count."
"And suppose you did not love anybody?"
"The idea! One loves always, always."
Marthe shook her head doubtfully.
"No," she said. "We don't love. We want to love. Love is the greatest
gift of God. Pray to Him that He may grant it you."
"But suppose my love is not returned?"
"Even if your love is not returned, you will be all the happier."
Jacqueline's face fell: she pouted a little:
"I don't want that," she said. "It wouldn't give me any pleasure."
Marthe laughed indulgently, looked at Jacqueline, sighed, and then went
on with her work.
"Poor child!" she said once more.
"Why do you keep on saying: 'Poor child'?" asked Jacqueline uneasily. "I
don't want to be a poor child. I want--I want so much to be happy!"
"That is why I say: 'Poor child!'"
Jacqueline sulked for a little. But it did not last long. Marthe laughed
at her so kindly that she was disarmed. She kissed her, pretending to be
angry. But in their hearts children of that age are secretly flattered
by predictions of suffering in later life, which is so far away. When it
is afar off there is a halo of poetry round sorrow, and we dread nothing
so much as a dull, even life.
Jacqueline did not notice that her aunt's face was growing paler and
paler. She observed that Marthe was going out less and less, but she
attributed it to her stay-at-home disposition, about which she used
often to tease her. Once or twice, when she called, she had met the
doctor coming out. She had asked her aunt:
"Are you ill?"
Marthe replied:
"It's nothing."
But now she had even given up her weekly dinner at the Langeais'.
Jacqueline was hurt, and went and reproached her bitterly.
"My dear," said Marthe gently, "I am rather tired."
But Jacqueline would not listen to anything. That was a poor sort of
excuse!
"It can't be very exhausting for you to come to our house for a couple
of hours a week! You don't love me," she would say. "You love nothing
but your own fireside."
But when at home she proudly told them how she had scolded her aunt,
Langeais cut her short with:
"Let your aunt be! Don't you know that the poor creature is very ill!"
Jacqueline grew pale: and in a trembling voice she asked what was the
matter with her aunt. They tried not to tell her. Finally, she found out
that Marthe was dying of cancer: she had had it for some months.
For some days Jacqueline lived in a state of terror. She was comforted a
little when she saw her aunt. Marthe was mercifully not suffering any
great pain. She still had her tranquil smile, which in her thin
transparent face seemed to shine like the light of an inward lamp.
Jacqueline said to herself:
"No. It is impossible. They must be mistaken. She would not be so
calm...."
She went on with the tale of her little confidences, to which Marthe
listened with more interest than heretofore. Only, sometimes, in the
middle of a conversation, her aunt would leave the room, without giving
any sign to show that she was in pain: and she would not return until
the attack was over, and her face had regained its serenity. She did not
like anybody to refer to her condition, and tried to hide it: she had a
horror of the disease that held her in its grip, and would not think of
it: all her efforts were directed towards preserving the peace of her
last months. The end came sooner than it was expected. Very soon she saw
nobody but Jacqueline. Then Jacqueline's visits had to be curtailed.
Then came the day of parting. Marthe was lying in her bed, which she had
not left for some weeks, when she took a tender farewell of her little
friend with a few gentle, comforting words. And then she shut herself
up, to die.
Jacqueline passed through months of despair. Marthe's death came at the
same time as the very worst hours of her moral distress, against which
Marthe had been the only person who could help her. She was horribly
deserted and alone. She needed the support of a religion. There was
apparently no reason why she should have lacked that support: she had
always been made to practise the duties of religion: her mother
practised them regularly. But that was just the difficulty: her mother
practised them, but her Aunt Marthe did not. And how was she to avoid
comparison? The eyes of a child are susceptible to many untruths, to
which her elders never give a thought, and children notice many
weaknesses and contradictions. Jacqueline noticed that her mother and
those who said that they believed had as much fear of death as though
there had been no faith in them. No: religion was not a strong enough
support.... And in addition there were certain personal experiences,
feelings of revolt and disgust, a tactless confessor who had hurt
her.... She went on practising, but without faith, just as she paid
calls, because she had been well brought up. Religion, like the world,
seemed to her to be utterly empty. Her only stay was the memory of the
dead woman, in which she was wrapped up. She had many grounds for
self-reproach in her treatment of her aunt, whom in her childish
selfishness she had often neglected, while now she called to her in
vain. She idealized her image: and the great example which Marthe had
left upon her mind of a profound life of meditation helped to fill her
with distaste for the life of the world, in which there was no truth or
serious purpose. She saw nothing but its hypocrisy, and those amiable
compromises, which at any other time would have amused her, now revolted
her. She was in a condition of moral hypersensitiveness, and everything
hurt her: her conscience was raw. Her eyes were opened to certain facts
which hitherto had escaped her in her heedlessness.
One afternoon she was in the drawing-room with her mother. Madame
Langeais was receiving a caller,--a fashionable painter, a good-looking,
pompous man, who was often at the house, but not on terms of intimacy.
Jacqueline had a feeling that she was in the way, but that only made her
more determined to stay. Madame Langeais was not very well; she had a
headache, which made her a little dull, or perhaps it was one of those
headache preventives which the ladies of to-day eat like sweets, so that
they have the result of completely emptying their pretty heads, and she
was not very guarded in what she said. In the course of the conversation
she thoughtlessly called her visitor:
"My dear...."
She noticed the slip at once. He did not flinch any more than she, and
they went on talking politely. Jacqueline, who was pouring out tea, was
so amazed that she almost dropped a cup. She had a feeling that they
were exchanging a meaning smile behind her back. She turned and
intercepted their privy looks, which were immediately disguised.--The
discovery upset her completely. Though she had been brought up with the
utmost freedom, and had often heard and herself laughed and talked about
such intrigues, it hurt her so that she could hardly bear it when she
saw that her mother.... Her mother: no, it was not the same thing!...
With her habitual exaggeration she rushed from one extreme to the
other. Till then she had suspected nothing. Thereafter she suspected
everything. Implacably she read new meanings into this and that detail
of her mother's behavior in the past. And no doubt Madame Langeais's
frivolity furnished only too many grounds for her suppositions: but
Jacqueline added to them. She longed to be more intimate with her
father, who had always been nearer to her, his quality of mind having a
great attraction for her. She longed to love him more, and to pity him.
But Langeais did not seem to stand in much need of pity: and a
suspicion, more dreadful even than the first, crossed the girl's heated
imagination,--that her father knew nothing, but that it suited him to
know nothing, and that, so long as he were allowed to go his own way, he
did not care.
Then Jacqueline felt that she was lost. She dared not despise them. She
loved them. But she could not go on living in their house. Her
friendship with Simone Adam was no help at all. She judged severely the
foibles of her former boon companion. She did not spare herself:
everything that was ugly and mediocre in herself made her suffer
terribly: she clung desperately to the pure memory of Marthe. But that
memory was fading: she felt that the stream of time, one day following
another, would cover it up and wash away all trace of it. And then there
would be an end of everything: she would be like the rest, sunk deep in
the mire.... Oh! if she could only escape from, such a world, at any
cost! Save me! Save me!...
It was just when she was in this fever of despair, feeling her utter
destitution, filled with passionate disgust and mystic expectancy,
holding out her arms to an unknown saviour, that she met Olivier.
Madame Langeais, of course, invited Christophe, who, that winter, was
the musician of the hour. Christophe accepted, and, as usual, did not
take any trouble to make himself pleasant. However, Madame Langeais
thought him charming;--he could do anything he liked, as long as he was
the fashion: everybody would go on thinking him charming, while the
fashion ran its allotted course of a few months.--Jacqueline, who, for
the time being, was outside the current, was not so charmed with him:
the mere fact that Christophe was belauded by certain people was enough
to make her diffident about him. Besides, Christophe's bluntness, and
his loud way of speaking, and his noisy gaiety, offended her. In her
then state of mind the joy of living seemed a coarse thing to her: her
eyes were fixed on the twilight melancholy of the soul, and she fancied
that she loved it. There was too much sunlight in Christophe.
But when she talked to him he told her about Olivier: he always had to
bring his friend into every pleasant thing that happened to him: it
would have seemed to him a selfish use of a new friendship if he had not
set aside a part of it for Olivier. He told Jacqueline so much about
him, that she felt a secret emotion in thus catching a glimpse of a soul
so much in accordance with her ideas, and made her mother invite him
too. Olivier did not accept at first, so that Christophe and Jacqueline
were left to complete their imaginary portrait of him at their leisure,
and, of course, he was found to be very like it when at last he made up
his mind to go.
He went, but hardly spoke a word. He did not need to speak. His
intelligent eyes, his smile, his refined manners, the tranquillity that
was in and inundated by his personality, could not but attract
Jacqueline. Christophe, by contrast, stood as a foil to Olivier's
shining qualities. She did not show anything, for she was fearful of the
feeling stirring in her: she confined herself to talking to Christophe,
but it was always about Olivier. Christophe was only too happy to talk
about his friend, and did not notice Jacqueline's pleasure in the
subject of their conversation. He used to talk about himself, and she
would listen agreeably enough, though she was not in the least
interested: then, without seeming to do so, she would bring the
conversation round to those episodes in his life which included Olivier.
Jacqueline's pretty ways were dangerous for a man who was not on his
guard. Without knowing it Christophe fell in love with her: it gave him
pleasure to go to the house again: he took pains with his dress: and a
feeling, which he well knew, began to tinge all his ideas with its
tender smiling languor. Olivier was in love with her too, and had been
from their first meeting: he thought she had no regard for him, and
suffered in silence. Christophe made his state even worse by telling him
joyously, as they left the Langeais' house, what he had said to
Jacqueline and what she had said to him. The idea never occurred to
Olivier that Jacqueline should like him. Although, by dint of living
with Christophe, he had become more optimistic, he still distrusted
himself: he could not believe that any woman would ever love him, for he
saw himself too clearly, and with eyes that saw too truthfully:--what
man is there would be worthy to be loved; if it were for his merits, and
not by the magic and indulgence of love?
One evening when he had been invited to the Langeais', he felt that it
would make him too unhappy to feel Jacqueline's indifference: he said
that he was too tired and told Christophe to go without him. Christophe
suspected nothing, and went off in high delight. In his naïve egoism he
thought only of the pleasure of having Jacqueline all to himself. He was
not suffered to rejoice for long. When she heard that Olivier was not
coming, Jacqueline at once became peevish, irritable, bored, and
dispirited: she lost all desire to please: she did not listen to
Christophe, and answered him at random: and he had the humiliation of
seeing her stifle a weary yawn. She was near tears. Suddenly she went
away in the middle of the evening, and did not appear again.
Christophe went home discomfited. All the way home he tried to explain
this sudden change of front: and the truth began dimly to dawn on him.
When he reached his rooms he found Olivier waiting for him, and then,
with a would-be indifferent air, Olivier asked him about the party.
Christophe told him of his discomfiture, and he saw Olivier's face
brighten as he went on.
"Still tired?" he asked. "Why didn't you go to bed?"
"Oh! I'm much better," said Olivier. "I'm not the least tired now."
"Yes," said Christophe slyly, "I fancy it has done you a lot of good not
going."
He looked at him affectionately and roguishly, and went away into his
own room: and then, when he was alone, he began to laugh quietly, and
laughed until he cried:
"Little minx!" he thought. "She was making a game of me! And he was
deceiving me, too. What a secret they made of it!"
From that moment he plucked out every personal thought of Jacqueline
from his heart: and, like a broody hen hatching her eggs, he hatched the
romance of the young lovers. Without seeming to know their secret, and
without betraying either to the other, he helped them, though they never
knew it.
He thought it his solemn duty to study Jacqueline's character to see if
Olivier could be happy with her. And, being very tactless, he horrified
Jacqueline with the ridiculous questions he put to her about her tastes,
her morality, etc., etc.
"Idiot! What does he mean?" Jacqueline would think angrily, and refuse
to answer him, and turn her back on him.
And Olivier would be delighted to see Jacqueline paying no more
attention to Christophe. And Christophe would be overjoyed at seeing
Olivier's happiness. His joy was patent, and revealed itself much more
obstreperously than Olivier's. And as Jacqueline could not explain it,
and never dreamed that Christophe had a much clearer knowledge of their
love than she had herself, she thought him unbearable: she could not
understand how Olivier could be so infatuated with such a vulgar,
cumbersome friend. Christophe divined her thoughts, and took a malicious
delight in infuriating her: then he would step aside, and say that he
was too busy to accept the Langeais' invitations, so as to leave
Jacqueline and Olivier alone together.
However, he was not altogether without anxiety concerning the future. He
regarded himself as responsible in a large measure for the marriage that
was in the making, and he worried over it, for he had a fair insight
into Jacqueline's character, and he was afraid of many things: her
wealth first of all, her up-bringing, her surroundings, and, above all,
her weakness. He remembered his old friend Colette, though, no doubt, he
admitted that Jacqueline was truer, more frank, more passionate: there
was in the girl an ardent aspiration towards a life of courage, an
almost heroic desire for it.
"But desiring isn't everything," thought Christophe, remembering a jest
of Diderot's: "the chief thing is a straight backbone."
He would have liked to warn Olivier of the danger. But when he saw him
come back from being with Jacqueline, with his eyes lit with joy, he had
not the heart to speak, and he thought:
"The poor things are happy. I won't disturb their happiness."
Gradually his affection for Olivier made him share his friend's
confidence. He took heart of grace, and at last began to believe that
Jacqueline was just as Olivier saw her and as she wished to appear in
her own eyes. She meant so well! She loved Olivier for all the qualities
which made him different from herself and the world she lived in:
because he was poor, because he was uncompromising in his moral ideas,
because he was awkward and shy in society. Her love was so pure and so
whole that she longed to be poor too, and, sometimes, almost ... yes,
almost to be ugly, so that she might be sure that he loved her for
herself, and for the love with which her heart was so full, the love for
which her heart was so hungry.... Ah! Sometimes, when he was not with
her, she would go pale and her hands would tremble. She would seem to
scoff at her emotion, and pretend to be thinking of something else, and
to take no notice of it. She would talk mockingly of things. But
suddenly she would break off, and rush away and shut herself up in her
room: and then, with the doors locked, and the curtains drawn over the
window, she would sit there, with her knees tight together, and her
elbows close against her sides, and her arms folded across her breast,
while she tried to repress the beating of her heart: she would sit there
huddled together, never stirring, hardly breathing: she dared not move
for fear lest her happiness should escape if she so much as lifted a
finger. She would sit holding her love close, close to her body in
silence.
And now Christophe was absolutely determined that Olivier should succeed
in his wooing. He fussed round him like a mother, supervised his
dressing, presumed to give him advice as to what he should wear, and
even--(think of it!)--tied his tie for him. Olivier bore with him
patiently at the cost of having to retie his tie on the stairs when
Christophe was no longer present. He smiled inwardly, but he was touched
by such great affection. Besides, his love had made him timid, and he
was not sure of himself, and was glad of Christophe's advice. He used to
tell him everything that happened when he was with Jacqueline, and
Christophe would be just as moved by it as himself, and sometimes at
night he would lie awake for hours trying to find the means of making
the path of love smoother for his friend.
It was in the garden of the Langeais' villa, near Paris, on the
outskirts of the forest of Isle-Adam, that Olivier and Jacqueline had
the interview which was the turning-point in their lives.
Christophe had gone down with his friend, but he had found a harmonium
in the house, and sat playing so as to leave the lovers to walk about
the garden in peace.--Truth to tell, they did not wish it. They were
afraid to be left alone. Jacqueline was silent and rather hostile. On
his last visit Olivier had been conscious of a change in her manner, a
sudden coldness, an expression in her eyes which was strange, hard, and
almost inimical. It froze him. He dared not ask her for an explanation,
for he was fearful of hearing cruel words on the lips of the girl he
loved. He trembled whenever he saw Christophe leave them, for it seemed
to him that his presence was his only safeguard against the blow which
threatened to fall upon him.
It was not that Jacqueline loved Olivier less. Rather she was more in
love with him, and it was that that made her hostile. Love, with which
till then she had only played, love, to which she had so often called,
was there, before her eyes: she saw it gaping before her like an abyss,
and she flung back in terror: she could not understand it, and wondered:
"Why? Why? What does it mean?"
Then she would look at Olivier with the expression which so hurt him,
and think:
"Who is this man?"
And she could not tell. He was a stranger.
"Why do I love him?"
She could not tell.
"Do I love him?"
She could not tell.... She did not know: and yet she knew that she was
caught: she was in the toils of love: she was on the point of losing
herself in love, losing herself utterly; her will, her independence, her
egoism, her dreams of the future, all were to be swallowed up by the
monster. And she would harden herself in anger, and sometimes she would
feel that she almost hated Olivier.
They went to the very end of the garden, into the kitchen-garden, which
was cut off from the lawns by a hedge of tall trees. They sauntered down
the paths bordered on either side with gooseberry bushes, with their
clusters of red and golden fruit, and beds of strawberries, the
fragrance of which scented the air. It was June: but there had been
storms, and the weather was cold. The sky was gray and the light dim:
the low-hanging clouds moved in a heavy mass, drifting with the wind,
which blew only in the higher air, and never touched the earth; no leaf
stirred: but the air was very fresh. Everything was shrouded in
melancholy, even their hearts, swelling with the grave happiness that
was in them. And from the other end of the garden, through the open
windows of the villa, out of sight, there came the sound of the
harmonium, grinding out the Fugue in E Flat Minor of Johann Sebastian
Bach. They sat down on the coping of a well, both pale and silent. And
Olivier saw tears trickling down Jacqueline's cheeks.
"You are crying?" he murmured, with trembling lips.
And the tears came to his own eyes.
He took her hand. She laid her head on Olivier's shoulder. She gave up
the struggle: she was vanquished, and it was such sweet comfort to her!
... They wept silently as they sat listening to the music under the
moving canopy of the heavy clouds, which in their noiseless flight
seemed to skim the tops of the trees. They thought of all that they had
suffered, and perhaps--who knows?--of all that they were to suffer in
the future. There are moments when music summons forth all the sadness
woven into the woof of a human being's destiny....
After a moment or two Jacqueline dried her eyes and looked at Olivier.
And suddenly they kissed. O boundless happiness! Religious happiness!
So sweet and so profound that it is almost sorrow!
[Illustration: Musical notation]
Jacqueline asked:
"Was your sister like you?"
Olivier felt a sudden pang. He said:
"Why do you ask me about her? Did you know her?"
She replied:
"Christophe told me.... You have suffered?"
Olivier nodded: he was too much moved to speak.
"I have suffered too," she said.
She told him of the friend who had been taken from her, her beloved
Marthe and with her heart big with emotion she told him how she had
wept, wept until she thought she was going to die.
"You will help me?" she said, in a beseeching tone. "You will help me
to live, and be good, and to be a little like her? Poor Marthe, you will
love her too?"
"We will love them both, as they both love each other."
"I wish they were here."
"They are here."
They sat there locked in each other's arms: they hardly breathed, and
could feel heart beating to heart. A gentle drizzle was falling,
falling. Jacqueline shivered.
"Let us go in," she said.
Under the trees it was almost dark. Olivier kissed Jacqueline's wet
hair: she turned her face up to him, and, for the first time, he felt
loving lips against his, a girl's lips, warm and parted a little. They
were nigh swooning.
Near the house they stopped once more:
"How utterly alone we were!" he said.
He had already forgotten Christophe.
They remembered him at length. The music had stopped. They went in.
Christophe was sitting at the harmonium with his head in his hands,
dreaming, he too, of many things in the past. When he heard the door
open, he started from his dream, and turned to them affectionately with
a solemn, tender smile lighting up his face. He saw in their eyes what
had happened, pressed their hands warmly, and said:
"Sit down, and I'll play you something."
They sat down, and he played the piano, telling in music all that was in
his heart, and the great love he had for them. When he had done they all
three sat in silence. Then he got up and looked at them. He looked so
kind, and so much older, so much stronger than they! For the first time
she began to appreciate what he was. He hugged them both, and said to
Jacqueline:
"You will love him dearly, won't you? You will love him dearly?"