Satiated, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and
a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry
to be returning home. The journey--what better pretext could there be
for the headaches which demand darkness and silence, or long morning
hours in bed, for siestas?
"I must sleep off my love, as drunkards say that one must sleep off
one's wine. But what a horrid comparison! I shall dream deliciously. My
lover, I have only to shut my eyes to see you, happy in my happiness,
and to feel your dear caresses. Tell me, are you pleased with me? What
must I do to be still more your mistress? Yes, I ought not to have
gone away; I ought to have stayed with you, at your orders, forgetting
everything that is not you. You should have run and overtaken me, kept
me, locked me up! But listen, I shall go and see you every week. Oh!
how gladly I shall tell lies! How pleasant it will be for me to look
M. de la Mesangerie in the face while he reads around my eyes only the
innocent fatigue of a long journey!"
The delirium of the senses invaded all her life. She scarcely
remembered the events that had preceded her trip to Compiègne. She had
spent more than an hour wondering if there were round about St. Lô, or
in the forest of Cerisy, any of these oceans of bracken. She could not
think of any; but she would look....
M. de la Mesangerie, who was waiting for her at the station,
thought she looked tired. She was not tired; she was in a state of
hallucination. However, she had enough presence of mind to reproach her
husband for having deserted her. Thus, she hadn't dare fix definitely
on the furniture which they had almost chosen together; she had
spent two days of indecision in the Louvre stores, tiring every one,
including herself.
"You must go back there by yourself," she said, "it will be your
punishment."
M. de la Mesangerie was flattered. But there was another misfortune:
the toys for the children had been forgotten. Hortense felt rather
ashamed when she confessed this; she also inwardly regretted such an
oversight.
"I am a lover, but I am also a mother."
For the first time the possibility of a conflict between two tendencies
of her heart occurred to her. A few minutes' shopping in the town
repaired her omissions, and meanwhile gave opportunity to send a post
card to Barnavast. After that she abandoned herself, with a certain
pleasure, to the re-discovery of familiar landscapes: they were not so
different as she might have thought.
Leonor went back with no lyrical ideas in his head, but none the less
very well satisfied.
"I have a mistress of the very kind I wanted. Libertinage and
sentiment. The mixture has a very piquant savour. But I didn't believe
her capable of so much boldness. She would never have dared in her
own surroundings. People only become themselves out of their native
surroundings: they either die or else they develop according to their
own physiological logic. Breton girls, out of whom Paris sometimes
makes such agreeable little drabs, are dreamy little prudes in the
shade of their village belfry. Hortense is, as was said of Marion,
'naturally lascivious'; she might have died without knowing the art of
fruitfully employing this precious temperament. She seemed so awkward
and shame-faced when she abandoned herself at those first meetings of
ours. She loves me. But mayn't she perhaps love me too much? Leave her
husband! No she must remain my secret."
He was in a very good humour, and took an interest in the trees and
rivers and houses that he passed. The monotony of the apple orchards
and the fields of cows did not bore him in the least. Having nothing to
desire he was enjoying the mere process of living!
He stopped at Carentan to look for a house in which he could hide a
bed, failed to find one, but discovered a very decent furnished room.
The skipper of an English coasting steamer occupied it sometimes, but
the people would be happy to have a more sober tenant. Everything
smelt strongly of whiskey. He made the bargain, had the room cleaned,
paid well and made no concealment of his intentions. "Oh, yes," they
answered, "the other tenant used to bring them back with him too. It's
all right provided there's no noise."
"_Them_, he thought; that's what she'll be for these people. Just one
of them."
He left them and strolled along the shore to Grandcamp, thinking of
nothing but the little sensations of the moment. He was not one of
those who complain that the seaside is fringed with houses, that
there are shelters where one can take refuge from wind and rain, iced
drinks to melt the salt out of one's throat, board and lodgings and
the movement of a second-rate, but sometimes curious, humanity. These
little boys destined to become gross males, little girls whom time will
turn into pretentious young ladies and rich middle class brides--what
pretty and delicate animals they are! Much more amusing than little
dogs or kittens! He had often pondered on the mystery of intelligence
among children. How is it that these subtle creatures are so quickly
transformed into imbeciles? Why should the flower of these fine
graceful plants be silliness?
"But isn't it the same with animals, and especially among the animals
that approach our physiology most closely? The great apes, so
intelligent in their youth, become idiotic and cruel as soon as they
reach puberty. There is a cape there which they never double. A few men
succeed; their intelligence escapes shipwreck, and they float free and
smiling on the tranquillized sea. Sex is an absinthe whose strength
only the strong can stand; it poisons the blood of the commonalty of
men. Women succumb even more surely to this crisis. Those who have
been intelligent in their critical age is past. In both sexes there
are two successive crises: the sexual crisis and the sensual crisis.
The first comes at a fixed period for the individuals of the same
race and the same environment. The second generally coincides with
the completion of growth, with the state of physiological perfection.
Sometimes, when decline is beginning, a third crisis occurs, which is
like the first, inasmuch as it almost always brings with it a condition
of sentimentality. Hervart, I feel almost sure, is going through this
crisis now; Hortense and I are at the second; Rose is undergoing the
first."
Leonor, like many of his contemporaries, despised his profession. He
was an architect, but his desire was to write scientific works, showing
that physiology is the base of all the so-called psychical phenomena.
All the acts which men call virtuous or vicious were, he considered,
made inevitable by the state of the organs and the disposition of
the nervous system. Nothing made him want to laugh so much as the
pretensions of cold-blooded women who make a merit of their chastity;
and he was amazed, after so much scientific data, at the way in which
men went on considering the explosions of the organism as voluntary or
involuntary. The influence of conscience on human conduct seemed to
him null. He had demonstrated this to one of his friends, a master in
an ecclesiastical school, by means of a grandfather clock which stood
in his study. "What you call conscience," he said, "is the weight that
works the striking apparatus. But I can take off that weight and the
clock will go on making the hours without striking them." This friend
had confessed that his own very real chastity was entirely involuntary:
women roused no desire in him. He had once made the experiment and had
obtained, after the greatest difficulty, only a most disappointing
result. "I believe," he added, "that most of my colleagues are like
me. Some of them, more favoured by nature, employ their faculties in
secret; another has a private vice; and I know one who is a danger
for children. For the most part we are chaste by the will of nature
herself. Debauchery would be a torture for me. I am only interested in
mathematics."
Leonor, however, had no intention of succumbing to the embraces of the
sensual crisis.
"Let me profit by this momentary disposition, but let me preserve
at the same time a certain spirit. I mustn't compromise either my
physical, intellectual or social fortune. Within these limits I can
give myself body and soul to this midsummer madness. Hortense is a
perfect violin; I will be her devoted bow. And between her hands,
am not I also a good instrument? Oh! the fools who pass their life
fighting against their passions! After that, what happens? When they
see that the garden is almost flowerless, they come in melancholy
fashion to smell the last rose: the wind passes and they find only a
bush of leaves and thorns! But shouldn't I also ask: after that? May
it not be that the only delicious thing in life is the constancy of an
unconscious love? I know only too well that I love Hortense, and I know
only too well why I love her. It is certain that on the day when she
appears to me less beautiful I shall leave her. Suppose I let it go at
that? Suppose I looked for something else? Is variety as satisfactory
as quality? Let's have a look on this beach.... I must make use of
my state of mind, that is to say of the pleasing irritation of my
nerves...."
Chance is scarcely ever anything more than our aptitude to take
advantage of circumstances. On the beach Leonor met a young and pretty
woman, a young woman of the sort that one sees so many of, the sort
whose dress and figure tell one nothing decisive. He might have gone
on contemplating the melancholy death of the wave at her feet; but he
was walking for this very purpose--to meet a woman walking by herself:
his desire created the chance. For a moment he was afraid that she was
going to make advances, but she passed on. He followed. Skirting the
water all the while, the young woman moved away from the frequented
part of the sands. She tried to pick up a ribbon of weed, but it
escaped her. Leonor reached it. Out of the water, it was a long vicious
whip-lash. She thanked him, embarrassed by the present.
"Throw it back, then. It's like most of our desires. As soon as one
holds them fast, one would like to throw them back into the sea."
She gave a little laugh, a sad, almost a smothered, laugh.
"Oh! Not always," she said.
They turned back toward the dunes and, seated on the sand, began to
talk as though they were old friends.
She looked at him insistently, though not appearing to do so. Finally
she said:
"You don't look like a nasty man."
"Is that a compliment?"
"In my mouth, yes."
Then, little by little warming up, she talked without stop. It was a
flood of words, like the mounting tide, only more rapid. She told him
the story of her life. Leonor liked this sort of thing from ladies of
equivocal reputations, and he now displayed a keen interest, putting in
little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in
making out:
She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends,
always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond
suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of
daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not
to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined
her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her
friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who
lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money
during the summer The other, though he was older, gave less she liked
him better--being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant.
She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to
be the department of Fine Arts. The first of these friends imagined
that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil
servant was at Honfleur. That complicated her correspondence a little,
but it was better. Besides, she had had no opportunity of writing to
the civil servant for a long time, for he gave signs of life only by
an occasional post-card. That seemed to her suspicious and made her
sad. When he had last written he was at Cherbourg, but he had given no
address.
"He looks like a man who wants to get married. Married! he's not
capable of satisfying a woman. All the same, I like him. And besides, I
should miss him for other reasons."
This woman, with her commonplace life her commonplace brain, had an
agreeable voice, a delicate face, intelligence in her eyes and a sort
of natural elegance. Leonor felt a violent desire for her.
"I am spending several days here," he said.
"So am I."
"Shouldn't we spend them together?"
She gave a pretty laugh, allowed herself to be entreated, and accepted,
after having once more examined Leonor with a sagacious eye. The
proposition accepted, she offered him her lips, looked at the time on a
minute watch and got up, saying:
"Let's go and have dinner. We must hurry to get a little table."
Her name was Gratienne. She was a little woman, with a mass of dark
hair, and her profile was charming. Leonor was amused by the contrast
between this little statuette and the opulent Leda type of Hortense.
She had a supple body, fresh and delicately scented; and since she
was a professional and ardently shared the pleasures she provoked, he
passed several pleasant nights. The days were much less agreeable, for
he had to submit to long prolix confidences. There were amusing touches
in her stories, but from professional ethics she refrained from ever
uttering a proper name, a fact which somewhat confused her anecdotes.
One evening, however, in a moment of distraction or of confidence, she
allowed Leonor to turn over her little collection of post-cards.
"Besides," added, "as you're not Parisian, the names will tell you
nothing."
Leonor looked at ships, mountains, casinos, girls bathing and many
other interesting pictures. Some were signed Theobald and came from
Austria, others Paul, and came from the Pyrenees.
"Hullo, Tourlaville castle!"
Without appearing to do so, he examined the writing of the address with
care. He did not know the hand. The card was signed H. He passed on.
Another of the La Hague castles. This time the signature was Herv.
"Surely it's Hervart."
The name appeared in full at the bottom of Martinvast Castle, with a
postscript of "love and kisses."
"That must be the civil servant in the Fine Arts Department. Obviously."
For a moment he felt annoyed at being the collaborator, even the casual
collabor, of M. Hervart. He would have preferred someone he did not
know. Theobald pleased him better. But all at once he thought of Rose:
"It's curious," he said to himself, "that we should love the same women
in all the different styles."
While Gratienne was looking out of the window, he slipped the card of
Martinvast castle into his pocket.