I had hardly seen Abel Vautier that year; he had enlisted without
waiting to be called up, whilst I, in the meantime, had been reading
for my degree. I was two years younger than Abel, and had put off my
military service until after leaving the Ecole Normale, where we were
both of us to go for our first term that year.
We met again with pleasure. After leaving the army, he had spent more
than a month travelling. I was afraid of finding him changed; but he
had merely acquired more confidence without losing any of his charm.
We spent the afternoon before the opening day of the term in the
Luxembourg gardens; unable to restrain myself from confiding in him,
I spoke to him at length about my love for Alissa, which, for that
matter, he knew of already. During the last year he had acquired some
experience of women, and, in consequence, put on rather a conceited and
patronising manner, which, however, did not offend me. He laughed at me
for not having finally managed to clinch the matter, as he expressed
it, giving forth as an axiom, that a woman should never be given time
to go back on herself. I let him talk, but thought to myself that his
excellent arguments were not applicable either to her or to me, and
simply showed that he did not understand us.
The day after our arrival I received the following letter:
“My dear Jerome,
“I have been thinking a great deal about your suggestion.” (My
suggestion! What a way of speaking of our engagement!) “I am afraid
I am too old for you. Perhaps you don’t think so now, because you
have had no opportunity yet of seeing anything of other women. But
I keep thinking of what I should suffer later on, if after I had
given myself to you, I were to find out that you were no longer
able to care for me. You will be very indignant, no doubt, as you
read this; I think I hear you protesting; it’s not that I doubt
your love--I simply ask you to wait a little longer until you are
rather better acquainted with life.
“Please understand that I am speaking only of you--as for myself, I
feel sure that I shall never cease to love you.
“Alissa.”
Cease to love each other! Could there be any question of such a thing?
I was more astonished than grieved, but so greatly disturbed, that I
hurried off to show the letter to Abel.
“Well, what do you mean to do?” said he, after he had read the letter,
shaking his head and screwing up his lips as he did so. I made a
despairing gesture. “At any rate, I hope you aren’t going to answer
her! If you begin arguing with a woman you’re lost. Listen to me: if
we were to sleep at Le Havre on Saturday night, we might spend Sunday
morning at Fongueusemare, and be back here in time for the lecture on
Monday morning. I haven’t seen your people since my military service.
That’s excuse enough: and a very creditable one. If Alissa sees that
it’s only an excuse, so much the better. I’ll look after Juliette
whilst you talk to her sister. Try not to play the fool. To tell you
the truth, there’s something I can’t understand in your tale; you can’t
have told me everything. Never mind! I’ll soon get to the bottom of it.
Mind you don’t let them know we’re coming; you must take your cousin
by surprise and not give her time to arm herself.”
* * * * *
My heart was beating fast as I pushed open the garden gate. Juliette
came running to meet us at once. Alissa, who was busy in the linen
room, made no haste to come down. We were talking to my uncle and Miss
Ashburton when at last she entered the drawing-room. If our sudden
arrival had upset her, at any rate she managed to show no signs of
it. I thought of what Abel had said, and that it was precisely with
the intention of arming herself against me, that she had been so
long before making her appearance. Juliette’s extreme animation made
her reserve seem colder still. I felt that she disapproved of my
return; at any rate she tried to show disapprobation in her manner,
and I dared not imagine that behind this disapprobation there might
be hidden another and a livelier feeling. Seated at some distance
apart from us, in a corner near the window, she seemed absorbed in a
piece of embroidery, the stitches of which she was counting below her
breath. Abel talked--fortunately! for, as for me, I felt incapable of
saying a word, and if it had not been for the tales he told of his
year’s service and his travels, this meeting would have had a dismal
beginning. My uncle himself seemed unusually thoughtful.
Immediately after lunch, Juliette took me aside and drew me into the
garden:
“What do you think?” said she, when we were alone, “I’ve had an offer
of marriage! Aunt Félicie wrote to papa yesterday to tell him she had
had a proposal for me from a Nîmes vine-grower; a person who is very
satisfactory in every way, she says; he met me out at some parties last
spring and fell in love with me.”
“And did this individual make any impression on you?” I questioned with
an instinctive feeling of hostility towards the suitor.
“Yes, I think I remember him. A kind of cheery Don Quixote--not
cultivated--very ugly--very vulgar--rather ridiculous; Aunt Félicie
couldn’t keep her countenance before him.”
“Has he any--chance?” I asked, mockingly.
“Oh, Jerome! How can you? A man who’s in business!... If you’d seen him
you wouldn’t ask.”
“And has my uncle answered?”
“He answered what I did--that I was too young to marry. Unfortunately,”
she added, laughing, “Aunt foresaw that objection; in a postscript she
says that Monsieur Edouard Teissières--that’s his name--is willing to
wait, that he has simply declared himself so soon in order to be put
‘on the ranks.’ It’s absurd, but what am I to do? All the same, I can’t
tell him he’s too ugly.”
“No, but you can say that you don’t want to marry a vine-grower.”
She shrugged her shoulders:
“That’s a kind of reason Aunt’s mind is incapable of taking in. But
let’s talk of something else. Has Alissa written to you?”
She spoke with extreme volubility and seemed in great agitation. I
handed her Alissa’s letter, which she read, blushing deeply. I seemed
to discern a note of anger in her voice as she asked me.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Now that I am here, I feel as if it would
have been easier to write, and I blame myself for coming. Can you
understand what she means?”
“I understand she wants to leave you free.”
“Free! What do I care for freedom? And can you understand why she
writes to me so?”
She answered “No!” so shortly that, without at all divining the truth,
I at least felt persuaded from that moment that Juliette probably knew
something about it. Then, abruptly turning back as we came to a bend
in the path: “Let me be now,” she said. “You haven’t come here to talk
to me. We have been together a great deal too long.”
She fled off to the house, and a moment later I heard her at the piano.
When I went back to the drawing-room she was talking to Abel, who had
joined her there; she went on playing as she talked, though carelessly,
and as if she were vaguely improvising. I left them. I went into the
garden and wandered about some time, looking for Alissa.
* * * * *
She was at the bottom of the orchard, picking the first chrysanthemums
at the foot of a low wall. The smell of the flowers mingled with that
of the dead leaves in the beach copse and the air was saturated with
autumn. The sun did no more now than just warm the espaliers, but the
sky was orientally pure. Her face was framed, hidden nearly, in the
depths of a big Dutch peasant’s cap which Abel had brought back from
his travels and which she had at once put on. She did not turn as I
drew near, but I saw by the slight tremor which she could not repress,
that she had recognised my step; and I began at once to fortify myself
against her reproaches and the severity which I felt her look was
going to impose upon me. But when, as I came closer and, as if afraid,
began to slacken my pace, she, although still she did not turn but
kept her head lowered as a sulky child might do, stretched out to me
from behind her back her hand full of flowers, and seemed to beckon
me on. And as, on the contrary, at sight of this gesture I came to a
standstill in a spirit of playfulness, she turned round at last and
took a few steps towards me, raising her face; and I saw that it was
all full of smiles. The brightness of her look made everything seem on
a sudden simple again and easy, so that without an effort and with an
unaltered voice, I began:
“It was your letter that brought me back.”
“I thought so,” said she, and then softening the sharpness of her
rebuke by the inflexion of her voice: “and that is what vexed me. Why
didn’t you like what I said? It was very simple, though.” (And indeed,
sadness and difficulty seemed now nothing but imagination, seemed now
to exist only in my mind.) “We were happy so; I told you we were; why
be astonished at my refusing when you ask me to change?”
And indeed I felt happy with her, so perfectly happy, that the one
desire of my mind was that it should differ in nothing from hers, and
already I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her
thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.
“If you prefer it,” said I gravely, renouncing at one stroke every
other hope, and giving myself up to the perfect happiness of the
present, “... if you prefer it, we will not be engaged. When I got your
letter, I did in fact realise that I was happy and that my happiness
was going to cease. Oh! give me back the happiness that I had; I can’t
do without it. I love you well enough to wait for you all my life, but
that you should cease to love me or that you should doubt my love, that
thought, Alissa, is unbearable to me.”
“Alas! Jerome, I cannot doubt it.”
And her voice, as she said this, was at once calm and sad; but the
smile which illuminated her remained so serenely beautiful that I was
ashamed of my fears and protestations; it seemed to me then, that from
them alone came that touch of sadness which I felt lurking in her
voice. Without any transition, I began speaking of my plans and of
the new life, from which I was expecting to derive so much benefit.
The Ecole Normale was not at that time what it has since become; its
somewhat rigorous discipline, irksome only to young men of an indolent
or refractory disposition, was helpful to those whose minds were bent
on study. I was glad that this almost monastic way of life should
preserve me from the world, which at best attracted me but little;
the knowledge that Alissa feared it for me would have been enough to
make it appear hateful. Miss Ashburton had kept on the apartment she
had shared with my mother in Paris. As Abel and I knew hardly anyone
in Paris, we should spend some hours of every Sunday with her; every
Sunday I should write to Alissa and keep her informed of every detail
of my life.
We were now sitting on the edge of an open garden frame through which
were sprawling huge stalks of cucumber plants the last fruits of
which had been gathered. Alissa listened to me, questioned me. I had
never before felt her tenderness more solicitous, her affection more
pressing. Fear, care, the slightest stir of emotion even, evaporated in
her smile, melted away in this delightful intimacy, like the mist in
the perfect blueness of the sky.
Then when Juliette and Abel came out to join us, we spent the rest
of the day on a bench in the beech copse, reading aloud Swinburne’s
_Triumph of Time_, each of us taking a verse by turns. Evening drew in.
When the time came for us to be going, Alissa kissed me good-bye, and
then half playfully, but still with that elder sister air, which was
perhaps called for by my thoughtlessness, and which she was fond of
assuming, “Come,” said she, “promise me you won’t be so romantic for
the future.”
* * * * *
“Well, are you engaged?” asked Abel, as soon as we were again alone
together.
“My dear fellow, there’s no question of that now,” I answered, adding
at once in a tone that cut short any further questioning, “and a
very good thing too. I have never been happier in my life than I am
to-night.”
“Nor I either!” he cried; then, abruptly flinging his arms round me:
“I’ve got something wonderful to tell you, something extraordinary!
Jerome, I’m madly in love with Juliette! I suspected as much as long
ago as last year; but I’ve seen life since then, and I didn’t want to
tell you anything about it until I’d met your cousins again. Now it’s
all up with me! It’s for life.
‘_J’aime, que dis-je aimer--j’idolâtre Juliette!_’
I’ve thought for a long time past that I had a kind of brother-in-law’s
affection for you.”
Then, laughing and joking, he embraced me again and again, flinging
himself about like a child, on the cushions of the railway carriage
that was taking us to Paris. I was absolutely astounded by his
announcement; and the slight strain of literary affectation which I
felt in it, jarred on me not a little; but how was it possible to hold
out against such vehemence and such rapture?
“Well, what? Have you proposed to her?” I managed to ask between two
bursts of excitement.
“No, no, certainly not!” cried he; “I don’t want to skip the most
charming part of the story.
‘_Le meilleur moment des amours
N’est pas quand on dit: je t’aime...._’
Come now, you aren’t going to reproach me with that, are you? You--such
a past master of slowness yourself!”
“Well, at any rate,” I said, slightly irritated, “do you think that she
...?”
“Didn’t you notice her embarrassment when she saw me again? And
the whole time of our visit, her agitation, and her blushes and
her volubility! No, you noticed nothing, of course! Because you’re
completely taken up with Alissa. And how she questioned me! How she
drank in my words! Her intelligence has tremendously developed since
last year. I don’t know where you got it that she doesn’t like reading;
you always imagine that Alissa’s the only person who can do anything!
My dear boy, it’s astonishing what she knows. Can you guess what we
were amusing ourselves by doing before dinner? Repeating one of Dante’s
Canzoni! We each of us said a line, and when I went wrong she corrected
me. You know, the one that begins:
‘_Amor che nella mente mi ragiona._’
You didn’t tell me that she had learnt Italian.”
“I didn’t know it myself,” said I, rather astonished.
“What? When we began the Canzone, she told me it was you who had shown
it to her.”
“She must have heard me read it to her sister one day when she was
sitting with us, doing her needlework, as she often does; but I’m
blessed if she ever let on that she understood.”
“Really! You and Alissa are amazing with your egoism. You are so much
absorbed in your own love, that you can’t spare a glance for the
admirable flowering of an intelligence and a soul like hers! I don’t
want to flatter myself, but all the same it was high time that I
appeared on the scene. No, no! I’m not angry with you, as you see,”
said he, embracing me again. “Only promise me--not a word of any of
this to Alissa. I want to conduct my affairs by myself. Juliette is
caught, that’s certain, and fast enough for me to venture to leave her
till next holidays. I think I shan’t even write to her between this and
then. But we will spend the Christmas vacations at Le Havre, and then--”
“And then?”
“Well, Alissa will suddenly learn our engagement. I mean to push it
through smartly. And do you know what will happen? Why! I shall get you
Alissa’s consent by force of our example. You can’t pull it off for
yourself, but we shall persuade her that we can’t get married before
you....”
So he went on, drowning me in an inexhaustible flow of words, which
did not stop even on the train’s arrival in Paris, even on our getting
back to Normale, for though we walked all the way from the station
to the school, he insisted, in spite of the lateness of the hour, on
accompanying me to my room, where we went on talking till morning.
Abel’s enthusiasm made short work of the present and the future. He
already saw and described our double wedding; imagined and painted
everybody’s surprise and joy; became enamoured of the beauty of our
story, of our friendship, of the part he was to play in my love affair.
Far from being proof against so flattering a warmth, I felt myself
pervaded by it, and gently succumbed to the allurement of his fanciful
suggestions. Thanks to our love, courage and ambition swelled in us;
we were hardly to have left the Ecole Normale when our double marriage
(the ceremony to be performed by Pasteur Vautier) would take place and
we should all four start on our wedding journey; then we were each to
embark on some monumental work, with our wives as collaborators. Abel,
for whom the school-master’s profession had no attractions, and who
thought he was born to be a writer, would rapidly earn the fortune of
which he stood in need, by a few successful plays. As for me, more
attracted by learning itself than by the thought of any gain that might
accrue from it, my plan was to devote myself to the study of religious
philosophy, of which I purposed writing the history--but what avails it
now to recall so many hopes?
The next day we plunged into our work.