* * *In later years M. Mairieux consented to tell me how he had learned his daughter’s secret. It was later, much later, after we had lost her, and I was questioning him greedily about the past. I had envied him the possession of this secret, but it was just that he should have received it, and not me. After twenty years of boundless and absolutely unselfish affection, what an advantage he had over me!When he entered Raymonde’s rooms, she was standing by the threshold of the window, motionless, inert, almost indifferent. He told her of my impatience, my unhappiness. Nevertheless, he said, she should take counsel only of her own heart. The material advantages of a marriage should only be a secondary consideration.She kept repeating obstinately:“No, no, I do not want to marry him.”“But why?”“M. Cernay is not the husband for me.”He was tempted to stop there. A presentiment, which he took to be paternal selfishness warned him, as he confessed to me, warned him not to insist. Conscientious scruples, however, and the desire to exhaust every argument in favour of the alliance, urged him to add:“Possibly, but he loves you.”This time he received no reply; indeed it was not a question. There was only one thing more to say:“And you—do you love him?”“How can I know?” she murmured, and then, realising the truth, she wept. These first tears I did not see. How many others did her love cost her, less observed, even more secret, which I saw no better?To young girls who have not squandered their imagination in precocious little flirtations, love is like a garden in springtime before the dawn. The flowers are there, all the flowers. We do not realise it, although we inhale their perfume, because it is so incredible. Thus, enclosed within the heart, the magic enchantment sleeps, invisible. Day breaks, and with it all the world seems to be born. But the love which shines forth was always there.* * *The next day I had my turn.Mme. Mairieux watched for my arrival. It was she who opened the door for me, and from her I learned of my happiness. It lost nothing in the telling, for she was anxious to spare me several moments of anxiety.Raymonde met me in the drawing-room, holding her father’s hand.She wore the same simple dress of white serge that she had had on the day before. Her smooth cheeks had grown pale; she did not smile, she was serious, indeed almost severe. When her eyes rested upon me they seemed to me to have grown not only even larger, but almost terrified, and at the same time that I read in them the avowal of her love, I saw a kind of holy fear, a sort of religious ecstasy. With ardour I poured out all my love to her, but of what value were my protestations in comparison with that pathetic countenance haloed by devotion? Why did I not throw myself upon my knees to plead before her, to pray to her as to a saint?I have before me as I write a little picture of the Annunciation. Mary, who is scarcely fifteen years old, has just learned from the angel her divine mission. With clasped hands she strives to quiet her heart. In spite of her unworthiness, she accepts the honour at which she thrills, but at the same time she foresees all the sorrow that will come to her. She trembles with joy or fear, or rather with joy and fear together.In the course of a journey to Italy I came upon the picture in a little town. To secure it I needed more than money; I had to use persistence, strategy, eloquence. But I wanted it at any price. For this acceptance without fear—oh, in my comparison I do not intend any irreverence, which as far as I am concerned would only be detestable and ridiculous—this acceptance without fear recalled to me my betrothal, which in truth was for Raymonde an oblation that she made to me of all the suffering to come. With mystic intuition she foresaw it, but I, I guessed nothing.She had listened to me without speaking. At last, as though there were any need of words when I saw that the whole current of her being was arrested, I demanded:“Will you not tell me, too, that you love me?”She shivered all over and I dared insist.“Not to-day,” she murmured at length in a colourless voice. “I cannot.”“And to-morrow?”“To-morrow perhaps.”Fool that I was, I could obtain nothing more from her, though she was sinking under the weight of her love. Ordinarily we employ the same phrases in common conversation that we use for the deepest emotions. Through reluctance, through delay, through the difficulty of giving them utterance, the desire to keep them in her heart, which cherished them in order the better to absorb their virtue, Raymonde restored to the divine words their true meaning, their power and their freshness. And I complained!I wished to embrace her, but despite myself my respect for her checked me, and instead I bent over the hand that hung by her side. She had to restrain herself from drawing it away, as if my kiss had burned it.“Leave her now,” said her father. “You do not see that she is thoroughly tired out.”Ah, how I pity those who become engaged, who marry, in the city! Does not everything urge them to set bounds to a love which they must keep, as it were, on a leash, in the streets, must protect incessantly in the midst of acquaintances, difficulties and embarrassments? My own and Raymonde’s love blossomed forth in freedom.We had resumed our horseback rides, and sometimes M. Mairieux accompanied us, sometimes he entrusted his daughter to me, when he would follow us with his eyes for several moments before he returned to his office or his work outdoors.The trees still retained their foliage, but the colours changed from day to day, a marvel to behold. The leaves of the lindens became a pale yellow, those of the oaks, at first a red copper, later that colour of rust which they keep all winter, for they do not fall: shrivelled, hardened, and curled up they cling to the branches until the new growth comes in the spring and flings them down.“They are like those feelings,” I said to Raymonde, “which remain in the heart even after they are dead, and which only a new passion has the power to drive away.”Whenever I gave vent to such sentimental rubbish as this, the art of which one acquires in society, she used to look me full in the face, her astonished eyes seeming to discover in me some unknown abysses. Why did I aim to dazzle her with such empty talk? I was thinking of those faded memories which still occasionally obtruded themselves upon my mind, and which, although they had not yet entirely gone, were destined, under the influence of my love, to disappear only to be reborn another day.“None of my affections is dead,” she replied. “None will die before I do.”We were passing the Green Fountain, and we paused to give our horses a drink from the basin. We saw the reflection of their heads mingle in the calm water, and leaning forward, she unconsciously and I intentionally, we saw our own heads come together and touch. Drawing back I looked at Raymonde: she was blushing as if she had felt my lips, although they had never yet touched her.Two years before, more than two years since, it was, on the birthday of spring, I had waylaid her there. I recalled the incident to her, and asked her the reason of her fear.“I did not expect you,” she said.“Was I so dreadful?” I inquired.“We must believe so, since I was afraid,” she answered, with her clear laugh.I should have been glad to have her assure me that even at that time she had begun to love me, although nothing could have equalled the charm that her ignorance of her own heart then possessed.“Whom did you love before me?” I asked.“Before you? My mother, and my father and all this besides,” she answered, and stretched out her arms in a comprehensive gesture that her little riding whip accentuated.“All this?” I repeated, not grasping her meaning.“Yes, the trees, the little pond that is down there, the orchards, the meadows, and the whole sky that you see.”I laughed as I listened to this catalogue.“I am not jealous of them,” I said.She looked about her at the forest, the luminous autumn forest which had contributed to the awakening of her spirit, and murmured:“You may well be, nevertheless.”She never questioned me about my past. Through a generosity, the nobility of which I understand now, she did not wish to crush me with it, although she suspected that it had been turbid and stormy. Believing me to be as honest as she was, she considered that I was sufficiently punished by not being able to sweep it utterly away when we exchanged our unequal love.As we turned for home the wind arose. Should we find our leaves again in the morning? On the avenue, those on the chestnut trees were stained brown and red. Before the chateau, the plane trees, with their leaves open like giant hands, were green and dull gold. They offered a splendid prize to the north wind which was beginning to blow. Each one, as it was gathered in, wavered gently in the air. Along the wall, the well-sheltered Virginia creeper spread out its vivid red, and the hardy hedges of privet and hawthorne preserved a touch of green in this symphony of brilliant colours.I was a little ahead and I turned.Why did Raymonde, in her white woollen dress, and mounted on her glistening horse, why did she, so young, seem to be so in harmony with the autumn, and like it to be so clothed with the delicate charm of things that perish? And why, feeling thus, did I not swear to watch over each instant of her happiness and her life?In the forest she showed me a young ash tree which, after several years, had succeeded in piercing the baleful vault of foliage and crept upward between its two powerful neighbours, now exposing its summit to the sun’s rays.“Raymonde, are you still a shadow-tree?” I asked.She recalled our former conversations, and, surprised at the attention I had paid to them, smiled.“The ash,” she said, “is a tree of light.”I believed that this was an answer and gloried in it. In reality she had not replied to me at all; possibly she was thinking of those trees that are so sensitive that the least hardship pierces them.* * *“I am glad,” she said to me one day, “that I had never given a single thought to any one before I met you. If it were not for this, my love would not be complete.”* * *Another day, under the arch of the cloister, she said:“My spirit seems so light that I can hardly hold it back. I feel as though it were beating its wings, as though it wished to fly away. I hold it back as much as I can, for if it should fly away, I should die. And I do not wish to die now, oh, no!”* * *In the valleys in October the evening falls swiftly. On our return from our ride, when night had surprised us, a falling star crossed the sky in front of us. Actually it seemed purposely not to hasten in its passage, as if it were asking us to tell it our desires.“What wish have you made?” I asked Raymonde.She turned on me her calm look.“None. Why should I?”“You would have had ample time,” I said. “One always wants something.”“Not I,” she answered. “I wish nothing.”* * *All the recollections that I pluck from the past contribute to picture her in a perfection of a love that I cannot imagine more complete. It was her very life, the very breath of her being.This love I believed myself worthy of inspiring, so many illusions did I still cherish. Her fervour, the solitude, the woods and the autumn days, strove together to exalt me. I truly believe that during this period I tried unconsciously to raise myself to her level. Her glance calmed, soothed and purified me. They say the moonlight calms the waves. In the same way, her influence stilled my transports and my desires. I should have striven to find my true self, to prune the forest of my spirit, to clear it of all its vanity and sham, of all that rank vegetation which I had permitted to grow up there—which, though temporarily stifled, would soon flourish again. I did not comprehend her love. I thought that I should teach her life, while she already knew by intuition that it was quite simple, and direct, level and smooth.One night the wind carried away the leaves. The next day we found them under our horses’ feet, and we left a track of red gold rustling behind us. However, in the forest we could the better appreciate the upward shooting of the bare trees, and the depth and charm of the paths. Winter was here, and the cold. Soon we should have to face bad weather. That ride would be one of our last. Mindful of all our others, we rode in silence more and more slowly, as if to prolong the hours....* * *Mme. Mairieux always prepared tea and small cakes for us on our return.She was very busy. Her daughter entrusted to her the choice of the trousseau, and she it was also who fixed the date for the marriage, made the arrangements for the official ceremony, marshalled the bridal procession as a captain his company, and finally even attempted to secure a bishop to pronounce the nuptial benediction.Her husband, somewhat reserved since our engagement, teased her gently, and by a calculated stubbornness obtained from her some concessions and omissions. These tilts consumed the evenings.“We must have a large wedding,” she said.“No, indeed, no,” he replied.Nevertheless she made out a list on the back of a mourning announcement, a sheet which she had economically torn from a letter of condolence. I recall that detail now, that omen: a black bordered sheet of paper for the list of our wedding guests.M. Mairieux read the list, which assumed disturbing proportions. Hoping for allies, he turned to the corner of the room where Raymonde and I were sitting, paying indifferent attention to these preparations.“What is your opinion, dear?” he inquired.“Oh, I,” she said, “you know very well that all the others are indifferent to me. All that I want are here now.”“One does not get married in secret,” protested her mother. “You, M. Cernay, who know so much of the world, must agree with me, do you not?”Thus drawn into the discussion, I supported my fiancée with an energy which astonished myself. Unquestionably, like her, I preferred to be alone with my happiness. Perhaps too—I am ashamed to admit it, but have I not undertaken to confess?—even at this happy time my vanity may not have been so completely dead that it did not suggest the advantage of not seeking to advertise too loudly a marriage without distinction, a union which would astonish the world, which they would make fun of in Paris. I was marrying my superintendent’s daughter; there was nothing in that on which to pride myself. Such were some of the imaginary difficulties that I had not succeeded in dispelling. When our judgment has been warped in early life by excess of worldly advantages and success, how many years and how much suffering are necessary to bring the truth, the real meaning of life, back to us! And in the interval, irreparable harm can be done.* * *One night about this time we began to discuss the plans of our life after the wedding. My wife and I intended to spend the winter in Rome, the following summer at the Sleeping Woods, and to postpone until the next winter our residence in Paris. I adopted this plan partly to secure more leisure for Raymonde’s education, which I flattered myself I was to undertake. Curiously enough, she smiled at the thought of Rome, while Paris frightened her.“But why?” I asked her.“In Italy we know nobody, all our time will be our own, all our hours, all our thoughts. It will be like the forest.”“Like the forest?” I repeated.“Yes, instead of the trees, the names of which I who know nothing of anything, was so proud to teach you, we shall see beautiful things, of which I am totally ignorant and which you will explain to me.”“And in Paris?”“In Paris, I shall be afraid.”“Of what?”“That you will not be pleased with me; I am only a little girl.”“How strange you are, Raymonde!” I answered.Nevertheless I did not ask her in what I could possibly fail to be pleased with her. It is not enough to say that I divined her doubts, for I actually shared them. But that which with her was merely modesty and shyness, was in my case, unwarranted distrust, a wretched preoccupation with the world’s opinion, which, even when away from it, I could not entirely disregard. What would be thought of my wife by the world, would my friends approve my choice?After a prolonged silence, in which there was no harmony of spirit, I determined to show my generosity, and turned to my parents-in-law.“It is understood,” I said, “that whether or not we are here, you will live in the chateau. I do not wish you to remain in this little lodge.”Mme. Mairieux broke into loud protestations of gratitude. Evidently I was making real one of her dreams. She had always wished to live in state, with dignity and ceremony, a troupe of servants, a continual round of visits, much publicity. A certain childishness lent to her ambition a touch of prettiness. The simplicity of her husband disconcerted her, for she did not recognise in it the superiority of breeding. The daughter of a bookseller in the town where he had been in garrison, thoroughly saturated with romantic novels, she had been captivated by his uniform and his horsemanship, and, after his marriage had cost him his career, had always cherished a grudge against him for the lack of money which compelled him to abandon his life of show. I reconstructed without difficulty this domestic drama, so common and inglorious.Raymonde looked at her father, who had not yet spoken. I noticed the anxiety in her glance, but I could not understand it. M. Mairieux gave me the explanation. He thanked me most amicably for what he called my delicacy, and declined. “This lodge,” he concluded, “was sufficient for us when we had our daughter. Without her it will be much too big and too empty. And see how conveniently it is arranged, and outside, the walls are clothed with vines and clematis. Let us live and die here.”Mme. Mairieux made a face, and I too was a little hurt by his refusal. I insisted, but ungraciously.“If not for your own sake, accept, for mine,” I said. “I cannot permit my parents-in-law to remain in an inferior position. What will they say in the neighbourhood?”This was the poorest of all arguments. At once the blood rushed to Raymonde’s face and she blushed all over. This excessive sensitiveness, which, however, she showed only in connection with the most subtle sentiments, gave her an incomparable charm. The time was still to come when I should reproach her for it.“That is perfectly true,” said Mme. Mairieux, her hopes reviving. “What will people say?”“What does it matter?” Her husband scorned the objection. “Are they not saying already that we have long lain in wait for M. Cernay in order to give him our daughter?”He regretted having repeated this gossip when he saw Raymonde’s eyes fill with tears.“They say that!” she cried.He endeavoured to soothe her at once.“Little one, little one! There are always evil-minded people. One must realise that.”“When you are happy,” she murmured, “how is one to know that?”* * *On the day we signed the marriage contract, she followed the example of her father. In the contract I had settled upon her a sum which would insure her future. She refused to accept it, and all my entreaties were useless.“But I may die, Raymonde,” I said.“Then I shall no longer need anything.”“One has to live even in sorrow,” I explained.“It takes very little.”“Fortune has favoured me,” I said. “Let me look after you.”“I want only your heart,” she answered, “because you already have mine.”“You know that you have mine too, Raymonde, but there are laws—”“The law cannot provide for everything.”Why had I not determined upon the expedient of holding the property in common? Why did I adopt that of dividing it, and then pose as a benefactor? Why, after her refusal to accept, did I not alter the contract? And, not having done so, why did I not draw a will in her favour on the day after the wedding? We forget too often to make our deeds consistent with our attitude in life. Our carelessness, or our egotism, or some mental reservation which escapes superficial analysis, leads us astray.Raymonde came to me with empty hands. Her youth and innocence amazed me, and I bargained for her.Now, now, I understand her better. There was no need of a contract between us, or, if one was necessary, it was only in order that a brief and indissoluble formula might unite our fortunes.* * *Our triple alliance cut down the greater part of Mme. Mairieux’s guests. I confined my own list to my two witnesses, Col. Briare, my nearest relative, and Pierre Ducal, one of my most intimate friends.The Colonel appeared to be satisfied with my alliance when he learned that my future father-in-law was an old army officer. Outside of his troopers, nothing interested him. Every one, including Mme. Mairieux, who was enraptured at the prospect of beholding a uniform, called him “my Colonel.” When he learned that Raymonde was an excellent horseman, he congratulated me brusquely.Pierre Ducal made me more uneasy. He brought into our woods the atmosphere of Paris, the dreaded judgment of Paris. His sarcasm is almost famous there. It is he who utters the last word about things, he who with no authority but his own acts as arbiter of fashion. Why did I choose him rather than another? I hoped by offering him this compliment to secure him as an ally. Would it not be better to have him with me than against me? Clearly I foresaw hostilities and in asking him to help me I would disarm him. Then too, although I had of late seen little of him, he still possessed for me the fascination with which he had once dazzled me. At one time, when the world monopolized me, I had copied him, so strongly did his assurance and ease of manner appeal to me as the summit of attractiveness.From the moment of his arrival at the chateau he was on the alert. The news of my marriage had burst like a bombshell upon the society we frequented. I had been the target for several of those forward, modern girls who look up a possible husband’s eligibility in advance. What rival in some forgotten corner of the world had snatched me from out of their experienced hands? No one knew anything, no one suspected anything, for my brief letter of invitation explained nothing. Nevertheless, I have learned since, before leaving, he trumpeted forth great news of the event. He had been generally commissioned to investigate my case.After the usual greetings he began the examination at once.“Is she a neighbour in the country here?”“Oh, a very close neighbour,” I replied. “She lives in the lodge which you see.”“At the entrance of the Avenue? Isn’t that part of your estate?”“Certainly, since her father is my superintendent.”In order to be done with it as quickly as possible, I hurled the sentence at him in a single breath, as if it were the confession of a sin. I decidedly was not enjoying the serenity which should have come from the happiness and honour of marrying Raymonde. The presence of a single man was sufficient to cause me one of those little shudders of cowardice and baseness. Nothing suggested a greater menace to my own and Raymonde’s happiness than the troubled way in which I confessed this little fact to Ducal. It proved that I was not cured of my pettiest vanities.Over them my love, born in solitude and nourished and beautified by the clear, fresh influence of my fiancée, temporarily triumphed. It did not destroy them. So many briers prevent the tree of our life from growing, and drain its sap.When Pierre Ducal’s trunks arrived I laughed at their number.“Well, you see,” he said nonchalantly, “I did not know.”Did not know what? In this vague phrase I perceived a painful significance. After a moment he explained:“You see I did not know exactly the character of the ceremony.”“It will be very simple.”“Naturally.”Naturally! I could have boxed his ears.At the same time a host of thoughts, which had not occurred to me during the happy months of my seclusion, beset and assailed me. I breathed again the intoxication of certain successes, I recollected the splendid alliances which had been offered me, I evoked the memory of some mistress whose rouge and whose treachery I had passed over because she carried to perfection the arts of dress and of fencing with words. What a position I might have held in Paris, had I wished! Forgotten impressions, as glittering and as false as the jewelry of a bazaar, impressions which tarnished my youth but had been happily lost during my rides with a pure child in the Sleeping Woods, conquests which had temporarily faded from my memory, these Ducal brought back to me as if they were precious stones that he had recovered.However, he had not yet seenHer. My radiant Raymonde would restore order in my heart.We were to take luncheon at the lodge before going to the mayor’s office. The religious ceremony was to be celebrated on the following day. Raymonde appeared in her plain street dress, almost entirely devoid of trimming or ornament, and for the first time I noticed those faults in attire which cost youth so little.“She is charming,” Ducal said to me in an undertone. “She has a little gown—”He hesitated a moment, then continued:“A delightful little gown. My compliments.”In words such as these the sneer is as plain as day, and I tasted its poison. It spoiled my pleasure. Why should I have attached any significance to what he said? I was like a mediocre artist or savant, who, not completely absorbed in his work, keeps his ears open for external sounds, for the voice of the critics, of rivals and of public opinion. The most beautiful love that could have illumined my youth did not shield me from such petty slights. Oh, dissipations of time and energy! Why must we perceive the greatest wonder of this life, that we can live but once, only when it has been put irreparably beyond our reach, when, like some perfect form arrested in the marble, or cloaked by night we cannot see it moving past?* * *My farmers, woodcutters and the neighbouring peasants, who adored M. Mairieux, but for whom I was a distant and puzzling landlord, had, during the night, covered with branches of fir trees the road which led from the lodge to the little church. They had despoiled the borders of the forest, in order that on this day of festivity we might walk on green boughs. It was late autumn in the forest, bare of leaves, but on the road it was spring. And in our hearts? Ah! Mine would have burst with joy, with that sheer joy which no impurity can spot, if Pierre Ducal had not been there.But he was there, piercing the least detail with his gimlet eyes. I should have been indifferent to him, and I hated him. He absorbed part of my attention, he prevented me from abandoning myself without reserve to the current of my love.Raymonde, her Book of Hours in her hand, slender and delicate, the contour of her face and the varying shades of gold in her hair softened despite the sunlight by her veil, looked in her white dress like one of those old missal pictures so radiant that it stands out from a golden background. Knowing the delicacy of her feelings I expected to see her agitated, but inwardly and outwardly she was peace. And seeing her thus I recalled the words she had said to me:“My Soul is so high that I can hardly hold it down.”I almost looked for wings, and it seemed to me that I could hear them beat. The first time I made a flight in my aeroplane, I distinctly saw a vision of Raymonde on the road strewn with foliage for the procession.Pierre Ducal approached to greet her. As he bowed, I noticed an uneven pleat in her gown. He straightened up and looked at me. I thought that I read his meaning: “That gown is certainly not a Maulet creation.”I realise that I am laying too much stress on impressions that were almost imperceptible, which slipped and fled away almost as soon as they were born. They indicated nevertheless the existence of that invisible crack in our happiness which made it the most vulnerable, the easiest to break.The sky was of that delicate tint which it assumes in mountainous countries at the end of the season, changing from pale blue to a pearl grey, as though by its transparency it was announcing the coming of snow.Raymonde, in order that we might be together in thought each moment of this unique day, had asked me to read the marriage service.“You will see,” she said, “how beautiful the Liturgy is.”I read it then. Since her death I have many times reread the words of St. Paul: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church: because we are members of his body. They two shall become one flesh—”I understood, I realised for one moment at least, that miracle of immortal love, which dares to brave time and because of its injuries from the union of body and soul, arrives at unity, order and peace. Yes, I understood that in loving Raymonde and in Raymonde’s love, I loved my better self, the heart of my heart, that which lives on in us after our youth is fled, that which, in each one of us, is part of the living Spirit of God.I had closed my Book of Hours. The thoughts which came to me were as refreshing as the living waters. I felt a kind of ecstasy. We were on our knees, and my bride signed to me to rise with her. I embraced her with my look, as though she were an object of infinite value, of which the internal charm exceeds by a thousand times the visible beauty. She smiled at me with perfect confidence, and at this moment we exchanged the mystic promise which includes in anticipation the sacramental “Yes.”A slight movement brought Pierre Ducal within my range of vision. I knew well the subtle smile which hollowed his cheeks. He was amusing himself, collecting anecdotes, already preparing an interesting story in which I was to figure as a first communicant. I felt it intuitively. Seized suddenly by fear of becoming ridiculous, I studied my actions. The ecstasy did not return. I placed the wedding ring on my bride’s finger with the indifference of some trivial mechanical duty.After luncheon Ducal asked me to lend him my automobile, for he wished to return to Paris that night. His many trunks, for which he had had no use, were placed on the machine, and after he had disappeared around the curve in the road, the wheels of the car crushing the fir boughs that had not yet been picked up, I breathed more easily, in fact I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief. Raymonde noticed the change at once.“Why were you not like this a little while ago?” she asked. “During the service you changed completely. Did you regret anything?”“Oh, Raymonde, what could I have regretted?”“Listen, I think I have guessed it,” she said. “You were looking at my white gown. Perhaps it did not become me very well.”“But, it did, I assure you.”“No, no, I know it,” she said. “But I should have grieved my little dressmaker in the village too much if I had given the order to any one else. What does a bad pleat amount to? But in the midst of happiness, to be neglectful of others, you agree with me that that would have been wicked?”I agreed with her, and moreover I did not discover the bad pleat again. It was as if it had disappeared with Pierre Ducal.Mme. Mairieux, to whom Col. Briare was telling stories of hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, had followed the course of our conversation and now began to excuse her daughter.“I scolded her,” she said. “She is lacking in elegance. You will know how to give it to her.”“Is it necessary?” asked Raymonde, laughing.“Of course it is, in the world to which your husband is going to take you. You will be gowned by the great dressmakers. Isn’t she fortunate, Colonel?”She spoke to every one of the luck of Mme. Cernay. These two words, “Madame Cernay,” assumed in her mouth majestic importance. Our marriage flattered her as though it were a personal triumph. The lack of guests, however, appeared to her unreasonable, harmful, and distressing. One had to talk continually to the same people. For lack of anything better, want of better guests, she gave orders that every peasant who passed the gate that day should receive entertainment.When the evening came, and I was leading my wife away, Mme. Mairieux, at the moment of parting, looked at her daughter in admiration before kissing her, like a commander embracing a newly decorated soldier. The chateau represented in her eyes the Promised Land.Her husband expressed his emotion differently:“She is my only child,” he said to me. “Take care of her.”Fearing lest he might break down, he dared not say more. In the midst of our little group, swayed by such different sentiments, Raymonde preserved her face of peace.We had only to walk the length of the avenue, and we were at home. After the fir branches which carpeted the space in front of the lodge, we found the ground hard, and it crackled under our feet, for it was freezing. The night was not dark. In the depths of the sky, between the chestnut trees whose branches stood out black and bare, and the oaks with their dry, shrivelled leaves, shone thousands of stars, that almost touched each other, and seemed to be in motion like a swarm of bees. Certainly this sense of throbbing has remained in my memory. Have I since seen similar nights? Did I dream of that one? I do not know now.The cold was stinging.“Suppose we run?” I suggested.“Come,” she answered.She picked up the train of her wedding dress and darted off. Practice in the woods had made her agile, and I still see clearly before me this flight in the shadow, the bare trees, the lawn and the empty urns. Oh! it was a wonderful night, a holy night, when in the majestic silence I heard her two little shoes striking the ground.I stopped, and then at last I pursued her. She was the first to gain the arches of the cloister. Without doubt the apparent life in the sky had struck her too, for when I rejoined her, she pointed it out to me with these words:“There are no falling stars to-night. Do you still want something more?”“No, Raymonde,” I said. “Nothing more.”I might have added: “Not even you.” No, not even her! Beyond desire, I was experiencing that kind of love, which one enjoys in moments of ecstatic adoration, when the blood flows gently not to thwart the rush of the spirit, when life means sweetness, goodness, joy, light, serenity—* * *“Let us go in,” I said, “you will catch cold.”“Listen,” she replied.The branches nearest to the cloister cracked with the frost. And from the forest, of which we could distinguish only a vague outline, a confused murmur came to us.“The night sings,” said I.“The night is praying,” she replied, and again she raised her head to the stars.“How many there are! How many there are!”She named some of the constellations. Cygnus, the most beautiful, appeared to be on the wing like a diamond-shaped flock of birds. I took Raymonde’s hand in mine so that she would look at me.“Now,” I said, “there is no one in the world but you and me. I shall love you all my life.”“Oh, no,” she replied, “that is not sufficient.”“What must you have?”“Our life—that is not enough. It will end. I wish a love which will never end. Never. Never.”“Is that possible?”“Of course, since there is Eternity.”At that moment her faith was contagious, enlarging and consecrating our love.* * *At the chateau we found a large fire burning in the little salon, which I had refurnished for her. She looked at the furniture, the pictures and the hangings, and then at me with a smile that was a little sad. Did she have a presentiment of the future? Now that I am able to interpret truly the past, I recall having seen, one morning when I was out shooting, a young hind stop at the entrance to a wood, where I was hiding. She inhaled the fresh breeze and then hesitated in fear. Finally she came on in my direction.“You are in your own home, Raymonde,” I said.“Oh! it is very beautiful, but I am not accustomed to it.”“You will become so soon.”“Of course, I must.”To her the new luxury was a burden. Otherwise it meant nothing. The only effect of this change of conditions for her was one of restraint.She left me to change her gown. When she reappeared, she came over and clung to me.“My love,” she said.And as I held her to my heart, so young, so pure and so confiding, I felt two tears fill my eyes. Raising her head a little she saw them.“What troubles you?” she asked anxiously. “Are you weeping?”I am proud now to remember those tears, the quivering of my love and the obscure confession of my own unworthiness. Through them Raymonde recognised the upheaval that I felt before the perfection of her love. Later they unquestionably helped her to endure my cruelty and to forgive it.I was silent.“Dear,” she repeated, “why do you weep?”“No doubt because I love you too much,” I managed to say at last, in an attempt to play with my emotion.“That is so simple,” she answered.Our happiness was indeed so simple that I could not believe that it was happiness. Until then I had sought it in the artificialities and complexities of pleasure. My engagement and marriage had restored it to me in its integrity and fulness, and I was astonished that it was serene.She took down her hair, and it spread over her shoulders and breast, even more golden at the ends than on top. The various shades of gold blended to frame the whiteness of her face and neck. She had chosen the white woollen dress which she had worn on the day I had asked for her hand. I felt that this act brought her closer to me, and that I shared in the radiance which emanated from her.We did not touch the supper which had been prepared. The chateau was asleep, and when we were silent there was nothing but the solemn silence of the country night. There was no one but us in the world; only us and love that was stronger than we.“It is late,” she murmured, and it was like a prayer. “Don’t you want me to retire? I am tired.”She leaned toward me and my mouth touched her forehead. Then I let her go. The peace that was in her dominated my love.I sat long before the open fire—how long, I cannot say—and my heart opened to all the sweetness of life.When I rejoined her she was sleeping. I did not waken her.Second Note BookNovember 19—As we were nearing Rome, I pointed out to Raymonde the Sabine mountains, already covered with snow. But she only saw a rainbow, trembling in the golden haze which the setting sun, reappearing after the rain, drew from the damp soil. She derived from it a happy omen.Then she compared the dome of St. Peter’s, which one sees first of all, to a rick in the field. Later, was she not to compare the Eternal City, upon which the centuries have left their imprint, to her forest, with its centenarian trees covered with moss, ivy, and mistletoe? One thinks that one will always remain bewildered, and soon things become so familiar, although imposing, that one speaks and listens to them. Her forest had prepared her. The shafts of the trees formed innumerable arches as at St. Paul’s outside the Walls; on the old trunks new stems grew, and the fallen leaves composed the soil which nourished the roots. Thus the continuity of historic Rome, which allowed Christian churches to flourish on the sites of pagan temples, did not astonish her.Her divine ignorance preserved her miraculously from that insincere admiration which the sanctity of established reputations imposes upon most of us. She delighted in art as she breathed the morning air in the woods, of which one knows neither where it comes from nor why it leaves upon the lips so agreeable a flavour. With sure taste she walked through the midst of statues and pictures as through a garden pointing out to me her favourites. Invariably these were works of calmness and serenity, in which the old masters represented life either with all its natural joy or with religious acceptation,—the draped Muses of the Vatican, that veiled woman on one of the sides of the throne of the goddess in the “Thermos” Museum who keeps alive the sacred fire on the hearth,—what others shall I name, a young Madonna by Fra Angelico; Raphael’s Parnassus; or Michelangelo’s sublime creation of the first man. By instinct she turned to them as to old friends. I never caught her in a mistake. Like the doves of the Villa Adrien who stoop on the basin and then lift their throats swelled with water, she was drinking in the masterpieces, in her appreciation of which I might well have tried to imitate her.However, I did not accept this unexpected superiority, this straightforward impulse of a young and unspoiled sensitiveness. I paraded my learning, I imposed on her my instruction. Her assurance disconcerted me, at the same time that her willing attention did not prevent her from confusing the different schools and classifications I tried to teach her. I corrected and scolded her, and she apologized and made more mistakes—except in the selection of her favourites.Through a spirit of contradiction in which vanity played the chief part, I turned her attention to works palpitating with unrest, misery, passion or sensuality. The contortions of a Laocoön, the “Dying Gladiator” crushed to the ground, Apollo darting forward with a theatrical gesture, Venus bowed under the weight of her own beauty and not like a Diana free in her movements,—these satisfied me but offended her. She did not respond to my enthusiasms, surmising perhaps that they were forced, and inwardly I reproached her for not understanding, for not knowing.“She knows nothing,” I thought, “of the passion that disfigures, the jealousy that twists, the doubt that convulses these countenances and permits them no peace. For the moment she and I are far apart.”And I prided myself on the discovery.All this she was to learn one day through me without permitting any alteration in her features to reveal it, merely becoming whiter and more distant as my cruelty increased and she grew nearer to death, death which writes for us our definitive expression, her own too pure and too noble to lower itself to complaints.These differences, which I considered insignificant and which were in fact hardly perceptible, were they not already part of a more profound discord?
* * *
In later years M. Mairieux consented to tell me how he had learned his daughter’s secret. It was later, much later, after we had lost her, and I was questioning him greedily about the past. I had envied him the possession of this secret, but it was just that he should have received it, and not me. After twenty years of boundless and absolutely unselfish affection, what an advantage he had over me!
When he entered Raymonde’s rooms, she was standing by the threshold of the window, motionless, inert, almost indifferent. He told her of my impatience, my unhappiness. Nevertheless, he said, she should take counsel only of her own heart. The material advantages of a marriage should only be a secondary consideration.
She kept repeating obstinately:
“No, no, I do not want to marry him.”
“But why?”
“M. Cernay is not the husband for me.”
He was tempted to stop there. A presentiment, which he took to be paternal selfishness warned him, as he confessed to me, warned him not to insist. Conscientious scruples, however, and the desire to exhaust every argument in favour of the alliance, urged him to add:
“Possibly, but he loves you.”
This time he received no reply; indeed it was not a question. There was only one thing more to say:
“And you—do you love him?”
“How can I know?” she murmured, and then, realising the truth, she wept. These first tears I did not see. How many others did her love cost her, less observed, even more secret, which I saw no better?
To young girls who have not squandered their imagination in precocious little flirtations, love is like a garden in springtime before the dawn. The flowers are there, all the flowers. We do not realise it, although we inhale their perfume, because it is so incredible. Thus, enclosed within the heart, the magic enchantment sleeps, invisible. Day breaks, and with it all the world seems to be born. But the love which shines forth was always there.
* * *
The next day I had my turn.
Mme. Mairieux watched for my arrival. It was she who opened the door for me, and from her I learned of my happiness. It lost nothing in the telling, for she was anxious to spare me several moments of anxiety.
Raymonde met me in the drawing-room, holding her father’s hand.
She wore the same simple dress of white serge that she had had on the day before. Her smooth cheeks had grown pale; she did not smile, she was serious, indeed almost severe. When her eyes rested upon me they seemed to me to have grown not only even larger, but almost terrified, and at the same time that I read in them the avowal of her love, I saw a kind of holy fear, a sort of religious ecstasy. With ardour I poured out all my love to her, but of what value were my protestations in comparison with that pathetic countenance haloed by devotion? Why did I not throw myself upon my knees to plead before her, to pray to her as to a saint?
I have before me as I write a little picture of the Annunciation. Mary, who is scarcely fifteen years old, has just learned from the angel her divine mission. With clasped hands she strives to quiet her heart. In spite of her unworthiness, she accepts the honour at which she thrills, but at the same time she foresees all the sorrow that will come to her. She trembles with joy or fear, or rather with joy and fear together.
In the course of a journey to Italy I came upon the picture in a little town. To secure it I needed more than money; I had to use persistence, strategy, eloquence. But I wanted it at any price. For this acceptance without fear—oh, in my comparison I do not intend any irreverence, which as far as I am concerned would only be detestable and ridiculous—this acceptance without fear recalled to me my betrothal, which in truth was for Raymonde an oblation that she made to me of all the suffering to come. With mystic intuition she foresaw it, but I, I guessed nothing.
She had listened to me without speaking. At last, as though there were any need of words when I saw that the whole current of her being was arrested, I demanded:
“Will you not tell me, too, that you love me?”
She shivered all over and I dared insist.
“Not to-day,” she murmured at length in a colourless voice. “I cannot.”
“And to-morrow?”
“To-morrow perhaps.”
Fool that I was, I could obtain nothing more from her, though she was sinking under the weight of her love. Ordinarily we employ the same phrases in common conversation that we use for the deepest emotions. Through reluctance, through delay, through the difficulty of giving them utterance, the desire to keep them in her heart, which cherished them in order the better to absorb their virtue, Raymonde restored to the divine words their true meaning, their power and their freshness. And I complained!
I wished to embrace her, but despite myself my respect for her checked me, and instead I bent over the hand that hung by her side. She had to restrain herself from drawing it away, as if my kiss had burned it.
“Leave her now,” said her father. “You do not see that she is thoroughly tired out.”
Ah, how I pity those who become engaged, who marry, in the city! Does not everything urge them to set bounds to a love which they must keep, as it were, on a leash, in the streets, must protect incessantly in the midst of acquaintances, difficulties and embarrassments? My own and Raymonde’s love blossomed forth in freedom.
We had resumed our horseback rides, and sometimes M. Mairieux accompanied us, sometimes he entrusted his daughter to me, when he would follow us with his eyes for several moments before he returned to his office or his work outdoors.
The trees still retained their foliage, but the colours changed from day to day, a marvel to behold. The leaves of the lindens became a pale yellow, those of the oaks, at first a red copper, later that colour of rust which they keep all winter, for they do not fall: shrivelled, hardened, and curled up they cling to the branches until the new growth comes in the spring and flings them down.
“They are like those feelings,” I said to Raymonde, “which remain in the heart even after they are dead, and which only a new passion has the power to drive away.”
Whenever I gave vent to such sentimental rubbish as this, the art of which one acquires in society, she used to look me full in the face, her astonished eyes seeming to discover in me some unknown abysses. Why did I aim to dazzle her with such empty talk? I was thinking of those faded memories which still occasionally obtruded themselves upon my mind, and which, although they had not yet entirely gone, were destined, under the influence of my love, to disappear only to be reborn another day.
“None of my affections is dead,” she replied. “None will die before I do.”
We were passing the Green Fountain, and we paused to give our horses a drink from the basin. We saw the reflection of their heads mingle in the calm water, and leaning forward, she unconsciously and I intentionally, we saw our own heads come together and touch. Drawing back I looked at Raymonde: she was blushing as if she had felt my lips, although they had never yet touched her.
Two years before, more than two years since, it was, on the birthday of spring, I had waylaid her there. I recalled the incident to her, and asked her the reason of her fear.
“I did not expect you,” she said.
“Was I so dreadful?” I inquired.
“We must believe so, since I was afraid,” she answered, with her clear laugh.
I should have been glad to have her assure me that even at that time she had begun to love me, although nothing could have equalled the charm that her ignorance of her own heart then possessed.
“Whom did you love before me?” I asked.
“Before you? My mother, and my father and all this besides,” she answered, and stretched out her arms in a comprehensive gesture that her little riding whip accentuated.
“All this?” I repeated, not grasping her meaning.
“Yes, the trees, the little pond that is down there, the orchards, the meadows, and the whole sky that you see.”
I laughed as I listened to this catalogue.
“I am not jealous of them,” I said.
She looked about her at the forest, the luminous autumn forest which had contributed to the awakening of her spirit, and murmured:
“You may well be, nevertheless.”
She never questioned me about my past. Through a generosity, the nobility of which I understand now, she did not wish to crush me with it, although she suspected that it had been turbid and stormy. Believing me to be as honest as she was, she considered that I was sufficiently punished by not being able to sweep it utterly away when we exchanged our unequal love.
As we turned for home the wind arose. Should we find our leaves again in the morning? On the avenue, those on the chestnut trees were stained brown and red. Before the chateau, the plane trees, with their leaves open like giant hands, were green and dull gold. They offered a splendid prize to the north wind which was beginning to blow. Each one, as it was gathered in, wavered gently in the air. Along the wall, the well-sheltered Virginia creeper spread out its vivid red, and the hardy hedges of privet and hawthorne preserved a touch of green in this symphony of brilliant colours.
I was a little ahead and I turned.
Why did Raymonde, in her white woollen dress, and mounted on her glistening horse, why did she, so young, seem to be so in harmony with the autumn, and like it to be so clothed with the delicate charm of things that perish? And why, feeling thus, did I not swear to watch over each instant of her happiness and her life?
In the forest she showed me a young ash tree which, after several years, had succeeded in piercing the baleful vault of foliage and crept upward between its two powerful neighbours, now exposing its summit to the sun’s rays.
“Raymonde, are you still a shadow-tree?” I asked.
She recalled our former conversations, and, surprised at the attention I had paid to them, smiled.
“The ash,” she said, “is a tree of light.”
I believed that this was an answer and gloried in it. In reality she had not replied to me at all; possibly she was thinking of those trees that are so sensitive that the least hardship pierces them.
* * *
“I am glad,” she said to me one day, “that I had never given a single thought to any one before I met you. If it were not for this, my love would not be complete.”
* * *
Another day, under the arch of the cloister, she said:
“My spirit seems so light that I can hardly hold it back. I feel as though it were beating its wings, as though it wished to fly away. I hold it back as much as I can, for if it should fly away, I should die. And I do not wish to die now, oh, no!”
* * *
In the valleys in October the evening falls swiftly. On our return from our ride, when night had surprised us, a falling star crossed the sky in front of us. Actually it seemed purposely not to hasten in its passage, as if it were asking us to tell it our desires.
“What wish have you made?” I asked Raymonde.
She turned on me her calm look.
“None. Why should I?”
“You would have had ample time,” I said. “One always wants something.”
“Not I,” she answered. “I wish nothing.”
* * *
All the recollections that I pluck from the past contribute to picture her in a perfection of a love that I cannot imagine more complete. It was her very life, the very breath of her being.
This love I believed myself worthy of inspiring, so many illusions did I still cherish. Her fervour, the solitude, the woods and the autumn days, strove together to exalt me. I truly believe that during this period I tried unconsciously to raise myself to her level. Her glance calmed, soothed and purified me. They say the moonlight calms the waves. In the same way, her influence stilled my transports and my desires. I should have striven to find my true self, to prune the forest of my spirit, to clear it of all its vanity and sham, of all that rank vegetation which I had permitted to grow up there—which, though temporarily stifled, would soon flourish again. I did not comprehend her love. I thought that I should teach her life, while she already knew by intuition that it was quite simple, and direct, level and smooth.
One night the wind carried away the leaves. The next day we found them under our horses’ feet, and we left a track of red gold rustling behind us. However, in the forest we could the better appreciate the upward shooting of the bare trees, and the depth and charm of the paths. Winter was here, and the cold. Soon we should have to face bad weather. That ride would be one of our last. Mindful of all our others, we rode in silence more and more slowly, as if to prolong the hours....
* * *
Mme. Mairieux always prepared tea and small cakes for us on our return.
She was very busy. Her daughter entrusted to her the choice of the trousseau, and she it was also who fixed the date for the marriage, made the arrangements for the official ceremony, marshalled the bridal procession as a captain his company, and finally even attempted to secure a bishop to pronounce the nuptial benediction.
Her husband, somewhat reserved since our engagement, teased her gently, and by a calculated stubbornness obtained from her some concessions and omissions. These tilts consumed the evenings.
“We must have a large wedding,” she said.
“No, indeed, no,” he replied.
Nevertheless she made out a list on the back of a mourning announcement, a sheet which she had economically torn from a letter of condolence. I recall that detail now, that omen: a black bordered sheet of paper for the list of our wedding guests.
M. Mairieux read the list, which assumed disturbing proportions. Hoping for allies, he turned to the corner of the room where Raymonde and I were sitting, paying indifferent attention to these preparations.
“What is your opinion, dear?” he inquired.
“Oh, I,” she said, “you know very well that all the others are indifferent to me. All that I want are here now.”
“One does not get married in secret,” protested her mother. “You, M. Cernay, who know so much of the world, must agree with me, do you not?”
Thus drawn into the discussion, I supported my fiancée with an energy which astonished myself. Unquestionably, like her, I preferred to be alone with my happiness. Perhaps too—I am ashamed to admit it, but have I not undertaken to confess?—even at this happy time my vanity may not have been so completely dead that it did not suggest the advantage of not seeking to advertise too loudly a marriage without distinction, a union which would astonish the world, which they would make fun of in Paris. I was marrying my superintendent’s daughter; there was nothing in that on which to pride myself. Such were some of the imaginary difficulties that I had not succeeded in dispelling. When our judgment has been warped in early life by excess of worldly advantages and success, how many years and how much suffering are necessary to bring the truth, the real meaning of life, back to us! And in the interval, irreparable harm can be done.
* * *
One night about this time we began to discuss the plans of our life after the wedding. My wife and I intended to spend the winter in Rome, the following summer at the Sleeping Woods, and to postpone until the next winter our residence in Paris. I adopted this plan partly to secure more leisure for Raymonde’s education, which I flattered myself I was to undertake. Curiously enough, she smiled at the thought of Rome, while Paris frightened her.
“But why?” I asked her.
“In Italy we know nobody, all our time will be our own, all our hours, all our thoughts. It will be like the forest.”
“Like the forest?” I repeated.
“Yes, instead of the trees, the names of which I who know nothing of anything, was so proud to teach you, we shall see beautiful things, of which I am totally ignorant and which you will explain to me.”
“And in Paris?”
“In Paris, I shall be afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you will not be pleased with me; I am only a little girl.”
“How strange you are, Raymonde!” I answered.
Nevertheless I did not ask her in what I could possibly fail to be pleased with her. It is not enough to say that I divined her doubts, for I actually shared them. But that which with her was merely modesty and shyness, was in my case, unwarranted distrust, a wretched preoccupation with the world’s opinion, which, even when away from it, I could not entirely disregard. What would be thought of my wife by the world, would my friends approve my choice?
After a prolonged silence, in which there was no harmony of spirit, I determined to show my generosity, and turned to my parents-in-law.
“It is understood,” I said, “that whether or not we are here, you will live in the chateau. I do not wish you to remain in this little lodge.”
Mme. Mairieux broke into loud protestations of gratitude. Evidently I was making real one of her dreams. She had always wished to live in state, with dignity and ceremony, a troupe of servants, a continual round of visits, much publicity. A certain childishness lent to her ambition a touch of prettiness. The simplicity of her husband disconcerted her, for she did not recognise in it the superiority of breeding. The daughter of a bookseller in the town where he had been in garrison, thoroughly saturated with romantic novels, she had been captivated by his uniform and his horsemanship, and, after his marriage had cost him his career, had always cherished a grudge against him for the lack of money which compelled him to abandon his life of show. I reconstructed without difficulty this domestic drama, so common and inglorious.
Raymonde looked at her father, who had not yet spoken. I noticed the anxiety in her glance, but I could not understand it. M. Mairieux gave me the explanation. He thanked me most amicably for what he called my delicacy, and declined. “This lodge,” he concluded, “was sufficient for us when we had our daughter. Without her it will be much too big and too empty. And see how conveniently it is arranged, and outside, the walls are clothed with vines and clematis. Let us live and die here.”
Mme. Mairieux made a face, and I too was a little hurt by his refusal. I insisted, but ungraciously.
“If not for your own sake, accept, for mine,” I said. “I cannot permit my parents-in-law to remain in an inferior position. What will they say in the neighbourhood?”
This was the poorest of all arguments. At once the blood rushed to Raymonde’s face and she blushed all over. This excessive sensitiveness, which, however, she showed only in connection with the most subtle sentiments, gave her an incomparable charm. The time was still to come when I should reproach her for it.
“That is perfectly true,” said Mme. Mairieux, her hopes reviving. “What will people say?”
“What does it matter?” Her husband scorned the objection. “Are they not saying already that we have long lain in wait for M. Cernay in order to give him our daughter?”
He regretted having repeated this gossip when he saw Raymonde’s eyes fill with tears.
“They say that!” she cried.
He endeavoured to soothe her at once.
“Little one, little one! There are always evil-minded people. One must realise that.”
“When you are happy,” she murmured, “how is one to know that?”
* * *
On the day we signed the marriage contract, she followed the example of her father. In the contract I had settled upon her a sum which would insure her future. She refused to accept it, and all my entreaties were useless.
“But I may die, Raymonde,” I said.
“Then I shall no longer need anything.”
“One has to live even in sorrow,” I explained.
“It takes very little.”
“Fortune has favoured me,” I said. “Let me look after you.”
“I want only your heart,” she answered, “because you already have mine.”
“You know that you have mine too, Raymonde, but there are laws—”
“The law cannot provide for everything.”
Why had I not determined upon the expedient of holding the property in common? Why did I adopt that of dividing it, and then pose as a benefactor? Why, after her refusal to accept, did I not alter the contract? And, not having done so, why did I not draw a will in her favour on the day after the wedding? We forget too often to make our deeds consistent with our attitude in life. Our carelessness, or our egotism, or some mental reservation which escapes superficial analysis, leads us astray.
Raymonde came to me with empty hands. Her youth and innocence amazed me, and I bargained for her.
Now, now, I understand her better. There was no need of a contract between us, or, if one was necessary, it was only in order that a brief and indissoluble formula might unite our fortunes.
* * *
Our triple alliance cut down the greater part of Mme. Mairieux’s guests. I confined my own list to my two witnesses, Col. Briare, my nearest relative, and Pierre Ducal, one of my most intimate friends.
The Colonel appeared to be satisfied with my alliance when he learned that my future father-in-law was an old army officer. Outside of his troopers, nothing interested him. Every one, including Mme. Mairieux, who was enraptured at the prospect of beholding a uniform, called him “my Colonel.” When he learned that Raymonde was an excellent horseman, he congratulated me brusquely.
Pierre Ducal made me more uneasy. He brought into our woods the atmosphere of Paris, the dreaded judgment of Paris. His sarcasm is almost famous there. It is he who utters the last word about things, he who with no authority but his own acts as arbiter of fashion. Why did I choose him rather than another? I hoped by offering him this compliment to secure him as an ally. Would it not be better to have him with me than against me? Clearly I foresaw hostilities and in asking him to help me I would disarm him. Then too, although I had of late seen little of him, he still possessed for me the fascination with which he had once dazzled me. At one time, when the world monopolized me, I had copied him, so strongly did his assurance and ease of manner appeal to me as the summit of attractiveness.
From the moment of his arrival at the chateau he was on the alert. The news of my marriage had burst like a bombshell upon the society we frequented. I had been the target for several of those forward, modern girls who look up a possible husband’s eligibility in advance. What rival in some forgotten corner of the world had snatched me from out of their experienced hands? No one knew anything, no one suspected anything, for my brief letter of invitation explained nothing. Nevertheless, I have learned since, before leaving, he trumpeted forth great news of the event. He had been generally commissioned to investigate my case.
After the usual greetings he began the examination at once.
“Is she a neighbour in the country here?”
“Oh, a very close neighbour,” I replied. “She lives in the lodge which you see.”
“At the entrance of the Avenue? Isn’t that part of your estate?”
“Certainly, since her father is my superintendent.”
In order to be done with it as quickly as possible, I hurled the sentence at him in a single breath, as if it were the confession of a sin. I decidedly was not enjoying the serenity which should have come from the happiness and honour of marrying Raymonde. The presence of a single man was sufficient to cause me one of those little shudders of cowardice and baseness. Nothing suggested a greater menace to my own and Raymonde’s happiness than the troubled way in which I confessed this little fact to Ducal. It proved that I was not cured of my pettiest vanities.
Over them my love, born in solitude and nourished and beautified by the clear, fresh influence of my fiancée, temporarily triumphed. It did not destroy them. So many briers prevent the tree of our life from growing, and drain its sap.
When Pierre Ducal’s trunks arrived I laughed at their number.
“Well, you see,” he said nonchalantly, “I did not know.”
Did not know what? In this vague phrase I perceived a painful significance. After a moment he explained:
“You see I did not know exactly the character of the ceremony.”
“It will be very simple.”
“Naturally.”
Naturally! I could have boxed his ears.
At the same time a host of thoughts, which had not occurred to me during the happy months of my seclusion, beset and assailed me. I breathed again the intoxication of certain successes, I recollected the splendid alliances which had been offered me, I evoked the memory of some mistress whose rouge and whose treachery I had passed over because she carried to perfection the arts of dress and of fencing with words. What a position I might have held in Paris, had I wished! Forgotten impressions, as glittering and as false as the jewelry of a bazaar, impressions which tarnished my youth but had been happily lost during my rides with a pure child in the Sleeping Woods, conquests which had temporarily faded from my memory, these Ducal brought back to me as if they were precious stones that he had recovered.
However, he had not yet seenHer. My radiant Raymonde would restore order in my heart.
We were to take luncheon at the lodge before going to the mayor’s office. The religious ceremony was to be celebrated on the following day. Raymonde appeared in her plain street dress, almost entirely devoid of trimming or ornament, and for the first time I noticed those faults in attire which cost youth so little.
“She is charming,” Ducal said to me in an undertone. “She has a little gown—”
He hesitated a moment, then continued:
“A delightful little gown. My compliments.”
In words such as these the sneer is as plain as day, and I tasted its poison. It spoiled my pleasure. Why should I have attached any significance to what he said? I was like a mediocre artist or savant, who, not completely absorbed in his work, keeps his ears open for external sounds, for the voice of the critics, of rivals and of public opinion. The most beautiful love that could have illumined my youth did not shield me from such petty slights. Oh, dissipations of time and energy! Why must we perceive the greatest wonder of this life, that we can live but once, only when it has been put irreparably beyond our reach, when, like some perfect form arrested in the marble, or cloaked by night we cannot see it moving past?
* * *
My farmers, woodcutters and the neighbouring peasants, who adored M. Mairieux, but for whom I was a distant and puzzling landlord, had, during the night, covered with branches of fir trees the road which led from the lodge to the little church. They had despoiled the borders of the forest, in order that on this day of festivity we might walk on green boughs. It was late autumn in the forest, bare of leaves, but on the road it was spring. And in our hearts? Ah! Mine would have burst with joy, with that sheer joy which no impurity can spot, if Pierre Ducal had not been there.
But he was there, piercing the least detail with his gimlet eyes. I should have been indifferent to him, and I hated him. He absorbed part of my attention, he prevented me from abandoning myself without reserve to the current of my love.
Raymonde, her Book of Hours in her hand, slender and delicate, the contour of her face and the varying shades of gold in her hair softened despite the sunlight by her veil, looked in her white dress like one of those old missal pictures so radiant that it stands out from a golden background. Knowing the delicacy of her feelings I expected to see her agitated, but inwardly and outwardly she was peace. And seeing her thus I recalled the words she had said to me:
“My Soul is so high that I can hardly hold it down.”
I almost looked for wings, and it seemed to me that I could hear them beat. The first time I made a flight in my aeroplane, I distinctly saw a vision of Raymonde on the road strewn with foliage for the procession.
Pierre Ducal approached to greet her. As he bowed, I noticed an uneven pleat in her gown. He straightened up and looked at me. I thought that I read his meaning: “That gown is certainly not a Maulet creation.”
I realise that I am laying too much stress on impressions that were almost imperceptible, which slipped and fled away almost as soon as they were born. They indicated nevertheless the existence of that invisible crack in our happiness which made it the most vulnerable, the easiest to break.
The sky was of that delicate tint which it assumes in mountainous countries at the end of the season, changing from pale blue to a pearl grey, as though by its transparency it was announcing the coming of snow.
Raymonde, in order that we might be together in thought each moment of this unique day, had asked me to read the marriage service.
“You will see,” she said, “how beautiful the Liturgy is.”
I read it then. Since her death I have many times reread the words of St. Paul: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church: because we are members of his body. They two shall become one flesh—”
I understood, I realised for one moment at least, that miracle of immortal love, which dares to brave time and because of its injuries from the union of body and soul, arrives at unity, order and peace. Yes, I understood that in loving Raymonde and in Raymonde’s love, I loved my better self, the heart of my heart, that which lives on in us after our youth is fled, that which, in each one of us, is part of the living Spirit of God.
I had closed my Book of Hours. The thoughts which came to me were as refreshing as the living waters. I felt a kind of ecstasy. We were on our knees, and my bride signed to me to rise with her. I embraced her with my look, as though she were an object of infinite value, of which the internal charm exceeds by a thousand times the visible beauty. She smiled at me with perfect confidence, and at this moment we exchanged the mystic promise which includes in anticipation the sacramental “Yes.”
A slight movement brought Pierre Ducal within my range of vision. I knew well the subtle smile which hollowed his cheeks. He was amusing himself, collecting anecdotes, already preparing an interesting story in which I was to figure as a first communicant. I felt it intuitively. Seized suddenly by fear of becoming ridiculous, I studied my actions. The ecstasy did not return. I placed the wedding ring on my bride’s finger with the indifference of some trivial mechanical duty.
After luncheon Ducal asked me to lend him my automobile, for he wished to return to Paris that night. His many trunks, for which he had had no use, were placed on the machine, and after he had disappeared around the curve in the road, the wheels of the car crushing the fir boughs that had not yet been picked up, I breathed more easily, in fact I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief. Raymonde noticed the change at once.
“Why were you not like this a little while ago?” she asked. “During the service you changed completely. Did you regret anything?”
“Oh, Raymonde, what could I have regretted?”
“Listen, I think I have guessed it,” she said. “You were looking at my white gown. Perhaps it did not become me very well.”
“But, it did, I assure you.”
“No, no, I know it,” she said. “But I should have grieved my little dressmaker in the village too much if I had given the order to any one else. What does a bad pleat amount to? But in the midst of happiness, to be neglectful of others, you agree with me that that would have been wicked?”
I agreed with her, and moreover I did not discover the bad pleat again. It was as if it had disappeared with Pierre Ducal.
Mme. Mairieux, to whom Col. Briare was telling stories of hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, had followed the course of our conversation and now began to excuse her daughter.
“I scolded her,” she said. “She is lacking in elegance. You will know how to give it to her.”
“Is it necessary?” asked Raymonde, laughing.
“Of course it is, in the world to which your husband is going to take you. You will be gowned by the great dressmakers. Isn’t she fortunate, Colonel?”
She spoke to every one of the luck of Mme. Cernay. These two words, “Madame Cernay,” assumed in her mouth majestic importance. Our marriage flattered her as though it were a personal triumph. The lack of guests, however, appeared to her unreasonable, harmful, and distressing. One had to talk continually to the same people. For lack of anything better, want of better guests, she gave orders that every peasant who passed the gate that day should receive entertainment.
When the evening came, and I was leading my wife away, Mme. Mairieux, at the moment of parting, looked at her daughter in admiration before kissing her, like a commander embracing a newly decorated soldier. The chateau represented in her eyes the Promised Land.
Her husband expressed his emotion differently:
“She is my only child,” he said to me. “Take care of her.”
Fearing lest he might break down, he dared not say more. In the midst of our little group, swayed by such different sentiments, Raymonde preserved her face of peace.
We had only to walk the length of the avenue, and we were at home. After the fir branches which carpeted the space in front of the lodge, we found the ground hard, and it crackled under our feet, for it was freezing. The night was not dark. In the depths of the sky, between the chestnut trees whose branches stood out black and bare, and the oaks with their dry, shrivelled leaves, shone thousands of stars, that almost touched each other, and seemed to be in motion like a swarm of bees. Certainly this sense of throbbing has remained in my memory. Have I since seen similar nights? Did I dream of that one? I do not know now.
The cold was stinging.
“Suppose we run?” I suggested.
“Come,” she answered.
She picked up the train of her wedding dress and darted off. Practice in the woods had made her agile, and I still see clearly before me this flight in the shadow, the bare trees, the lawn and the empty urns. Oh! it was a wonderful night, a holy night, when in the majestic silence I heard her two little shoes striking the ground.
I stopped, and then at last I pursued her. She was the first to gain the arches of the cloister. Without doubt the apparent life in the sky had struck her too, for when I rejoined her, she pointed it out to me with these words:
“There are no falling stars to-night. Do you still want something more?”
“No, Raymonde,” I said. “Nothing more.”
I might have added: “Not even you.” No, not even her! Beyond desire, I was experiencing that kind of love, which one enjoys in moments of ecstatic adoration, when the blood flows gently not to thwart the rush of the spirit, when life means sweetness, goodness, joy, light, serenity—
* * *
“Let us go in,” I said, “you will catch cold.”
“Listen,” she replied.
The branches nearest to the cloister cracked with the frost. And from the forest, of which we could distinguish only a vague outline, a confused murmur came to us.
“The night sings,” said I.
“The night is praying,” she replied, and again she raised her head to the stars.
“How many there are! How many there are!”
She named some of the constellations. Cygnus, the most beautiful, appeared to be on the wing like a diamond-shaped flock of birds. I took Raymonde’s hand in mine so that she would look at me.
“Now,” I said, “there is no one in the world but you and me. I shall love you all my life.”
“Oh, no,” she replied, “that is not sufficient.”
“What must you have?”
“Our life—that is not enough. It will end. I wish a love which will never end. Never. Never.”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course, since there is Eternity.”
At that moment her faith was contagious, enlarging and consecrating our love.
* * *
At the chateau we found a large fire burning in the little salon, which I had refurnished for her. She looked at the furniture, the pictures and the hangings, and then at me with a smile that was a little sad. Did she have a presentiment of the future? Now that I am able to interpret truly the past, I recall having seen, one morning when I was out shooting, a young hind stop at the entrance to a wood, where I was hiding. She inhaled the fresh breeze and then hesitated in fear. Finally she came on in my direction.
“You are in your own home, Raymonde,” I said.
“Oh! it is very beautiful, but I am not accustomed to it.”
“You will become so soon.”
“Of course, I must.”
To her the new luxury was a burden. Otherwise it meant nothing. The only effect of this change of conditions for her was one of restraint.
She left me to change her gown. When she reappeared, she came over and clung to me.
“My love,” she said.
And as I held her to my heart, so young, so pure and so confiding, I felt two tears fill my eyes. Raising her head a little she saw them.
“What troubles you?” she asked anxiously. “Are you weeping?”
I am proud now to remember those tears, the quivering of my love and the obscure confession of my own unworthiness. Through them Raymonde recognised the upheaval that I felt before the perfection of her love. Later they unquestionably helped her to endure my cruelty and to forgive it.
I was silent.
“Dear,” she repeated, “why do you weep?”
“No doubt because I love you too much,” I managed to say at last, in an attempt to play with my emotion.
“That is so simple,” she answered.
Our happiness was indeed so simple that I could not believe that it was happiness. Until then I had sought it in the artificialities and complexities of pleasure. My engagement and marriage had restored it to me in its integrity and fulness, and I was astonished that it was serene.
She took down her hair, and it spread over her shoulders and breast, even more golden at the ends than on top. The various shades of gold blended to frame the whiteness of her face and neck. She had chosen the white woollen dress which she had worn on the day I had asked for her hand. I felt that this act brought her closer to me, and that I shared in the radiance which emanated from her.
We did not touch the supper which had been prepared. The chateau was asleep, and when we were silent there was nothing but the solemn silence of the country night. There was no one but us in the world; only us and love that was stronger than we.
“It is late,” she murmured, and it was like a prayer. “Don’t you want me to retire? I am tired.”
She leaned toward me and my mouth touched her forehead. Then I let her go. The peace that was in her dominated my love.
I sat long before the open fire—how long, I cannot say—and my heart opened to all the sweetness of life.
When I rejoined her she was sleeping. I did not waken her.
Second Note Book
November 19—
As we were nearing Rome, I pointed out to Raymonde the Sabine mountains, already covered with snow. But she only saw a rainbow, trembling in the golden haze which the setting sun, reappearing after the rain, drew from the damp soil. She derived from it a happy omen.
Then she compared the dome of St. Peter’s, which one sees first of all, to a rick in the field. Later, was she not to compare the Eternal City, upon which the centuries have left their imprint, to her forest, with its centenarian trees covered with moss, ivy, and mistletoe? One thinks that one will always remain bewildered, and soon things become so familiar, although imposing, that one speaks and listens to them. Her forest had prepared her. The shafts of the trees formed innumerable arches as at St. Paul’s outside the Walls; on the old trunks new stems grew, and the fallen leaves composed the soil which nourished the roots. Thus the continuity of historic Rome, which allowed Christian churches to flourish on the sites of pagan temples, did not astonish her.
Her divine ignorance preserved her miraculously from that insincere admiration which the sanctity of established reputations imposes upon most of us. She delighted in art as she breathed the morning air in the woods, of which one knows neither where it comes from nor why it leaves upon the lips so agreeable a flavour. With sure taste she walked through the midst of statues and pictures as through a garden pointing out to me her favourites. Invariably these were works of calmness and serenity, in which the old masters represented life either with all its natural joy or with religious acceptation,—the draped Muses of the Vatican, that veiled woman on one of the sides of the throne of the goddess in the “Thermos” Museum who keeps alive the sacred fire on the hearth,—what others shall I name, a young Madonna by Fra Angelico; Raphael’s Parnassus; or Michelangelo’s sublime creation of the first man. By instinct she turned to them as to old friends. I never caught her in a mistake. Like the doves of the Villa Adrien who stoop on the basin and then lift their throats swelled with water, she was drinking in the masterpieces, in her appreciation of which I might well have tried to imitate her.
However, I did not accept this unexpected superiority, this straightforward impulse of a young and unspoiled sensitiveness. I paraded my learning, I imposed on her my instruction. Her assurance disconcerted me, at the same time that her willing attention did not prevent her from confusing the different schools and classifications I tried to teach her. I corrected and scolded her, and she apologized and made more mistakes—except in the selection of her favourites.
Through a spirit of contradiction in which vanity played the chief part, I turned her attention to works palpitating with unrest, misery, passion or sensuality. The contortions of a Laocoön, the “Dying Gladiator” crushed to the ground, Apollo darting forward with a theatrical gesture, Venus bowed under the weight of her own beauty and not like a Diana free in her movements,—these satisfied me but offended her. She did not respond to my enthusiasms, surmising perhaps that they were forced, and inwardly I reproached her for not understanding, for not knowing.
“She knows nothing,” I thought, “of the passion that disfigures, the jealousy that twists, the doubt that convulses these countenances and permits them no peace. For the moment she and I are far apart.”
And I prided myself on the discovery.
All this she was to learn one day through me without permitting any alteration in her features to reveal it, merely becoming whiter and more distant as my cruelty increased and she grew nearer to death, death which writes for us our definitive expression, her own too pure and too noble to lower itself to complaints.
These differences, which I considered insignificant and which were in fact hardly perceptible, were they not already part of a more profound discord?