“Alissa is waiting for you in the garden,” said my uncle, after having
embraced me paternally, when one day at the end of April I arrived at
Fongueusemare. If at first I was disappointed at not finding her ready
to welcome me, the next moment I was grateful that she had spared us
both the first commonplace greetings.
She was at the bottom of the garden. I made my way to the place at the
head of the steps, where, at this time of year, the shrubs that set it
closely round were all in flower--lilacs, rowan-trees, laburnums and
weigelias; in order not to catch sight of her from too far, or so that
she should not see me coming, I took the other side of the garden,
along the shady path, where the air was cool beneath the branches.
I advanced slowly; the sky was like my joy--warm, bright, delicately
pure. No doubt she was expecting me by the other path. I was close to
her, behind her, before she heard me; I stopped ... and as if time
could have stopped with me, “This is the moment,” thought I, “the
most delicious moment, perhaps, of all, even though it should precede
happiness itself--which happiness itself will not equal.”
I meant to fall on my knees before her; I took a step which she heard.
She got up suddenly, letting the embroidery at which she was working
roll to the ground; she stretched out her arms towards me, put her
hands on my shoulders. For a few moments we stayed so, she with her
arms outstretched, her face smiling and bent towards me, looking at me
tenderly without speaking. She was dressed all in white. On her grave
face--almost too grave--I recognised her childhood’s smile.
“Listen, Alissa,” I cried suddenly. “I have twelve days before me. I
will not stay one more than you please. Let us settle on a sign, which
shall mean: ‘To-morrow you must leave Fongueusemare.’ The next day I
will go, without recrimination, without complaint. Do you agree?”
As I had not prepared what I was going to say, I spoke more easily. She
reflected a moment; then:
“The evening that I come down to dinner without wearing the amethyst
cross you like ... will you understand?”
“That it is to be my last evening.”
“But will you be able to go without a tear or a sigh?”
“Without a good-bye. I will leave you on that last evening exactly as
I shall have done the evening before, so simply that you will wonder
whether I have understood. But when you look for me the next morning, I
shall just not be there.”
“I shall not look for you the next morning.”
She held out her hand; as I raised it to my lips, I added:
“But from now till the fatal evening, not an allusion to make me feel
that it is coming.”
“And you, not an allusion to the parting that will follow.”
The embarrassment, which the solemnity of this meeting was in danger of
creating between us, had now to be dispelled.
“I should so much like,” I went on, “that these few days with you
should seem like other days ... I mean, that we should not feel, either
of us, that they are exceptional. And then ... if we were not to try
too hard to talk just at first ...”
She began to laugh. I added:
“Isn’t there anything we could do together?”
Ever since we could remember we had taken great pleasure in gardening.
An inexperienced gardener had lately replaced the old one, and there
was a great deal to be done in the garden, which had been neglected
for the last two months. Some of the rose trees had been badly pruned;
some, luxuriant growers, were encumbered with dead wood; some of the
ramblers had come down for want of the necessary props; others were
being exhausted by suckers. Most of them had been grafted by us; we
recognised our nurslings; the attention of which they were in need took
up a large part of our time, and allowed us during the first three days
to talk a great deal without saying anything of weight, and, when we
said nothing, it enabled us not to feel our silence burdensome.
In this way we once more grew accustomed to one another. It was on this
familiarity that I counted, rather than on any actual explanation. The
very recollection of our separation was already beginning to disappear
from between us, and the fearfulness which I used to feel in her, the
tension of spirit which she used to fear in me, were already beginning
to grow less. Alissa seemed younger than during my melancholy visit of
the autumn, and I had never thought her prettier. I had not yet kissed
her. Every evening I saw sparkling on her bodice the little amethyst
cross, which she wore hanging from a gold chain round her neck. Hope
sprang up again, confidently, in my breast. Hope, do I say? No! it was
already certainty, and I thought I felt it too in Alissa; for I was so
little doubtful of myself that I could no longer have any doubts of
her. Little by little our talk grew bolder.
“Alissa,” I said to her one morning, when all the air breathed laughter
and delight and our hearts were opening like the flowers, “now that
Juliette is happy, won’t you let us too ...”
I spoke slowly, with my eyes fixed upon her; on a sudden she turned
pale, so extraordinarily, that I could not finish my sentence.
“Dear!” she began, without turning her eyes towards me, “I feel happier
with you than I thought it was possible to feel ... but, believe me, we
were not born for happiness.”
“What can the soul prefer to happiness?” I cried, impetuously. She
whispered:
“Holiness ...” so low that I divined rather than heard the word.
My whole happiness spread its wings and flew away out of my heart and
up to Heaven.
“I cannot reach it without you,” I said, and with my head on her knees,
weeping like a child--but for love, not for grief--I repeated again and
again: “Not without you; not without you!”
* * * * *
Then that day, too, passed by like the others. But in the evening
Alissa came down without the little amethyst ornament. Faithful to my
promise, the next morning at daybreak I left.
* * * * *
On the following day I received the strange letter which I give below,
with these lines of Shakespeare’s as motto:
“‘That strain again,--it had a dying fall:
Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.--Enough; no more,
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.’
“Yes! In spite of myself, I looked for you the whole morning, my
brother. I could not believe that you had gone. I felt resentful
against you for having kept to our engagement. I thought it must
be a jest. I expected you to step out from behind every bush. But
no! you have really gone. Thank you.
“I spent the rest of the day haunted by the constant presence of
thoughts, which I should like to communicate to you, and by the
peculiar and very definite fear that if I did not, I should have
the feeling later on of having failed in my duty towards you, of
having deserved your reproaches ...
“In the first moments of your stay at Fongueusemare it was
astonishment that I felt--soon after it was uneasiness--at the
strange contentment that filled my whole being in your presence; ‘a
contentment so great,’ you said, ‘that I desire nothing beyond!’
Alas! that is just what makes me uneasy....
“I am afraid, my friend, lest you should misunderstand me. Above
all, I am afraid lest you should take for subtlety (Oh, how
mistaken a subtlety!) what is merely the expression of the most
violent feeling of my soul.
“‘If it did not suffice, it would not be happiness,’ you said, do
you remember? And I did not know what to answer. No, Jerome, it
does not suffice us. Jerome, it must not suffice us. I cannot take
this delicious contentment for the true one. Did we not realise
last autumn what misery it covered over?...
“The true one! Ah! God forbid! We were born for a happiness other
than that....
“Just as it was our correspondence which spoilt our meeting last
autumn, so now the memory of your presence yesterday disenchants
my letter of to-day. What has happened to the delight I used to
take in writing to you? By writing to each other, by being with
each other, we have exhausted all that is pure in the joy to which
our love dare aspire. And now, in spite of myself, I exclaim, like
Orsino in _Twelfth Night_: ‘Enough; no more; ’tis not so sweet now
as it was before.’
“Good-bye, my friend. _Hic incipit amor Dei._ Ah! will you ever
know how much I love you?... Until the end I will be your
“Alissa.”
Against the snare of virtue I was defenceless. All heroism attracted
and dazzled me, for I could not separate it from love. Alissa’s letter
inspired me with a rash and intoxicating enthusiasm. God knows that
I strove after more virtue only for her sake. Any path, provided it
climbed upwards, would lead me to her. Ah! the ground could not too
soon narrow enough to hold only her and me! Alas! I did not suspect the
subtlety of her feint, and little imagined that it would be by a height
where there was room for only one, that she might escape me once more.
I replied lengthily. I remember the only passage of my letter that was
at all clear-sighted.
“I often think,” I said, “that my love is the best part of me; that
all my virtues are suspended to it; that it raises me above myself,
and that without it I should fall back to the mediocre level of a very
ordinary disposition. It is the hope of reaching you that will always
make me think the steepest path the best.”
What did I add which can have induced her to answer as follows:
“But, my friend, holiness is not a choice; it is an obligation”
(the word was underlined three times in her letter). “If you are
what I take you to be, _you_ will not be able to evade it either.”
That was all. I understood, or rather I had a foreboding, that our
correspondence would stop there, and that neither the most cunning
counsels nor the most steadfast determination would be of any avail.
I wrote again, however, lengthily, tenderly. After my third letter I
received this note:
“My friend,
“Do not imagine that I have made any resolution not to write to
you; I merely no longer take any pleasure in writing. And yet your
letters still interest me, but I reproach myself more and more for
engrossing so much of your thoughts.
“The summer is not far off. I propose that we give up our
correspondence for a time, and that you come and spend the last
fortnight of September with me at Fongueusemare. Do you accept? If
you do, I have no need of a reply. I shall take your silence for
consent, and hope, therefore, that you will not answer.”
I did not answer. No doubt this silence was only the last trial to
which she was subjecting me. When, after a few months’ work and a
few weeks’ travel, I returned to Fongueusemare, it was with the most
tranquil assurance.
* * * * *
How should I, by a simple recital, make clear at once what I myself
understood at first so ill? What can I paint here save the occasion
of the wretchedness which from that moment overwhelmed me wholly?
For if I have no forgiveness in my heart to-day for my failure to
recognise that love that was still throbbing, hidden under a semblance
so artificial, it was at first only this semblance that I was able to
see; and so, no longer finding my friend, I accused her ... No! Even
then, Alissa, I did not accuse you, but wept despairingly that I could
recognise you no longer. Now that I can gauge the strength of your love
by the cunning of its silence and by its cruel workings, must I love
you all the more, the more agonisingly you bereft me?
Disdain? Coldness? No; nothing that could be overcome; nothing against
which I could even struggle; and sometimes I hesitated, doubting
whether I had not invented my misery, so subtle seemed its cause and
so skilful was Alissa’s pretence of not understanding it. What should
I have complained of? Her welcome was more smiling than ever; never
had she shown herself more cordial, more attentive; the first day I
was almost taken in by it. What did it matter, after all, that she
did her hair in a new way, which flattened it and dragged it back
from her face, so that her features were harshened and their true
expression altered--that an unbecoming dress, dull in colour and ugly
in texture, turned the delicate rhythm of her body to clumsiness?...
There was nothing here, I thought blindly, that might not be remedied
the very next day, either of her own accord or at my request. I was
more unpleasantly affected by the cordiality, by the attentions, which
were so foreign to our habits, and in which I was afraid I saw more
deliberation than spontaneity, and, though I scarcely dare say so, more
politeness than love.
That evening, when I went into the drawing-room, I was astonished not
to find the piano in its usual place; Alissa answered my exclamation of
disappointment in her most tranquil voice:
“It has gone to be done up, dear.”
“But I repeatedly told you, my child,” said my uncle, in a tone of
reproach that was almost severe, “that as it had done well enough up
till now, you might have waited until Jerome had gone before sending it
away; your haste has deprived us of a great pleasure.”
“But, father,” said she, turning aside to blush, “I assure you it had
got so jingly latterly that Jerome himself wouldn’t have been able to
get anything out of it.”
“When you played it, it didn’t seem so bad,” said my uncle.
She stayed a few moments in the shadow, stooping down, as if she were
engaged in taking the measurements of a chair cover, then she left the
room abruptly, and did not return till later, when she brought in the
tray with the cup of _tisane_ which my uncle was in the habit of taking
every evening.
* * * * *
The next day she changed neither the way of doing her hair nor her
dress; seated beside her father on a bench in front of the house, she
went on with the mending on which she had already been engaged the
evening before. On the bench or the table beside her was a great basket
full of stockings and socks into which she dipped. A few days later
it was towels and sheets. This work absorbed her, it seemed, to such
a pitch that every gleam of expression vanished from her lips and her
eyes.
“Alissa!” I exclaimed the first evening, almost terrified by this
obliteration of all poetry from her face, which I could hardly
recognise, and at which I had been gazing for some moments without her
seeming to feel my look.
“What is it?” said she, raising her head.
“I wanted to see if you would hear me. Your thoughts seemed so far away
from me.”
“No; they are here; but this darning requires a great deal of
attention.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to read to you while you are sewing?”
“I am afraid I shouldn’t be able to listen very well.”
“Why do you choose such absorbing work to do?”
“Some one must do it.”
“There are so many poor women who would be glad to do it for the sake
of earning a trifle. It can’t be from economy that you undertake such a
tedious task?”
She at once assured me that she liked no other kind of sewing so much,
that it was the only kind she had done for a long time past, and that
she was doubtless out of practice for doing anything else. She smiled
as she spoke. Never had her voice been sweeter than now, when she was
so grieving me. “I am saying nothing but what is natural,” her face
seemed to declare, “why should it make you sad?”
And my whole heart’s protest no longer even rose to my lips--it choked
me.
* * * * *
A day or two later, as we had been picking roses, she invited me to
carry them for her to her room, into which I had not as yet been this
year. What flattering hopes arose in me at once! For I had not got
beyond blaming myself for my sadness; one word from her would have
healed my heart.
I never went into this room without emotion; I cannot tell what it
was that made up the kind of melodious peace which breathed in it,
and in which I recognised Alissa. The blue shadow of the curtains at
the windows and round the bed, the furniture of shining mahogany, the
order, the spotlessness, the silence, all spoke to my heart of her
purity and pensive grace.
I was astonished that morning to see that two large photographs of
Masaccio’s, which I had brought back from Italy, were no longer on the
wall beside her bed; I was on the point of asking her what had become
of them when my glance fell on the book-shelf close by, where she used
to keep her bedside books. This little collection had been gradually
formed, partly by the books I had given her, partly by others which we
had read together. I had just noticed that all these books had been
removed, and that they had been replaced exclusively by a number of
insignificant little works of vulgar piety, for which I hoped she had
nothing but contempt. Raising my eyes suddenly, I saw that Alissa was
laughing--yes, laughing--as she watched me.
“I beg your pardon,” said she at once; “your face made me laugh; it
fell so abruptly when you saw my book-case.”