Madame Delmare's home had become more peaceable, however. With their
false friends had disappeared many of the difficulties which, under the
fostering hand of those officious meddlers, had been envenomed with all
the warmth of their zeal. Sir Ralph, with his silence and his apparent
non-interference, was more skilful than all of them in letting drop
those airy trifles of intimate companionship which float about in the
favoring breeze of pleasant gossip. But Indiana lived almost alone. Her
house was in the mountains above the town, and Monsieur Delmare, who had
a warehouse in the port, went down every morning for the whole day, to
superintend his business with the Indies and with France. Sir Ralph, who
had no other home than theirs, but who found ways to add to their
comfort without their suspecting his gifts, devoted himself to the study
of natural history or to superintending the plantation; Indiana,
resuming the easy-going habits of creole life, passed the scorching
hours of the day in her straw chair, and the long evenings in the
solitude of the mountains.
Bourbon is in truth, simply a huge cone, the base of which is about
forty leagues in circumference, while its gigantic mountain peaks rise
to the height of ten thousand feet. From almost every part of that
imposing mass, the eye can see in the distance, beyond the beetling
rocks, beyond the narrow valleys and stately forests, the unbroken
horizon surrounding the azure-hued sea like a girdle. From her window,
Indiana could see between the twin peaks of a wooded mountain opposite
that on which their house was built, the white sails on the Indian
Ocean. During the silent hours of the day, that spectacle attracted her
eyes and gave to her melancholy a fixed and uniform tinge of despair.
That splendid sight made her musings bitter and gloomy, instead of
casting its poetical influence upon them; and she would lower the
curtain that hung at her window and shun the very daylight, in order to
shed bitter, scalding tears in the secrecy of her heart.
But when the land breeze began to blow, toward evening, and to bring to
her nostrils the fragrance of the flowering rice-fields, she would go
forth into the wilderness, leaving Delmare and Ralph on the veranda, to
enjoy the aromatic infusion of the _faham_ and to loiter over their
cigars. She would climb to the top of some accessible peak, the extinct
crater of a former volcano, and gaze at the setting sun as it kindled
the red vapors of the atmosphere into flame and spread a sort of dust of
gold and rubies over the murmuring stalks of the sugar cane and the
glistening walls of the cliff. She rarely went down into the gorges of
the St. Gilles River, because the sight of the sea, although it
distressed her, fascinated her with its magnetic mirage. It seemed to
her that beyond those waves and that distant haze the magic apparition
of another land would burst upon her gaze. Sometimes the clouds on the
shore assumed strange forms in her eyes: at one time she would see a
white wave rise upon the ocean and describe a gigantic line which she
took for the façade of the Louvre; again two square sails would emerge
suddenly from the mist and recall to her mind the towers of Notre-Dame
at Paris, when the Seine sends up a dense mist which surrounds their
foundations and leaves them as if suspended in the sky; at other times
there were patches of pink clouds which, in their changing shapes,
imitated all the caprices of architecture in a great city. That woman's
mind slumbered in the illusions of the past, and she would quiver with
joy at sight of that magnificent Paris, whose realities were connected
with the most unhappy period of her life. A curious sort of vertigo
would take possession of her brain. Standing at a great height above the
shore, and watching the gorges that separated her from the ocean recede
before her eyes, it seemed as if she were flying swiftly through space
toward the fascinating city of her imagination. Dreaming thus, she would
cling to the rock against which she was leaning, and to one who had at
such times seen her eager eyes, her bosom heaving with impatient longing
and the horrifying expression of joy on her face, she would have seemed
to manifest all the symptoms of madness. And yet those were her hours of
pleasure, the only moments of well-being to which she looked forward
hopefully during the day. If her husband had taken it into his head to
forbid these solitary walks, I do not know what thought she would have
lived upon; for in her everything centred in a certain faculty of
inventing allusions, in an eager striving toward a point which was
neither memory, nor anticipation, nor hope, nor regret, but longing in
all its devouring intensity. Thus she lived for weeks and months beneath
the tropical sky, recognizing, loving, caressing but one shade,
cherishing but one chimera.
Ralph, for his part, was attracted to gloomy, secluded spots in his
walks, where the wind from the sea could not reach him; for the sight of
the ocean had become as antipathetic to him as the thought of crossing
it again. France held only an accursed place in his heart's memory.
There it was that he had been unhappy to the point of losing courage,
accustomed as he was to unhappiness and patient with his misery. He
strove with all his might to forget it; for, although he was intensely
disgusted with life, he wished to live as long as he should feel that he
was necessary. He was very careful therefore never to utter a word
relating to the time he had passed in that country. What would he not
have given to tear that ghastly memory from Madame Delmare's mind! But
he had so little confidence of his ability, he felt that he was so
awkward, so lacking in eloquence, that he avoided her instead of trying
to divert her thoughts. In the excess of his delicate reserve, he
continued to maintain the outward appearance of indifference and
selfishness. He went off and suffered alone, and, to see him scouring
woods and mountains in pursuit of birds and insects, one would have
taken him for a naturalist sportsman engrossed by his innocent passion
and utterly indifferent to the passions of the heart that were stirring
in his neighborhood. And yet hunting and study were merely the pretext
behind which he concealed his long and bitter reveries.
This conical island is split at the base on all sides and conceals in
its embrasures deep gorges through which flow pure and turbulent
streams. One of these gorges is called Bernica. It is a picturesque
spot, a sort of deep and narrow valley, hidden between two perpendicular
walls of rock, the surface of which is studded with clumps of saxatile
shrubs and tufts of ferns.
A stream flows in the narrow trough formed by the meeting of the two
sides. At the point where they meet it plunges down into frightful
depths, and, where it falls, forms a basin surrounded by reeds and
covered with a damp mist. Around its banks and along the edges of the
tiny stream fed by the overflow of the basin grow bananas and oranges,
whose dark and healthy green clothe the inner walls of the gorge.
Thither Ralph fled to avoid the heat and companionship. All his walks
led to that favorite goal; the cool, monotonous plash of the waterfall
lulled his melancholy to sleep. When his heart was torn by the secret
agony so long concealed, so cruelly misunderstood, it was there that he
expended in unknown tears, in silent lamentations, the useless energy of
his heart and the concentrated activity of his youth.
In order that you may understand Ralph's character, it will be well to
tell you that at least half of his life had been passed in the depths of
that ravine. Thither he had gone, in his early childhood, to steel his
courage against the injustice with which he had been treated in his
family. It was there that he had put forth all the energies of his soul
to endure the destiny arbitrarily imposed upon him, and that he had
acquired the habit of stoicism which he had carried to such a point that
it had become a second nature to him. There too, in his youth, he had
carried little Indiana on his shoulders; he had laid her on the grass by
the stream while he fished in the clear water or tried to scale the
cliff in search of birds' nests.
The only dwellers in that solitude were the gulls, petrels, coots and
sea-swallows. Those birds were incessantly flying up and down, hovering
overhead or circling about, having chosen the holes and clefts in those
inaccessible walls to rear their wild broods. Toward night they would
assemble in restless groups and fill the echoing gorge with their
hoarse, savage cries. Ralph liked to follow their majestic flight, to
listen to their melancholy voices. He taught his little pupil their
names and their habits; he showed her the lovely Madagascar teal, with
its orange breast and emerald back; he bade her admire the flight of the
red-winged tropic-bird, which sometimes strays to those regions and
flies in a few hours from Mauritius to Rodrigues, whither, after a
journey of two hundred leagues, it returns to sleep under the
_veloutier_ in which its nest is hidden. The petrel, harbinger of the
tempest, also spread its tapering wings over those cliffs; and the queen
of the sea, the frigate-bird, with its forked tail, its slate-colored
coat and its jagged beak, which lights so rarely that it would seem that
the air is its country, and constant movement its nature, raised its cry
of distress above all the rest. These wild inhabitants were apparently
accustomed to seeing the two children playing about the dwellings, for
they hardly condescended to take fright at their approach; and when
Ralph reached the shelf on which they had installed their families, they
would rise in black clouds and light, as if in derision, a few feet
above him. Indiana would laugh at their evolutions, and would carry
home, carefully, in her hat of rice-straw, the eggs Ralph had succeeded
in stealing for her, and for which he had often to fight stoutly against
powerful blows from the wings of the great amphibious creatures.
These memories rushed tumultuously to Ralph's mind, but they were
extremely bitter to him; for times had changed greatly, and the little
girl who had always been his companion had ceased to be his friend, or
at all events was no longer his friend, as formerly, in absolute
simpleness of heart. Although she returned his affection, his devotion,
his regard, there was one thing which prevented any confidence between
them, one memory upon which all the emotions of their lives turned as
upon a pivot. Ralph felt that he could not refer to it; he had ventured
to do it once, on a day of danger, and his bold act had availed nothing.
To recur to it now would be nothing more than cold-blooded barbarity,
and Ralph had made up his mind to forgive Raymon, the man for whom he
had less esteem than for any man on earth, rather than add to Indiana's
sorrow by condemning him according to his own ideas of what justice
demanded.
So he held his peace and even avoided her. Although living under the
same roof, he had managed so that he hardly saw her except at meals; and
yet he watched over her like a mysterious providence. He left the house
only when the heat confined her to her hammock; but at night, when she
had gone out, he would invent an excuse for leaving Delmare on the
veranda and would go and wait for her at the foot of the cliffs where he
knew she was in the habit of sitting. He would remain there whole hours,
sometimes gazing at her through the branches upon which the moon cast
its white light, but respecting the narrow space which separated them,
and never venturing to shorten her sad reverie by an instant. When she
came down into the valley she always found him on the edge of a little
stream along which ran the path to the house. Several broad flat stones,
around which the water rippled in silver threads, served him as a seat.
When Indiana's white dress appeared on the bank, Ralph would rise
silently, offer her his arm and take her back to the house without
speaking to her, unless Indiana, being more discouraged and depressed
than usual, herself opened the conversation. Then, when he had left her,
he would go to his own room and wait until the whole house was asleep
before going to bed. If he heard Delmare scolding, Ralph would grasp the
first pretext that came to his mind to go to him, and would succeed in
pacifying him or diverting his thoughts without ever allowing him to
suspect that such was his purpose.
The construction of the house, which was transparent, so to speak,
compared with the houses in our climate, and the consequent necessity of
being always under the eyes of everybody else, compelled the colonel to
put more restraint upon his temper. Ralph's inevitable appearance, at
the slightest sound, to stand between him and his wife, forced him to
keep a check upon himself; for Delmare had sufficient self-esteem to
retain control of himself before that acute but stern censor. And so he
waited until the hour for retiring had delivered him from his judge
before venting the ill-humor which business vexations had heaped up
during the day. But it was of no avail; the secret influence kept vigil
with him, and, at the first harsh word, at the first loud tone that was
audible through the thin partitions, the sound of moving furniture or of
somebody walking about, as if by accident, in Ralph's room, seemed to
impose silence on him and to warn him that the silent and patient
solicitude of Indiana's protector was not asleep.