TO
M. A. G.
I
Some people might have made a book out of it; but the story I am going
to tell is one which it took all my strength to live and over which I
spent all my virtue. So I shall set down my recollections quite simply,
and if in places they are ragged I shall have recourse to no invention
and neither patch nor connect them; any effort I might make to dress
them up would take away from the last pleasure I hope to get in telling
them.
I lost my father before I was twelve years old. As there was nothing
to keep my mother at Le Havre, where my father had had a practice as
a doctor, she decided to go to Paris where she thought I should be
better able to finish my education. She took a small apartment near
the Luxembourg and Miss Ashburton came to live with us. Miss Flora
Ashburton, who had no relations of her own, had begun by being my
mother’s governess; she afterwards became her companion and later on
her friend. I spent my childhood in the society of these two women whom
I remember as equally gentle and equally sad and always dressed in
mourning. One day--it was a good long time, I think, after my father’s
death--my mother changed the black ribbon in her morning cap for a
mauve one.
“Oh, mamma!” I cried. “That colour doesn’t suit you at all.” The next
morning the black ribbon was back again.
My health was delicate. My mother and Miss Ashburton had only one
thought--to keep me from ailing. If I have not become an idler as a
result of their solicitude it must really be that my love of work is
ingrained. At the very beginning of the fine weather they both used to
persuade themselves that it was time for me to leave town, that I was
growing pale. About the middle of June we would start for Fongueusemare
in the neighbourhood of Le Havre, where we used to spend the summer
every year at my uncle Bucolin’s.
Standing in a garden which is neither very large nor very fine, and
which has nothing special to distinguish it from a number of other
Normandy gardens, the Bucolins’ house, a white two-storied building,
resembles a great many country houses of the century before last. A
score of large windows look east on to the front of the garden; as many
more on to the back; there are none at the sides. The windows have
small panes; some of them, which have been recently replaced, seem too
light in colour among the old ones, which look green and dull beside
them. Certain others have flaws in the glass which our parents used to
call “bubbles”; a tree seen through them becomes distorted; when the
postman passes he suddenly develops a hump.
The garden is rectangular and is enclosed by a wall. The part which
lies in front of the house consists of a fairly large, shady lawn with
a gravel path all round it. On this side the wall is lower and allows a
view of the farmyard and buildings which lie round the garden. The farm
is bordered according to the custom of the country, by an avenue of
beeches.
Behind the house on the west side the garden spreads more spaciously.
A walk gay with flowers runs along the south espalier wall and is
protected from the sea winds by a thick screen of Portugal laurel
and a few trees. Another walk running along the north wall disappears
under a mass of branches. My cousins used to call it the “dark walk”
and would not venture along it after twilight. These two paths lead to
the kitchen-garden, which continues the flower-garden on a lower level,
and which you reach by a small flight of steps. Then, at the bottom
of the kitchen-garden, a little gate with a secret fastening leads,
on the other side of the wall, to a coppice in which the beach avenue
terminates right and left. As one stands on the door-step of the west
front one can look over the top of this clump of trees to the plateau
beyond with its admirable clothing of crops. On the horizon, at no
great distance, can be seen the church of a little village and, when
the air is still, the smoke rising from half-a-dozen houses.
Every fine summer evening after dinner we used to go down to the “lower
garden.” We went out by the little secret gate and walked as far as
a bench in the avenue from which there was a view over the country;
there, near the thatched roof of a deserted marl-pit, my uncle, my
mother and Miss Ashburton would sit down; before us the little valley
filled with mist, and over the distant woods we watched the sky turn
golden. Afterwards we would linger for a while at the lower end of
the garden where it had already grown dark. When we came in we found
my aunt in the drawing-room. She hardly ever went out with us. For us
children the evening ended here; but very often we were still reading
in our rooms when we heard our elders go up to bed.
Almost every hour of the day which we did not spend in the garden we
spent in the “school-room,” my uncle’s study, in which some school
desks had been placed for us. My cousin Robert and I worked side by
side--behind us were Juliette and Alissa. Alissa was two years older
than I, and Juliette one year younger; Robert was the youngest of us
four.
I am not writing here an account of my early recollections, but only of
those which refer to my story. It really begins, I may say, in the year
of my father’s death. Perhaps my sensibility--over-stimulated as it had
been by our bereavement and if not by my own grief at any rate by the
sight of my mother’s--predisposed me at this time to new emotions. I
had matured precociously, so that when we went back to Fongueusemare
that year, Juliette and Robert seemed to me all the younger by
comparison, but when I saw Alissa I understood on a sudden that we two
had ceased to be children.
Yes, it was certainly the year of my father’s death; my recollection
is confirmed by a conversation which, I remember, took place between
my mother and Miss Ashburton immediately after our arrival. I had
come unexpectedly into the room where my mother and her friend were
talking together; the subject of their talk was my aunt. My mother was
indignant that she had not gone into mourning or had gone out again
so soon. (To tell the truth it was as impossible for me to imagine
Aunt Bucolin dressed in black as my mother in colours). The day of our
arrival Lucile Bucolin, as far as I can remember, was wearing a muslin
gown. Miss Ashburton, conciliatory as ever, was trying to calm my
mother.
“After all,” she argued timidly, “white is mourning too.”
“And do you call that red shawl she has round her shoulders mourning
too? Flora, I am ashamed of you,” cried my mother.
It was only during the holidays that I saw my aunt and no doubt the
warm summer weather was the reason of her wearing the transparent,
low-necked bodices in which I always remember her; but still more than
the brilliant colour of the scarves which she used to throw over her
bare shoulders, it was my aunt’s low necks that shocked my mother.
Lucile Bucolin was very beautiful. I still have by me a little portrait
of her, in which I can see her as she then was, looking so young that
she might have been taken for the elder sister of her daughters,
sitting sideways in an attitude which was habitual to her, her head
leaning on her left hand, her little finger curved rather affectedly
towards her lip. A large meshed net confines the masses of her curly
hair, which fall half-uncoiled upon her neck. In the opening of her
bodice a locket of Italian mosaic hangs from a loosely tied black
velvet neck ribbon. Her black velvet sash, with its wide floating bow,
her broad-brimmed soft straw hat which is dangling from the back of her
chair--everything adds to the childishness of her appearance. Her right
hand hangs by her side, holding a shut book.
Lucile Bucolin came from a West Indian family; she had either never
known her parents or lost them very early. My mother told me later that
when she was left an orphan, or, possibly even deserted, she was taken
in by Pasteur Vautier and his wife, who at that time had no children
of their own. They left Martinique soon after, taking her with them
to Le Havre, where the Bucolins were settled. The Vautiers and the
Bucolins used to see a good deal of each other. My uncle was at that
time employed in a bank abroad, and it was only three years later,
when he came home to stay with his people, that he saw little Lucile.
He fell in love with her and at once asked her to marry him, to the
great grief of his parents and of my mother. Lucile was then sixteen
years old. In the meantime Madame Vautier had had two children; she was
beginning to be anxious as to the influence their adopted sister--whose
character was developing more and more oddly every month--might have
over them; the household, moreover, was in straitened circumstances. My
mother told me all this in order to explain why the Vautiers accepted
her brother’s proposal so gladly. What I suppose for my own part is,
that Miss Lucile was becoming terribly embarrassing. I am well enough
acquainted with Le Havre society to imagine the kind of reception
that a girl of such fascinations would meet with. Pasteur Vautier,
whom I knew later on, was a gentle creature, at once circumspect and
ingenuous, incapable of coping with intrigue and quite defenceless
against evil--the worthy man must have been at the end of his tether.
I can say nothing of Madame Vautier; she died in giving birth to a
fourth child who was about my own age and who afterwards became my
friend.
* * * * *
Lucile Bucolin took very little share in our life; she did not come
downstairs from her room till after the mid-day meal was over, and then
immediately stretched herself on the sofa or in a hammock and remained
there till evening, when she would rise, no less languid than before.
She used sometimes to raise a handkerchief to her forehead as if wiping
away some imaginary moisture, though her skin was a perfection of
smooth purity; this handkerchief of hers filled me with wonder because
of its fineness and its scent, which seemed more like the perfume of
a fruit than of a flower; sometimes she would draw from her waist a
minute mirror with a sliding silver lid, which hung with various other
objects from her watch-chain; she would look at herself, wet her finger
at her lips and then moisten the corner of her eyes. She used often to
hold a book, but it was almost always shut; a tortoise-shell bookmarker
was stuck between its pages. If you came near her she did not turn from
the contemplation of her dreams to look at you. Often from her careless
or tired hand, from the back of the sofa or from a fold of her dress,
her handkerchief would drop to the ground, or her book, or a flower,
may be, or the bookmarker. One day when I picked up her book--this is
a childish memory I am telling you--I blushed to see it was a book of
poetry.
In the evening after dinner Lucile Bucolin did not join our family
party at the table, but sat down to the piano, where she took a kind
of placid pleasure in playing one or other of Chopin’s slow mazurkas;
sometimes she would break off in the middle of a bar and pause,
suspended motionless on a chord.
* * * * *
I used to experience a peculiar discomfort when I was with my aunt; it
was a feeling of uneasiness, of disturbance, mingled with a kind of
admiration and a kind of terror. Perhaps some obscure instinct set me
against her; and then I felt that she despised Flora Ashburton and my
mother, and that Miss Ashburton was afraid of her, and that my mother
disliked her.
Lucile Bucolin, I wish I no longer bore you malice; I wish I could
forget for a moment how much harm you did ... at any rate, I will try
to speak of you without anger.
* * * * *
One day of that summer--or perhaps of the following, for as the place
where the scene was laid never changed, my memories sometimes overlap
and become confused--one day I went into the drawing-room to fetch a
book; she was there. I was on the point of going away again when she
called me back--she, who as a rule never seemed to see me.
“Why do you run away so fast, Jerome? Are you afraid of me?”
With a beating heart I drew near, forced myself to smile, put out my
hand. She took my hand with one of hers and with the other stroked my
cheek.
“How badly your mother dresses you, you poor little thing!” she said.
At that time I used to wear a sort of sailor suit with a large collar,
which my aunt began pulling about.
“Sailor collars are worn much more open,” said she, undoing a button
of my shirt. “There, see if that doesn’t look better!” and taking out
her little mirror, she drew my face down to hers, passed her bare arm
around my neck, put her hand into my shirt, asked me laughingly if I
was ticklish--went on--further.... I started so violently that my shirt
tore across and with a flaming face I fled, as she called after me.
“Oh! the little stupid!”
I rushed away to the other end of the kitchen-garden, and there
I dipped my handkerchief into a little tank, put it to my
forehead--washed, scrubbed--my cheeks, my neck, every part of me the
woman had touched.
* * * * *
There were certain days on which Lucile Bucolin had one of her
“attacks.” They would come on suddenly and the whole house was turned
upside down. Miss Ashburton made haste to get the children out of the
way and distract their attention; but it was impossible to stifle or to
prevent their hearing the dreadful screams which came from the bedroom
or the drawing-room. My uncle lost his head; we heard him rushing along
the passages, fetching towels and eau de Cologne and ether; in the
evening at table, where my aunt was not yet able to appear, he looked
anxious and aged.
When the attack was more or less over, Lucile Bucolin used to send for
her children--that is for Robert and Juliette--never for Alissa. On
those melancholy days Alissa would shut herself up in her room where
her father sometimes joined her, for he used often to talk to Alissa.
My aunt’s attacks made a great impression upon the servants. One
evening when the attack had been particularly acute and I was being
kept in my mother’s room, where what was going on in the drawing-room
was less noticeable, we heard the cook running along the passages
calling out:
“Sir, sir, come quick! My poor lady is dying.”
My uncle had gone up to Alissa’s room; my mother went out to meet him
on his way down. A quarter of an hour later I heard them talking below
the windows of the room where I had remained, and my mother’s voice
reached me.
“Do you know what I think, my dear? The whole thing is play-acting.”
And she repeated the word several times over, emphasising every
syllable, “_play-acting_.”
* * * * *
This was towards the end of the holidays and two years after our
bereavement. I was not to see my aunt much oftener. The unhappy event
which shattered our family life was preceded by a little incident which
occurred a short time before the final catastrophe and turned the
uncertain and complex feeling I had hitherto experienced for Lucile
Bucolin into pure hatred. But before relating this I must first speak
of my cousin.
That Alissa Bucolin was pretty, I was incapable yet of perceiving;
I was drawn and held to her by a charm other than mere beauty. No
doubt she was very like her mother; but the expression of her eyes was
so different that it was not till later that I became aware of this
likeness. I cannot describe faces; the features escape me and even the
colour of the eyes; I can only recall the expression of her smile--a
smile that was already almost sad--and the line of her eyebrows,
which were so extraordinarily far from her eyes, raised above the
eye in a great circle. I have never seen any like them anywhere ...
stay, though! there is a Florentine statuette of the time of Dante;
and I like to fancy that Beatrice as a child had eyebrows wide-arched
like hers. They gave her look, her whole being, an expression of
enquiry which was at once anxious and confident--yes, of passionate
enquiry. She was all question and expectation. You shall hear how this
questioning took possession of me, became my life.
And yet Juliette might have been considered more beautiful; the
brilliancy of joy and health was upon her; but this beauty of hers
beside her sister’s grace seemed something external, something which
lay open to the whole world at the first glance. As for Robert, there
was nothing particular to distinguish him. He was merely a boy of
about my own age; I used to play with him and Juliette; with Alissa I
used to talk. She mixed very little in our games; as far back as I can
remember, I see her serious, gently smiling, reflective. What did we
talk about? What can two children talk about? I will try to tell you in
a moment, but let me first finish what I have to say about my aunt, so
as to have done with her.
Two years after my father’s death, my mother and I spent the Easter
holidays at Le Havre. We did not stay with the Bucolins, who had
comparatively little room in their town house, but with an elder sister
of my mother’s, whose house was larger. Aunt Plantier, whom I rarely
had the opportunity of seeing, had long since been left a widow; I
hardly knew her children, who were much older than I was and very
unlike me.
The Plantiers’ house was not actually in the town, but half way up the
small hill called the “Côte,” which overlooks it. The Bucolins lived in
the business quarter; a steep short cut led in a few minutes from one
house to the other. I used to run up and down it several times a day.
On that particular day I had had lunch at my uncle’s. After the meal
was over he went out, and I accompanied him as far as his office and
then returned home to the Plantiers’ to fetch my mother. There I
heard that she had gone out with my aunt and would not be back till
dinnertime. I immediately went down again to the town where I was very
rarely free to go by myself, and found my way to the port which was
dreary that day with a sea-fog; I loitered on the quays for an hour or
so, and then suddenly I was seized with the desire to go back and take
Alissa by surprise, though indeed I had only just left her. I ran back
through the town and rang at the Bucolins’ door. I was just darting
upstairs when the maid who had let me in stopped me.
“Don’t go up, Master Jerome. Don’t go up! Mistress is having an attack.”
But I brushed past her. It was not my aunt I had come to see....
Alissa’s room was on the third floor. On the first there were the
drawing-room and the dining-room; on the second, my aunt’s room, from
which voices were coming. The door past which I had to go was open and
a flood of light came from the room and fell on the landing; afraid
of being seen, I hesitated a moment and drew back into the dark; this
is what I beheld to my unspeakable amazement: my aunt was lying on a
sofa in the middle of the room; the curtains were drawn, and it was
illuminated by the cheerful light of two candelabras full of candles;
Robert and Juliette were at her feet and behind her was a strange young
man in a lieutenant’s uniform. The presence of the two children seems
to me to-day monstrous; at that time in my innocence I thought it
reassuring rather than otherwise. They were laughing and looking at the
stranger, who was saying in a piping voice:
“Bucolin! Bucolin!... If I had a pet lamb I should certainly call it
Bucolin.”
My aunt herself burst out laughing. I saw her hold out a cigarette for
the young man to light, smoke a few whiffs of it and then let it fall
to the floor. He rushed forward to pick it up, made as if he had caught
his feet in a scarf, tripped and fell on his knees before my aunt.
Thanks to this ridiculous performance, I was able to slip by without
being noticed.
* * * * *
I found myself outside Alissa’s door. For a moment I waited. Bursts
of laughter and voices came up from the floor below; perhaps they
drowned the sound of my knock, for I heard no answer. I pushed the
door and it opened silently. The room was so dark that I did not at
once distinguish Alissa; she was on her knees by the bedside; through
the window behind her came the last glimmer of expiring daylight. She
turned as I came near, but without getting up, and murmured:
“Oh, Jerome, why have you come back?”