The next morning Raymon, on waking, received a second letter from Noun.
He did not toss this one disdainfully aside; on the contrary, he opened
it eagerly: it might have something to say of Madame Delmare. So, in
fact, it did; but in what an embarrassing position this complication of
intrigues placed Raymon! It had become impossible to conceal the girl's
secret. Already suffering and terror had thinned her cheeks. Madame
Delmare observed her ailing condition, but was unable to discover its
cause. Noun dreaded the colonel's severity, but she dreaded her
mistress's gentleness even more. She was very sure that she would obtain
forgiveness, but she would die of shame and grief in being forced to
make the confession. What would become of her if Raymon were not careful
to protect her from the humiliations that were certain to overwhelm her!
He must give some thought to her, or she would throw herself at Madame
Delmare's feet and tell her the whole story.
The fear of this result had a powerful effect upon Monsieur de Ramière.
His first thought was to separate Noun from her mistress.
"Be very careful not to speak without my consent," he wrote in reply.
"Try and be in Lagny this evening. I will be there."
On his way thither he reflected as to the course he had better pursue.
Noun had common sense enough not to expect a reparation--that was out of
the question. She had never dared to utter the word marriage, and
because she was discreet and generous, Raymon deemed himself less
guilty. He said to himself that he had not deceived her, and that Noun
must have foreseen what her fate must be. The cause of Raymon's
embarrassment was not any hesitation about offering the poor girl half
of his fortune; he was ready to enrich her, to take all the care of her
that the most sensitive delicacy could suggest. What made his position
so painful was the necessity of telling her that he no longer loved her;
for he did not know how to dissemble. Although his conduct at this
crisis seems two-faced and treacherous, his heart was sincere, and had
always been. He had loved Noun with his senses; he loved Madame Delmare
with all his heart. Thus far he had lied to neither. His aim now was to
avoid beginning to lie, and Raymon felt equally incapable of deceiving
Noun and of dealing her the fatal blow. He must make a choice between a
cowardly and a barbarous act. Raymon was very unhappy. He had come to no
decision when he reached the gate of Lagny park.
Noun, for her part, had not expected so prompt a reply, and had
recovered a little hope.
"He still loves me," she said to herself, "he doesn't mean to abandon
me. He had forgotten me a little, that's not to be wondered at; in
Paris, in the midst of merrymaking, with all the women in love with him,
as they are sure to be, he has allowed himself to be led away from the
poor creole for a few moments. Alas! who am I that he should sacrifice
to me all those great ladies who are much lovelier and richer than I am?
Who knows," she said to herself artlessly, "perhaps the Queen of France
is in love with him!"
By dint of meditating upon the seductions which luxurious surroundings
probably exerted on her lover, Noun thought of a scheme for making
herself more agreeable to him. She arrayed herself in her mistress's
clothes, lighted a great fire in the room that Madame Delmare occupied
at Lagny, decorated the mantel with the loveliest flowers she could find
in the greenhouse, prepared a collation of fruit and choice wines, in a
word resorted to all the dainty devices of the boudoir, of which she had
never thought before; and when she looked at herself in a great mirror,
she did herself no more than justice in deciding that she was fairer
than the flowers with which she had sought to embellish her charms.
"He has often told me," she said to herself, "that I needed no ornaments
to make me lovely, and that no woman at court, in all the splendor of
her diamonds, was worth one of my smiles. And yet those same women that
he used to despise fill his thoughts now. Come, I must be cheerful, I
must seem lively and happy; perhaps I shall reconquer to-night all the
love I once aroused in him."
Raymon, having left his horse at a charcoal-burner's cabin in the
forest, entered the park, to which he had a key. This time he did not
run the risk of being taken for a thief; for almost all the servants had
gone with their masters, he had taken the gardener into his confidence,
and he knew all the approaches to Lagny as well as those to his own
estate.
It was a cold night; the trees in the park were enveloped in a dense
mist, and Raymon could hardly distinguish their black trunks through the
white mist which swathed them in diaphanous robes. He wandered some time
through the winding paths before he found the door of the summer-house
where Noun awaited him. She was wrapped in a pelisse with the hood
thrown over her head.
"We cannot stay here," she said, "it is too cold. Follow me and do not
speak."
Raymon felt an extreme reluctance to enter Madame Delmare's house as the
lover of her maid. However, he could not but comply; Noun was walking
lightly away in front of him, and this interview was to be the last.
She led him across the courtyard, quieted the dogs, opened the doors
noiselessly, and, taking his hand, guided him in silence through the
dark corridors; at last she ushered him into a circular room, furnished
simply but with refinement, where flowering orange-bushes exhaled their
sweet perfume; transparent wax candles were burning in the candelabra.
Noun had strewn the floor with the petals of Bengal roses, the divan was
covered with violets, a subtle warmth entered at every pore, and the
glasses gleamed on the table amid the fruit, whose ruddy cheeks were
daintily blended with green moss.
Dazzled by the sudden transition from darkness to brilliant light,
Raymon stood for a moment bewildered; but it was not long ere he
realized where he was. The exquisite taste and chaste simplicity which
characterized the furniture; the love stories and books of travel
scattered over the mahogany shelves; the embroidery frame covered with a
bright, pretty piece of work, the diversion of hours of patient
melancholy; the harp whose strings seemed still to quiver with strains
of love and longing; the engravings representing the pastoral attachment
of Paul and Virginie, the peaks of Ile Bourbon and the blue shores of
Saint-Paul; and, above all, the little bed half-hidden behind its muslin
curtains, as white and modest as a maiden's bed, and over the headboard,
by way of consecrated boxwood, a bit of palm, taken perhaps from some
tree in her native island, on the day of her departure;--all these
revealed the presence of Madame Delmare, and Raymon was seized with a
strange thrill as he thought that that cloak-enveloped woman who had led
him thither might be Indiana herself. This extravagant supposition
seemed to be confirmed when he saw, in the mirror opposite, a white
figure, the phantom of a woman entering a ball-room and laying aside her
cloak, to appear, radiant and half-nude, in the dazzling light. But it
was only a momentary error--Indiana would have concealed her charms more
carefully; her modest bosom would have been visible only through the
triple gauze veil of her corsage; she would perhaps have dressed her
hair with natural camellias, but they would not have frisked about on
her head in such seductive disorder; she might have encased her feet in
satin shoes, but her chaste gown would not have betrayed thus
shamelessly the mysteries of her shapely legs.
Taller and more powerfully built than her mistress, Noun was dressed,
not clothed in her finery. She was graceful but lacked nobility of
bearing; she was lovely with the loveliness of women, not of fairies;
she invited pleasure and gave no promise of sublime bliss.
Raymon, after scrutinizing her in the mirror without turning his head,
turned his eyes upon everything that was calculated to give forth a
purer reflection of Indiana--the musical instruments, the paintings, the
narrow, maidenly bed. He was intoxicated by the vague perfume her
presence had left behind in that sanctuary; he shuddered with desire as
he thought of the day when Indiana herself should throw open its
delights to him; and Noun, standing behind him with her arms folded,
gazed ecstatically at him, fancying that he was overwhelmed with delight
at the sight of all the pains she had taken to please him.
But he broke the silence at last.
"I thank you," he said, "for all the preparations you have made for me;
I thank you especially for bringing me here, but I have enjoyed this
pleasant surprise long enough. Let us leave this room; we are not in our
proper place here, and I must have some respect for Madame Delmare, even
in her absence."
"That is very cruel," said Noun, who did not understand him, but
remarked his cold and displeased manner; "it is very hard to have had
such hopes of pleasing you and to see that you spurn me."
"No, dear Noun, I shall never spurn you; I came here to have a serious
talk with you and to show you the deep affection that I owe you. I am
grateful for your desire to please me; but I loved you better adorned by
your youth and your natural charms than in this borrowed finery."
Noun half understood and wept.
"I am a miserable creature," she said; "I hate myself, for I no longer
please you. I should have foreseen that you would not love me long,
being, as I am, a poor, uneducated girl. I do not reproach you for
anything. I knew well enough that you would not marry me; but if you
would have kept on loving me, I would have sacrificed everything without
a regret, endured everything without complaining. Alas! I am ruined! I
am dishonored! perhaps I shall be turned out-of-doors. I am going to
give life to a creature who will be even more unfortunate than I am, and
no one will pity me. Everyone will feel that he has a right to trample
on me. But I would joyfully submit to all that, if you still loved me."
Noun talked thus a long while. Perhaps she did not repeat the same
words, but she said the same things, and said them a hundred times more
eloquently than I can say them. Where are we to look for the secret of
the eloquence which suddenly reveals itself to an ignorant,
inexperienced mind in the crisis of a genuine passion and a profound
sorrow? At such times words have a greater value than in all the other
scenes of life; at such times trivial words become sublime by reason of
the sentiment that dictates them and the accent with which they are
spoken. At such times the woman of the lowest rank, abandoning herself
to the frenzy of her emotions, becomes more pathetic and more convincing
than her to whom education has taught moderation and reserve.
Raymon was flattered to find that he had inspired so generous an
attachment, and gratitude, compassion, perhaps a little vanity,
rekindled love for a moment.
Noun was suffocated by her tears; she had torn the flowers from her hair
which fell in disorder over her broad and dazzling shoulders. If Madame
Delmare had not had her slavery and her sufferings to heighten her
charms, Noun would have surpassed her immeasurably in beauty at that
moment; she was resplendent with grief and love. Raymon was vanquished;
he drew her into his arms, made her sit beside him on the sofa, moved
the little decanter-laden table nearer to them, and poured a few drops
of orange-flower water in a silver cup for her. Comforted by this mark
of interest far more than by the calming potion, Noun wiped away her
tears and threw herself at Raymon's feet.
"Do love me," she said, passionately embracing his knees; "tell me that
you still love me and I shall be cured, I shall be saved. Kiss me as you
used to, and I will not regret having ruined myself to give you a few
days of pleasure."
She threw her cool, brown arms about him, she covered him with her long
hair; her great black eyes emitted a burning languor and betrayed that
ardor of the blood, that purely oriental lust which is capable of
triumphing over all the efforts of the will, all the chaste delicacy of
the thought. Raymon forgot everything--his resolutions, his new love and
his surroundings. He returned Noun's delirious caresses. He moistened
his lips at the same cup, and the heady wines which were close at hand
completed the dethronement of their reason.
Little by little a vague and shadowy memory of Indiana was blended with
Raymon's drunkenness. The two glass panels which repeated Noun's image
_ad infinitum_ seemed to be peopled by a thousand phantoms. He gazed
into the depths of that multiple reflection, looking for a slenderer
figure there, and it seemed to him that he could distinguish, in the
last hazy and confused shadow of Noun's image the graceful and willowy
form of Madame Delmare.
Noun, herself bewildered by the strong liquors which she knew not how to
use, no longer noticed her lover's strange remarks. If she had not been
as drunk as he, she would have understood that in his wildest flights
Raymon was thinking of another woman. She would have seen him kiss the
scarf and the ribbons Indiana had worn, inhale the perfume which
reminded him of her, crumple in his burning hands the tissue that had
covered her breast; but Noun appropriated all these transports to
herself, when Raymon saw naught of her but Indiana's dress. If he kissed
her black hair, he fancied that he was kissing Indiana's black hair. It
was Indiana whom he saw in the fumes of the punch which Noun's hand had
lighted; it was she who smiled upon him and beckoned him from behind
those white muslin curtains; and it was she of whom he dreamed upon that
chaste and spotless bed, when, yielding to the influence of love and
wine, he led thither his dishevelled creole.
When Raymon woke, a sort of half light was shining through the cracks of
the shutters, and he lay a long while without moving, absorbed by a
vague feeling of surprise and gazing at the room in which he was and the
bed in which he had slept, as if they were a vision of his slumber.
Everything in Madame Delmare's chamber had been put in order. Noun, who
had fallen asleep the sovereign mistress of that place, had waked in the
morning a lady's-maid once more. She had taken away the flowers and put
the remains of the collation out of sight; the furniture was all in
place, nothing suggested the amorous debauch of the night, and Indiana's
chamber had resumed its innocent and virtuous aspect.
Overwhelmed with shame, he rose and attempted to leave the room, but he
was locked in; the window was thirty feet from the ground, and he must
needs remain in that remorse-laden atmosphere, like Ixion on his wheel.
Thereupon he fell on his knees with his face toward that disarranged,
tumbled bed which made him blush.
"O Indiana!" he cried, wringing his hands, "how I have outraged you! Can
you ever forgive me for such infamous conduct? Even if you should
forgive me, I can never forgive myself. Resist me now, my gentle,
trustful Indiana; for you do not know the baseness and brutality of the
man to whom you would surrender the treasures of your innocence! Repulse
me, trample on me, for I have not respected the sanctuary of your sacred
modesty; I have befuddled myself with your wine like a footman, sitting
beside your maid; I have sullied your spotless robe with my accursed
breath, and your chaste girdle with my infamous kisses on another's
breast; I have not shrunk from poisoning the repose of your lonely
nights, and from shedding, even upon this bed, which your husband
himself respected, the influences of seduction and adultery! What safety
will you find henceforth behind these curtains whose mysteries I have
not shrunk from profaning? What impure dreams, what bitter and consuming
thoughts will cling fast to your brain and wither it! What phantoms of
vice and shamelessness will crawl upon the virginal linen of your couch!
And your sleep, pure as a child's--what chaste divinity will care to
protect it now? Have I not put to flight the angel who guarded your
pillow? Have I not thrown your alcove open to the demon of lust? Have I
not sold him your soul? And will not the insane passion which consumes
the vitals of this lascivious creole cling to yours, like Dejanira's
robe and gnaw at them! Oh! miserable wretch! miserable, guilty wretch
that I am! if only I could wash away with my blood the stain I have left
on this couch!"
And Raymon sprinkled it with his tears.
At that moment Noun returned, in her neckerchief and apron; she fancied,
when she saw Raymon kneeling, that he was praying. She did not know that
society people do not pray. She stood waiting in silence, until he
should deign to notice her presence.
Raymon, when he saw her, had a feeling of embarrassment and irritation,
but without the courage to scold her, without the strength to say a
friendly word to her.
"Why did you lock me in this room?" he said at last. "Do you forget that
it is broad daylight and that I cannot go out without compromising you
openly?"
"So you're not to go out," said Noun caressingly. "The house is deserted
and no one can see you; the gardener never comes to this part of the
building to which I alone have the keys. You must stay with me all day;
you are my prisoner."
This arrangement drove Raymon to despair; he had no other feeling for
his mistress than a sort of aversion. However, he could do nothing but
submit, and it may be that, notwithstanding what he suffered in that
room, an invincible attraction detained him there.
When Noun left him to go and find something for breakfast, he set about
examining by daylight all those dumb witnesses of Indiana's solitude. He
opened her books, turned the leaves of her albums, then closed them
precipitately; for he still shrank from committing a profanation and
violating some feminine mystery. At last he began to pace the room and
noticed, on the wooden panel opposite Madame Delmare's bed, a large
picture, richly framed and covered with a double thickness of gauze.
Perhaps it was Indiana's portrait. Raymon, in his eagerness to see it,
forgot his scruples, stepped on a chair, removed the pins, and was
amazed to see a full-length portrait of a handsome young man.