“No, really, Alissa, is that what you read now?”
“Yes, certainly. What is it surprises you?”
“I should have thought that a mind accustomed to substantial food would
have been disgusted by such sickly stuff.”
“I don’t understand you,” said she. “These are humble souls who talk to
me simply, and express themselves as best they can. I take pleasure in
their society. I know beforehand that they will not fall into any snare
of fine language, and that I, as I read, shall not be tempted by any
profane admiration.”
“Do you read nothing but that, then, now?”
“Almost. Yes, for the last few months. But I haven’t much time for
reading now. And I confess that quite lately, when I tried to re-read
one of the great authors whom you taught me to admire, I felt like the
man in the Scriptures, who strives to add a cubit to his height.”
“Who is this ‘great author’ who has given you such an odd opinion of
yourself?”
“He didn’t give it me, but it was while reading him that I got it....
It was Pascal. Perhaps I lighted on some passage that was not so
good....”
I made an impatient movement. She spoke in a clear, monotonous voice,
as if she were reciting a lesson, not lifting her eyes from her
flowers, which she went on arranging and re-arranging interminably. She
stopped for an instant at my movement and then continued in the same
tone:
“Such surprising grandiloquence and such effort!--and to prove so
little! I wonder sometimes whether his pathetic intonation is not the
result of doubt rather than of faith. The voice of perfect faith speaks
with fewer tears, with fewer tremors.”
“It is just those very tremors, those very tears, which make the beauty
of his voice,” I endeavoured to retort, although dispiritedly; for in
her words I could recognise nothing of what I loved in Alissa. I write
them down as I remember them, and without any after addition of either
art or logic.
“If he had not first emptied this life of its joy,” she went on, “it
would weigh heavier in the balance than ...”
“Than what?” I asked, for I was amazed at her strange sayings.
“Than the uncertain felicity he holds out.”
“Don’t you believe in it, then?” I exclaimed.
“No matter!” she answered; “I wish it to remain uncertain, so that
every suspicion of a bargain may be removed. The soul that loves God
steeps itself in virtue out of natural nobility, and not for the hope
of reward.”
“And that is the reason of the secret scepticism in which nobility such
as Pascal’s finds a refuge.”
“Not scepticism--Jansenism,” said she smiling. “What have I to do
with such things? These poor souls, here,” she added, turning towards
her books, “would be at a loss to say whether they are Jansenist or
quietist or what not. They bow down before God like the grass which is
bent by the wind, without guile or anxiety or beauty. They consider
themselves of little account, and know that their only value lies in
their effacement before God.”
“Alissa!” I cried, “why do you tear off your wings?”
Her voice remained so calm and natural that my exclamation seemed to me
all the more absurdly emphatic.
She smiled again, and shook her head. “All that I brought away from my
last visit to Pascal ...”
“Was what?” I asked, for she stopped.
“This saying of Christ’s: ‘Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall
lose it.’ And as for that,” she went on, smiling still more and looking
me steadily in the face, “I really hardly understood him any longer.
When one has lived any time in the society of such lowly ones as these,
it is extraordinary how quickly the sublimity of the great leaves one
breathless and exhausted.”
Would my discomposure allow me no answer?
“If I were obliged to read all these sermons and tracts with you now
...”
“But,” she interrupted, “I should be very sorry to see you read them!
I agree with you; I think you were meant for much better things than
that.”
She spoke quite simply and without seeming to suspect that my heart
might be rent by these words which implied the separation of our lives.
My head was burning; I should have liked to go on speaking; I should
have liked to cry; perhaps my tears would have vanquished her; but I
remained without saying a word, my elbows on the mantelpiece, my head
buried in my hands. She went on calmly arranging her flowers, seeing
nothing--or pretending to see nothing of my suffering....
At this moment the first bell rang.
“I shall never be ready for lunch,” said she. “You must go away now.”
And as if it had been nothing but play: “We will go on with this
conversation another time.”
* * * * *
We never went on with the conversation. Alissa continually eluded
me; not that she ever appeared to be avoiding me; but every casual
occupation became a duty of far more urgent importance. I had to wait
my turn; I only came after the constantly recurring cares of the
household, after she had attended to the alterations that were being
carried out in the barn, after her visits to the farmers and after her
visits to the poor, with whom she busied herself more and more. I had
the time that was left over, and very little it was; I never saw her,
but she was in a hurry--though it was still, perhaps, in the midst of
these trivial occupations, and when I gave up pursuing her, that I
least felt how much I had been dispossessed. The slightest talk showed
it me more clearly. When Alissa granted me a few minutes, it was,
indeed, for the most laborious conversation to which she lent herself
as one does to playing with a child. She passed beside me swiftly,
absent-minded and smiling; and I felt she had become more distant than
if I had never known her. It even seemed to me sometimes that there
was a kind of challenge in her smile, or at any rate a kind of irony
and that she took amusement in thus eluding my wishes.... And at that
it was myself that I turned to upbraid, not wishing to give way to
reproaches, and, indeed, hardly knowing what might be expected from her
now, nor with what I could reproach her.
* * * * *
Thus the days from which I had promised myself so much felicity passed
by. I contemplated their flight with stupor, but without desiring to
increase their number or delay their passage, so greatly each one
aggravated my grief. Two days before my departure, however, Alissa came
with me to the bench beside the deserted marl-pit; it was a bright
autumn evening; as far as the cloudless horizon, every blue-tinted
detail of the landscape stood out distinct and clear, and in the past
the dimmest of its memories. I could not withhold my lamentations as I
showed her my present unhappiness--as I showed her the happiness I had
lost.
“But what is it I can do, my friend?” she said at once: “You are in
love with a phantom.”
“No, not with a phantom, Alissa.”
“With a creature of your imagination.”
“Alas! I am not inventing. She was once my friend. I call upon her.
Alissa! Alissa! it was you I loved. What have you done with yourself?
What have you made yourself become?”
She remained a few moments without answering, slowly pulling a flower
to pieces and keeping her head down. Then, at last:
“Jerome, why don’t you simply admit that you love me less?”
“Because it’s not true! Because it’s not true!” I exclaimed
indignantly; “because I never loved you more.”
“You love me--and yet you regret me!” said she, trying to smile, and
slightly shrugging her shoulders.
“I cannot put my love into the past.”
The ground was giving way beneath me; and I caught at anything.
“It must pass with the rest.”
“A love like mine will pass only with me.”
“It will gradually grow less. The Alissa whom you think you still love,
already exists only in your memory; a day will come when you will only
remember that you loved her.”
“You speak as if her place might be taken in my heart, or as if my
heart were going to stop loving. Do you no longer remember that you
once loved me yourself that you take such pleasure in torturing me?”