienced. Was not that enough to intoxicate her? I thought how I could inform her of her good fortune tactfully, in order not to overwhelm her with the revelation. Thus do we judge from on high when we perch ourselves upon riches and prejudice. We like to believe that we attach no importance to them, that we are showing genuine simplicity, that we treat as equals those whom we overwhelm with our insolence; and all the time the treasures of the soul escape our vision. We need the virgin ore, and we make use only of the minted gold!
I should have prolonged this period of waiting; for me a period of spiritual refreshment. Raymonde was nearing her twentieth birthday, the white summit of her first youth. In her “desert” she had sprung up like a lily of the fields. She was ignorant of the very existence of those sensations, those flirtations, those trivial love affairs, which, weak emotions though they are, mere forerunners to true love, are yet sufficient to tarnish the heart of a young girl, to put upon it a useless stigma before life has really begun. But those women who preserve themselves unsullied even in their inmost thoughts, who cross their pure hands upon their breasts as though to guard the tabernacle of their future and only love—what husband can ever merit the absolute surrender that they will some day make to him? Can he ever comprehend, can he ever realise the significance of such a gift of infinite confidence, of undying promise? He accepts his conquest as if it were a foreign country, while all the sweetness of a fatherland is offered to him. Yes, I should have prolonged that period of waiting.
Before marriage every man ought to compel himself to retire from the world, to leave an interval between his past and that future for which he is not prepared. A little time must be permitted to flow over our dead passions. A new life demands a new-born spirit. My self-conceit convinced me that I was beloved by Raymonde, although nothing had betrayed her. Might I not have profited by this security to attempt to merit her love by cultivating my own? Was there any need to demand so soon a useless confession, when the spectacle of a heart which was ignorant of itself could cleanse my heart that knew too much?
On the contrary I was all impatience and desire. I imagined in advance Raymonde’s joy on learning that among all others I had chosen her for my wife. I wished to be the only one to see her transfigured face. Without any fear of reversing the convention I intended to speak to her first, in order the better to enjoy her surprise. Later I would speak to her parents, who would be only too happy to consent to so brilliant a match! Such was the arrangement I determined upon.
Chance favoured me after I had spent several days in a vain attempt to arrange so important an interview. I had asked Mme. Mairieux, of whom I knew I could easily dispose, at the opportune moment, to come to the chateau, to help me with some household arrangements with which I was not satisfied. I hoped that Raymonde would accompany her. However, she came without her mother. Less perspicacious than her husband, Mme. Mairieux kept no supervision over her daughter’s actions. Besides, did not Raymonde’s own dignity protect her sufficiently? I looked upon her with an intoxication of delight, but how can I depict what I felt? I looked at her as a sovereign at his subject, as an Ahasuerus upon an Esther. My imagination dwelt lovingly upon the dream that she was about to realise through me. She was coming to me who awaited her. In a few moments she would learn of her good fortune. It seemed to me that I could already hear her heart beat. It would beat like that of the pigeon which I had once wounded while hunting. I had picked it up in my hands and felt its warm life as I caressed it, the warm life that was ebbing away.
After we had settled the details in question I suggested that we look over the chateau.
“It is strange,” I said, “that you have never visited it. Would you like to?”
“Very much,” she replied.
We began our inspection of the salon and the galleries. I opened the doors for the young girl and showed her the pictures and the furniture, while she listened attentively to my small remarks. She wore, I remember, a dress of white serge, touching in its simplicity, and rather clumsily cut, which, however, did not succeed in concealing the slender lines of her figure. The plain dress seemed to match the frankness of her face and the peace of her eyes.
Outside it was one of those September days whose close one dreads, for fear that on the morrow one may not find its equal.
After our little expedition was over and she was about to leave, I stopped her:
“Would you enjoy living here, Mlle. Raymonde?”
She turned her calm eyes to me.
“Our lodge satisfies me,” she said.
So then I should have to dazzle her with one stroke, in spite of my desire to drink in her emotion slowly and in little swallows. She would not guess. Not to lose anything of the agitation she was about to feel I looked her full in the face, as I went on:
“You will leave your lodge some day.”
She was astonished and even showed some anxiety.
“Our lodge? When?”
“When you marry.”—
Then, in order to strike her the more suddenly, I added with scarcely a pause: “When you become my wife.”
I watched for the rapture which these magic words were surely to produce. Instead she only burst into a laugh, though it seemed to me that the laugh did not have its accustomed clearness.
“It is absurd,” she said, “to make fun that way.”
I insisted that I was in earnest, and repeated my declaration, which was more like an announcement than a proposal of marriage, so certain was I in advance of her consent. Could the idea of a refusal have entered my mind? I could sooner have believed that Raymonde was mad.
When at last she understood, I saw the colour leave her face. She swung for a second like a boat on the sea when the wind rises, and then she fled at full speed through the open door of the ante-chamber.
I scarcely heard her light tread as she descended the stairs, but I saw her cross the court without slackening her speed. In the same way two years before she had run away at the Green Fountain. Was it even then on account of my love?
To me, her flight was an insult, an unjust and cruel insult, and I hastened to lay the blame for it upon the Mairieux. Did not this girl deserve to be scolded for her rudeness? And what was the meaning of this access of shyness? at the very moment when I was thinking of checking generously an outburst of gratitude!
Nevertheless I loved her, and to lose her would have been intolerable. But, like the majority of lovers, I could not distinguish between love and the selfish gratification of my immediate desires.
The elder Mairieux, whom I found in their drawing room, raised dismayed faces to me. Indeed, it is stretching a point to say that I was not even welcomed by my superintendent. Raymonde had told them nothing, and they were laying all the blame upon me.
“Where is your daughter,” I demanded of them almost violently.
“In her room—what have you said that has wounded her so? I insist upon knowing.”
It was a new M. Mairieux that I, dumbfounded by this note of antagonism, saw before me. His broad experience of life, his indifference to the fashionable world, his courtesy in his business relations, the good-fellowship of his conversations with me, everything, in short, which had made our relations so agreeable, prevented me from crediting him with such firmness of character. Now, however, when his daughter was concerned, he spoke with an authority I had not anticipated.
In a single word I explained the situation.
“I asked her to marry me and she ran away.”
M. Mairieux, accustomed as he was to the quickness of my resolves, understood at once. So much his smile told me, a smile that was quite grave, somewhat serious even, in the face of such wonderful news. He repeated my statement to his wife, who could not believe her ears, and insisted upon demanding further explanations from me without giving me an opportunity to utter a word.
“Is it really true, monsieur? Do you wish to marry our daughter?” she exclaimed, and then lifting her hands to heaven, she cried: “And she ran away from you!”
This particular gesture, and in fact, her general attitude, flattered my vanity a little. But I knew that Mme. Mairieux was peculiarly alive to the social advantages of this union, even more to them than to the material benefits that would result from it.
“Be seated, monsieur,” said the good woman; “I am going to scold Raymonde and bring her down to you.”
“Wait,” ordered her husband.
It was a command which conveyed a warning to her. Then he began to question me about the hasty scene at the chateau. His conclusion was that I should have talked to him before I spoke to his daughter. I was no longer addressing my superintendent, but the father of Raymonde, from whom I wished to take, without obtaining his consent, that which was most precious to him. A totally new view of life was opened to me, upon which I had never bestowed a thought. His reasoning overcame me, and though I was conquered by it for the moment, I was furious at my inability to withstand him. To submit without a protest to the categorical rebuke of this man whom I regarded as an inferior—was that not in itself a proof of my love?
However, M. Mairieux went on with a calm determination, which overawed me despite myself, and which now, as I look back upon it, revealed truth and simplicity, a greatness of spirit which I did not then appreciate:
“Marriage,” he began, “is a lifelong bond. It involves the whole of one’s life. For us, who are good Catholics, it implies a definite choice; it is indissoluble. Do you also consider it so? Is it in this way that you regard marriage? The point is essential.”
Most assuredly, I did. When one is about to marry one believes that it will last forever, and very often, also, when one is in love. What useless questions! And there were more to come, together with some definitions.
“The husband is the head of the family,” declared M. Mairieux, “but he owes his wife the protection of his love. You understand: you must protect her against others, against unhappiness, against herself, against you yourself, and the temptations that you will encounter more frequently in your world. Have you taken into account all these obligations, so foreign to your past life?”
Hurt by these doubts, and convinced of my omniscience as to the care of a wife, I assured him that I was prepared to fulfill all my duties. Thereupon M. Mairieux softened.
“Let me speak to you now of my little Raymonde,” he said; “she will come to her fiancé with a pure heart, and the treasure, yes, the treasure, of the rarest feeling. You will give her wealth and surroundings very different from her own. But she—how much more will she bring you! You are too young to understand all the perfection that is in her. You must watch over her, watch over yourself, if your union is to be blessed.”
With these words, the last of which rose to the height of solemnity, he completely overthrew the conception that I had formed of our mutual relations. My pride might perhaps have revolted against them, seeing in them chiefly an evidence of paternal partiality sufficiently remarkable in the mouth of my superintendent, if I had not appreciated their essential truth. As it was, I confined my reply to promises whose full extent I did not then perceive.
“Are you sure, at least, that you love her?” went on M. Mairieux.
Was I sure of it! My presence there proved it.
“But she?” he persisted.
“I believe she loves me.”
“Has she told you so?”
“No, she has not told me.”
“How do you know it?”
As this examination grew more pointed, I searched vainly in my memory for a single token, a single sign, no matter how slight, which might have revealed Raymonde’s heart. There was nothing—not a word, not a look, not a gesture, neither the intimacy of some ride, nor some sudden shyness—there was absolutely nothing to put me on the track. I had settled the question without ever having asked it. And so, after a hesitation which covered me with confusion, I confessed aloud that I knew nothing about it.
For the first time since the commencement of this conversation, M. Mairieux regarded me with sympathy. His clear eyes are almost as limpid as his daughter’s were, and I was surprised at their tenderness. Nevertheless, at the moment, I hated him for the avowals that his cross-examination forced upon me. Was he not casting me down from the pedestal I had mounted? My wealth, by which I thought he would of course be conquered, had been stripped of all its importance in my offer of marriage, and now, uncertain that I had inspired love, I was like those poor lovers whom suspense drives to despair and excess of hope keeps in suspense. But I did not remain there long. Internally I was boiling over, and if I restrained myself on the surface, it was because I thought I should surmount these obstacles without delay.
Mme. Mairieux, to whose remarks her husband had several times responded by requesting her to keep silent, and who had not ceased bestowing upon him evidence of her surprise and disapproval, arose at last to play her part.
“I am going to question her,” she declared.
“No, no, my dear,” protested M. Mairieux.
He attempted to detain her and she grew angry.
“A daughter hides nothing from her mother,” she cried.
I can only guess at what passed between the two women. Raymonde never spoke to me of her mother except with the deepest and the most filial respect. Nevertheless one can divine the conversation from the reply which her mother brought back.
“The child is peculiar,” she said. “I consider her stubborn; she does not want to listen to reason.”
“What is the matter.”
“She considers you too different from us, too—I don’t know what, too rich.”
“And because of that?”
“She will not accept? Yes, because of that. It is crazy. I am heart-broken. I ask—I ask your pardon for it.”
She asked my pardon for this refusal as if it were a lapse in good manners. In the conversation which she had just had with Raymonde without doubt she had emphasised that which appealed to and blinded her, that upon which I had based my own superiority: the unexpected opportunity of this union, the change of circumstances, the pleasures of success and of life in the great world, far from “this desert.” Over the vanishing of a dream in such harmony with her aspirations she mourned as sorrowfully as Pierette over her broken pitcher.
M. Mairieux, on the contrary, seemed comforted: he was to keep his daughter.
On my part, suffering from this blow struck at both my passion and my pride, I cried out:
“But since I love her!”
I could not conceive that any one should oppose my will. Was it possible to tolerate any obstacle which did not proceed from me myself?
“Possibly you do,” observed M. Mairieux, “but she is the question.”
I felt an intense anger at this child, who at her age and in her position, dared not to love me. I could not believe such audacity. The whole current of my life was stopped, congealed like the surface of a frozen stream. Yet I had not said, “Will she ever love me.” Neither had I said, “Will she not love me some day.” No, I had simply said, “Since I love her!”
“She will accept,” good Mme. Mairieux assured me. “How can you imagine that she will not?”
To her the refusal was almost sacrilege.
Seeing my stupefaction and my emotion, her husband took my hand.
“We are much touched by your offer, M. Cernay,” he said. “We expected it so little. We are simple folk, without ambition. Some nice fellow, an industrious, cheerful, intelligent, upright, sensitive-souled lad who would have assured us Raymonde’s happiness—we did not ask anything more. In order to find him we were planning to go to the city the next winter or two. But you—no, truly, we did not think of it.”
Throughout this harangue, which was scarcely to her taste, Mme. Mairieux kept shaking her head. Despite her denials, however, her husband continued:
“Your offer is an honour. Many advantageous marriages were open to you and you chose this. Now allow us to recover our breath and think it over. I will question my daughter, and learn whether her answer is final or not.”
“No, no,” protested his wife. “It is not.”
“I will let you know, I promise you,” he said.
“When?” I demanded instantly.
“Some day soon.”
To wait still longer! It was not to be dreamed of, and I turned impetuously upon my superintendent.
“No, no, not some day soon—immediately. I wish to see her, to speak to her. I will learn from her why it is that she avoids me. I insist upon it.”
But in the face of M. Mairieux as he confronted me, there was the same resolution which had so much surprised me when I first observed it, and which I felt was invincible. Influenced by it despite myself, I modified my language.
“Allow me to see her, I beg of you, if only for a few moments. I will talk to her before you, before her mother. Don’t you understand my suffering?”
Mme. Mairieux, who had been incessantly encouraging me with all kinds of significant looks, now turned to her husband.
“My dear,” said she, “see how he suffers. It is inconceivable. Do you wish me to go back to Raymonde?”
But, reaching his own decision, he rebuffed her.
“I will go myself,” he said, and walked to the door.
“I will go with you,” said his wife.
He instructed her to keep me company instead, and disappeared. His absence seemed long to me, though I do not believe that it was really so. Mme. Mairieux deluged me throughout this period of expectation with the most consoling flattery, and the consoling flattery of Mme. Mairieux had the gift of exasperating me. I began to walk up and down the room, now fast, now slow.
“Everything will come out all right,” the good woman kept repeating. “If she does not love you now, she will not fail to do so in time. It is not an opportunity that presents itself twice, and Raymonde is so reasonable.”
But these assurances merely increased my anxiety.
At last M. Mairieux reappeared. He did not bring back with him, however, the repentant culprit, as I had hoped he would. Walking up to me, he laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“We must give her time to come to herself,” he said. “You have frightened her a little. You should have spoken to me first. She is timid. She does not know.”
I heeded nothing but the delay that was being forced upon me.
“Time?” I demanded. “How much time?”
“Several days.”
“Oh, several days! That will be death. A day, one day, won’t that be enough? Mayn’t I come back to-morrow?”
“Well, try it,” agreed M. Mairieux.
I returned to my own home exalted by mingled sensations of anger and love. In the avenue several dead oak trees had been replaced by early chestnuts, and from one of these a leaf blew away. It was certainly one of the first to fall. A breath of wind kept it in the air, and it floated, like a tired bird, around one of the stone vases on the open lawn. Would it rest there, or would it reach the earth? With childish superstition, I looked upon it as an omen. If it fell to the ground, it would mean happiness for me.
The wind understood me and the urn swallowed it.
When the heart is truly alive the least trifles are important.