"Is she as beautiful as she is elegant? Suppose I were to find a farm-girl under the dress of the great lady."
Less than an hour after their meeting they were together in the refreshment room of the Gare du Nord. They had time to eat a hasty luncheon, then the train carried them off.
"I'm quite mad," she said, kissing Leonor's hands. "What an adventure! It's I who have thrown myself at your head."
"I have thrown myself so often at your knees!"
"Very well, let it be understood that I am yielding to an old entreaty—and to my own desire, my darling boy, for I love you. Haven't I done what you would have liked often enough? But do you think I didn't want to as much as you? A woman has so little freedom, especially in a country place. How many women are there who would dare do what I have done, even that little? Getting lost when we were out shooting—that was all right for once. How frightened I was when you got into my railway carriage, against orders, one evening at Condé.... Many's the afternoon I've spent dreaming of you, you wicked boy.... There, you make me quite shameless. I'm glad."
And she took Leonor's head between her hands, kissing it all over, at haphazard. Leonor had often seen her kissing her little boy or her dog like that.
Hortense was thirty. She owed her name to certain Bonapartist sentiments which, in her family, had survived by a few years the events of 1870. Certain elegant habits of thought and manners had also been preserved. Her father, M. d'Urville had been one of the actors of Octave Feuillet's comedies, in this same Compiègne where they were now arriving. At the age when girls begin to forget that there are such things as dolls, she had read the complete works of this shy passionate writer; her mother did not forbid her to look at theVie Parisienne, in which her happy frivolity had never seen anything that might be dangerous for a well-bred girl. And so, when she married, Hortense knew that though marriage may be a garden surrounded by a wall, there are ladders to climb over this wall; the only things she thought of in her husband were rank, fortune and the conventions. Her first lover had been a young officer, with whom, as with Leonor, she had lost her way hunting; only with him it had been a stag-hunt. Leonor had participated only at an ordinary shoot, M. de la Mesangerie, in view of the present hard times, having broken up his pack of hounds. That affair had been of the most fugitive character. Afterward she had received the advances of M. de la Cloche, a once celebrated member of the Chamber of Deputies; but M. de la Cloche voted the wrong way, and under the cloak of political reasons M. de la Mesangerie closed his doors to him, in spite of his wife, who concealed a real though momentary despair. Finally M. Leonor Varin came to stay at La Mesangerie to superintend certain repairs to the fine Louis XIII house. In this chilly young man, so cold and yet so romantic as well as sensual, Hortense had found a more durable love, which greatly increased her happiness. Under a very skilfully calculated reserve, she adored Leonor, who had, on his side, always shown himself obedient, respectful, adroit and tender. She realised that the furtive pleasures which she was able to give him without compromising herself did not altogether satisfy her lover. She too, in whom the avid sensuality of the woman of thirty had begun to wake, desired pleasures of a less rapid and more complicated nature. Leonor's kisses and the words he whispered had little by little filled her imagination with images which she wanted to see in real life. How often she had thought of running away! Two days in Paris! And now her husband had given her these two days himself.
When she said, "I'm glad" she was confessing to the existence of a happiness in which it still seemed impossible wholly to believe. She pressed herself close to Leonor.
"Is it true? Are we really both of us here, alone and free?"
In a whisper she added, her bosom heaving with precipitate waves, "I shall be yours, absolutely yours, at last."
"All mine, all?" asked Leonor, touching her mouth with his own.
"I belong to you."
She had the wisdom to withdraw, and looking out of the window she asked:
"Where are we?"
"We are coming near our happiness," said Leonor.
They crossed the Oise, calm and gentle; then came the first houses of Compiègne and in a moment the station. They felt a strange emotion.
She did not wish to go to the Bell Hotel. A cab took them quickly to the Stag. Leonor was paying it off, but Hortense, wiser than her lover, kept it to do a round in the forest. She was pitiless and laughed, but with passion in her laughter; she changed her clothes and came down again.
They passed, without seeing it, before that elegant casket of stone which is the town hall. Following the fringe of the Great Park they reached the Tremble hills, where oaks and chestnut trees emerge, like the sails of ships, above the green ocean of bracken. They got down from the carriage with the intention of losing themselves for a moment in this bitter-smelling sea. The woman's white dress and fair hair left a luminous track as she advanced, for she was flying, like a laughing nymph before the hoarse laughter of the faun.
"It was about time," she said when the carriage picked them up to take them on to the Beaux-Monts.
"Time? what do you mean?"
"Yes," she went on, "I was too entranced.... We'll come back. Would you like to? We'll come back every year.... One needs a lot of virtue to resist the persuasions of the forest."
"Virtue," said Leonor, "consists in being able to defer one's pleasure or one's happiness.... I should like to see you in this scented sea, a nymph, a dryad, a siren...."
"Do you want to?... You're driving me crazy."
The climb up the slope of the Beaux-Monts calmed their nerves. The carriage, which had come round by the circular road, was waiting for them at the top. They stood for a little while looking at the mist-grey distances.
They drove back by the Soissons road; they looked at nothing now and, since it had grown cool, they drew closer together and sat with clasped hands.
Leonor was thinking of the curious chances that had transported him, in a day or two, from Barnavast into the forest of Compiègne and had changed his profession from architecture to love. In spite of the fact that it seemed absurd and almost indelicate, he began, sitting in this carriage with his mistress's hand in his, to think of his walk with Rose.
"Rose is the cause of it all. It is she who brought me here, not you, poor darling, who sit dreaming at my side. It is she who made me hungry for the kisses I reserve for you?? kisses that any other woman might have received in your place.... Yes, squeeze my hand, you may do it, for I really think I love you. I love you more than chance, I love you more than the woman I was looking for, because you are the woman I found. Besides, the perfume of your soul will make sweet your own pleasure without thinking at all of mine. In love, egotism is a homage; it is also a sign of confidence."
The moment came. Silence fell with the night. She strove to hide her shyness under an impudent smile.
"Must I be a statue to please you? Am I a statue?"
"Your beauty would enchant me," he said, "even if it were not you. Statue, are you made of marble?"
"You know I'm not."
She called to mind, though the moment seemed most inapposite, her husband's pudicity, his discreet entries into the conjugal chamber, the timidity of his caresses, the decency of his words, and the sudden savagery after his almost brotherly conversation. M. de la Mesangerie had explained to her that the final formality was necessary for the procreation of children. "God," he added, "has so ordered it, and we must bless his divine providence." He seemed to regret the obligation of going so far and, whether through natural or acquired foolishness, or whether through hypocrisy, he encouraged his wife to believe that sensual pleasures were contemptible. "They are," he even said, "a means and not an end." Following these principles, he had deprived her of them as soon as her first child seemed imminent. M. de la Mesangerie was very pious and prided himself on the possession of a most enlightened and methodical religion.
"That's the way," she said to herself, as she looped up her hair, "to train up a wife for adultery."
Under the pretext of sticking a pin into her hair, she stood admiring herself in front of the glass, and at the same time, at the risk of offending her lover, who shouldn't have doubted the fact, she said, "You're the only person who has seen me like this, you and I...."
When Leonor went to sleep she knelt beside his adored body and pious words came to her lips: she had found the living god at last.
They had two days. They decided to finish the last hours at Paris and they returned to shut themselves up in a hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. Hortense was indefatigable.
"What shall we do to recapture this?" she asked.
The idea of taking a little house at Carentan seemed to them a good one. Mme. de la Mesangerie would always have the pretext of going to see her mother at Carquebut; her husband accompanied her there only once a year.
"Yes," said Leonor; "there's the time between two trains, one hour; then one misses one train. That makes two hours. Plenty of things can be done in two hours."
"Lovers learn the art of using every moment."
To Hortense it seemed as though she had begun a new life, her real life. She began consulting time-tables, fitting in her connections. Then she tossed the booklet aside, saying:
"Bah! It would be much simpler to get divorced."
"Your husband's virtue stands in the way, my dear."
She did not insist. Nevertheless, at this moment, she would have abandoned everything—family, children, house, fortune, honour—to follow Leonor and become the wife of a little architect with a still uncertain future. And then she would be the niece of Lanfranc, whose mother used to sell cakes to the children in the Place Notre-Dame at Saint-Lô! She had bought them from her when she was ten. Her aristocratic instinct revolted, but she looked at Leonor and reflected that the demigods were born of the peasant girls of Attica. She pursued her idea.
"Your mother must have been very beautiful."
"Who told you so? It's quite true."
She wished to go to the station alone, refused to be seen off.
"When shall I see you? You're not going to stay on in Paris?"
"No."
Leonor kept his word. He saw Hortense starting for the station, with red eyes, and an hour later he left in his turn.
Satiated, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry to be returning home. The journey—what better pretext could there be for the headaches which demand darkness and silence, or long morning hours in bed, for siestas?
"I must sleep off my love, as drunkards say that one must sleep off one's wine. But what a horrid comparison! I shall dream deliciously. My lover, I have only to shut my eyes to see you, happy in my happiness, and to feel your dear caresses. Tell me, are you pleased with me? What must I do to be still more your mistress? Yes, I ought not to have gone away; I ought to have stayed with you, at your orders, forgetting everything that is not you. You should have run and overtaken me, kept me, locked me up! But listen, I shall go and see you every week. Oh! how gladly I shall tell lies! How pleasant it will be for me to look M. de la Mesangerie in the face while he reads around my eyes only the innocent fatigue of a long journey!"
The delirium of the senses invaded all her life. She scarcely remembered the events that had preceded her trip to Compiègne. She had spent more than an hour wondering if there were round about St. Lô, or in the forest of Cerisy, any of these oceans of bracken. She could not think of any; but she would look....
M. de la Mesangerie, who was waiting for her at the station, thought she looked tired. She was not tired; she was in a state of hallucination. However, she had enough presence of mind to reproach her husband for having deserted her. Thus, she hadn't dare fix definitely on the furniture which they had almost chosen together; she had spent two days of indecision in the Louvre stores, tiring every one, including herself.
"You must go back there by yourself," she said, "it will be your punishment."
M. de la Mesangerie was flattered. But there was another misfortune: the toys for the children had been forgotten. Hortense felt rather ashamed when she confessed this; she also inwardly regretted such an oversight.
"I am a lover, but I am also a mother."
For the first time the possibility of a conflict between two tendencies of her heart occurred to her. A few minutes' shopping in the town repaired her omissions, and meanwhile gave opportunity to send a post card to Barnavast. After that she abandoned herself, with a certain pleasure, to the re-discovery of familiar landscapes: they were not so different as she might have thought.
Leonor went back with no lyrical ideas in his head, but none the less very well satisfied.
"I have a mistress of the very kind I wanted. Libertinage and sentiment. The mixture has a very piquant savour. But I didn't believe her capable of so much boldness. She would never have dared in her own surroundings. People only become themselves out of their native surroundings: they either die or else they develop according to their own physiological logic. Breton girls, out of whom Paris sometimes makes such agreeable little drabs, are dreamy little prudes in the shade of their village belfry. Hortense is, as was said of Marion, 'naturally lascivious'; she might have died without knowing the art of fruitfully employing this precious temperament. She seemed so awkward and shame-faced when she abandoned herself at those first meetings of ours. She loves me. But mayn't she perhaps love me too much? Leave her husband! No she must remain my secret."
He was in a very good humour, and took an interest in the trees and rivers and houses that he passed. The monotony of the apple orchards and the fields of cows did not bore him in the least. Having nothing to desire he was enjoying the mere process of living!
He stopped at Carentan to look for a house in which he could hide a bed, failed to find one, but discovered a very decent furnished room. The skipper of an English coasting steamer occupied it sometimes, but the people would be happy to have a more sober tenant. Everything smelt strongly of whiskey. He made the bargain, had the room cleaned, paid well and made no concealment of his intentions. "Oh, yes," they answered, "the other tenant used to bring them back with him too. It's all right provided there's no noise."
"Them, he thought; that's what she'll be for these people. Just one of them."
He left them and strolled along the shore to Grandcamp, thinking of nothing but the little sensations of the moment. He was not one of those who complain that the seaside is fringed with houses, that there are shelters where one can take refuge from wind and rain, iced drinks to melt the salt out of one's throat, board and lodgings and the movement of a second-rate, but sometimes curious, humanity. These little boys destined to become gross males, little girls whom time will turn into pretentious young ladies and rich middle class brides—what pretty and delicate animals they are! Much more amusing than little dogs or kittens! He had often pondered on the mystery of intelligence among children. How is it that these subtle creatures are so quickly transformed into imbeciles? Why should the flower of these fine graceful plants be silliness?
"But isn't it the same with animals, and especially among the animals that approach our physiology most closely? The great apes, so intelligent in their youth, become idiotic and cruel as soon as they reach puberty. There is a cape there which they never double. A few men succeed; their intelligence escapes shipwreck, and they float free and smiling on the tranquillized sea. Sex is an absinthe whose strength only the strong can stand; it poisons the blood of the commonalty of men. Women succumb even more surely to this crisis. Those who have been intelligent in their critical age is past. In both sexes there are two successive crises: the sexual crisis and the sensual crisis. The first comes at a fixed period for the individuals of the same race and the same environment. The second generally coincides with the completion of growth, with the state of physiological perfection. Sometimes, when decline is beginning, a third crisis occurs, which is like the first, inasmuch as it almost always brings with it a condition of sentimentality. Hervart, I feel almost sure, is going through this crisis now; Hortense and I are at the second; Rose is undergoing the first."
Leonor, like many of his contemporaries, despised his profession. He was an architect, but his desire was to write scientific works, showing that physiology is the base of all the so-called psychical phenomena. All the acts which men call virtuous or vicious were, he considered, made inevitable by the state of the organs and the disposition of the nervous system. Nothing made him want to laugh so much as the pretensions of cold-blooded women who make a merit of their chastity; and he was amazed, after so much scientific data, at the way in which men went on considering the explosions of the organism as voluntary or involuntary. The influence of conscience on human conduct seemed to him null. He had demonstrated this to one of his friends, a master in an ecclesiastical school, by means of a grandfather clock which stood in his study. "What you call conscience," he said, "is the weight that works the striking apparatus. But I can take off that weight and the clock will go on making the hours without striking them." This friend had confessed that his own very real chastity was entirely involuntary: women roused no desire in him. He had once made the experiment and had obtained, after the greatest difficulty, only a most disappointing result. "I believe," he added, "that most of my colleagues are like me. Some of them, more favoured by nature, employ their faculties in secret; another has a private vice; and I know one who is a danger for children. For the most part we are chaste by the will of nature herself. Debauchery would be a torture for me. I am only interested in mathematics."
Leonor, however, had no intention of succumbing to the embraces of the sensual crisis.
"Let me profit by this momentary disposition, but let me preserve at the same time a certain spirit. I mustn't compromise either my physical, intellectual or social fortune. Within these limits I can give myself body and soul to this midsummer madness. Hortense is a perfect violin; I will be her devoted bow. And between her hands, am not I also a good instrument? Oh! the fools who pass their life fighting against their passions! After that, what happens? When they see that the garden is almost flowerless, they come in melancholy fashion to smell the last rose: the wind passes and they find only a bush of leaves and thorns! But shouldn't I also ask: after that? May it not be that the only delicious thing in life is the constancy of an unconscious love? I know only too well that I love Hortense, and I know only too well why I love her. It is certain that on the day when she appears to me less beautiful I shall leave her. Suppose I let it go at that? Suppose I looked for something else? Is variety as satisfactory as quality? Let's have a look on this beach.... I must make use of my state of mind, that is to say of the pleasing irritation of my nerves...."
Chance is scarcely ever anything more than our aptitude to take advantage of circumstances. On the beach Leonor met a young and pretty woman, a young woman of the sort that one sees so many of, the sort whose dress and figure tell one nothing decisive. He might have gone on contemplating the melancholy death of the wave at her feet; but he was walking for this very purpose—to meet a woman walking by herself: his desire created the chance. For a moment he was afraid that she was going to make advances, but she passed on. He followed. Skirting the water all the while, the young woman moved away from the frequented part of the sands. She tried to pick up a ribbon of weed, but it escaped her. Leonor reached it. Out of the water, it was a long vicious whip-lash. She thanked him, embarrassed by the present.
"Throw it back, then. It's like most of our desires. As soon as one holds them fast, one would like to throw them back into the sea."
She gave a little laugh, a sad, almost a smothered, laugh.
"Oh! Not always," she said.
They turned back toward the dunes and, seated on the sand, began to talk as though they were old friends.
She looked at him insistently, though not appearing to do so. Finally she said:
"You don't look like a nasty man."
"Is that a compliment?"
"In my mouth, yes."
Then, little by little warming up, she talked without stop. It was a flood of words, like the mounting tide, only more rapid. She told him the story of her life. Leonor liked this sort of thing from ladies of equivocal reputations, and he now displayed a keen interest, putting in little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in making out:
She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends, always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money during the summer The other, though he was older, gave less she liked him better—being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant. She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to be the department of Fine Arts. The first of these friends imagined that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil servant was at Honfleur. That complicated her correspondence a little, but it was better. Besides, she had had no opportunity of writing to the civil servant for a long time, for he gave signs of life only by an occasional postcard. That seemed to her suspicious and made her sad. When he had last written he was at Cherbourg, but he had given no address.
"He looks like a man who wants to get married. Married! he's not capable of satisfying a woman. All the same, I like him. And besides, I should miss him for other reasons."
This woman, with her commonplace life her commonplace brain, had an agreeable voice, a delicate face, intelligence in her eyes and a sort of natural elegance. Leonor felt a violent desire for her.
"I am spending several days here," he said.
"So am I."
"Shouldn't we spend them together?"
She gave a pretty laugh, allowed herself to be entreated, and accepted, after having once more examined Leonor with a sagacious eye. The proposition accepted, she offered him her lips, looked at the time on a minute watch and got up, saying:
"Let's go and have dinner. We must hurry to get a little table."
Her name was Gratienne. She was a little woman, with a mass of dark hair, and her profile was charming. Leonor was amused by the contrast between this little statuette and the opulent Leda type of Hortense. She had a supple body, fresh and delicately scented; and since she was a professional and ardently shared the pleasures she provoked, he passed several pleasant nights. The days were much less agreeable, for he had to submit to long prolix confidences. There were amusing touches in her stories, but from professional ethics she refrained from ever uttering a proper name, a fact which somewhat confused her anecdotes.
One evening, however, in a moment of distraction or of confidence, she allowed Leonor to turn over her little collection of post-cards.
"Besides," added, "as you're not Parisian, the names will tell you nothing."
Leonor looked at ships, mountains, casinos, girls bathing and many other interesting pictures. Some were signed Theobald and came from Austria, others Paul, and came from the Pyrenees.
"Hullo, Tourlaville castle!"
Without appearing to do so, he examined the writing of the address with care. He did not know the hand. The card was signed H. He passed on. Another of the La Hague castles. This time the signature was Herv.
"Surely it's Hervart."
The name appeared in full at the bottom of Martinvast Castle, with a postscript of "love and kisses."
"That must be the civil servant in the Fine Arts Department. Obviously."
For a moment he felt annoyed at being the collaborator, even the casual collabor, of M. Hervart. He would have preferred someone he did not know. Theobald pleased him better. But all at once he thought of Rose:
"It's curious," he said to himself, "that we should love the same women in all the different styles."
While Gratienne was looking out of the window, he slipped the card of Martinvast castle into his pocket.
Since his marriage had been decided on, M. Hervart seemed very happy Rose's confidence in him had grown still greater and with it their intimacy. He hesitated now about only one thing: what date should he fix? Rose, without admitting the fact wanted to be married as soon as possible, so that she might know the end of the story. Women, however, are broken into prolonged patience. She would wait, if Xavier decided that they ought to wait. To obey Xavier was to her a great pleasure.
M. Hervart's latest hesitations were not very comprehensible. His situation, after the winter, would be in no way altered. What was the present obstacle? Gratienne? Of course, he thought himself passionately adored by her, but would she love him less, would she be less hurt a year hence? His ideas about Gratienne, were moreover, variable. At one moment he attributed to her the virtue of an unhappily married woman who has given herself for love to her heart's choice; at the next going to the opposite extreme, he saw her prostituted to every chance comer. The humble truth escaped him. Expert in these matters though he was, he had never been able to see that Gratienne was a girl who could skilfully reconcile her interests, her pleasures and her sentimental needs, and who completely dissociated these three things. What she loved in M. Hervart was the sensual lover, but she none the less appreciated the rich and serious civil servant in him. For free love is like legal love in this also, that money reinforces sentiment. Thus M. Hervart esteemed Gratienne sometimes more and sometimes less, but he always loved her the same, having, moreover, no visible breach of contract to reproach her with. The thought of deserting Gratienne filled him with distress, not because of the pain he himself would feel, but because of the pain that she most certainly would suffer. Besides, even when he was in a mood to despise Gratienne, he set store by her esteem. However, all of that would come right, he thought, for the situation was a common one and one of those that have to be solved every day.
"As soon as I have possessed Rose, I shall think no more of Gratienne, that's obvious. And then, why should I break with the charming girl brutally? I don't intend to upset her."
At bottom, it was the thought of marriage itself that was still alarming M. Hervart. He felt the tyrant that they all turn into already rising up beneath the surface of the sweet young girl.
"She loves me, therefore she will be jealous. So shall I perhaps. Or perhaps in a few days I shall dislike her. Shall I please her for long? She loves me because she knows no one else but me."
M. Hervart's health sometimes alarmed him. He would wake up feeling more tired than when he went to bed. The least cold caught him in the throat or in the joints. And when meals were late, his breathing became difficult and he was seized with giddiness.
"I'm a fool. Here am I, getting married at an age when wise men begin unmarrying. Bah! In spite of everything, I'm still tough and I can still tame a woman."
He recalled, with pride, his last rendezvous with Gratienne; he had conquered her, annihilated her, reduced her to a pulp, and himself, strutting like a cock, had crowed over his happy victim.
"Besides, with Rose, I shall be master. I shall be for her the Man and men in general.... By the way, why hasn't Gratienne written to me since I've been here? Of course, I never gave her my address."
That had been the right thing, he first thought; then he reproached himself for it, felt almost remorseful. He hastily concocted a quite affectionate letter, asking for news. There was a letter-box not far away, on the St. Martin road; he went quickly downstairs and ran there with his missive.
On his return he found Rose in the garden. Since their engagement she had been living in a perpetual smile. She entered naïvely into her destiny, suspecting no further possible obstacle to her happiness. At the same time, by what must have been instinctive coquetry, she had become, not more reserved, but less prompt at their habitual sports. She spoke a great deal of her future house, picturing to herself their drawing-room furniture, which she pictured from the illustrated catalogues, and the colour of their carpets and curtains. The idea of this furniture horrified M. Hervart, who had a taste for antiques and happy discoveries, which he mixed, without shame, with practical constructions made under his own directions. To-day he found it more difficult than usual to tolerate this housewifely chatter. He was bored.
"Can it be," he wondered, "that I feel nothing but a wholly carnal love for her? What's the use of marrying, if I can't see in her the wife, the mother, the lady of the house as well as the mistress? In that case Gratienne is quite enough for me. Marriage is delightful when one is fresh from school. One finds the happiest establishments among students. They live on one another, in one another. Promiscuity seems an enchantment. One makes one's first acquaintance with the opposite sex; one completes oneself. Later on, all this intimacy is no longer possible; and later still, one is very well content with mere amorous visitations while one awaits the moment when solitude brings the only instants of appreciable happiness."
M. Hervart brought his meditations to no conclusions, and so the morning passed—Rose choosing imaginary wallpapers and Xavier philosophising in secret on the unpleasantnesses of marriage.
After luncheon, a diabolic idea occurred to him: Why shouldn't he take a definite advance on his conjugal rights? The blood went to his head. He began to breathe a little heavily as he pressed Rose against him. When they were seated, the usual ceremony took place after the usual rebuffs. She allowed her lover's hand to wander. Their mouths, meanwhile, were kissing, drinking one another. After a moment of calm, M. Hervart, on his knees now, took one of Rose's feet in his hand. He caressed the ankle and she made no resistance, when he became more daring, though much moved, still she did not protest, and did no more than whisper, "Xavier! No! No!" Nothing more happened. M. Hervart did not dare. While, feeling very uncomfortable, he was deploring his virtue, Rose fondled him and called him naughty.
"It's curious," he thought, "that they all have the same vocabulary by nature."
He was ashamed. Nothing makes a man ashamed so much as having failed in his purpose, what ever may have been the cause of his failure. He said, a little nervously:
"Let's walk a little. Let's do something."
"What an idiot I am," he thought, as they walked along the Couville road, where there are rocks and a little heather and foxgloves among the birch-trees; "after all, she's my wife."
On the following days the same manoeuvre was repeated several times, and M. Hervart always hesitated at the decisive moment.
"Besides," he wondered, "would she let me? I can hardly violate my fiancée, can I? I have taught her nothing she doesn't know. If we came on to untried lessons, how would she take it?..."
He continued: "Dismal pleasures for me. I've had enough of them. It was amusing only the first time."
Finally, one evening when they had gone out alone, a thing which never had happened before, he was a little more daring....
The darkness made Rose receive her lover's caresses more willingly than usual. She was expecting them. The thing which had appeared so bold to M. Hervart obviously seemed already quite natural to her....
"Much more natural, perhaps, than allowing me to touch her breast or the under side of her arm...."
M. Hervart made bold to ask for more.... "Rose! Rose!"
But the girl recoiled. Suppressing a cry, Rose got up and said: "Let's go indoors."
She added, a moment later, "It's wrong Xavier, it's wrong. Respect me."
"What logic," said M. Hervart to himself. "Respect me! But it's true, I made a mistake. With young girls especially one must begin at the end."
The next day they met very early and Rose, refusing to listen to anything he had to say, refusing even to give him a friendly kiss, pronounced the sentence on which she had been meditating:
"I am angry. If you want me to pardon you, go away at once and write to me a week hence that everything's arranged for our marriage. I love you. You will realise that when I am your wife, but not before. I have been willing to play with you and you have tried to abuse the privilege. It's wrong. Go!"
He had to go, she was inflexible.
When M. Hervart got into the express at Sottevast, Rose cried. She had forgiven him because she loved him. She had forgiven him because he had obeyed.
From 8.57 a.m. till the hour of 6 p.m., when she rang at his door, M. Hervart had precisely one idea, a single one: he must meet Gratienne.
She had been in Paris since the day before, and she had just written to him when she got his telegram from Caen. Her delight was very great. She fulfilled her lover's desire with joy.
"I love you, my old darling!"
M. Hervart spent two days without thinking of Rose except as something very remote. He was thrilled to re-discover the Louvre: he looked at the colonnade before he went in; even the "fighting Hero" seemed a novelty to him: he went and meditated in front of the crouching Venus, of which he was especially fond. It was there that he had often met Gratienne. How he loved her! What a pleasure it had been to come back to his "ephebe."
On the third day after his arrival he received Gratienne's letter forwarded from Robinvast. That disturbed him a little—Rose's writing superimposed on Gratienne's.
"But aren't they superimposed in life? No, I mean, mingled together. Rose is much too ignorant of the way things go to have any suspicion. And besides, I must have got at least ten letters in women's handwriting while I was at Robinvast and I never made any attempt at concealment.... Rose—it's true I went rather far with her. But whose fault was that? If she had resisted my first attacks, I shouldn't have insisted. What an egoist she is!... However, I ought to write to her. No, not to-day. It's my turn to be cross."
During the day he thought several more times of Rose. The scenes in the garden and the wood came back into his mind and unnerved him. Then a question posed itself in his mind: Do I love her? But he would not answer. Others presented themselves yet insistently: How shall I draw back. He did not understand. He had no intention of drawing back. Well, then, should the marriage take place? He really didn't know.
"I must have a breathing space. I come back, I have arrears of work and friends to sec. Everything must be done properly. For the little dryad of the Robinvast wood, there is only one thing in the world and that is I. For me there are a dozen things, a thousand...."
He rang the bell, gave unnecessary orders, asked futile questions. It was only at about three o'clock that he opened the door to an image which had been prowling round his head since the morning: Gratienne was coming to pick him up at four and they were to go to St. Cloud. That was one of his great pleasures.
"Will Rose be able to understand these profoundly civilised landscapes, this well-tamed nature, these hills with their harmonious lines like the body of a lovely sleeping woman?"
M. Hervart felt in very good form. The uncomfortable symptoms which had disquieted him in the country had disappeared since his return.... He found in Gratienne a favourable reception and to the realisation of his desires. She knew his tastes and she shared them. In short, he promised himself several delightful hours after this familiar outing. However a very disagreeable surprise was in store for him. After the preludes of passion, when his whole being was bent on realisation, M. Hervart had a moment of weakness. Gratienne's skilful tenderness had certainly overcome it, the self-esteem of both parties had been preserved.
In the morning, he thought of Stendhal, carried the volume to his office and read chapter LX ofL'Amourwith the greatest attention. He found nothing there to enlighten him. Gratienne, certainly, did not inspire, and indeed no woman had ever inspired, in him that kind of ill-balanced passion in which the body recoils, alarmed at its own boldness.
"Stendhal no doubt had discovered one of the reasons for an absence of apropos, but he had found only one. And besides, all this doesn't belong to psychology; it is physiology. There's nothing but physiology. Bouret will tell me about it."
Bouret, who knew M. Hervart's life, made him relate, point by point, the whole history of his last year. Finally he said: "Well it's very simple."
Bouret employed no circumlocutions. He was clear and brutal. After a moment's reflection he continued!
"The inevitable accompaniment of Platonic love is secret vice. Simple flirtation leads to the same consequences. Double flirtation is secret viceà deux, discreet and hypocritical. Triple flirtation, if it exists, would still be secret viceà deux, but avowed, frank. It would perhaps be less dangerous than double flirtation, which is simply realisation artificially provoked. No virility can stand that. Women, for another reason less easy to explain, are destroyed by it just like men. Men are fools. If you want a woman, take a woman and behave like a fine animal fulfilling its functions! And above all beware of young girls. Young girls have destroyed the virility of more men than all the Messalinas in the world. Sentimental conversations, furtive kisses and hand-squeezings are almost always accompanied in an impressionable man, especially if he has several months or even a few weeks of chastity behind him, by loss of vigor. Then do you know what happens? One gets used to it. I believe that our organs, despite their close interdependence, have a certain autonomy. The first thing you must do is to preserve perfect chastity for an indefinite period. Active occupations, fatigue; you must procure sheer brute sleep. Then, in two or three months make a few direct attempts, absolutely direct. If that's all right, you must marry and set your mind to producing children. There."
"Then you condemn me to conjugal duty."
"That's it precisely."
"One should marry a woman one doesn't love?
"That would be true wisdom."
"And be faithful to her?"
"Obviously."
"Or else renounce everything?"
"I won't go as far as that. Your case isn't desperate. You have fled in time."
"I didn't fly. I was driven away."
"Bless her cruel heart. Tell me, did she permit indiscretions?"
"Yes, I should almost have said willingly."
"She will be a dangerous wife."
"She is so innocent!"
"There are no innocent women. They know by instinct all that we claim to teach them."
"That's just what innocence is."
"Perhaps. But a delicate voluptuary with an innocent and amorous girl is a lost man."
"I begin to realise the fact."
"There are not," Bouret went on, "several kinds of love. There is only one kind. Love is physical. The most ethereal reverberates through the organism with as much certainty as the most brutal. Nature knows only one end, procreation, and if the road you take does not lead there, she stops you and condemns you at least to some simulacrum; that is her vengeance. Every intersexual sentiment tends towards love, unless its initial character be well defined or unless the partners are in a phase of life in which love is impossible.... But I am treating you too much as a friend and too little as a patient. You seem to be pensive. You're not as much interested in questions as Leonor Varin. He is my pupil in the physiology of morals. How is Lanfranc? He doesn't Platonise, doesn't flirt...."
"Oh! no."
"Varin interests me. Do you know him?"
"Very little."
"The loss is yours. One of his days he will become a fine mind, if he gets over the sensual crisis. I'd like to marry him to some one."
"That's your panacea."
"Perhaps it is one, my friend, on condition that marriage is taken seriously. It's only in marriage that one can find stability. By the way, have you seen Des Boys' daughter? He writes to me from time to time. We have remained friends because, though he's a fool, he's a laconic fool. And then he's a very decent sort of fellow and a man to whom I owe my position. He seems to be almost embarrassed with his daughter. He has no connections in the world. What's she like? Pretty?
"Yes."
"Intelligent? I mean, of course, as far as a woman can be intelligent."
"Yes."
"And now the principal thing—her health?"
"Good as far as one can see."
"Ho, ho! I shall unloose Varin in pursuit of this nymph."
"Unnecessary; he knows her."
"Ah, he knows her?"
M. Hervart got up. He was afraid that some unforeseen question might make him say something silly. Suppose Bouret, who was a friend of Des Boys, guessed something? He tried to think of an ambiguous phrase and found one:
"I spent a day at the Des Boys' with Varin. I don't know if he's a familiar of the house."
And with that he went away.
"What a bad business!" he said to himself, as he thought of his health, for the rest was of secondary importance to him now. "No more women! No more Gratienne! No libidinous thoughts! Am I master of my thoughts? Why not a course of pious reading?"
He spent several black days, then gave orders, in one of the galleries of his museum, for one of those untimely upheavals which drive the amateur wild. M. Hervart needed to distract himself. After a week, Gratienne grown anxious, sent him an express letter. He yielded to the suggestion and that evening made an attempt which Bouret would have considered premature. However, it succeeded marvellously well and M. Hervart felt new life spring within him.
The next day, as he was in excellent spirits, he wrote to Rose, whose prolonged silence had ended by pricking his self-satisfaction.
On reaching Barnavast, Leonor had found two letters; which of the two interested him the more he could not tell. One was from M. Des Boys, asking him to come and finish, before the winter, and immediately, if he could, the alterations at Robinvast. A room was ready for him. He had but to give them warning, and they would send for him. The second came from La Mesangerie. It was a diary.
"15th September. What are my children's kisses after the kisses of my lover? It is like the smell of the humble pink after the heady perfume of the rarest flowers...."
"What a fool the woman is," said Leonor inwardly. "Why does she write. She has intelligence, her conversation is agreeable, she has taste, and see what she writes! God, how melancholy!..."
"... But pinks have their charm, just as they have their own season, and I am happy to come back to them, since their season has returned."
"That," thought Leonor, "is better; it's almost good.... Is Hervart still at Robinvast? I hope not. His holiday wasn't indefinite, I should think. Suppose I wrote to Gratienne?"
"... You flowers that the touch of my Beloved made to blossom in my heart, you perfume my soul, you intoxicate my senses...."
"Intoxicate my senses.... Is it necessary to remember myself to Gratienne? I would as soon get my information from another source."
"... intoxicate my senses. My body trembles at the thought of the night at Compiègne, every moment of which is a star that shines in my dreams. I did not know what love was...."
"Who does know what love is?... I don't feel bound to answer that to-day. Now I come to think of it, I don't know where Gratienne is. She must have left almost at the same time as I did. Let's leave it at that...."
"... what love was.... I have no desire to meet Hervart again at Robinvast. He bores me. Is she really going to marry this civil servant? If Rose knew. Yes, but if Rose knew everything, would she think much more of me than of M. Hervart? I am ten years younger than he, that's all; and my mistress is a much heavier millstone about my neck than his. It's easy to get rid of a Gratienne; with some one like Hortense, the process is much more difficult. She may make a scandal, she may kill herself, she may make her husband turn her out and then come and take refuge in my arms.... What then? Besides I love this beautiful woman quite a lot and it would distress me very much if I had to drive her to despair. And then Rose is wildly in love. Let me be reasonable. Where was I? Still at love."
"... what love was, before knowing you; I did not know what pleasure was before our mad night...."
"That's very likely. But I am doubtful about love. Is it love, that frenzy of sensual curiosity that makes us desire to know, in every aspect and in all its mysteries, the longed-for body? Why not? It is indeed, probably, the best kind of love. Bite, eat, devour! How well they realise it—those who reduce the object of their love to a little bit of bread which they swallow. The Communion—what an act of love! It's marvellous. Bouret would think that foolish, perhaps; but Bouret, right as he is in being a materialist, is wrong in not understanding materialistic mysticism. Can any one be at once more materialistic and more mystical than those Christians who believe in the Real Presence? Flesh and blood—that's what lovers want too, and they too have to content themselves with a mere symbol."
"... our mad night. It revealed a new world to me. I shall not die, like Joshua, without having seen the earthly paradise."
This phrase, despite its banality, pleased Leonor, who had begun to feel more indulgent towards his mistress.
"To write along letter like this was a great effort for her, and as it was for me that she made the effort, I should be a cad to laugh at it. That is why it would be as well to read no more. I shall ask her to give me a rendezvous too. Afterwards I shall go to Robinvast. Everything fits in well."
The assignation at Carentan was difficult to arrange. Hortense, at first delighted and ready to start, seemed to hesitate. It was too near, the town was too small. But her desire was so strong! What should she do? She hoped to find some pretext for going to Paris alone.
The truth was that, re-established in her surroundings, Hortense did not feel sufficiently bold to flout the rules voluntarily. She was one of those women who are ready to do anything, provided that circumstances determine their will. She could yield on an impulse to an imperious lover, where or when did not matter, as soon as safety was assured; she would profit by a chance, but to create chance, to organise it—that was another matter. Her escapade at Compiègne appeared to her now as one of those strokes of fortune which life does not grant twice. She dreamed of a new chance meeting with Leonor; but a concerted assignation! At the very thought, she felt herself followed, shadowed; the idea made her quite ill. To be surprised by her absurd husband—how shameful that would be!
"If Leonor came here we could easily find some means. I could have a headache, one Sunday, stay in my room, be alone in the house; besides, there is luck."
She always entrusted herself to luck. She had never yielded to any of her lovers except on the spur of the moment.
"Might we not recapture," she went on, "something of the night at Compiègne, even in a rapid abandonment?"
Women are ruminants: they can live for months, for years it may be, on a voluptuous memory. That is what explains the apparent virtue of certain women; one lovely sin, like a beautiful flower with an immortal perfume, is enough to bless all the days of their life. Women still remember the first kiss when men have forgotten the last.
Hortense dreamed, Leonor desired. He thought only of yesterday's mistress, when he did think of her, in order to make her the mistress of to-morrow. His sentimentality was material. He crossed the stream from stone to stepping-stone, from reality to reality. In default of Hortense, he had taken Gratienne, not to satisfy his physical, but his cerebral needs. To live, he had to have the electuary of two or three sensations, always the same, but always fresh. Was he capable of a profound emotion, and would such a love have influenced his physiological habits? He did not know. Faithful to Bouret's theories, he did not think so.
He wrote to Hortense: "I want you to come." She was frightened but happy.
"How he loves me!"
The pleasure of obeying struggled in her with fear. Fear, at certain moments, gave way.
"Since he wants me to come, it is clear that he knows I can come, that there is no danger. And then, he will be there!"
She leaned on Leonor as on a second husband, stronger, more real, though distant. Distant? But wasn't he always present in her thoughts?
One morning her fear gave way altogether, she wrote, set out, arrived.
She was trembling, and she still trembled long after the bolts were shot.
This new festival of love was vain, on account of her sensibility. Leonor, astonished by a coldness which he imagined he had overcome for ever, attributed it to a failure of tenderness. He knew that women only palpitate with the men they adore, but he thought that they ought always to palpitate. He did He did not know that there are women who, their whole life long, pursue the delirious sensations which they are doomed never to find again. He imagined therefore, that he was no longer loved, and he was bitter, for men are readily bitter when their mistress's exaltation is too moderate.
Hortense wept. "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
Her tenderness had, however, in no way diminished. Leonor had to admit it as he received contritely Hortense's poignant kisses. He asked her pardon, humiliated himself, and for a moment she was happy in the caresses of her lover, but she was still whispering to herself, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
After her departure, Leonor coldly informed his landlady that he did not mean to come back; then after a long tedious wait in an inn parlour, he returned to Barnavast. A letter awaited him, pressing him to come. M. Des Boys begged him, with a kind of anxiety, to fix the day on which they could come and fetch him.
Leonor would have liked, however, to devote some few days to meditation. He had a question to answer, "Does she love me?"
"We shall not meet again at Carentan, that is decided. Besides, it was absurd. What a place to make love in! Her failure was due to her repugnance for the surroundings. It was a sign of her refinement of feeling. And then women have no imagination. To me, everything is a palace; the woman I adore would light up a hovel.... Does she love me?"
But it was in vain that he repeated the question, he could find no answer.
"What a fool I am! I shall see well enough next time. I continue to love her. She is beautiful, she is obedient.... But is that the aim of my life? Suppose she were given me for my own?"
But to this question he could think of no answer either.
Hortense, at the same moment, in the old room she had had before she was married, was going to sleep, sighing, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
When Leonor arrived at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter.... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the trees; M. Des Boys between two sentences of his letter would examine his daughter. During this last fortnight, she had been pale, sad, out of humour; and her father, absent-minded, but affectionate, had grown anxious. What was going on between the recently engaged couple? But M. Des Boys would never have dared to question his daughter. He was waiting for a confidence, knowing quite well that it would never come; and on her side, Rose was unhappy at having to keep locked up in her heart the troubles that were suffocating her. These two people, shy and secretive towards one another, might have remained like this for years without deciding to speak the words which would have consoled them.
M. Des Boys had accordingly urged Leonor to come and finish his work.
"It will be a distraction for her," he had thought, "and then, at bottom and in spite of my pledged word, I agree with my wife: Leonor would be a much more suitable husband. What! Can Hervart be making her unhappy already."
The letter he was reading at this moment put the final touch to his anxiety. It was from Bouret and Leonor was much praised in it. Bouret went on:
"I have seen Hervart and have equally advised him to get married, but for different reasons. Though he is little younger than we are, he is probably nearer the end. We shall all, alas, see this end confronting us, if we live another fifteen years. Do you understand me? With prudence and diplomacy, Hervart can still drag on a long time, can even recapture brilliant moments; but he has played too much on the fine violin given him by nature. The strings will snap one after the other. As long as one remains a virtuoso, one can still astonish ears habituated to vulgar exercises; but all the same, a single string is very risky! I have therefore ordered him to marry and, above all, to be faithful to his wife. Fidelity will bring satiety, satiety will bring continence, and continence will perhaps be the true philter. A young wife is not so dangerous as one thinks for a man on the down grade. She is a favourable stimulant and, at the same time, a moderating element. In fine, Hervart may make a very good husband. In any case it's an experiment that interests me. I should be quite capable—if it gives good results, that is, at least a fine child—of yielding myself to an old temptation. I would give up my practice and go and cultivate roses and camellias in some corner of your earthly Paradise, in the Saire Valley, where one sees palms among the willow-trees!"
"I had almost forgotten one important point in our hypothesis. The young wife must have a virtuous temperament, without coldness, but also without sensual curiosity; a good reproducing animal, apt in the pleasure of conceiving rather than in the pleasure of love-making; one of those who, after having been blushing brides, become loving mothers. If he falls on some rebellious woman he is lost. If the instrument which he has to tune and render sensitive gives out no sound or false notes he will lose courage and return to his old concerts. But if, by chance, his wife should reveal herself as a creature of voluptuousness, his perdition would be still more certain: Hervart would flare up like a faggot and nothing but a handful of ashes would be left. I am not speaking of the adultery which would, in these last two cases be inevitable. Sometimes it has the effect of re-establishing the balance in a dislocated household; there are excellent conjugal associations in which each party has his or her ideal down town, in a different quarter of the city. But this is a matter of sociology and doesn't interest me. I remain in my domain, which is the human body, its functions, its anomalies. I may add that it is by their ignorance of it that the sociologists think of such nonsense as they do. They are still hard at work—the idiots!—reasoning about averages, they never come down to reality, to the individual. How it is despised, this human body of ours! And yet it is the only truth, the only beauty, just as it is the only ideal and the only poetry...."
Bouret was inclined to philosophise. His letters almost always passed the range of his correspondents' comprehension. He saw that himself, when he re-read them, and smiled. All that M. Des Boys understood in his friend's dissertation was the passage which concerned Hervart; but that he understood very well. Bouret's reticences produced their ordinary effect: Hervart was considered as a man incapable, condemned without reprieve.
"He's a madman. What does he mean by going and captivating a young girl's heart when he isn't sure of being able to make a wife of her! The Lord knows, women aren't angels; they have corpora! sensations; and then maternity, maternity...."
M. Des Boys confided to himself all the scabrous or moral banalities that such a subject could make him think of. Meanwhile, he examined his daughter.
"How shall I explain this to her? I shall make her mother do it."
He continued his meditations; and sometimes he would smile at the evocation of foolish fancies, sometimes his brows contracted and he would feel a mixture of anxiety and anger.
Rose was also reading:
"... but I have been very ill since my arrival here. Some fever, due, it may be to the delicious excitement of my heart. A great depression has been the result and I now feel a most disquieting lassitude. Alas! the conclusion is sad: we must put off our marriage. It's a infinite pain to me to write this; but I ask myself when it will be possible? Will it ever be possible? No, I won't ask that. It would be terrible. I love you so much! What a happiness it is to walk again with you, in fancy, through the wood at Robinvast! If I was too audacious, you will pardon me won't you, because of the violence of my love...."
There was a lot more in this style, and a less inexperienced woman than Rose would have felt the artificiality of this amorous eloquence Not a word of it, certainly, came from the heart. M. Hervart, who was not cruel, had first laid down the principle of his illness and his intention was to draw from it, graduating deceptions, all its logical conclusions. If necessary, he had said to himself, Bouret will help me. M. Hervart, who was by nature a man of the last moment and the present sensation, thought of Rose only as one thinks of a sick friend, for whose recovery one certainly hopes, but without anguish of mind. However the fatuity inevitable in the male sex assured him that he was not forgotten: he flattered himself on having left a wound in the young girl's heart which would never altogether close, and he felt what was almost remorse. To enjoy the egoist's complete peace, he would have consented to a sacrifice; he would have allowed Rose, not forgetfulness, but melancholy resignation.
"Poor child!... But it had to happen. I hope she won't be too unhappy."
The perusal of M. Hervart's letter left Rose sad and charmed:
"Oh, how he loves me! Oh, my darling Xavier, you are ill then?"
And she thought of the fiancée's cruel fate:
"He is ill, and mayn't go and console him."
She was turning towards her father when he rose to meet Leonor. It was in the presence of the young man and without paying heed to him that she imparted M. Hervart's news.
"He is ill, he has had a touch of fever...."
"Fever?" exclaimed M. Des Boys.
"Yes, and afterwards he's been feeling very weak after it."
"Very weak, yes. What then?"
"What then, why, our marriage has to be postponed...."
"Of course."
"I'm very anxious."
"So I should imagine."
"Why shouldn't we go and see him?"
"Do you think it would be any use?"
"It would give him such pleasure."
"Does he ask you to do it?"
"No...."
"Well, then."
"He doesn't dare ask."
"Is he as shy as all that?"
This innocent question made her blush.
"I'll speak of it with your mother," M. Des Boys continued. "Meanwhile, let's get on a little with our architecture."
Rose had been so bored since Xavier's departure, she had been so miserable at his long silence, and now she was feeling so anxious that she accepted her father's proposal without repugnance.
This time they were dealing with the house, there were urgent repairs to be made and useful ameliorations. As they went round, the architect pointed out the weak spots. A whole plan of restoration formed itself in his head.
The days passed. The masons were soon at work. Rose hardly left Leonor's side.
They had news of M. Hervart more than once through the newspapers, for his rearrangements at the Louvre had drawn upon him the epigrams of the press; but he himself remained silent.
In the circumstances M. Des Boys had resolved to say nothing, to leave time to do its work. Later on, when no dangerous memories of her past love remained in Rose's heart, when she should be married, he would confide her the truth, with a smile.
One day Leonor let fall, from the top of a ladder, a pocket-book from which a flood of papers—sketches, bills, letters, picture post-cards —escaped. Rose picked them up, without giving them more than the discreetest glance when Martinvast castle caught her eye. At the loot of the keep she found M. Hervart's "love and kisses." The blood came suddenly to her eyes; she turned the card over and read: "Mademoiselle Gratienne Leboeuf, Rue du Havre, Honfleur." She looked up; Leonor did not seem to have noticed the incident, and with a rapid gesture she folded up the card and slipped it into her bosom.
"Monsieur Leonor, you've dropped your pocket-book."
Leonor descended his ladder and thanked her, while Rose walked away. When she had disappeared he noticed with delight that she had stolen Martinvast Castle; then, whistling, he climbed up once more to see his workmen.
Arrived in her room, Rose sat down, trembling.
"I have made a mistake," she said to herself. "It isn't possible. And how could it have come into Leonor's hands?"
She extracted the card from its hiding-place, unfolded it and looked at it, trembling.
"It's his writing all right."
She still felt doubtful.
"What's the date?"
She deciphered it without difficulty. "Cherbourg, 31 July, 1903."
"The very day we went to the Liais Garden, the day we went up that tower where I almost fainted with love.... I was so happy!"
She began crying. Through her tears she looked at her hands, turning them, looking at all the fingers one after another. She looked as though she were rediscovering them, taking possession of them once more.
Finally she got up and stamped her foot.
"Very well then, I don't love him any more. There! Good-bye, Monsieur Hervart. You deceived me, I shall never forgive you. And I had such confidence in him; I let myself rest so softly on his heart."
She was still crying.
"Now, I am ashamed...."
And she felt her body, from head to feet, as though to take possession of it also. She would have liked to press it, to wring it so that all the caresses, all the kisses which had sunk into her skin, penetrated her veins, thrilled her nerves, might be drained out of it.
In her already perverted innocence she pictured to herself the mutual caresses of Xavier and this Gratienne woman. She pictured to herself this woman's body and compared it with her own. Was she more beautiful? In what is one woman's body more beautiful than another's? Xavier had loved to caress her, to crush her in his arms. And used he not to say: "How beautiful you are!" A vision, against which she struggled in vain, showed her Xavier kneeling beside Gratienne and covering her with kisses.
A heat mounted in her breast, her heart contracted; she tried to cry out, half got up, clutched at the air with her hands and fell in a faint.
When she came to herself, she felt very tired and very frightened as well. She looked about her, afraid to discover the reality of the painful vision which had overwhelmed her. Reassured, she breathed again.
"It was a dream, only a dream."
But it seemed as though a spring had suddenly been released in her heart. Throughout her whole being there was a sudden change. Under her maiden breast, grief had taken up its home. She felt it as one feels a piece of gravel in one's shoe. It was something material which had insinuated itself into the intimacy of her flesh, causing her, not pain, but a sense of discomfort.
At the same time, all that she habitually loved seemed to her without the faintest interest. She looked with an indifferent eye at this room in which she had dreamt so many dreams, this room that she had arranged, decorated with so much pleasure, so much minute care, this cell she had spun and woven herself to sleep in, like a chrysalis, till the awakening of love should come. The great trees of the wood which she could see from her window, and could never see without emotion, appeared to her patches of insignificant greenery: she noticed, for the first time, that their tops were of uneven height and she was irritated by it. There was a sound of hammering; she leaned out of the window and saw two men splitting a block of granite, and for a moment she wondered what for.
"Oh, yes, of course, the repairs.... What does it all matter to me? Ah! where are my dear solitary hours in the old house, imprisoned by its ivy and climbing roses! And now Leonor! I wish he'd go away. He's the cause of it all. If it hadn't been for his clumsiness, I should never have known of the existence of this woman.... But how did he come to have that card in his pocket?"
The idea of a voluntary indiscretion did not occur to her. She had never dreamt that Leonor could feel for her any emotion of tenderness. Besides, no man except Xavier had yet existed in her imagination. There was Xavier on the one hand; and on the other there were the others.
Meanwhile she went on reflecting. Love, jealousy, grief, quickened her natural intelligence.
"There were several letters in the pocket-book addressed to M. Varin. That's natural. But why this card addressed to that woman? He must know her too. She must have given it to him because of the view of Martinvast Castle, I suppose...."
She could not succeed in reconstructing the adventure of this post-card. There was some mystery about it, which she soon gave up the hope of solving.
"But all I have to do is to ask M. Leonor. How simple! But then I shall have to tell him that I stole his postal card, for I have stolen it! It's not very serious, perhaps, but how shall I dare talk to him about it, how shall I, first of all, confess that I had the bad manners to look at his correspondence? Oh! but a post-card, a picture! And then I shall tell him the truth? it fell under my eyes by chance, and if the card had been turned with the address side upwards, I should certainly not have turned it over...."
What was most repugnant to her was the necessity of speaking of Gratienne, for Leonor was not ignorant of her projected marriage with M. Hervart. She remained undecided, and at once she began to suffer once more; for her grief had spared her a little while she was engaged in her deliberations.
She was so wretched and so tired that when the dinner-bell rang she went down without thinking of her dress, without refreshing her eyes, still red and inflamed with crying.
Leonor was on the watch for the effect of his cure. He saw that evening that it had succeeded. Rose looked like a shadow, a dolorous shadow. She forgot to eat, and would sit looking into the void, her hand on her glass; she did not reply to questions unless they were repeated. Finally, it was obvious that she had been crying.
"The remedy has been a painful one," said Leonor to himself. "Will she bear a grudge against the doctor? Perhaps, but the important thing was to scratch out the unblemished image stamped on her heart. That has been done. Across M. Hervart's portrait, in all directions, from top to bottom, from side to side, there is written now: Gratienne, Gratienne, Gratienne.