It was last year, one evening during the never-ending summer that reigns
in those latitudes, that two passengers from the schooner _Nahandove_
journeyed into the mountains of Ile Bourbon three days after landing.
These two persons had devoted the interval to repose, a precaution quite
inconsistent with the plan which had brought them to the colony. But
such was evidently not their opinion; for, after taking _faham_ together
on the veranda, they dressed with especial care as if they intended to
pass the evening in society, and, taking the road to the mountain, they
reached the ravine of Bernica after about an hour's walk.
Chance willed that it should be one of the loveliest evenings for which
the moon ever furnished light in the tropics. That luminary had just
risen from the dark waves and was beginning to cast a long band of
quick-silver on the sea; but its rays did not shine into the gorge, and
the edges of the basin reflected only the trembling gleam of a few
stars. Even the lemon-trees on the higher slopes of the mountain were
not covered with the pale diamonds with which the moon sprinkles their
polished, brittle leaves. The ebony trees and the tamarinds murmured
softly in the darkness; only the bushy tufts at the summit of the huge
palm-trees, whose slender trunks rose a hundred feet from the ground,
shone with a greenish tinge in the silvery beams.
The sea-birds were resting quietly in the crevices of the cliffs, and
only a few blue pigeons, concealed behind the projections of the
mountain, raised their melancholy, passionate note in the distance.
Lovely beetles, living jewels, rustled gently in the branches of the
coffee-trees, or skimmed the surface of the lake with a buzzing noise,
and the regular plashing of the cascade seemed to exchange mysterious
words with the echoes on its shores.
The two solitary promenaders ascended by a steep and winding path to the
top of the gorge, to the spot where the torrent plunges down in a white
column of vapor to the foot of the precipice. They found themselves on a
small platform admirably adapted to their purpose. A number of
convolvuli hanging from the trunks of trees formed a natural cradle
suspended over the waterfall. Sir Ralph, with wonderful self-possession,
cut away several branches which might impede their spring, then took his
companion's hand and drew her to a seat beside him on a moss-covered
rock from which in the daytime the beautiful view from that spot could
be seen in all its wild and charming grandeur. But at that moment the
darkness and the dense vapor from the cascade enveloped everything and
made the height of the precipice seem immeasurable and awe-inspiring.
"Let me remind you, my dear Indiana," said Ralph, "that the success of
our undertaking requires the greatest self-possession on our part. If
you jump hastily in a direction where, because of the darkness, you see
no obstacles, you will inevitably bruise yourself on the rocks and your
death will be slow and painful; but, if you take care to throw yourself
in the direction of the white line which marks the course of the
waterfall you will fall into the lake with it, and the water itself will
see to it that you do not miss your aim. But, if you prefer to wait an
hour, the moon will rise high enough to give us light."
"I am willing," Indiana replied, "especially as we ought to devote these
last moments to religious thoughts."
"You are right, my dear," said Ralph. "This last hour should be one of
meditation and prayer. I do not say that we ought to make our peace with
the Eternal, that would be to forget the distance that separates us from
His sublime power; but we ought, I think, to make our peace with the men
who have caused our suffering, and to confide to the wind which blows
toward the northeast words of pity for those from whom three thousand
leagues of ocean separate us."
Indiana received this suggestion without surprise or emotion. For
several months past her thoughts had become more and more elevated in
direct proportion to the change that had taken place in Ralph. She no
longer listened to him simply as a phlegmatic adviser; she followed him
in silence as a good spirit whose mission it was to take her from the
earth and deliver her from her torments.
"I agree," she said; "I am overjoyed to feel that I can forgive without
an effort, that I have neither hatred nor regret nor love nor resentment
in my heart; indeed, at this moment, I hardly remember the sorrows of my
sad life and the ingratitude of those who surrounded me. Almighty God!
Thou seest the deepest recesses of my heart; Thou knowest that it is
pure and calm, and that all my thoughts of love and hope have turned to
Thee."
Thereupon, Ralph seated himself at Indiana's feet and began to pray in a
loud voice that rose above the roar of the cascade. It was the first
time perhaps since he was born that his whole thought came to his lips.
The hour of his death had struck; his heart was no longer held in check
by fetters or mysteries; it belonged to God alone; the chains of society
no longer weighed it down. Its ardor was no longer a crime, it was free
to soar upward to God who awaited it; the veil that concealed so much
virtue, grandeur and power fell away, and the man's mind rose at its
first leap to the level of his heart.
As a bright flame burns amid dense clouds of smoke and scatters them, so
did the sacred fire that glowed in the depths of his being send forth
its brilliant light. The first time that that inflexible conscience
found itself delivered from its trammels and its fears, words came of
themselves to the assistance of his thoughts, and the man of mediocre
talents, who had never said any but commonplace things in his life,
became, in his last hour, eloquent and convincing as Raymon had never
been. Do not expect me to repeat to you the strange harangue that he
confided to the echoes of the vast solitude; not even he himself, if he
were here, could repeat it. There are moments of mental exaltation and
ecstasy when our thoughts are purified, subtilized, etherealized as it
were. These infrequent moments raise us so high, carry us so far out of
ourselves, that when we fall back upon the earth we lose all
consciousness and memory of that intellectual debauch. Who can
understand the anchorite's mysterious visions? Who can tell the dreams
of the poet before his exaltation cooled so that he could write them
down for us? Who can say what marvellous things are revealed to the soul
of the just man when Heaven opens to receive him? Ralph, a man so
utterly commonplace to all outward appearance--and yet an exceptional
man, for he firmly believed in God and consulted the book of his
conscience day by day--Ralph at that moment was adjusting his accounts
with eternity. It was the time to be himself, to lay bare his whole
moral being, to lay aside, before the Judge, the disguise that men had
forced upon him. Casting away the haircloth in which sorrow had
enveloped his bones, he stood forth sublime and radiant as if he had
already entered into the abode of divine rewards.
As she listened to him, it did not occur to Indiana to be surprised; she
did not ask herself if it were really Ralph who talked like that. The
Ralph she had known had ceased to exist, and he to whom she was
listening now seemed to be a friend whom she had formerly seen in her
dreams and who finally became incarnate for her on the brink of the
grave. She felt her own pure soul soar upward in the same flight. A
profound religious sympathy aroused in her the same emotions, and tears
of enthusiasm fell from her eyes upon Ralph's hair.
Thereupon, the moon rose over the tops of the great palms, and its
beams, shining between the branches of the convolvuli, enveloped Indiana
in a pale, misty light which made her resemble, in her white dress and
with her long hair falling over her shoulders, the wraith of some maiden
lost in the desert.
Sir Ralph knelt before her and said:
"Now, Indiana, you must forgive me for all the injury I have done you,
so that I may forgive myself for it."
"Alas!" she replied, "what can I possibly have to forgive you, my poor
Ralph? Ought I not, on the contrary, to bless you to the last moment of
my life, as you have forced me to do in all the days of misery that have
fallen to my lot?"
"I do not know how far I have been blameworthy," rejoined Ralph; "but it
is impossible that, in the course of such a long and terrible battle
with my destiny, I should not have been many times without my own
volition."
"Of what battle are you speaking?" queried Indiana.
"That is what I must explain to you before we die; that is the secret of
my life. You asked me to tell it to you on the ship that brought us
here, and I promised to do so on the shore of Bernica Lake, when the
moon should rise upon us for the last time."
"That moment has come," she said, "and I am listening."
"Summon all your patience then, for I have a long story to tell you,
Indiana, and that story is my own."
"I thought that I knew it, inasmuch as I have hardly ever been separated
from you."
"You do not know it; you do not know it for a single day, a single
hour," said Ralph sadly. "When could I have told it to you, pray? It is
Heaven's will that the only suitable moment for me to do so, should be
the last moment of your life and my own. But it is as innocent and
proper to-day as it would formerly have been insane and criminal. It is
a personal gratification for which no one has the right to blame me at
this hour, which you accord to me in order to complete the task of
patience and gentleness which you have taken upon yourself with regard
to me. Endure to the end, therefore, the burden of my unhappiness; and
if my words tire you and annoy you, listen to the waterfall as it sings
the hymn of the dead over me.
"I was born to love; none of you chose to believe it, and your error in
that regard had a decisive influence on my character. It is true that
nature, while giving me an ardent heart, was guilty of a strange
inconsistency; she placed on my face a stone mask and on my tongue a
weight that it could not raise; she refused me what she grants to the
most ordinary mortals, the power to express my feelings by the glance or
by speech. That made me selfish. People judged the mental being by the
outer envelope and, like an imperfect fruit I was compelled to dry up
under the rough husk which I could not cast off. I was hardly born when
I was cast out of the heart which I most needed. My mother put me away
from her breast with disgust, because my baby face could not return her
smile. At an age when one can hardly distinguish a thought from a
desire, I was already branded with the hateful designation of egotist.
"Thereupon it was decided that no one would love me, because I was
unable to put in words my affection for anyone. They made me unhappy,
they declared that I did not feel my unhappiness; I was almost banished
from my father's house; they sent me to live among the rocks like a
lonely shore-bird. You know what my childhood was, Indiana. I passed the
long days in the desert, with no anxious mother to come there in search
of me, with no friendly voice amid the silence of the ravines to remind
me that the approach of night called me back to the cradle. I grew up
alone, I lived alone; but God would not permit me to be unhappy to the
end, for I shall not die alone.
"Heaven however sent me a gift, a consolation, a hope. You came into my
life as if Heaven had created you for me. Poor child! abandoned like me,
like me set adrift in life without love and without protectors, you
seemed to be destined for me--at least I flattered myself that it was
so. Was I too presumptuous? For ten years you were mine, absolutely
mine; I had no rivals, no misgivings. At that time I had had no
experience of what jealousy is.
"That time, Indiana, was the least dismal period of my life. I made of
you my sister, my daughter, my companion, my pupil, my whole society.
Your need of me made my life something more than that of a wild beast;
for your sake I threw off the gloom into which the contempt of my own
family had cast me. I began to esteem myself by becoming useful to you.
I must tell you everything, Indiana; after accepting the burden of life
for you, my imagination suggested the hope of a reward. I accustomed
myself--forgive the words I am about to use; even to-day I cannot utter
them without fear and trembling--I accustomed myself to think that you
would be my wife; child that you were, I looked upon you as my
betrothed; my imagination arrayed you in the charms of young womanhood;
I was impatient to see you in your maturity. My brother, who had usurped
my share of the family affection and who took pleasure in peaceful
avocations, had a garden on the hillside which we can see from here by
daylight, and which subsequent owners have transformed into a
rice-field. The care of his flowers occupied his pleasantest moments,
and every morning he went out to watch their progress with an impatient
eye, and to wonder, child that he was, because they had not grown so
much as he expected in a single night. You, Indiana, were my whole
vocation, my only joy, my only treasure; you were the young plant that I
cultivated, the bud that I was impatient to see bloom. I, too, looked
eagerly every morning for the effect of another day that had passed over
your head; for I was already a young man and you were but a child.
Already passions of which you did not know the name were stirring my
bosom; my fifteen years played havoc with my imagination, and you were
surprised to see me so often in a melancholy mood, sharing your games,
but taking no pleasure in them. You could not imagine that a fruit or a
bird was no longer a priceless treasure to me as it was to you, and I
already seemed cold and odd to you. And yet you loved me such as I was;
for, despite my melancholy, there was not a moment of my life that was
not devoted to you; my sufferings made you dearer to my heart; I
cherished the insane hope that it would be your mission to change them
to joys some day.
"Alas! forgive me for the sacrilegious thought which kept me alive for
ten years; if it were a crime in the accursed child to hope for you,
lovely, simple-hearted child of the mountains, God alone is guilty of
giving him, for his only sustenance, that audacious thought. Upon what
could that wounded, misunderstood heart subsist, who encountered new
necessities at every turn and found a refuge nowhere? from whom could he
expect a glance, a smile of love, if not from you, whose lover and
father he was at the same time?
"Do not be shocked to find that you grew up under the wing of a poor
bird consumed by love; never did any impure homage, any blameworthy
thought endanger the virginity of your soul; never did my mouth brush
from your cheeks that bloom of innocence which covered them as the fruit
is covered with a moist vapor in the morning. My kisses were the kisses
of a father, and when your innocent and playful lips met mine they did
not find there the stinging flame of virile desire. No, it was not with
you, a tiny blue-eyed child, that I was in love. As I held you in my
arms, with your innocent smile and your dainty caresses, you were simply
my child, or at most my little sister; but I was in love with your
fifteen years, when, yielding to the ardor of my own youth, I devoured
the future with a greedy eye.
"When I read you the story of Paul and Virginie, you only half
understood it. You wept, however; you saw only the story of a brother
and sister where I had quivered with sympathy, realizing the torments of
two lovers. That book made me miserable, whereas it was your joy. You
enjoyed hearing me read of the attachment of a faithful dog, of the
beauty of the cocoa-palms and the songs of Dominique the negro. But I,
when I was alone, read over and over the conversations between Paul and
his sweetheart, the impulsive suspicions of the one, the secret
sufferings of the other. Oh! how well I understood those first anxieties
of youth, seeking in his own heart an explanation of the mysteries of
life, and seizing enthusiastically on the first object of love that
presents itself to him! But do me justice, Indiana--I did not commit the
crime of hastening by a single day the placid development of your
childhood; I did not let a word escape me which could suggest to you
that there were such things as tears and misery in life. I left you, at
the age of ten, in all the ignorance, all the security that were yours
when your nurse placed you in my arms, one day when I had determined to
die.
"Often as I sat alone on this cliff I wrung my hands frantically as I
listened to all the sounds of spring time and of love which the mountain
gives forth, as I saw the creepers chase each other to and fro, the
insects sleeping in a voluptuous embrace in the calyx of a flower, as I
inhaled the burning dust which the palm-trees sent to one
another--ethereal transports, subtle joys to which the gentle summer
breeze serves as a couch. At such times I was frantic, I was mad. I
appealed for love to the flowers, to the birds, to the voice of the
torrent. I called wildly upon that unknown bliss, the mere thought of
which made my brain whirl. But I would see you running toward me, along
yonder path, merry and laughing, so tiny in the distance and so awkward
about climbing the rocks that one might have taken you for a penguin,
with your white dress and your brown hair. Then my blood would grow
calm, my lips cease to burn. In presence of the little Indiana of seven
I would forget the Indiana of fifteen of whom I had just been dreaming.
I would open my arms to you with pure delight; your kisses would cool my
forehead. At those times I was happy; I was a father.
"How many free, peaceful days we have passed in this ravine! How many
times I have bathed your feet in the pure water of yonder basin! How
many times I have watched you sleeping among the reeds, shaded by the
leaf of a palm for an umbrella! It was at those times that my tortures
would occasionally begin anew. It was a sore affliction to me that you
were so small. I would ask myself whether, suffering as I did, I could
live until the day when you could understand me and respond to my love.
I would gently lift your silken locks and kiss them with passion. I
would compare them with curls I had cut from your head in preceding
years and which I kept in my wallet. I would joyously make sure of the
darker shade that each recurring spring gave to them. Then I would
examine the marks on the trunk of a date-tree nearby, that I had made to
show the progressive increase in your height for four or five years. The
tree still bears those scars, Indiana; I found them on it the last time
I came here to suffer. Alas! in vain did you grow taller and taller; in
vain did your beauty keep all its promises; in vain did your hair become
black as ebony. You did not grow for me; not for me did your charms
develop. The first time that your heart beat faster it was for another
than me.
"Do you remember how we ran, as light of foot as two turtle-doves, among
the thickets of wild rose bushes? Do you remember, too, that we
sometimes went astray in the forests over our heads? Once we tried to
reach the mist-enveloped peaks of the Salazes; but we had not foreseen
that the higher we went the scarcer the fruit became, the less
accessible the streams, the more terrible and more penetrating the cold.
"When we saw the vegetation receding behind us you would have returned;
but when we had crossed the fern belt we found a quantity of wild
strawberries, and you were so busy filling your basket with them that
you thought no more about leaving the place. But we had to abandon the
idea of going on. We were walking on volcanic rocks covered with little
brown spots, and with woolly plants growing among them. Those wretched
wind-beaten weeds made us think of the goodness of God, who has given
them a warm garment to withstand the violence of the storm. Then the
mist became so dense that we could not tell where we were going, and we
had to go down again. I carried you in my arms. I crept carefully down
the deep slopes of the mountain. Darkness surprised us as we entered the
first woods, in the third belt of vegetation. I picked some pomegranates
for you and made shift to quench my own thirst with the convolvuli, the
stalks of which contain an abundant supply of cool, pure water.
Thereupon we recalled the adventure of our favorite heroes, when they
lost themselves in the forests of the Rivière-Rouge. But we had no
loving mothers, nor zealous servants, nor faithful dog to search for us.
But I was content; I was proud. I shared with no one the duty of
watching over you, and I considered myself more fortunate than Paul.
"Yes, it was a profound and pure and true passion that you inspired in
me even then. Noun, at ten years, was a head taller than you; a creole
in the fullest acceptation of the word, she was already developed. Her
melting eyes already shone with a curious expression; her bearing and
character were those of a young woman. But I did not love Noun, or I
loved her only because of you, with whom she always played. It never
occurred to me to wonder whether she was beautiful already; whether she
would be more beautiful some day. I never looked at her. In my eyes she
was more of a child than you; for, you see, I loved you. I staked all my
hopes upon you; you were the companion of my life, the dream of my
youth.
"Those days of exile in England, that period of pain and grief, I will
not describe. If I treated any one badly, it was not you; and if any one
treated me badly, I do not propose to complain. There I became more
_egotistical_ that is to say more depressed and more distrustful than
ever. By being suspicious of me, people had compelled me to become
self-sufficient and to rely upon myself. Thus I had only the testimony
of my own heart to support me in those trials. It was attributed to me
as a crime that I did not love a woman who married me only because she
was forced to and who never treated me with anything but contempt. It
was afterwards remarked that one of the principal characteristics of my
egotism was the aversion I seemed to feel for children. Raymon more than
once bantered me cruelly concerning that supposed peculiarity, observing
that the care necessary for the education of children was quite
inconsistent with the rigidly methodical ways of an old bachelor. I
fancy that he did not know that I had been a father, and that it was I
who educated you. But none of you would ever understand that the memory
of my son was as intensely painful to me after many years as on the
first day, and that my sore heart swelled at the sight of flaxen heads
that reminded me of him. When a man is unhappy, people are terribly
afraid of not finding him blameworthy enough, because they dread being
compelled to pity him.
"But what no one will ever be able to understand is the profound
indignation, the black despair which took possession of me when I, a
poor child of the desert, upon whom no one had ever deigned to cast a
pitying glance, was forced to leave this spot and take upon myself the
burdens of society; when I was told that I must fill an empty place that
had spurned me; when they tried to make me understand that I had duties
to fulfil toward those men and women who had disregarded their duties
toward me. Think of it! no one of all my kindred had chosen to be my
protector and now they all called upon me to undertake the defence of
their interests! They would not even leave me to enjoy in peace what
pariahs enjoy, the air of solitude! I had but one thing in life that I
cherished, one thought, one hope--that you would belong to me forever;
they deprived me of that, they told me that you were not rich enough for
me. Bitter mockery! for me whom the mountains had nourished and whom my
father's roof had cast out! me, who had never been allowed to learn the
use of riches, and upon whom was now laid the duty of managing to
advantage the riches of other people!
"However I submitted. I had no right to pray that my paltry happiness
might be spared; I was despised enough, Heaven knows! to resist would
have been to make myself odious. My mother, inconsolable for her other
son's death, threatened to die herself if I did not follow out my
destiny. My father, who accused me of not knowing how to comfort him, as
if I were to blame because he loved me so little, was ready to curse me
if I tried to escape from his yoke. I bent my head; but what I suffered
even you yourself, although you too have been very unhappy, could never
understand. If, after being hunted and maltreated and oppressed as I
have been, I have not returned mankind evil for evil, perhaps it is a
fair conclusion that my heart is not so cold and sterile as it has been
accused of being.
"When I came back here, when I saw the man to whom you had been
married--forgive me, Indiana, that was the time when I was genuinely
selfish; there must always be selfishness in love, since there was a
touch of it even in mine--I felt an indescribably cruel joy in the
thought that that legal sham would give you a master and not a husband.
You were surprised at the species of affection for him I displayed; it
was because I did not look upon him as a rival. I knew well enough that
that old man could neither feel nor inspire love, and that your heart
would come forth untouched from that marriage. I was grateful to him for
your coldness and your melancholy. If he had remained here, I should
perhaps have become a very guilty man; but you left me alone and it was
not in my power to live without you. I tried to conquer the indomitable
love which had sprung to life again in all its force when I found you as
fair and sad as I had dreamed of you in your childhood. But solitude
only intensified my suffering and I yielded to the craving I felt to see
you, to live under the same roof, to breathe the same air, to drink my
fill every hour of the melodious tones of your voice. You know what
obstacles I had to meet, what distrust I had to overcome; I realized
then what duties I had voluntarily undertaken; I could not connect my
life with yours without quieting your husband's suspicions by a sacred
promise, and I have never known what it was to trifle with my word. I
pledged myself therefore with my mind and my heart never to forget my
rôle of brother, and I ask you, Indiana, if I ever was false to my
oath.
"I realized also that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for me
to perform that painful task, if I laid aside the disguise that
precluded any intimate relations, any profound sentiment; I realized
that I must not play with the danger, for my passion was too intense to
come forth victorious from a battle. I felt that I must erect about
myself a triple wall of ice, in order to repel your interest in me, in
order to deprive myself of your compassion, which would have ruined me.
I said to myself that on the day that you pitied me, I should be already
guilty, and I made up my mind to live under the weight of that horrible
accusation of indifference and selfishness, which, thank Heaven! you did
not fail to bring against me. The success of my ruse surpassed my hopes;
you lavished upon me a sort of insulting pity like that which is
accorded to eunuchs; you denied me the possession of a heart and
passions; you trampled me under foot, and I had not the right to display
energy enough to be angry and vow vengeance, for that would have
betrayed me and shown you that I was a man.
"I complain of mankind at large and not of you, Indiana. You were always
kind and merciful; you tolerated me under this despicable disguise I had
adopted in order to be near you; you never made me blush for my rôle,
you were all in all to me, and sometimes I thought with pride that if
you looked kindly upon me in the guise I had assumed in order that you
might misunderstand me, you might perhaps love me if you should know me
some day as I really was. Alas! what other than you would not have
spurned me? what other would have held out her hand to that speechless,
witless clown? Everybody but you held aloof with disgust from the
_egotist!_ Ah! there was one being in the world generous enough not to
tire of that profitless exchange; there was one heart large enough to
shed something of the blessed flame that animated it upon the narrow,
benumbed heart of the poor abandoned wretch. It required a heart that
had too much of that of which I had not enough. There was under Heaven
but one Indiana capable of caring for a Ralph.
"Next to you the person who showed me the most indulgence was Delmare.
You accused me of preferring him to you, of sacrificing your comfort to
my own by refusing to interfere in your domestic quarrels. Unjust, blind
woman! you did not see that I served you as well as it was possible to
do; and, above all, you did not understand that I could not raise my
voice in your behalf without betraying myself. What would have become of
you if Delmare had turned me out of his house? who would have protected
you, patiently, silently, but with the persevering steadfastness of an
undying love? Not Raymon surely. And then I was fond of him from a
feeling of gratitude, I confess;--yes, fond of that rough, vulgar
creature who had it in his power to deprive me of my only remaining joy,
and who did not do it; that man whose misfortune it was not to be loved
by you, so that there was a secret bond of sympathy between us! I was
fond of him too for the very reason that he had never caused me the
tortures of jealousy.
"But I have come now to the most ghastly sorrow of my life, to the fatal
time when your love, of which I had dreamed so long, belonged to
another. Then and not till then did I fully realize the nature of the
sentiment that I had held in check so many years. Then did hatred pour
poison into my breast and jealousy consume what was left of my strength.
Hitherto my imagination had kept you pure; my respect encompassed you
with a veil which the innocent audacity of dreams dared not even raise;
but when I was assailed by the horrible thought that another had
involved you in his destiny, had snatched you from my power and was
intoxicating himself with deep draughts of the bliss of which I dared
not I even dream, I became frantic; I would have rejoiced to see that
detested man at the foot of this precipice and to roll stones down upon
his head.
"However your sufferings were so great that I forgot my own. I did not
choose to kill him, because you would have wept for him. Indeed I was
tempted twenty times, Heaven forgive me! to be a vile and despicable
wretch, to betray Delmare and serve my enemy. Yes, Indiana, I was so
insane, so miserable at the sight of your suffering, that I repented
having tried to enlighten you and that I would have given my life to
bequeath my heart to that man! Oh! the villain! may God forgive him for
the injury he has done me! but may He punish him for the misery he has
heaped on your head! It is for that that I hate him; for, so far as I am
concerned, I forget what my life has been, when I see what he has made
of yours. He is a man whom society should have branded on the forehead
on the day of his birth! whom it should have spat upon and cast out as
the hardest-hearted and vilest of men! But on the contrary, she bore it
aloft in triumph. Ah! I recognize mankind in that, and I ought not to be
indignant; for man simply obeys his nature in adoring the deformed
creature who destroys the happiness and consideration of another.
"Forgive me, Indiana, forgive me! it is cruel perhaps to complain before
you, but this is the first time and the last; let me curse the
ungrateful wretch who has driven you to the grave. This terrible lesson
was necessary to open your eyes. In vain did a voice from Noun's
deathbed and Delmare's cry out to you: 'Beware of him, he will ruin
you!'--you were deaf: your evil genius led you on and, dishonored as you
are, public opinion condemns you and absolves him. He did all sorts of
evil and no heed was paid to it. He killed Noun and you forgot it; he
ruined you and you forgave him. You see, he had the art to dazzle the
eyes and deceive the mind; his adroit, deceitful words found their way
to the heart; his viper's glance fascinated; and if nature had given him
my metallic features and my dull intelligence she would have made a
perfect man of him.
"Yes, I say, may God punish him, for he was barbarous to you! or,
rather, may He forgive him, for perhaps he was more stupid than wicked!
He did not understand you; he did not appreciate the happiness he might
have enjoyed! Oh! you loved him so dearly! He might have made your life
so beautiful! In his place I would not have been virtuous; I would have
fled with you into the heart of the mountains; I would have torn you
from society to have you all to myself, and I should have had but one
fear, that you would not be accursed and abandoned sufficiently so that
I might be all in all to you. I would have been jealous of your
consideration, but not in the same way that he was; my aim would have
been to destroy it in order to replace it by my love. I should have
suffered intensely to see another man give you the slightest morsel of
pleasure, a moment's gratification; it would have been a theft from me;
for your happiness would have been my care, my property, my life, my
honor! Oh! how vain and how wealthy I would have been with this wild
ravine for my only home, these mountain trees for my only fortune, if
heaven had given them to me with your love! Let us weep, Indiana; it is
the first time in my life that I have wept; it is God's will that I
should not die without knowing that melancholy pleasure."
Ralph was weeping like a child. It was in very truth the first time that
stoical soul had ever given way to self-compassion; and yet there was in
those tears more sorrow for Indiana's fate than for his own.
"Do not weep for me," he said, seeing that her face too was bathed in
tears. "Do not pity me; your pity wipes out the whole past, and the
present is no longer bitter. Why should I suffer now? You no longer love
him."
"If I had known you as you are, Ralph, I should never have loved him,"
cried Madame Delmare; "it was your virtue that was my ruin."
"And then," continued Ralph, looking at her with a sorrowful smile, "I
have many other causes of joy. You unwittingly confided something to me
during the hours that we poured out our hearts to each other on board
ship. You told me that this Raymon was never so fortunate as he had the
presumption to claim to be, and you relieved me of a part of my
torments. You took away my remorse for having watched over you so
ineffectually; for I had the insolence to try to protect you from his
fascinations; and therein I insulted you, Indiana. I did not have faith
in your strength; that is another crime for you to forgive."
"Alas!" said Indiana, "you ask me to forgive! me who have made your
whole life miserable, who have rewarded so pure and generous a love with
incredible blindness, barbarous ingratitude! Why, I am the one who
should crawl at your feet and implore forgiveness."
"Then this love of mine arouses neither disgust nor anger in your
breast, Indiana? O my God! I thank Thee! I shall die happy! Listen,
Indiana; cease to blame yourself for my sufferings. At this moment I
regret none of Raymon's joys, and I think that my fate would arouse his
envy if he had the heart of a man. Now I am your brother, your husband,
your lover for all eternity. Since the day that you promised to leave
this life with me, I have cherished the sweet thought that you belonged
to me, that you had returned to me never to leave me again. I began once
more to call you my betrothed under my breath. It would have been too
much happiness--or, it may be, not enough--to possess you on earth. In
God's bosom the bliss awaits me of which my childhood dreamed. There,
Indiana, you will love me; there, your divine intellect, stripped of all
the lying fictions of this life, will make up to me for a whole life of
sacrifices, suffering and self-denial; there, you will be mine, O my
Indiana! for you are heaven! and if I deserve to be saved, I deserve to
possess you. This is what I had in mind when I asked you to put on this
white dress; it is the wedding dress; and yonder rock jutting out into
the basin is the altar that awaits us."
He rose and plucked a branch from a flowering orange tree in a
neighboring thicket and placed it on Indiana's black hair; then he knelt
at her feet.
[Illustration 06: _RALPH AND INDIANA SEEK DEATH
TOGETHER_
_Their lips met; and doubtless there is in a love
that comes from the heart a greater power than in
the ardor of a fugitive desire; for that kiss, on the
threshold of another life, summed up for them all
the joys of this._
_Thereupon Ralph took his fiancée in his arms and
bore her away to plunge with her in the torrent._]
"Make me happy," he said; "tell me that your heart consents to this
marriage in another world. Give me eternity; do not compel me
to pray for absolute annihilation."
If the story of Ralph's inward life has produced no effect upon you, if
you have not come to love that virtuous man, it is because I have proved
to be an unfaithful interpreter of his memories, because I have not been
able to exert the power possessed by a man who is profoundly in earnest
in his passion. Moreover, the moon does not lend me its melancholy
influence, nor do the song of the grosbeak, the perfume of the
cinnamon-tree, and all the luxurious and intoxicating seductions of a
night in the tropics appeal to your head and heart. It may be, too, that
you do not know by experience what powerful and novel sensations awake
in the heart at the thought of suicide, and how all the things of this
life appear in their true light at the moment of severing our connection
with them. This sudden light filled all the inmost recesses of Indiana's
heart; the bandage, which had long been loosened, fell from her eyes
altogether. Newly awake to the truth and to nature, she saw Ralph's
heart as it really was. She also saw his features as she had never seen
them; for the mental exaltation of his position had produced the same
effect on him that the Voltaic battery produces on paralyzed limbs; it
had set him free from the paralysis that had fettered his eyes and his
voice. Arrayed in all the glory of his frankness and his virtue he was
much handsomer than Raymon, and Indiana felt that he was the man she
should have loved.
"Be my husband in heaven and on earth," she said, "and let this kiss
bind me to you for all eternity!"
Their lips met; and doubtless there is in a love that comes from the
heart a greater power than in the ardor of a fugitive desire; for that
kiss, on the threshold of another life, summed up for them all the joys
of this.
Thereupon Ralph took his fiancée in his arms and bore her away to
plunge with her in the torrent.