For several days Calyste went regularly to Les Touches. He paced round
and round the lawn, where he had sometimes walked with Beatrix on his
arm. He often went to Croisic to stand upon that fateful rock, or lie
for hours in the bush of box; for, by studying the footholds on the
sides of the fissure, he had found a means of getting up and down.
These solitary trips, his silence, his gravity, made his mother very
anxious. After about two weeks, during which time this conduct, like
that of a caged animal, lasted, this poor lover, caged in his despair,
ceased to cross the bay; he had scarcely strength to drag himself along
the road from Guerande to the spot where he had seen Beatrix watching
from her window. The family, delighted at the departure of “those
Parisians,” to use a term of the provinces, saw nothing fatal or
diseased about the lad. The two old maids and the rector, pursuing their
scheme, had kept Charlotte de Kergarouet, who nightly played off her
little coquetries on Calyste, obtaining in return nothing better than
advice in playing _mouche_. During these long evenings, Calyste sat
between his mother and the little Breton girl, observed by the rector
and Charlotte’s aunt, who discussed his greater or less depression as
they walked home together. Their simple minds mistook the lethargic
indifference of the hapless youth for submission to their plans. One
evening when Calyste, wearied out, went off suddenly to bed, the players
dropped their cards upon the table and looked at each other as the young
man closed the door of his chamber. One and all had listened to the
sound of his receding steps with anxiety.
“Something is the matter with Calyste,” said the baroness, wiping her
eyes.
“Nothing is the matter,” replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel; “but you
should marry him at once.”
“Do you believe that marriage would divert his mind?” asked the
chevalier.
Charlotte looked reprovingly at Monsieur du Halga, whom she now began
to think ill-mannered, depraved, immoral, without religion, and very
ridiculous about his dog,--opinions which her aunt, defending the old
sailor, combated.
“I shall lecture Calyste to-morrow morning,” said the baron, whom
the others had thought asleep. “I do not wish to go out of this world
without seeing my grandson, a little pink and white Guenic with a Breton
cap on his head.”
“Calyste doesn’t say a word,” said old Zephirine, “and there’s no making
out what’s the matter with him. He doesn’t eat; I don’t see what he
lives on. If he gets his meals at Les Touches, the devil’s kitchen
doesn’t nourish him.”
“He is in love,” said the chevalier, risking that opinion very timidly.
“Come, come, old gray-beard, you’ve forgotten to put in your stake!”
cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. “When you begin to think of your young
days you forget everything.”
“Come to breakfast to-morrow,” said old Zephirine to her friend
Jacqueline; “my brother will have had a talk with his son, and we can
settle the matter finally. One nail, you know, drives out another.”
“Not among Bretons,” said the chevalier.
The next day Calyste saw Charlotte, as she arrived dressed with
unusual care, just after the baron had given him, in the dining-room,
a discourse on matrimony, to which he could make no answer. He now knew
the ignorance of his father and mother and all their friends; he had
gathered the fruits of the tree of knowledge, and knew himself to be
as much isolated as if he did not speak the family language. He merely
requested his father to give him a few days’ grace. The old baron rubbed
his hands with joy, and gave fresh life to the baroness by whispering in
her ear what he called the good news.
Breakfast was gay; Charlotte, to whom the baron had given a hint, was
sparkling. After the meal was over, Calyste went out upon the portico
leading to the garden, followed by Charlotte; he gave her his arm and
led her to the grotto. Their parents and friends were at the window,
looking at them with a species of tenderness. Presently Charlotte,
uneasy at her suitor’s silence, looked back and saw them, which gave her
an opportunity of beginning the conversation by saying to Calyste,--
“They are watching us.”
“They cannot hear us,” he replied.
“True; but they see us.”
“Let us sit down, Charlotte,” replied Calyste, gently taking her hand.
“Is it true that your banner used formerly to float from that twisted
column?” asked Charlotte, with a sense that the house was already hers;
how comfortable she should be there! what a happy sort of life! “You
will make some changes inside the house, won’t you, Calyste?” she said.
“I shall not have time, my dear Charlotte,” said the young man, taking
her hands and kissing them. “I am going now to tell you my secret. I
love too well a person whom you have seen, and who loves me, to be able
to make the happiness of any other woman; though I know that from our
childhood you and I have been destined for each other by our friends.”
“But she is married, Calyste.”
“I shall wait,” replied the young man.
“And I, too,” said Charlotte, her eyes filling with tears. “You
cannot long love a woman like that, who, they say, has gone off with a
singer--”
“Marry, my dear Charlotte,” said Calyste, interrupting her. “With the
fortune your aunt intends to give you, which is enormous for Brittany,
you can choose some better man than I. You could marry a titled man.
I have brought you here, not to tell you what you already knew, but
to entreat you, in the name of our childish friendship, to take this
rupture upon yourself, and say that you have rejected me. Say that you
do not wish to marry a man whose heart is not free; and thus I shall be
spared at least the sense that I have done you public wrong. You do not
know, Charlotte, how heavy a burden life now is to me. I cannot bear the
slightest struggle; I am weakened like a man whose vital spark is gone,
whose soul has left him. If it were not for the grief I should cause my
mother, I would have flung myself before now into the sea; I have not
returned to the rocks at Croisic since the day that temptation became
almost irresistible. Do not speak of this to any one. Good-bye,
Charlotte.”
He took the young girl’s head and kissed her hair; then he left the
garden by the postern-gate and fled to Les Touches, where he stayed near
Camille till past midnight. On returning home, at one in the morning, he
found his mother awaiting him with her worsted-work. He entered softly,
clasped her hand in his, and said,--
“Is Charlotte gone?”
“She goes to-morrow, with her aunt, in despair, both of them,” answered
the baroness. “Come to Ireland with me, my Calyste.”
“Many a time I have thought of flying there--”
“Ah!” cried the baroness.
“With Beatrix,” he added.
Some days after Charlotte’s departure, Calyste joined the Chevalier du
Halga in his daily promenade on the mall with his little dog. They sat
down in the sunshine on a bench, where the young man’s eyes could wander
from the vanes of Les Touches to the rocks of Croisic, against which the
waves were playing and dashing their white foam. Calyste was thin and
pale; his strength was diminishing, and he was conscious at times
of little shudders at regular intervals, denoting fever. His eyes,
surrounded by dark circles, had that singular brilliancy which a fixed
idea gives to the eyes of hermits and solitary souls, or the ardor of
contest to those of the strong fighters of our present civilization. The
chevalier was the only person with whom he could exchange a few ideas.
He had divined in that old man an apostle of his own religion; he
recognized in his soul the vestiges of an eternal love.
“Have you loved many women in your life?” he asked him on the second
occasion, when, as seamen say, they sailed in company along the mall.
“Only one,” replied Du Halga.
“Was she free?”
“No,” exclaimed the chevalier. “Ah! how I suffered! She was the wife of
my best friend, my protector, my chief--but we loved each other so!”
“Did she love you?” said Calyste.
“Passionately,” replied the chevalier, with a fervency not usual with
him.
“You were happy?”
“Until her death; she died at the age of forty-nine, during the
emigration, at St. Petersburg, the climate of which killed her. She must
be very cold in her coffin. I have often thought of going there to fetch
her, and lay her in our dear Brittany, near to me! But she lies in my
heart.”
The chevalier brushed away his tears. Calyste took his hand and pressed
it.
“I care for this little dog more than for life itself,” said the old
man, pointing to Thisbe. “The little darling is precisely like the one
she held on her knees and stroked with her beautiful hands. I never look
at Thisbe but what I see the hands of Madame l’Amirale.”
“Did you see Madame de Rochefide?” asked Calyste.
“No,” replied the chevalier. “It is sixty-eight years since I have
looked at any woman with attention--except your mother, who has
something of Madame l’Amirale’s complexion.”