CHAPTER VIIIMADAME GUIBERT
On the veranda Madame Guibert was waiting for the return of “her children.” Her arms were crossed on the iron balustrade; hidden in one of her hands she held a rosary, the beads of which she told while her lips murmured theAve Maria. A peace as deep as that which had fallen over the land now reigned over her tear-stained face.
She saw Paule come back sobbing distractedly and tried in vain to stop her.
“Paule, what is the matter? Tell me,” she called. But the girl passed her without a word and fled to her room.
Madame Guibert turned to follow her. Then she changed her mind, threw a shawl round her shoulders, and descended the steps. With trembling feet, summoning all her strength, she went up the avenue and posted herself near the open gate which looked on to the road.
“He cannot have passed yet,” she thought. “Paule came back so quickly.”
By the light of the setting sun she scanned the deserted road. Allround her she heard nothing but the never-ceasing, strident sound of the crickets and the occasional flutter of a heavy chestnut-leaf blown down by the wind. After a few minutes of suspense, she saw the young man’s shadow on the path which skirts the Montcharvin meadows. He walked along with his head bowed, and his body stooping listlessly. As he came nearer she read easily the expression of sadness in his face. So absorbed was he in his sorrow that he did not notice her standing to his right beside the stone column. As he passed her, she called to him:
“Jean!”
Surprised to hear his own name he turned round and saw the old lady smiling sweetly at him. He took off his hat and came up to her.
“I am so unhappy,” he said simply, as if he were telling his troubles to his own mother. Madame Guibert held out her hand to him.
“Jean, give me your arm. Let us go in, night is coming on and it is getting cold.”
He gave her his arm, answering in dull accents: “Madame Guibert, you know that I must not come in any more. But I will take you back as far as the door.”
The golden splashes of twilight sought to blend with the thick trunks of the chestnuts. Daylight was fighting obstinately with darkness. Slowly and silently the pair walked over the gravel of the avenue. Atthe foot of the steps, as he was going to bid her good-bye she said:
“Come in with me. I want to talk to you. Paule is not in the drawing-room.”
He tried to resist, then gave way indifferently and followed Madame Guibert. He was like a condemned man, who does not believe in the chaplain’s consolations and yet listens to him.
When he had shut the door she turned to him and taking his two hands looked at him steadily with her clear eyes.
“She has refused to be your wife?”
“She ran away in tears.”
“Jean, my dear Jean, you did not understand.”
Her affectionate words soothed his pain, but also had the effect of softening his resolution, and he was ready to burst into tears.
“I am sure she does not love me,” he said. “I love hersomuch.”
She let go his hands and leaned against the table, seeming to collect her thoughts. What she was making up her mind to say was so serious. Could she answer for her daughter’s heart? Was she indeed sure that she herself quite understood? She looked at the young man whom she wished to have for her son, and remembered how loyal and brave he had been in the past. Above all she thought of Paule’s loving nature and her life in the days to come. Reassured, she smiled at Jean and spoke at last.
“You are quite wrong, Jean. Paule loves you.”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, Madame, do not trouble yourself to find explanations. Let me go away.”
“Do you think mothers can no longer guess their daughter’s secrets?”
She paused and then spoke out her thoughts.
“Paule loves you. Did you not understand that she was sacrificing herself for me?”
“For you?” he repeated. “How so?”
He looked attentively at Madame Guibert. His youth rebelled at the thought of defeat and already he was full of a new hope. Still she was not surprised that he had not guessed her meaning. She answered almost apologetically:
“Did you not tell her that you were leaving for Tonkin?”
“Yes, I did.”
“She did not want to go away from me, Jean. And that is why she left you in tears. But she loves you. Did not her tears tell you that?”
At last his own selfishness was clear to him, and he stood stupidly before the woman whose existence he had forgotten. He had been preparing to leave her in loneliness and yet a few minutes ago she hadsaid nothing when he had asked her for the gift of her last child.
Madame Guibert repeated, as he maintained his silence: “She did not wish to leave me all alone.” And with a faint smile she added, “Does that surprise you, Jean?”
He was still silent, trying to master the feeling that was overwhelming him. The old lady went on in her gentle, resolute voice:
“She was wrong, Jean. She loved me before she loved you. She loves you best to-day and does not yet know it. She has been my joy and my strength. You will see later what her devotion can be. She has devoted herself to me to the verge of sacrificing herself. But I do not wish it. God does not wish it.”
She saw that the young man was almost in tears and she took his hand again.
“She is looking back, and in life we must look forward. Fathers and mothers must live for their children, not the other way. It is the natural law. It is the divine will. Do not mourn, Jean. She will be your wife. I am going to send her to you. But you must promise me you will cherish and protect her always and make her happy. My little Paule deserves it so much.”
Jean could not keep back his tears any longer. And these were sacred tears, stirred at the sight of such a miracle of abnegation. His deep and respectful admiration embraced both mother and daughter, so worthyof one another in their forgetfulness of their own happiness. And he himself, blinded by his love, had not guessed that this love, cruel as the gods of old, demanded a great sacrifice, an offering of atonement in the sorrow of the noblest of hearts!
With an impulsive movement he bent over the hand which he held in his and placed his lips on it.
“I should like to kneel to you,” he murmured. “May you be blessed above all women!”
“Oh, what are you saying, Jean?”
He continued: “But I cannot accept your sacrifice. We will stay in France near you. Paule shall never leave you.”
Madame Guibert had already left him. She went to the end of the drawing-room, opened a door, and turning round on the threshold as she went out said, “Wait here for me.”
She crossed her own room and entered her daughter’s noiselessly. Through the open window the dying light of day came in, with the perfume of the garden, and was reflected with the trees in the mirror. In the afterglow, she saw Paule, sitting huddled up at the foot of her bed, crying her heart out for her lost happiness. She had lost it of her own free will, and not through weakness; but could she not see itnow from afar, like the promised land which she should never enter? She plunged herself into the flood of that love which none had known or could ever know, that joyous love of old which she had thought suppressed for ever and which she now felt welling forth again to her sorrow—plunged herself so deep that she seemed almost to taste the savor of death upon her lips. She was awakened from her misery by her mother’s kiss upon her hair.
“Paule,” said Madame Guibert, “why are you crying? You must be brave in your happiness, as you have been in your trials.”
The girl had already risen and under cover of the growing darkness, which partly hid the signs of her sorrow, she began at once to defend herself.
“You don’t know what happened, Mother. I do not love him. Only ... his offer was so unexpected, so strange, that I was a little startled. It is the first time, Mother, you know.... But I don’t love him, I assure you.... I cannot do more than I have done.”
Her mother was looking at her with infinite love, as if she were measuring the extent of this devotion which would not confess itself and persisted in denial, even to despair.
“Come with me, Paule,” she said at last. “Jean has not told youeverything—Or you left too soon. He did not have time to tell you, dear, that when you go I am going with you.”
As flowers after a heavy shower sparkle in the sunlight which changes their rain-drops to precious stones, so now this tearful face lighted up. Paule threw her arms round her mother’s neck. If Madame Guibert had any doubts about Paule’s secret, this quick change would have enlightened her.
“Mother, is that true? How happy we shall be out there! ... I love you.”
Madame Guibert smiled, fully aware that these three immortal words were not meant for her.
“I knew it well,” she murmured softly, fondling her daughter’s cheek as she used to do when she was but a tiny child. Moved to tears she was thinking of the blossoming of this happiness to which, by a providential chance, she had been allowed to contribute, and under her breath she thanked God, who had answered her prayer.
Shyly and without looking at her mother, Paule asked: “Has he gone?”
“He is here.”
The girl blushed, but the darkness hid her. The golden lights were already fading from the mirror.
“Let us go and find him,” said Madame Guibert.
She lead Paule by the hand into the drawing-room.
“Jean,” she said, “here is your wife!”
She joined their hands. But they did not look at each other yet. A similar emotion filled their hearts. Jean was the first to raise his eyes. The tears Paule had shed, if they lessened the beauty of her features, took away the pride of her expression and in its place brought a humbler, more touching look. He loved her all the more for her womanly weakness.
“I may be certain of my happiness?” were his first words.
With a sigh she answered, “Oh, yes....”
“Paule, I love you,” he said.
She repeated after him in a voice that was scarcely audible: “I love you, Jean.”
She looked at him in her turn and they smiled at each other. But immediately her eyes went to her mother, and, the joy of her heart confirmed, she said:
“Mother is going to Tonkin with us. We will all be together out there except my sister Marguerite, the nun.”
Now Jean understood the last argument Madame Guibert had used to test her daughter’s heart. And although he had doubts about this journey and instinctively suspected the generous falsehood, he pretended torejoice with the two women.
“My children, my dear children,” Madame Guibert cried. “God has given us great happiness. May His blessing be upon you, upon your new home, upon your family! Jean, kiss your bride.”
The young man’s lips touched a cheek that was still wet. Thus their first kiss was mingled with sadness, as if to symbolize their union for life, in sorrow and in joy.
Madame Guibert had gone to the end of the drawing-room, and was looking at Marcel’s photograph; but at this late hour it was more in memory than in the portrait that she could see her son’s features. Jean and Paule came up to her.
“How happy Marcel would be,” said the young man. “I think now he knew my heart before I did myself.”
And the girl was thinking of her brother’s words: “Don’t be anxious, you will be happy some day.” Could he, who bore the fatal sign upon his brow and walked towards death with a sure step, have read the future then, with eyes that saw into another world? Was it his detachment from this life that enabled him to understand the affinity of souls and the secret of destinies? Paule’s sisterly devotion was glad to have Marcel associated with her own love.
The glowing struggle of the daylight with the dusk was over. Day was dead.
“I must go,” murmured Jean to his fiancée. And immediately she felt sad. Already all her thoughts were with her future husband and this first separation was a cause of grief.
“It is very late,” Madame Guibert broke in. “Stay with us, Jean. You must dine with us—you are not hard to please. Afterwards you can go back to Rose Villa.”
He hesitated a minute.
“I cannot,” he said. “My uncle would be anxious. I was rude to him just now on the road and I don’t wish to cause him fresh annoyance.”
He told Paule of M. Loigny’s unaccomplished official mission.
“Come back with him to-morrow for luncheon, then,” continued Madame Guibert. “Tell him that the garden will play its part in the fête. We shall have our loveliest flowers on the table. They will entertain him. Then we will all go and celebrate your engagement at the village church.”
As Jean left Le Maupas he found darkness in the oakwood. Joyfully and in no haste he descended the wooded hillside, as though it were the plain straight path of his well-ordered life in the days to come; the same hillside that Marcel had once mounted running, with the fire of love in his heart and the savor of danger upon his dry lips.
That night Paule was late in getting to sleep. She welcomed love with a steadfast heart, and with a serious feeling that made her resolution the firmer, not the weaker. She had climbed the hill of her youth, fighting difficulties, both physical and moral, as the hardy mountain-sheep struggle upward through the bushes which tear their fleeces on the way. Now it seemed to her that she was walking over a plain and that her bare feet were treading the soft grass. The sky before her was full of light. And what did it matter to her if she still had to climb? Would she not hereafter have a stronger arm to lean upon? And did she not feel in herself a new courage?
But Paule had been asleep a long time when her mother was still watching and praying.
“My God,” the poor woman murmured, “for the first time in my life I have told a lie. Forgive me. These two children had to be brought together. They were made for each other. Should not their happiness go before mine? I am too old to follow them. I cannot leave my dead. The earth is calling to me and Thou will soon summon me. Here I will await the hour that Thou hast fixed. But grant me strength, Oh my God, to bear this last separation calmly. I had grown accustomed to Paule’s care and Thou remindest me, in taking away my only earthly joy, thatwe cannot attach ourselves for ever to this world’s goods. In leaving me she will take away the heart which Thou hast filled, before breaking it. I offer Thee my sorrows beforehand, so that Thou mayst shower the most abundant blessings on my sons, including Jean, and on my daughters, on the living and the dead.”
She prayed a long time. At last she found peace in resignation, and her tardy slumbers were tranquil.