MARIE
The seat leans against the gray wall, at the spot where a rose tree
hangs over it, and the lane begins to slope to the river. I asked
Marie to come, and I am waiting for her in the evening.
When I asked her--in sudden decision after so many days of
hesitation--to meet me here this evening, she was silent, astonished.
But she did not refuse; she did not answer. Some people came and she
went away. I am waiting for her, after that prayer.
Slowly I stroll to the river bank. When I return some one is on the
seat, enthroned in the shadow. The face is indistinct, but in the
apparel of mourning I can see the neck-opening, like a faint pale
heart, and the misty expansion of the skirt. Stooping, I hear her low
voice, "I've come, you see." And, "Marie!" I say.
I sit down beside her, and we remain silent. She is there--wholly.
Through her black veils I can make out the whiteness of her face and
neck and hands--all her beauty, like light enclosed.
For me she had only been a charming picture, a passer-by, one apart,
living her own life. Now she has listened to me; she has come at my
call; she has brought herself here.
* * * * * *
The day has been scorching. Towards the end of the afternoon
storm-rain burst over the world and then ceased. One can still hear
belated drops falling from the branches which overhang the wall. The
air is charged with odors of earth and leaves and flowers, and wreaths
of wind go heavily by.
She is the first to speak; she speaks of one thing and another.
I do not know what she is saying; I draw nearer to see her lips; I
answer her, "I am always thinking of you."
Hearing these words, she is silent. Her silence grows greater and
greater in the shadows. I have drawn still nearer; so near that I feel
on my cheek the wing-beat of her breath; so near that her silence
caresses me.
Then, to keep myself in countenance, or to smoke, I have struck a
match, but I make no use of the gleam at my finger-tips. It shows me
Marie, quivering a little; it gilds her pale face. A smile arises on
her face; I have seen her full of that smile.
My eyes grow dim and my hands tremble. I wish she would speak.
"Tell me----" Her down-bent neck unfolds, and she lifts her head to
speak. At that moment, by the light of the flame that I hold, whose
great revealing kindness I am guarding, our eyes fall on an inscription
scratched in the wall--a heart--and inside it two initials, H-S. Ah,
that design was made by me one evening. Little Helen was lolling there
then, and I thought I adored her. For a moment I am overpowered by
this apparition of a mistake, bygone and forgotten. Marie does not
know; but seeing those initials, and divining a presence between us,
she dare not speak.
As the match is on the point of going out I throw it down. The little
flame's last flicker has lighted up for me the edge of the poor black
serge skirt, so worn that it shines a little, even in the evening, and
has shown me the girl's shoe. There is a hole in the heel of the
stocking, and we have both seen it. In quick shame, Marie draws her
foot under her skirt; and I--I tremble still more that my eyes have
touched a little of her maiden flesh, a fragment of her real innocence.
Gently she stands up in the grayness, and puts an end to this first
fate-changing meeting.
We return. The obscurity is outstretched all around and against us.
Together and alone we go into the following chambers of the night. My
eyes follow the sway of her body in her dress against the vaguely
luminous background of the wall. Amid the night her dress is night
also; she is there--wholly! There is a singing in my ears; an anthem
fills the world.
In the street, where there are no more wayfarers, she walks on the edge
of the causeway. So that my face may be on a level with hers, I walk
beside her in the gutter, and the cold water enters my boots.
And that evening, inflated by mad longing, I am so triumphantly
confident that I do not even remember to shake her hand. By her door I
said to her, "To-morrow," and she answered, "Yes."
On one of the days which followed, finding myself free in the
afternoon, I made my way to the great populous building of flats where
she lives. I ascended two dark flights of steps, closely encaged, and
followed a long elbowed corridor. Here it is. I knock and enter.
Complete silence greets me. There is no one, and acute disappointment
runs through me.
I take some hesitant steps in the tiny vestibule, which is lighted by
the glass door to the kitchen, wherein I hear the drip of water. I see
a room whose curtains invest it with broidered light. There is a bed
in it, with a cover of sky-blue satinette shining like the blue of a
chromo. It is Marie's room! Her gray silk hat, rose-trimmed, hangs
from a nail on the flowery paper. She has not worn it since my aunt's
death; and alongside hang black dresses. I enter this bright blue
sanctuary, inhabited only by a cold and snow-like light, and orderly
and chaste as a picture.
My hand goes out like a thief's. I touch, I stroke these dresses,
which are wont to touch Marie. I turn again to the blue-veiled bed.
On a whatnot there are books, and their titles invite me; for where her
thoughts dwell, the things which occupy her mind--but I leave them. I
would rather go near her bed. With a movement at once mad, frightened
and trembling, I lift the quilts that clothe it and my gaze enters it,
and my knees lean trembling on the edge of this great lifeless thing,
which, alone among dead things, is one of soft and supple flesh.
* * * * * *
My customary life continues and my work is always the same. I make
notes, by the way, of Crillon's honest trivialities; of Brisbille's
untimely outbursts; of the rumors anent the Pocard scheme, and the
progress of the Association of Avengers, a society to promote national
awakening, founded by Monsieur Joseph Bonéas. The same complex and
monotonous existence bears me along as it does everybody. But since
that tragic night when my sorrow was transformed into joy at the
lyke-wake in the old room, in truth the world is no longer what it was.
People and things appear to me shadowy and distant when I go out into
the current of the crowds; when I am dressing in my room and decide
that I look well in black; when I sit up late at my table in the
sunshine of hope. Now and again the memory of my aunt comes bodily
back to me. Sometimes I hear people pronounce the name of Marie. My
body starts when it hears them say "Marie," who know not what they say.
And there are moments when our separation throbs so warmly that I do
not know whether she is here or absent.
* * * * * *
During this walk that we have just had together the summer and the
sweetness of living have weighed more than ever on my shoulders. Her
huge home, which is such a swarming hive at certain times, is now
immensely empty in the labyrinth of its dark stairs and the landings,
whence issue the narrow closed streets of its corridors, and where in
the corners taps drip upon drain-stones. Our immense--our naked
solitude pervades us. An exquisite emotion takes hold of me while we
are slowly climbing the steep and methodical way. There is something
human in the stairway; in the inevitable shapes of its spiral and its
steps cut out of the quick, in the rhythmic repetition of its steps. A
round skylight pierces the sloping roof up there, and it is the only
light for this part of the people's house, this poor internal city.
The darkness which runs down the walls of the well, whence we are
striving to emerge step by step, conceals our laborious climb towards
that gap of daylight. Shadowed and secret as we are, it seems to me
that we are mounting to heaven.
Oppressed by a common languor, we at last sat down side by side on a
step. There is no sound in the building under the one round window
bending over us. We lean on each other because of the stair's
narrowness. Her warmth enters into me; I feel myself agitated by that
obscure light which radiates from her. I share with her the heat of
her body and her thought itself. The darkness deepens round us.
Hardly can I see the crouching girl there, warm and hollowed like a
nest.
I call her by her name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud
avowal! She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have
seen her naked face. "Kiss me," she says; and without speaking we
stammer, and murmur, and laugh.
* * * * * *
Together we are looking at a little square piece of paper. I found it
on the seat which the rose-tree overhangs on the edge of the downward
lane. Carefully folded, it had a forgotten look, and it was waiting
there, detained for a moment by its timorous weight. A few lines of
careful writing cover it. We read it:
"I do not know how speaks the pious heart; nothing I know; th'
enraptured martyr I. Only I know the tears that brimming start, your
beauty blended with your smile to espy."
Then, having read it, we read it again, moved by a mysterious
influence. And we finger the chance-captured paper, without knowing
what it is, without understanding very well what it says.
* * * * * *
When I asked her to go with me to the cemetery that Sunday, she agreed,
as she does to all I ask her. I watched her arms brush the roses as
she came in through the gardens. We walked in silence; more and more
we are losing the habit of talking to each other. We looked at the
latticed and flower-decked square where our aunt sleeps--the garden
which is only as big as a woman. Returning from the cemetery by way of
the fields, the sun already low, we join hands, seized with triumphant
delight.
She is wearing a dress of black delaine, and the skirt, the sleeves and
the collar wave in the breeze. Sometimes she turns her radiant face to
me and it seems to grow still brighter when she looks at me. Slightly
stooping, she walks, though among the grass and flowers whose tints and
grace shine in reflection on her forehead and cheeks, she is a
giantess. A butterfly precedes us on our path and alights under our
eyes, but when we come up it takes wing again, and comes down a little
farther and begins all over again; and we smile at the butterfly that
thinks of us.
Inlaid with gold by the slanting sun we lead each other, hand in hand,
as far as the statue of Flora, which once upon a time a lord of the
manor raised on the fringe of the wood. Against the abiding background
of distant heights the goddess stands, half-naked, in the beautiful
ripe light. Her fair hips are draped with a veil of still whiter
stone, like a linen garment. Before the old moss-mellowed pedestal I
pressed Marie desperately to my heart. Then, in the sacred solitude of
the wood, I put my hands upon her, and so that she might be like the
goddess I unfastened her black bodice, lowered the ribbon
shoulder-straps of her chemise, and laid bare her wide and rounded
bosom.
She yielded to the adoration with lowered head, and her eyes
magnificently troubled, red-flushing with blood and sunshine.
I put my lips on hers. Until that day, whenever I kissed her, her lips
submitted. This time she gave me back my long caress, and even her
eyes closed upon it. Then she stands there with her hands crossed on
her glorious throat, her red, wet lips ajar. She stands there, apart,
yet united to me, and her heart on her lips.
She has covered her bosom again. The breeze is suddenly gusty. The
apple trees in the orchards are shaken and scatter bird-like jetsam in
space; and in that bright green paddock yonder the rows of out-hung
linen dance in the sunshine. The sky darkens; the wind rises and
prevails. It was that very day of the gale. It assaults our two
bodies on the flank of the hill; it comes out of infinity and sets
roaring the tawny forest foliage. We can see its agitation behind the
black grille of the trunks. It makes us dizzy to watch the swift
displacement of the gray-veiled sky, and from cloud to cloud a bird
seems hurled, like a stone. We go down towards the bottom of the
valley, clinging to the slope, an offering to the deepest breath of
heaven, driven forward yet holding each other back.
So, gorged with the gale and deafened by the universal concert of space
that goes through our ears, we find sanctuary on the river bank. The
water flows between trees whose highest foliage is intermingled. By a
dark footpath, soft and damp, under the ogive of the branches, we
follow this crystal-paved cloister of green shadow. We come on a
flat-bottomed boat, used by the anglers. I make Marie enter it, and it
yields and groans under her weight. By the strokes of two old oars we
descend the current.
It seems to our hearts and our inventing eyes that the banks take
flight on either side--it is the scenery of bushes and trees which
retreats. _We_--we abide! But the boat grounds among tall reeds.
Marie is half reclining and does not speak. I draw myself towards her
on my knees, and the boat quivers as I do. Her face in silence calls
me; she calls me wholly. With her prostrate body, surrendered and
disordered, she calls me.
I possess her--she is mine! In sublime docility she yields to my
violent caress. Now she is mine--mine forever! Henceforth let what
may befall; let the years go by and the winters follow the summers, she
is mine, and my life is granted me! Proudly I think of the great and
famous lovers whom we resemble. I perceive that there is no recognized
law which can stand against the might of love. And under the transient
wing of the foliage, amid the continuous recessional of heaven and
earth, we repeat "never"; we repeat "always"; and we proclaim it to
eternity.
* * * * * *
The leaves are falling; the year draws near to its end; the wedding is
arranged to take place about Christmas.
That decision was mine; Marie said "yes," as usual, and her father,
absorbed all the day in figures, would emerge from them at night, like
a shipwrecked man, seeing darkly, passive, except on rare occasions
when he had fits of mad obstinacy, and no one knew why.
In the early morning sometimes, when I was climbing Chestnut Hill on my
way to work, Marie would appear before me at a corner, in the pale and
blushing dawn. We would walk on together, bathed in those fresh fires,
and would watch the town at our feet rising again from its ashes. Or,
on my way back, she would suddenly be there, and we would walk side by
side towards her home. We loved each other too much to be able to
talk. A very few words we exchanged just to entwine our voices, and in
speaking of other people we smiled at each other.
One day, about that time, Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon had the
kindly thought of asking us both to an evening party at the castle,
with several leading people of our quarter. When all the guests were
gathered in a huge gallery, adorned with busts which sat in state
between high curtains of red damask, the Marquis took it into his head
to cut off the electricity. In a lordly way he liked heavy practical
jokes--I was just smiling at Marie, who was standing near me in the
middle of the crowded gallery, when suddenly it was dark. I put out my
arms and drew her to me. She responded with a spirit she had not shown
before, our lips met more passionately than ever, and our single body
swayed among the invisible, ejaculating throng that elbowed and jostled
us. The light flashed again. We had loosed our hold. Ah, it was not
Marie whom I had clasped! The woman fled with a stifled exclamation of
shame and indignation towards him who she believed had embraced her,
and who had seen nothing. Confused, and as though still blind, I
rejoined Marie, but I was myself again with difficulty. In spite of
all, that kiss which had suddenly brought me in naked contact with a
complete stranger remained to me an extraordinary and infernal delight.
Afterwards, I thought I recognized the woman by her blue dress, half
seen at the same time as the gleam of her neck after that brief and
dazzling incident. But there were three of them somewhat alike. I
never knew which of those unknown women concealed within her flesh the
half of the thrill that I could not shake off all the evening.
* * * * * *
There was a large gathering at the wedding. The Marquis and
Marchioness of Monthyon appeared at the sacristy. Brisbille, by good
luck, stayed away. Good sectarian that he was, he only acknowledged
civil marriages. I was a little shamefaced to see march past, taking
their share of the fine and tranquil smile distributed by Marie, some
women who had formerly been my mistresses--Madame Lacaille, nervous,
subtle, mystical; big Victorine and her good-natured rotundity, who had
welcomed me any time and anywhere; and Madeleine Chaine; and slender
Antonia above all, with the Italian woman's ardent and theatrical face,
ebony-framed, and wearing a hat of Parisian splendor. For Antonia is
very elegant since she married Véron. I could not help wincing when I
saw that lanky woman, who had clung to me in venturesome rooms, now
assiduous around us in her ceremonious attire. But how far off and
obliterated all that was!