“Whatever I hope to become later is for you.”
“But, Jerome, I may leave you too.”
My soul went into my words:
“_I_ shall never leave _you_.”
She raised her shoulders slightly:
“Aren’t you strong enough to walk alone? We must each of us find God by
ourselves.”
“But you must show me the way.”
“Why do you want any other guide but Christ? Do you think we are ever
nearer to each other than when each of us forgets the other, as we pray
to God?”
“Yes,” I interrupted, “that He may unite us. That is what I ask Him
morning and evening.”
“Don’t you understand what communion in God means?”
“With my whole heart I understand. It means being rapturously united in
the worship of the same thing. I think it is just because I want to be
united to you, that I worship what I know you worship too.”
“Then your worship is not pure.”
“Don’t ask too much of me. I shouldn’t care for Heaven if you were not
there too.”
She put her finger on her lips and answered with some solemnity:
“_Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness._”
As I put down our words I feel that they will seem very unchildlike to
those who do not realise the deliberate seriousness with which some
children talk to each other. What am I to do? Try to excuse them? No!
no more than I will colour them to make them look more natural.
We had procured the Gospels in the Vulgate and knew long passages of
them by heart. Alissa had learnt Latin with me, under the plea of
helping her brother, but really, I think, in order to follow me in my
reading. And indeed, I could hardly bring myself to take pleasure in
any study in which I knew she would not keep me company. If this was
sometimes a hindrance to me, it was not, as might be supposed, because
it hampered the growth of my mind; on the contrary, it was she who
seemed to be everywhere and easily ahead of me. But the course my mind
pursued was always shaped with reference to her, and what preoccupied
us at that time, what we called “thought,” was often merely the pretext
for some more subtle communion, merely the disguise of feeling, merely
the covering of love.
* * * * *
My mother may at first, perhaps, have been anxious about a feeling
whose depth she had not as yet gauged. But now that she felt her
strength ebbing, she loved to gather us together in the same maternal
embrace. The heart disease from which she had long been suffering began
to be more and more troublesome. In the course of a particularly
severe attack she sent for me:
“My poor boy,” she said, “I’m getting very old. Some day I shall leave
you suddenly.”
She stopped; her breathing was very difficult. Then I broke out,
irresistibly, with what it seemed to me she was expecting me to say:
“Mamma ... you know I want to marry Alissa.” And my sentence was no
doubt the continuation of her secret thoughts, for she went on at once:
“Yes, that is what I want to speak to you about, my Jerome.”
“Mamma,” said I, sobbing, “you do think she loves me, don’t you?”
“Yes, my child.” And several times she repeated tenderly: “Yes, my
child.” She spoke with difficulty. She added: “You must leave it to the
Lord.” Then as I was stooping over her, she put her hand on my head and
said:
“May God keep you, my children! May God keep you both!” Then she fell
into a doze, from which I did not try to rouse her.
This conversation was never resumed. The next morning my mother felt
better. I went back to school and silence closed again over this
semi-confidence. In any case, what more could I have learnt? That
Alissa loved me I could not for a moment doubt. And, even if I could,
doubt would for ever have vanished from my heart at the time of the
melancholy event which occurred soon after.
My mother passed away very quietly one evening when Miss Ashburton and
I were with her. The final attack which carried her off had not at
first seemed worse than the preceding ones; it was only towards the
end that it became alarming and we had no time to send for any of our
relations. It was with our old friend that I watched the first night
beside my dear mother’s body. I loved my mother deeply, and wondered
that in spite of my tears I should feel so little sadness. If I wept it
was out of pity for Miss Ashburton, whose friend--so many years younger
than herself--had thus been taken by God before her. But the secret
thought that this bereavement would hasten an understanding with my
cousin greatly predominated over my grief.
My uncle arrived the next morning. He handed me a letter from his
daughter, who did not come till the day after with Aunt Plantier.
“... Jerome, my friend, my brother” (she wrote), “... how grieved I
am not to have been able to speak those few words to her before her
death, which would have given her that great happiness she desired.
May she forgive me now! And may God alone guide us both henceforward!
Good-bye, my poor friend.
“I am, more tenderly than ever,
“Your Alissa.”
What could be the meaning of this letter? What were those words that
she was grieved not to have uttered--what could they be but those
with which she would have plighted our future? I was still so young,
however, that I dared not ask her for her hand at once. And besides,
what need had I of her promise? Were we not already as good as engaged?
Our love was no secret from our relations; my uncle was no more opposed
to it than my mother had been; on the contrary, he treated me already
as a son.
* * * * *
I spent the Easter holidays, which began a few days later, at Le Havre,
sleeping at Aunt Plantier’s and taking nearly all my meals at Uncle
Bucolin’s.
My Aunt Félicie Plantier was the best of women, but neither my cousins
nor I were on very intimate terms with her. She was in a continual
state of breathless bustle; her gestures were ungentle and her voice
unmusical; she harried us with caresses and at odd moments of the day,
when the need for effusion seized her, she would suddenly overwhelm us
with the floods of her affection. Uncle Bucolin was very fond of her,
but merely from the tone of his voice when he spoke to her, it was easy
to understand how greatly he had preferred my mother.
“My poor boy,” she began one evening, “I don’t know what you are
meaning to do this summer, but I will wait to hear your plans before
settling my own; if I can be useful to you--”
“I have not thought much about it yet,” I answered. “Perhaps I shall
travel.”
She went on:
“You know that both here and at Fongueusemare you will always be
welcome. You will be doing your uncle and Juliette a pleasure by going
to them ...”
“Alissa, you mean.”
“Of course. I beg your pardon.... Would you believe it? I thought it
was Juliette you were in love with! Until a month ago--when your uncle
told me--you know I’m very fond of you all, but I don’t know you very
well; I’ve seen so little of you.... And then I’m not very observant; I
have no time to mind other people’s business. I always saw you playing
with Juliette--I thought to myself, she’s so pretty, so gay--”
“Yes, I like playing with her still, but it’s Alissa I love.”
“All right, all right! It’s your affair. As for me, I hardly know her
at all, so to speak. She talks less than her sister. I suppose as
you’ve chosen her you must have good reasons for it.”
“But, Aunt, I didn’t choose to love her, and I’ve never thought what
reasons I had for--”
“Don’t be cross, Jerome. I didn’t mean anything. Now, you’ve made me
forget what I wanted to say. Oh, yes! I suppose, of course, it’ll all
end with your marrying; but it wouldn’t be quite proper for you to
become engaged just yet because of your mourning--and then you’re still
very young. I thought, now that your mother isn’t there, your staying
at Fongueusemare mightn’t be considered quite the thing.”
“But, Aunt, that’s just why I spoke of travelling.”
“Oh, well, my dear, I thought that my presence there might make things
easier and I’ve arranged to keep part of the summer free.”
“If I asked Miss Ashburton she would certainly come with pleasure.”
“Yes, I know she’s coming already. But that’s not enough! I will come
too. Oh! I don’t pretend I shall take your poor mother’s place,”
she added, suddenly bursting into sobs, “but I can look after the
housekeeping--and--well--you and your uncle and Alissa needn’t feel
uncomfortable.”
* * * * *
Aunt Félicie was mistaken as to the efficacy of her presence. To tell
the truth we were only uncomfortable because of her. In accordance with
her announcement, she settled herself at Fongueusemare at the beginning
of July, and Miss Ashburton and I joined her there soon after.
Under the pretence of helping Alissa to look after it, she filled the
house, which had always been so peaceful, with a continual hubbub.
The zeal with which she set about being agreeable to us and “making
things easier,” as she called it, was so overdone that Alissa and I
were nearly always constrained and practically speechless when she was
by. She must have thought us very cold.... And even if we had not been
silent, would she have been able to understand the nature of our love?
Juliette’s character, on the other hand, fitted in well enough with
this exuberance; and perhaps my affection for my aunt was tinged with a
certain resentment at seeing her show such a marked preference for the
younger of her nieces.
* * * * *
One morning after the arrival of the post, she sent for me:
“My poor Jerome,” she said, “I’m absolutely heart-broken; my daughter
is ill and wants me; I shall be obliged to leave you....”
Puffed up with idle scruples, I went to find my uncle, not knowing
whether I should dare to stay on at Fongueusemare after my aunt’s
departure. But at my first words:
“What,” he cried, “will my poor sister think of next to complicate what
is so very natural? Why should you leave us, Jerome? Aren’t you already
almost my child?”
My aunt had barely stayed a fortnight at Fongueusemare. As soon as she
was gone the house was able to sink back again into peace. There dwelt
in it once more a serenity that was very like happiness. My mourning
had not cast a shadow on our love, but had made it weightier. And in
the monotonous course of the life which then began, as if in some place
of high resonance, each slightest stirring of our hearts was audible.
Some days after my aunt’s departure I remember we were discussing her
one evening at table:
“What a commotion!” said we. “Is it possible that the stir of life
should leave her soul so little respite? Fair image of love, what
becomes of your reflection here?”... For we remembered Goethe’s saying
about Madame de Stein: “It would be beautiful to see the world
reflected in that soul.” And we then and there established a kind of
hierarchy, putting the contemplative faculties in the highest place. My
uncle, who up to then had been silent, reproved us, smiling sadly:
“My children,” said he, “God will recognise His image even though
broken. Let us beware of judging men from a single moment of their
lives. Everything which you dislike in my poor sister is the result
of circumstances, with which I am too well acquainted to be able to
criticise her as severely as you do. There is not a single pleasing
quality of youth which may not deteriorate in old age. What you call
‘commotion’ in Félicie, was at first nothing but charming high spirits,
spontaneity, impulsiveness and grace. We were not very different,
I assure you, from what you are to-day. I was rather like you,
Jerome--more so, perhaps, than I imagine. Félicie greatly resembled
Juliette as she now is--yes, even physically--and I catch a likeness to
her by starts,” he added, turning to his daughter, “in certain sounds
of your voice; she had your smile--and that trick, which she soon lost,
of sitting sometimes, like you, without doing anything, her elbows in
front of her and her forehead pressed against the locked fingers of her
hands.”
Miss Ashburton turned towards me and said almost in a whisper:
“It is your mother that Alissa is like.”
* * * * *
The summer that year was splendid. The whole world seemed steeped in
azure. Our fervour triumphed over evil--over death; the shades gave way
before us. Every morning I was awakened by my joy; I rose at dawn and
sprang to meet the coming day.... When I dream of that time, it comes
back to me all fresh with dew. Juliette, an earlier riser than her
sister, whose habit it was to sit up very late at nights, used to come
out into the garden with me. She was the messenger between her sister
and me; I talked to her interminably of our love, and she never seemed
tired of listening. I told her what I dared not tell Alissa, with whom
excess of love made me constrained and shy. Alissa seemed to lend
herself to this child’s play and to be delighted that I should talk so
happily to her sister, ignoring or feigning to ignore, that in reality
we talked only of her.
Oh, lovely shifts of love, of love’s very excess, by what hidden ways
you led us, from laughter to tears, from the most artless joy to the
exactions of virtue!
The summer sped by so pure, so smooth, that of its swift-slipping days
scarce anything remains in my memory. Its only events were talks and
readings.
“I have had a melancholy dream,” said Alissa to me on one of the last
mornings of the holidays. “I was alive and you were dead. No, I didn’t
see you die. It was merely--that you were dead. It was horrible; it was
so impossible, that I managed to get it granted for you to be simply
absent. We were parted and I felt that there was a way of getting to
you; I tried to find out how, and I made such an effort to succeed that
it woke me up.
“This morning I think I was under the impression of my dream; it seemed
as if it were still going on. I felt as if I were still parted from
you--going to be parted from you for a long, long time--” and she added
very low: “all my life--and that all our lives we should have to make a
great effort ...”
“Why?”
“Each of us a great effort to come together again.”
I did not take these words seriously, or perhaps I was afraid to take
them seriously. With a beating heart, and in a sudden fit of courage, I
said to her, as though protesting:
“Well, as for me, this morning I dreamt that I was going to marry
you--so surely, that nothing, nothing would be able to part us, except
death.”
“Do you think that death is able to part?” asked she.
“I mean--”
“I think that death, on the contrary, is able to bring together--yes,
bring together what has been parted in life.”
The whole of this conversation sank into us so deeply that I can still
hear the very intonation of the words we used. And yet I did not
realise all their gravity until later.
* * * * *
The summer sped by. Already nearly all the fields lay bare, with their
wider spaces more emptied of hope. The evening before--no, two evenings
before my departure, I went out with Juliette and we wandered down to
the shrubbery at the end of the lower garden.
“What were you repeating yesterday to Alissa?” she asked.
“When do you mean?”
“When you stayed behind us on the quarry bench.”
“Oh! Some verses of Baudelaire’s, I think.”
“What were they? Won’t you say them to me?”
“‘_Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres_,’”
I began rather ungraciously; but no sooner had I started than she
interrupted me and took up the lines in a changed and trembling voice:
“‘_Adieu! vive clarté de nos étés trop courts!_’”
“What! you know them?” I cried, extremely astonished. “I thought you
didn’t care for poetry....”
“Why? Because you never repeat me any?” said she, laughing, though
in rather a forced way. “Sometimes you seem to think I’m perfectly
idiotic.”
“It’s quite possible to be very intelligent and not care for poetry.
I’ve never heard you repeat any or ask me to repeat you any.”
“Because that’s Alissa’s business.” She was silent for a few minutes
and then asked abruptly:
“You’re going away the day after to-morrow?”
“Yes, I must.”
“What are you going to do this winter?”
“It’s my first year at the Ecole Normale.”
“When do you think of marrying Alissa?”
“Not before I’ve done my military service. And indeed, not before I
have a better idea of what I mean to do afterwards.”
“Don’t you know yet?”
“I don’t want to know yet. Too many things appeal to me. I want to put
off for as long as I can having to choose and settle down to only one
thing.”
“Is it reluctance to settle down that makes you put off getting engaged
too?”