"Good! I hope that you will stay with us now.... Come, let me see that
a brighter face! We will make your life as pleasant as possible, but
you'll have to help us a bit, you know. You cultivate your sadness, I
fancy. You live, if I may say so, too much like an owl. You're a kind
of Spaniard such as one rarely sees. You must drop that sort of thing.
You are young and good-looking, you have wit and talents; make the best
of those qualities. Listen. Why not try a flirtation with little
Helouin.... It would amuse you. She is very charming, and she would
suit you. But, deuce take me! I am rather forgetting my promotion to
high dignities! ... And now, good-bye, Maxime, till to-morrow, isn't
it?"
"Till to-morrow, certainly."
And this honest gentleman--who is the sort of Spaniard one often
sees!--left me to my reflections.
_October 1st_.
A strange thing has happened. Though the results are not, so far, very
satisfactory, they have done me good. The blow I had received had left
me numb with grief. This at least makes me feel that I am alive, and
for the first time for three long weeks I have had the courage to open
this book and take up my pen. Every satisfaction having been given to
me, I thought there was no longer any reason for leaving, at least
suddenly, a position and advantages which, after all, I need, and could
not easily replace. The mere prospect of the personal sufferings I had
to face, which, moreover, were the result of my own weakness, could not
entitle me to shirk duties which involved other interests than my own.
And more; I did not intend that Mlle. Marguerite should interpret my
sudden flight as the result of pique at the loss of a good match. I
made it a point of honour to show her an unruffled front up to the altar
itself. As for my heart--that she could not see. So I contented myself
with informing M. Laubepin that certain things incident to my situation
might at any moment become unbearable, and that I eagerly desired some
less lucrative but more independent occupation.
The next day I appeared at the chateau, where M. de Bevallan received me
cordially. I greeted the ladies with all the self-possession I could
command. There was, of course, no explanation. Mme. Laroque seemed
moved and thoughtful; Mlle. Marguerite was a little highly strung still,
but polite. As for Mlle. Helouin, she was very pale, and kept her eyes
fixed on her work. The poor girl could not have been very much
delighted with the final result of her diplomacy. She endeavoured once
or twice to dart a look of scorn and menace at M. de Bevallan; but
though this stormy atmosphere might have troubled a neophyte, M. de
Bevallan breathed, moved, and fluttered about in it entirely at his
ease. His regal self-possession evidently irritated Mlle. Helouin, but
it quelled her at the same time. I am sure, however, that she would
have played him the same sort of trick she had played me the day before,
and with far more excuse, if she had not been afraid of ruining herself
as well as her accomplice. But it was most likely that if she yielded to
her jealous rage, and admitted her ingratitude and duplicity, she would
ruin herself only, and she was quite clever enough to see this. In
fact, M. de Bevallan was not the kind of man to have run any risks with
her, without having provided himself with some very effective weapon
which he would use with pitiless indifference. Of course, Mlle. Helouin
might tell herself that the night before they had believed her when she
made other false accusations, but she knew that the falsehood which
flatters or wounds is much more readily believed than mere general
truth. So she suffered in silence, not, I suppose, without feeling
keenly that the sword of treachery sometimes turns against the person
who makes use of it. During this day and those which followed I had to
bear a kind of torture I had foreseen, though without realizing how
painful it would be. The marriage was fixed for a month later. All the
preparations had to be made at once and in great haste. Regularly each
morning came one of Mme. Provost's bouquets. Laces, dresses, jewels
poured in and were exhibited every evening to interested and envious
ladies. I had to give my opinion and my advice on everything. Mlle.
Marguerite begged for them with almost cruel persistence. I responded
as graciously as I could, and then returned to my tower and took from a
secret drawer the tattered handkerchief I had won at the risk of my
life, and I dried my tears with it. Weakness again! But what would you
have? I love her. Treachery, enmity, hopeless misunderstandings, her
pride and mine, separate us forever! So let it be, but nothing can
prevent me from living and dying with my heart full of her.
As for M. de Bevallan, I did not hate him; he was not worthy of it. He
is a vulgar but harmless soul. Thank God! I could receive the
overtures of his shallow friendliness without hypocrisy, and put my hand
tranquilly in his. But if he was too insignificant for my resentment,
that did not lessen the deep and lacerating agony with which I
recognised his unworthiness of the rare creature he would soon
possess--and never know. I cannot, and I dare not, describe the flood
of bitter thoughts, of nameless sensations which have been aroused in me
at the thought of this odious _mesalliance_, and have not yet subsided.
Love, real true love, has something sacred in it, which gives an almost
superhuman character to its pain as to its joy.
To the man who loves her, a woman has a sort of divinity of which no
other man knows the secret, which belongs only to her lover, and to see
even the threshold of this mystery profaned by another gives us a
strange and indescribable shock--a horror, as of sacrilege. It is not
merely that a precious possession is taken from you; it is an altar
polluted, a mystery violated, a god defiled! This is jealousy. At
least, it is mine. In all sincerity it seemed to me that in the whole
world I only had eyes to see, intelligence to understand, and a heart to
worship in its full perfection the beauty of this angel. With any other
she would be cast away, and lost; body and soul, she was destined for me
from all eternity. So vast was my pride! I expiated it with suffering
as immeasurable.
Nevertheless, some mocking demon whispered that in all probability
Marguerite would find more peace and real happiness in the kindly
friendship of a judicious husband, than she would have enjoyed in the
poetic passion of a romantic lover. Is it true? Is it possible? I do
not believe it. She will have peace! Granted. But peace, after all, is
not the best thing in life, nor the highest kind of happiness. If
insensibility and a petrified heart sufficed to make us happy, too many
people who do not deserve it would be happy. By dint of reasoning and
calculation we come to blaspheme against God, and to degrade his work.
God gives peace to the dead; to the living he gives passion! Yes, in
addition to the vulgar interests of daily life, which I am not so
foolish as to expect to set aside, a certain poetry is permitted, nay,
enjoined. That is the heritage of the immortal soul. And this soul
must feel, and sometimes reveal itself, whether by visions that
transcend the real, by aspirations that out-soar the possible, by
storms, or by tears. Yes, there is suffering which is better than
happiness, or, rather, which is itself happiness--that of a living
creature who knows all the agonies of the heart, and all the illusions
of the mind, and who accepts these noble torments with an equable mind
and a fraternal heart. That is the romance which every one who claims
to be a man, and to justify that claim, may, and indeed is bound to put
into his life.
And, after all, this boasted peace will not be hers. The marriage of
two stolid hearts, of two frozen imaginations, may produce the calm of
lifelessness. I can believe that, but the union of life with death
cannot be endured without a horrible oppression and ceaseless anguish.
In the midst of these personal miseries, which increased each day in
intensity, my only refuge was my poor old friend, Mlle. de Porhoet. She
did not know, or pretended not to know, the state of my heart; but with
her remote and perhaps involuntary allusions she touched my bleeding
wounds with a woman's light and delicate hand. And this soul, the
living symbol of sacrifice and resignation, which seemed already to
float above our earth, had a detachment, a calmness, and a gentle
firmness, which seemed to descend on me. I came to understand her
innocent delusion, and to share it with something of the same
simplicity. Bent over the album, I wandered with her for hours through
the cloisters of her cathedral, and breathed for a while the vague
perfumes of an ideal serenity.
I further found at the old lady's house another kind of distraction.
Habit gives an interest to every kind of work. To prevent Mlle. de
Porhoet from suspecting the final loss of her case, I regularly
continued the exploration of the family archives. Among the confused
mass I occasionally came across traditions, legends, and traces of
old-world customs which awakened my curiosity and carried back my
thoughts to far-off days remote from the crushing reality of life. My
perseverance maintained Mlle. de Porhoet in her illusions, and she was
grateful to me beyond my deserts. For I had come to take an interest in
this work---now practically useless--which repaid me for all my trouble,
and gave me a wholesome distraction from my grief.
As the fateful day approached, Mlle. Marguerite lost the feverish
vivacity which had seemed to inspire her since the date of the marriage
had been fixed, and relapsed at times into the fits of indolence and
sombre reverie formerly habitual to her. Once or twice I surprised her
watching me in wondering perplexity. Mme. Laroque, too, often looked at
me with an anxious and hesitating air, as if she wished and yet feared
to discuss some painful subject with me. The day before yesterday I
found myself by chance alone with her in the _salon_, which Mlle.
Helouin had just left to give some order. The trivial conversation in
which we had been engaged ceased suddenly, as by common consent. After a
short silence, Mme. Laroque said, in a voice full of emotion:
"M. Odiot, you are not wise in your choice of confidants."
"Confidants, madame? I do not follow you. Except Mlle. de Porhoet, I
have had no confidant in this place."
"Alas!" she replied, "I wish to believe you ... I _do_ believe you ...
but that is not enough----"
At this moment Mlle. Helouin came in, and no more could be said.
The day after--yesterday--I had ridden over in the morning to
superintend some wood-cutting in the neighbourhood. I was returning to
the chateau about four in the afternoon, when, at a sharp turn of the
road, I found myself face to face with Mlle. Marguerite. She was alone.
I prepared to pass her with a bow, but she stopped her horse.
"What a fine autumn day!" she said.
"Yes, mademoiselle. You are going for a ride?"
"As you see. I am making the best of my moments of independence, and,
in fact, I have been rather abusing my liberty, for I am somewhat tired
of solitude. But Alain is wanted at the house.... Poor Mervyn is
lame.... You would not care to take his place?"
"With pleasure. Where are you going?"
"Well ... I thought of riding as far as the tower of Elven."
With her whip she indicated the misty summit of a hill which rose on the
right of the road.
"I think," she went on, "you've never made that pilgrimage?"
"I have not. I have often meant to, but until now I have always put it
off. I don't know why."
"Well, that is fortunate; but it is getting late; we must make haste, if
you don't mind."