VI

It was at Aunt Plantier’s that our first meeting took place. I suddenly

felt that my military service had made me heavy and clumsy.... Later

on I thought she must have found me altered. But why should this first

deceptive impression have had any importance for us two? As for me, I

was so much afraid of not recognising the Alissa I knew, that at first

I hardly dared look at her. No! what was really embarrassing was the

absurd position of being engaged which they all forced upon us, and

everybody’s anxiety to leave us alone and hurry away when we were there!

“Oh, Aunt! you are not the least in the way; we have nothing private to

say to each other,” cried Alissa at last, impatient at the tactless

manner in which the excellent woman tried to efface herself.

“Yes, yes! my dears. I quite understand. When young people haven’t seen

each other for a long time, they always have lots of little things to

tell each other.”

“Please, Aunt! You really will annoy us if you go away!” and this was

said in a tone which was almost angry, and in which I hardly recognised

Alissa’s voice.

“Aunt! I assure you that if you go away, we shan’t utter a single other

word!” added I, laughing, but myself filled with a certain apprehension

at the idea of our being left alone. And then, with sham cheerfulness,

we all three set to work to make conversation, trying to hide our

embarrassment beneath the forced liveliness of our commonplace talk. We

were to meet again the next day, as my uncle had invited me to lunch,

so that we parted that evening without regret, glad to put an end to

this absurd scene.

I arrived long before luncheon-time, but I found Alissa talking to

a girl friend, whom she had not the strength of mind to send away,

and who was not discreet enough to go. When at last she left us, I

pretended to be surprised that Alissa had not kept her to lunch. We

were both of us in a state of nervous tension and tired by a sleepless

night. My uncle appeared. Alissa felt that I thought him aged. He had

grown rather deaf, and heard my voice with difficulty; the necessity I

was under of shouting so as to make myself understood made my talk dull

and stupid.

After lunch Aunt Plantier, as had been arranged, came to take us out in

her carriage; she drove us to Orcher, with the idea of letting Alissa

and me do the pleasantest part of the return journey on foot.

The weather was hot for the time of year. The part of the hill up which

we had to walk was exposed to the sun and unattractive; the leafless

trees gave us no shelter. In our anxiety to rejoin the carriage in

which our aunt was to wait for us, we hastened our pace uncomfortably.

My head was aching so badly that I could not extract a single idea

from it; to keep myself in countenance, or because I thought that

the gesture might serve instead of words, I had taken Alissa’s hand,

which she let me keep. Our emotion, the rapidity of our walk, and the

awkwardness of our silence, sent the blood to our faces; I felt my

temples throbbing; Alissa’s colour was unpleasantly heightened; and

soon the discomfort of feeling the contact of our damp hands made us

unclasp them and let them drop sadly to our sides.

We had made too much haste, and arrived at the cross-roads long

before the carriage, which had taken another road and driven very

slowly, because of my aunt’s desire to leave us plenty of time for

talking. We sat down on the bank at the side of the road; a cold wind,

which suddenly got up, chilled us to the bone, for we were bathed in

perspiration; then we walked on to meet the carriage. But the worst was

again the pressing solicitude of our poor aunt, who was convinced that

we had had a long and satisfactory talk and was longing to question us

about our engagement. Alissa, unable to bear it, and with her eyes full

of tears, alleged a violent headache, and we drove home in silence.

The next day I woke up with aching limbs and a bad chill, so unwell

that I put off going to the Bucolins’ till the afternoon. By ill

luck, Alissa was not alone. Madeleine Plantier, one of Aunt Félicie’s

granddaughters, was there. I knew Alissa liked talking to her. She was

staying with her grandmother for a few days, and when I came in, she

exclaimed:

“If you are going back to the Côte when you leave here, we might as

well go together.”

I agreed mechanically; so that I was unable to see Alissa alone. But

the presence of this charming girl was, no doubt, a help to us; I

no longer felt the intolerable embarrassment of the day before; the

conversation between the three of us was soon going smoothly, and was

less futile than I had at first feared. Alissa smiled strangely when I

said good-bye to her; I had the impression that she had not understood

till that moment that I was going away the next morning. But the

prospect of my speedy return took away any touch of tragedy from my

good-bye.

After dinner, however, prompted by a vague uneasiness, I went down to

the town, where I wandered about for nearly an hour before I made up my

mind to ring at the Bucolins’ door. It was my uncle who received me.

Alissa, who was not feeling very well, had already gone to her room

and, no doubt, straight to bed. I talked to my uncle for a few moments,

and then left.

It would be vain for me to blame the perverseness of these incidents,

unfortunate though they were. For even if everything had favoured us,

we should still have invented our embarrassment ourselves. But nothing

could have made me more wretched, than that Alissa, too, should feel

this. This is the letter I received as soon as I got to Paris:

“My friend, what a melancholy meeting! You seemed to lay the blame

on other people, but without being able to convince yourself. And

now I think--I know--it will be so always. Oh! I beg of you, don’t

let us see each other again!

“Why this awkwardness, this feeling of being in a false position,

this paralysis, this dumbness, when we have everything in the

world to say to each other? The first day of your return this very

silence made me happy, because I believed it would vanish, and that

you would tell me the most wonderful things; it was impossible that

you should leave me without.

“But when our lugubrious expedition to Orcher came to an end

without a word, when, above all, our hands unclasped and fell apart

so hopelessly, I thought my heart would have fainted within me for

grief and pain. And what distressed me most was not so much that

your hand let go mine, but my feeling that if yours had not, mine

would have done so, for my hand too no longer felt happy in yours.

“The next day--yesterday--I expected you, madly, all the morning. I

was too restless to stop indoors, and I left a line for you to tell

you where to find me on the jetty. I stayed a long time looking at

the stormy sea, but I was too miserable looking at it without you;

I imagined suddenly that you were waiting for me in my room, and

went in. I knew I shouldn’t be free in the afternoon; Madeleine had

told me the day before that she meant to come, and as I expected to

see you in the morning I did not put her off. But, perhaps, it was

to her presence we owed the only pleasant moments of our meeting.

For a few minutes I had the strange illusion that this comfortable

conversation was going to last a long, long time. And when you came

up to the sofa where I was sitting beside her, and bent down and

said ‘good-bye,’ I could not answer; it seemed as though it were

the end of everything: it suddenly dawned upon me that you were

going.

“You had no sooner left with Madeleine, than it struck me as

impossible, unbearable. Will you believe it? I went out! I wanted

to speak to you again, to tell you all the things I had not told

you; I was already hurrying to the Plantiers’ ... It was late;

I didn’t have time, didn’t dare ... I came in again, desperate,

to write to you--that I didn’t want to write to you any more--a

good-bye letter because I felt too much that our correspondence was

nothing but a vast mirage, that we were each writing, alas! only

to ourselves and that--Jerome! Jerome! Ah! how far apart we were

all the time!

“I tore that letter up, it is true; but now I am writing it over

again, almost the same. Oh! I do not love you less, my dear! On the

contrary, I never before felt so clearly, by my very disturbance,

by my embarrassment as soon as you came near me, how deeply I

loved you; but hopelessly too, for I must perforce confess it to

myself--when you were away, I loved you more. I had already begun

to suspect so, alas! This longed-for meeting has finally shown me

the truth, and you too, my friend, must needs be convinced of it.

Good-bye, my much-loved brother; may God keep and guide you! To Him

alone can we draw near with impunity.”

And as if this letter were not sufficiently painful, the next day she

had added the following postscript:

“I do not wish to let this letter go without asking you to show a

little more discretion in regard to what concerns us both. Many

a time you have wounded me by talking to Juliette or Abel about

things which should have remained private between you and me, and

this is, indeed, what made me think--long before you suspected

it--that your love was above all intellectual, the beautiful

tenacity of a tender faithful mind.”

The fear lest I should show this letter to Abel had doubtless inspired

the last lines. What suspicious instinct had put her on her guard? Had

she formerly detected in my words some reflection of my friend’s advice?

In truth, I felt myself far enough away from him! The paths we

followed were henceforth divergent; and there was little need of these

recommendations to teach me to bear the anxious burden of my grief

alone.

The next three days were wholly occupied by my pleading; I wished to

reply to Alissa; I was afraid of incurably inflaming the wound by

too deliberate a discussion, by too vehement protestations, by the

slightest clumsy word; twenty times over I began the letter in which

my love struggled for its life. I cannot to this day re-read without

weeping the tear-stained paper, which is the copy of the one I at last

decided to send:

“Alissa! Have pity on me, on us both! Your letter hurts me. How

much I wish I could smile at your fears! Yes, I felt everything

you write; but I was afraid to own it to myself. What frightful

reality you give to what is merely imaginary, and how you thicken

it between us!

“If you feel that you love me less ... Ah! let me dismiss this

cruel supposition, which your whole letter contradicts! But then,

of what importance are your fleeting apprehensions? Alissa! As soon

as I begin to argue, my words freeze; I can only hear the weeping

of my heart. I love you too much to be skilful, and the more I love

you the less I know what to say to you. ‘Intellectual love!’...

what am I to answer to that? When it is with my whole soul that

I love you, how can I distinguish between my intellect and my

heart? But since our correspondence is the cause of your unkind

imputation, since we have been so grievously hurt by our fall into

reality from the heights to which that correspondence had raised

us, since, if you were to write to me now you would think that you

were writing only to yourself, since, too, I have not strength to

bear another letter like your last--please, for a time, let us stop

all communication.”

In the rest of my letter I protested and appealed against her judgment,

imploring her to grant us the opportunity of another interview. The

last had had everything against it: the scene, the personages, the

time of year--and even our correspondence, whose impassioned tone had

prepared us for it with so little prudence. This time it should be

preceded only by silence. I wished it to take place in the spring,

at Fongueusemare, where my uncle would let me stay during the Easter

holidays, for as long or as short a time as she herself should think

fit.

My determination was firmly taken and as soon as my letter had gone I

was able to bury myself in my work.

* * * * *

I was to see Alissa once more before the end of the year. Miss

Ashburton, whose health had been declining for some months past, died

four days before Christmas. On my return from my military service I had

gone back to stay with her. I left her very little and was present at

her last moments. A card from Alissa showed me that our vow of silence

lay nearer her heart than my bereavement: she would come up, she said,

for the day, just to go to the funeral, which my uncle would not be

able to attend.

She and I were almost the only mourners to be present at the burial

service and afterwards to follow the coffin. We walked side by side and

exchanged barely a few sentences; but in church, where she took her

seat beside me, I several times felt her eyes resting tenderly upon me.

“It is agreed,” said she, as she left me, “nothing before Easter.”

“No, but at Easter ...”

“I will expect you.”

We were at the gate of the cemetery. I suggested taking her to the

station; but she called a cab and without a word of farewell, left me.