ask him to tell you who his seconds are. It is to them that you must
explain matters, if the idiotic business doesn’t settle itself. Dhurmer
didn’t seem particularly keen.”
“We will tell him nothing,” said Lucien, “and leave him all the shame
of retreating. For he will shuffle out of it, I’m certain.”
Bernard asked if he might see Olivier. But Edouard thought he had
better be kept quiet.
Bernard and Lucien were just leaving, when young George arrived.
He came from Passavant’s, but had not been able to get hold of his
brother’s things.
“Monsieur le Comte is not at home,” he had been told. “He has left no
orders.”
And the servant had shut the door in his face.
A certain gravity in Edouard’s tone, in the bearing of the two others,
alarmed George. He scented something out of the way--made enquiries.
Edouard was obliged to tell him.
“But say nothing about it to your parents.”
George was delighted to be let into a secret.
“A fellow can hold his tongue,” said he. And as he had nothing to do
that morning, he proposed to accompany Bernard and Lucien on their way
to Dhurmer’s.
After his three visitors had left him, Edouard called the charwoman.
Next to his own room was a spare room, which he told her to get ready,
so that Olivier might be put into it. Then he went noiselessly back to
the studio. Olivier was resting. Edouard sat down again beside him. He
had taken a book, but he soon threw it aside without having opened it,
and watched his friend sleeping.
X
OLIVIER’S CONVALESCENCE
_Rien n’est simple de ce qui s’offre à l’âme; et l’âme ne s’offre
jamais simple à aucun sujet_.
PASCAL
“I THINK he will be glad to see you,” said Edouard to Bernard next
morning. “He asked me this morning if you hadn’t come yesterday.
He must have heard your voice, at the time when I thought he was
unconscious.... He keeps his eyes shut, but he doesn’t sleep. He
doesn’t speak. He often puts his hand to his forehead, as if it were
aching. Whenever I speak to him he frowns; but if I go away, he calls
me back and makes me sit beside him.... No, he isn’t in the studio.
I have put him in the spare room next to mine, so that I can receive
visitors without disturbing him.”
They went into it.
“I’ve come to enquire after you,” said Bernard very softly.
Olivier’s features brightened at the sound of his friend’s voice. It
was almost a smile already.
“I was expecting you.”
“I’ll go away if I tire you.”
“Stay.”
But as he said the word, Olivier put his finger on his lips. He didn’t
want to be spoken to. Bernard, who was going up for his _viva
voce_ in three days’ time, never moved without carrying in his
pocket one of those manuals which contain a concentrated elixir of the
bitter stuff which is the subject matter of examinations. He sat down
beside his bed and plunged into his reading. Olivier, his face turned
to the wall, seemed to be asleep. Edouard had gone to his own room,
which communicated with Olivier’s; the door between them had been left
open, and from time to time he appeared at it. Every two hours he made
Olivier drink a glass of milk, but only since that morning. During the
whole of the preceding day, the patient had been unable to take any
food.
A long time went by. Bernard rose to go. Olivier turned round, held out
his hand, and with an attempt at a smile:
“You’ll come back to-morrow?”
At the last moment he called him back, signed to him to stoop down, as
if he were afraid of not making himself heard, and whispered:
“Did you ever know such an idiot?”
Then, as though to forestall Bernard’s protest, put his finger again to
his lips.
“No, no; I’ll explain later.”
The next morning Edouard received a letter from Laura, when Bernard
came, he gave it to him to read:
My dear friend,
I am writing to you in a great hurry to try and prevent an absurd
disaster. You will help me, I am sure, if only this letter reaches you
in time.
Felix has just left for Paris, with the intention of going to see you.
His idea is to get from you the explanation which I refuse to give
him; he wants you to tell him the name of the person, whom he wishes
to challenge. I have done all I can to stop him, but nothing has any
effect and all I say merely serves to make him more determined. You
are the only person who will perhaps be able to dissuade him. He has
confidence in you and will, I hope, listen to you. Remember that he
has never in his life held a pistol or a foil in his hands. The idea
that he may risk his life for my sake is intolerable to me; but--I
hardly dare own it--I am really more afraid of his covering himself
with ridicule.
Since I got back, Felix has been all that is attentive and tender and
kind; but I cannot bring myself to show more love for him than I feel.
He suffers from this; and I believe it is his desire to force my
esteem, my admiration, that is making him take this step, which will
no doubt appear to you unconsidered, but of which he thinks day and
night, and which, since my return, has become an _idée fixe_ with
him. He has certainly forgiven me; but he bears ... a mortal grudge.
Please, I beg of you, welcome him as affectionately as you would
welcome myself; no proof of your friendship could touch me more.
Forgive me for not having written to you sooner to tell you once more
how grateful I am for all the care and kindness you lavished on me
during our stay in Switzerland. The recollection of that time keeps me
warm and helps me to bear my life.
Your ever anxious and ever confident friend
LAURA
“What do you mean to do?” asked Bernard, as he gave the letter back.
“What _can_ I do?” replied Edouard, slightly irritated, not so
much by Bernard’s question, as by the fact that he had already put
it to himself. “If he comes, I will receive him to the best of my
abilities. If he asks my advice, I will give him the best I can; and
try to persuade him that the most sensible thing he can do is to keep
quiet. People like poor Douviers are always wrong to put themselves
forward. You’d think the same if you knew him, believe me. Laura, on
the other hand, was cut out for a leading rôle. Each of us assumes the
drama that suits his measure, and is allotted his share of tragedy.
What can we do about it? Laura’s drama is to have married a super.
There’s no help for that.”
“And Douviers’ drama is to have married someone who will always be his
superior, do what he may,” rejoined Bernard.
“Do what he may ...” echoed Edouard, “--and do what Laura may. The
admirable thing is that Laura, out of regret for her fault, out of
repentance, wanted to humble herself before him; but he immediately
prostrated himself lower still; so that all that each of them did
merely served to make _him_ smaller and _her_ greater.”
“I pity him very much,” said Bernard. “But why won’t you allow that he
too may become greater by prostrating himself?”
“Because he lacks the lyrical spirit,” said Edouard irrefutably.
“What _do_ you mean?”
“He never forgets himself in what he feels, so that he never feels
anything great. Don’t push me too hard. I have my own ideas; but they
don’t lend themselves to the yard measure, and I don’t care to measure
them. Paul-Ambroise is in the habit of saying that he refuses to take
count of anything that can’t be put down in figures; I think he is
playing on the words ‘take count’; for if that were the case, we should
be obliged to leave God out of ‘the account.’ That of course is where
he is tending and what he desires.... Well, for instance, I think I
call _lyrical_ the state of the man who consents to be vanquished
by God.”
“Isn’t that exactly what the word _enthusiasm_ means?”
“And perhaps the word _inspiration_. Yes, that is just what I
mean: Douviers is a being who is incapable of inspiration. I admit that
Paul-Ambroise is right when he considers inspiration as one of the most
harmful things in art; and I am willing to believe that one can only be
an artist on condition of mastering the lyrical state; but in order to
master it, one must first of all experience it.”
“Don’t you think that this state of divine visitation can be
physiologically explained by....”
“Much good that will do!” interrupted Edouard. “Such considerations
as that, even if they are true, only embarrass fools. No doubt there
is no mystical movement that has not its corresponding material
manifestation. What then? Mind, in order to bear its witness, cannot do
without matter. Hence the mystery of the incarnation.”
“On the other hand, matter does admirably without mind.”
“Oh, ho! we don’t know about that!” said Edouard, laughing.
Bernard was very much amused to hear him talk in this way. As a
rule Edouard was more reserved. The mood he was in to-day came from
Olivier’s presence. Bernard understood it.
“He is talking to me as he would like already to be talking to him,”
thought he. “It is Olivier who ought to be his secretary. As soon as
Olivier is well again, I shall retire. My place is not here.”
He thought this without bitterness, entirely taken up as he now was by
Sarah, with whom he had spent the preceding night and whom he was to
see that night too.
“We’ve left Douviers a long way behind,” he said, laughing in his turn.
“Will you tell him about Vincent?”
“Goodness no! What for?”
“Don’t you think it’s poisoning Douviers’ life not to know whom to
suspect?”
“Perhaps you are right. But you must say that to Laura. I couldn’t tell
him without betraying her.... Besides I don’t even know where he is.”
“Vincent?... Passavant must know.”
A ring at the door interrupted them. Madame Molinier had come to
enquire for her son. Edouard joined her in the studio.
XI
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: PAULINE
VISIT from Pauline. I was a little puzzled how to let her know, and yet
I could not keep her in ignorance of her son’s illness. I thought it
useless to say anything about the incomprehensible attempt at suicide
and spoke simply of a violent liver attack, which, as a matter of fact,
remains the clearest result of the proceedings.
“I am reassured already by knowing Olivier is with you,” said Pauline.
“I shouldn’t nurse him better myself, for I feel that you love him as
much as I do.”
As she said these last words, she looked at me with an odd insistence.
Did I imagine the meaning she seemed to put in her look? I was feeling
what one is accustomed to call “a bad conscience” as regards Pauline,
and was only able to stammer out something incoherent. I must also say
that, sur-saturated as I have been with emotion for the last two days,
I had entirely lost command of myself; my confusion must have been very
apparent, for she added:
“Your blush is eloquent!... My poor dear friend, don’t expect
reproaches from me. I should reproach you if you didn’t love him....
Can I see him?”
I took her in to Olivier. Bernard had left the room as he heard us
coming.
“How beautiful he is!” she murmured, bending over the bed. Then,
turning towards me: “You will kiss him from me. I am afraid of waking
him.”
Pauline is decidedly an extraordinary woman. And to-day is not the
first time that I have begun to think so. But I could not have hoped
that she would push comprehension so far. And yet it seemed to me that
behind the cordiality of her words and the pleasantness she put into
her voice, I could distinguish a touch of constraint (perhaps because
of the effort I myself made to hide my embarrassment); and I remembered
a sentence of our last conversation--a sentence which seemed to me
full of wisdom even then, when I was not interested in finding it so:
“I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan’t be able to
prevent.” Evidently Pauline was striving after good grace; and, as if
in response to my secret thoughts, she went on again, as soon as we
were back in the studio:
“By not being shocked just now, I am afraid it is I who have shocked
you. There are certain liberties of thought of which men would like to
keep the monopoly. And yet I can’t pretend to have more reprobation
for you than I feel. Life has not left me ignorant. I know what a
precarious thing boys’ purity is, even when it has the appearance of
being most intact. And besides, I don’t think that the youths who are
chastest turn into the best husbands--nor even, unfortunately, the most
faithful!” she added, smiling sadly. “And then their father’s example
made me wish other virtues for my sons. But I am afraid of their taking
to debauchery or to degrading liaisons. Olivier is easily led astray.
You will have it at heart to keep him straight. I think you will be
able to do him good. It only rests with you....”
These words filled me with confusion.
“You make me out better than I am.”
That is all I could find to say, in the stupidest, stiffest way. She
went on with exquisite delicacy:
“It is Olivier who will make you better. With love’s help what can one
not obtain from oneself?”
“Does Oscar know he is with me?” I asked, to put a little air between
us.
“He does not even know he is in Paris. I told you that he pays very
little attention to his sons. That is why I counted on you to speak to
George. Have you done so?”
“No--not yet.”
Pauline’s brow grew suddenly sombre.
“I am becoming more and more anxious. He has an air of assurance, which
seems to me a combination of recklessness, cynicism, presumption. He
works well. His masters are pleased with him; my anxiety has nothing to
lay hold of....”
Then all of a sudden, throwing aside her calm and speaking with an
excitement such that I barely recognized her:
“Do you realize what my life is?” she exclaimed. “I have restricted my
happiness; year by year, I have been obliged to narrow it down; one by
one, I have curtailed my hopes. I have given in; I have tolerated; I
have pretended not to understand, not to see.... But all the same, one
clings to something, however small; and when even that fails one!... In
the evening he comes and works beside me under the lamp; when sometimes
he raises his head from his book, it isn’t affection that I see in his
look--it’s defiance. I haven’t deserved it.... Sometimes it seems to me
suddenly that all my love for him is turned to hatred; and I wish that
I had never had any children.”
Her voice trembled. I took her hand.
“Olivier will repay you, I vouch for it.”
She made an effort to recover herself.
“Yes, I am mad to speak so; as if I hadn’t three sons. When I think of
one, I forget the others.... You’ll think me very unreasonable, but
there are really moments when reason isn’t enough.”
“And yet what I admire most about you is your reasonableness,” said I
baldly, in the hopes of calming her. “The other day, you talked about
Oscar so wisely....”
Pauline drew herself up abruptly. She looked at me and shrugged her
shoulders.
“It’s always when a woman appears most resigned that she seems the most
reasonable,” she cried, almost vindictively.
This reflection irritated me, by reason of its very justice. In order
not to show it, I asked:
“Anything new about the letters?”
“New? New?... What on earth that’s new can happen between Oscar and me?”
“He was expecting an explanation.”
“So was I. I was expecting an explanation. All one’s life long one
expects explanations.”
“Well, but,” I continued, rather annoyed, “Oscar felt that he was in a
false situation.”
“But, my dear friend, you know well enough that nothing lasts more
eternally than a false situation. It’s the business of you novelists
to try to solve them. In real life nothing is solved; everything
continues. We remain in our uncertainty; and we _shall_ remain to
the very end without knowing what to make of things. In the mean time
life goes on and on, the same as ever. And one gets resigned to that
too; as one does to everything else ... as one does to everything.
Well, well, good-bye.”
I was painfully affected by a new note in the sound of her voice, which
I had never heard before; a kind of aggressiveness, which forced me
to think (not at the actual moment, perhaps, but when I recalled our
conversation) that Pauline accepted my relations with Olivier much less
easily than she said; less easily than all the rest. I am willing to
believe that she does not exactly reprobate them, that from some points
of view she is glad of them, as she lets me understand; but, perhaps
without owning it to herself, she is none the less jealous of them.
This is the only explanation I can discover for her sudden outburst of
revolt, so soon after, and on a subject which, on the whole, she had
much less at heart. It was as though by granting me at first what cost
her more, she had exhausted her whole stock of benignity and suddenly
found herself with none left. Hence her intemperate, her almost
extravagant language, which must have astonished her herself, when she
came to recall it, and in which her jealousy unconsciously betrayed
itself.
In reality, I ask myself, what can be the state of mind of a woman who
is not resigned? An “honest woman,” I mean.... As if what is called
“honesty” in woman did not always imply resignation!
This evening Olivier is perceptibly better. But returning life brings
anxiety along with it. I reassure him by every device in my power.
“His duel?”--Dhurmer has run away into the country. One really can’t
run after him.
“The review?”--Bercail is in charge of it.
“The things he had left at Passavant’s?”--This is the thorniest point.
I had to admit that George had been unable to get possession of them;
but I have promised to go and fetch them myself to-morrow. He is
afraid, from what I can gather, that Passavant may keep them as a
hostage; inadmissable for a single moment!
Yesterday, I was sitting up late in the studio, after having written
this, when I heard Olivier call me. In a moment I was by his side.
“I should have come myself, only I was too weak,” he said. “I tried
to get up, but when I stand, my head turns round and I was afraid of
falling. No, no, I’m not feeling worse; on the contrary. But I had to
speak to you.
“You must promise me something.... Never to try and find out why I
wanted to kill myself the other night. I don’t think I know myself.
I can’t remember. Even if I tried to tell you, upon my honour, I
shouldn’t be able to.... But you mustn’t think that it’s because of
anything mysterious in my life, anything you don’t know about.” Then,
in a whisper: “And don’t imagine either that it was because I was
ashamed....”
Although we were in the dark, he hid his face in my shoulder.
“Or if I am ashamed, it is of the dinner the other evening; of being
drunk, of losing my temper, of crying; and of this summer ... and of
having waited for you so badly.”
Then he protested that none of all that was part of him any more; that
it was all that that he had wanted to kill--that he had killed--that he
had wiped out of his life.
I felt, in his very agitation, how weak he still was, and rocked him in
my arms, like a child, without saying anything. He was in need of rest;
his silence made me hope he was asleep; but at last I heard him murmur:
“When I am with you, I am too happy to sleep.”
He did not let me leave him till morning.
XII
EDOUARD AND THEN STROUVILHOU VISIT PASSAVANT
BERNARD arrived early that morning. Olivier was still asleep. As on the
preceding days, Bernard settled himself down at his friend’s bedside
with a book, which allowed Edouard to go off guard, in order to call on
the Comte de Passavant, as he had promised. At such an early hour he
was sure to be in.
The sun was shining; a keen air was scouring the trees of their last
leaves; everything seemed limpid, bathed in azure. Edouard had not been
out for three days. His heart was dilated by an immense joy; and even
his whole being, like an opened, empty wrapping, seemed floating on a
shoreless sea, a divine ocean of loving-kindness. Love and fine weather
have this power of boundlessly enlarging our contours.
Edouard knew that he would want a taxi to bring back Olivier’s things;
but he was in no hurry to take one; he enjoyed walking. The state of
benevolence in which he felt himself towards the whole world, was no
good preparation for facing Passavant. He told himself that he ought
to execrate him; he went over in his mind all his grievances--but
they had ceased to sting. This rival, whom only yesterday he had so
detested, he could detest no longer--he had ousted him too completely.
At any rate he could not detest him that morning. And as, on the other
hand, he thought it prudent that no trace of this reversal of feeling
should appear, for fear of its betraying his happiness, he would
have gladly evaded the interview. And indeed, why the dickens was he
going to it? He! Edouard! Going to the Rue de Babylone, to ask for
Olivier’s things--on what pretext? He had undertaken the commission
very thoughtlessly, he told himself, as he walked along; it would imply
that Olivier had chosen to take up his abode with him--exactly what he
wanted to conceal.... Too late, however, to draw back; Olivier had his
promise. At any rate, he must be very cold with Passavant, very firm. A
taxi went by and he hailed it.
Edouard knew Passavant ill. He was ignorant of one of the chief traits
of his character. No one had ever succeeded in catching Passavant out;
it was unbearable to him to be worsted. In order not to acknowledge his
defeats to himself, he always affected to have desired his fate, and
whatever happened to him, he pretended that that was what he wished. As
soon as he understood that Olivier was escaping him, his one care was
to dissemble his rage. Far from attempting to run after him, and risk
being ridiculous, he forced himself to keep a stiff lip and shrug his
shoulders. His emotions were never too violent to keep under control.
Some people congratulate themselves on this, and refuse to acknowledge
that they owe their mastery over themselves less to their force of
character than to a certain poverty of temperament. I don’t allow
myself to generalize; let us suppose that what I have said applies only
to Passavant. He did not therefore find much difficulty in persuading
himself that he had had enough of Olivier; that during these two summer
months he had exhausted the charm of an adventure which ran the risk of
encumbering his life; that, for the rest, he had exaggerated the boy’s
beauty, his grace and his intellectual resources; that, indeed, it was
high time he should open his eyes to the inconveniences of confiding
the management of a review to anyone so young and inexperienced. Taking
everything into consideration, Strouvilhou would serve his purpose far
better (as regards the review, that is). He had written to him and
appointed him to come and see him that very morning.
Let us add too that Passavant was mistaken as to the cause of Olivier’s
desertion. He thought he had made him jealous by his attentions to
Sarah; he was pleased with this idea which flattered his self-conceit;
his vexation was soothed by it.
He was expecting Strouvilhou; and as he had given orders that he was to
be let in at once, Edouard benefited by the instructions and was shown
in to Passavant without being announced.
Passavant gave no signs of his surprise. Fortunately for him, the part
he had to play was suited to his temperament and he was easily able to
switch his mind on to it. As soon as Edouard had explained the motive
of his visit:
“I’m delighted to hear what you say. Then really? You’re willing to
look after him? It doesn’t put you out too much?... Olivier is a
charming boy, but he was beginning to be terribly in my way here. I
didn’t like to let him feel it--he’s so nice.... And I knew he didn’t
want to go back to his parents.... Once one has left one’s parents,
you know--.... Oh! but now I come to think of it, his mother is a
half-sister of yours, isn’t she?... Or something of that kind? Olivier
must have told me so, I expect. Then, nothing could be more natural
than that he should stay with you. No one can possibly smile at it”
(though he himself didn’t fail to do so as he said the words). “With
me, you understand, it was rather more shady. In fact, that was one of
the reasons that made me anxious for him to go.... Though I am by no
means in the habit of minding public opinion. No; it was in his own
interest rather....”
The conversation had not begun badly; but Passavant could not resist
the pleasure of pouring a few drops of his poisonous perfidy on
Edouard’s happiness. He always kept a supply on hand; one never knows
what may happen.